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I´ve been thinking about about inherent contradictions in Cyberpunk lately.

I´d say there are several conflicting things in the published materiél.

Does anybody else think so?
What are your experiences?

Examples:
lethality vs. damage/armor ratio

prevalence of heavy weapons and armor vs. combat rules and their implications; linked to the first point

professionals vs punks

tactical approach vs. cinematic, fast paced action

internal logic/"realism" vs. combat zone

detailed NetRunning vs. fast paced action

style vs. substance

Quote from: SettembriniProfessional vs Punk

This debate has raged for along time between me and some people, mainly concerning Shadowrun-but yeah I harbor the same grudge against Punk in this game too.

In my games Punk is good for some comic relief, but the players and I are on the same page-it's a fast way to a long walk off a short pier.

Quote from: SettembriniI´ve been thinking about about inherent contradictions in Cyberpunk lately.

I´d say there are several conflicting things in the published materiél.

Does anybody else think so?
What are your experiences?

Examples:
lethality vs. damage/armor ratio

prevalence of heavy weapons and armor vs. combat rules and their implications; linked to the first point

My experience with CP2020 It is a lethal game. I found most of my players leaned toward heavier weapons. So armor did help mooks as much. Or my players for that matter. I also injected a little reality in to my game. By that I mean if you arm was just blown off or rendered useless. That victim is not really worried about the guy shooting but how his arm is fucked. Rendering him out of the picture.
professionals vs punks

Quote from: Settembrinitactical approach vs. cinematic, fast paced action

i think you can have it both ways. Sometime tactly can start slowly. Being planned. But both can erupt into nonstop action, excitment.

Quote from: Settembriniinternal logic/"realism" vs. combat zone

Im not sure I know what you mean by this. Are you talking about being an armchair quartereback so to speak looking at a situation. As opposed to a truely adrenaline filled situation?

Quote from: Settembrinidetailed NetRunning vs. fast paced action

Yeah this is one I have struggled with my self. I never played a net runner, and none of my players every did either. I theory it should be just as high pace as any combat. (obviously depending on the situation)  But in practice I have not been able to achieve that myself.

Quote from: Settembrinistyle vs. substance

DOnt really have a good answer for this one. Let me think about it I'll get back to it.

Quote from: RoninI´m not sure I know what you mean by this. Are you talking about being an armchair quartereback so to speak looking at a situation. As opposed to a truely adrenaline filled situation?

No, I just think the combat zones are a major fuck up in suspension of disbelief. You need a lot of rationalizing and re-fitting to make them feasible. And the more feasible they are, the less combat-zoney they become.
As an over-the-top element they work splendidly, compare "Combat-Cab".
But the concept doesn´t go well together with the ecologized rest of the setting.

You want contradictions?

Mike Pondsmith, author of Cyberpunk 2020: "Cyberpunk should be played kind of like the film Casablanca, with glittering parties, fast dates, betrayals and stuf."

Cyberpunk 2020 Product Line: "This month: a new book of guns!  Next month: More guns!"

"Drugs are bad" ....remember folks "style over substance"

Regards,
David R

Rotwang:

I read your review, and it was reinforcing my opinion I built upon my own experiences. Good stuff.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Cyberpunk 2020 Product Line: "This month: a new book of guns!  Next month: More guns!"

what were the names of those supplements?  i want to get 'em cheap on ebay!  (see thread of mine for interest of similar subject matter)

:D

:verkill:

I wonder if RTG just published more and more toybooks because that's what sold?

Well, it WAS reinforced by the published scenarios!
They are DEADLY without the latest gear!

Never seen one of them Casablanca adventures.

Quote from: SettembriniNo, I just think the combat zones are a major fuck up in suspension of disbelief. You need a lot of rationalizing and re-fitting to make them feasible. And the more feasible they are, the less combat-zoney they become.
As an over-the-top element they work splendidly, compare "Combat-Cab".
But the concept doesn´t go well together with the ecologized rest of the setting.

Ok I see what you mean now. I got to disagree with you. I see it more as a urban ghetto. But far more dangerous. Their are places in real life that pretty much are combat zones. Look at some of the housing projects in the some of the big cities in the US. Chicago, Illinois home of the Cabrini-Green Housing projects. Or closer to me the Jeffries, or Brewster-Douglas Projects in Detroit. These were fucked up places to live. And you sure as hell didnt visit. Unless your buying drugs or picking hookers. Either way you sure as hell werent ever safe. Hell in the Cabrini-Green gangs controlled entire biuldings. A lot of these in the early 90's were torn down or renovated. But these kind of places still exist. I've even seen it in my town here of lansing. There are places that are just dangerous to go. That if your not from there you shouldnt go there.
Now to look to the future. Where their is readily available combat cyberwear to those that can afford it. The ultimate in concealed weapons. Powerful designer drugs run rampant. High powered automatic weapons now rule the day. Even more so now than in the past. Every one has given up on the area. Cops fear for their lives. Patrols becoming less and less frequent. Or worst yet are paid off by the gangs turning a blind eye to the madness. They are the ultimate evolution of the urban ghetto. The darkest part of the dark future.

Quote from: Settembrinilethality vs. damage/armor ratio

prevalence of heavy weapons and armor vs. combat rules and their implications; linked to the first point

Yeah, damage:armor ration in by-the-book CP2020 doesn't work out. My quick-fix was to halve all SPs - armor is still useful, but you won't completely on a pistol anymore. (Unless it's one of those 5-6mm joke articles... But who doesn't?)

Quote from: Settembriniprofessionals vs punks

Depends on the campaign - PsychoSquad gives you access to other free equipment and perks than, let's say, Boosters or Nomads.
(However, I prefer the punk angle. There is so much freaky stuff like the arc thrower cyberarm or the combat drugs that it would be a waste of material to neglect them.)

Quote from: Settembrinitactical approach vs. cinematic, fast paced action

I'd say that the tactical approach is way more present. a.) you don't get support for cinematic stuff like running around in akimbo style (that even cuts down your chances) and b.) are maneuvers and positioning the only real source of influence in combat.

Quote from: Settembriniinternal logic/"realism" vs. combat zone

I just treat it as a "there are chromed monsters" shithole and don't think to hard about it.

Quote from: Settembrinidetailed NetRunning vs. fast paced action

I've never seen netrunner action in actual play; can't say anything educated about it.


Regarding Casablanca, the closest to it what I'd know is the adventure in WGF. Until about the middle of it where it once again turns into a kill'em smash-fest.

I thought of a better example of a real life combat zone. The West bank. Not only is it the Arab vs Isreal. Its also normal folks, criminals, and everything else. Work'n for a livin in a strange mix of tradition, and modern values and items.

Alas, the killings there are lower per capita than those in Washington D.C.
The "Big Turf" War in Gaza and the West Bank yielded less than 50 dead, and was on all international media.

There´s no need for ridiculous combat cabs, body lottery and the like.

The only thing akin to what the combat zones are described, is the city of Falludja in 2004.
And that was fueled by (at least) two external parties.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!I wonder if RTG just published more and more toybooks because that's what sold?

That's been the reasoning that I've encountered so far.

If you compare Cyperpunk 2020 to Cybergeneration, you get some interesting contrasts even though they were made by the same guy. Cyberpunk 2020 seems to be the more traditional approach to the genre while Cybergeneration seems to have more of a story-games approach to the genre.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!You want contradictions?
 
Mike Pondsmith, author of Cyberpunk 2020: "Cyberpunk should be played kind of like the film Casablanca, with glittering parties, fast dates, betrayals and stuf."
 
Cyberpunk 2020 Product Line: "This month: a new book of guns! Next month: More guns!"

So sad, but so true.
 
It took me many years to really understand that a cyberpunk game is not about crunchy rules and a big list of guns and cyberwear. Now I yearn for the ultimate, lightweight cyberpunk game.
 
It will be mine... oh yes, it will be.

Quote from: SettembriniI´ve been thinking about about inherent contradictions in Cyberpunk lately.
 
I´d say there are several conflicting things in the published materiél.
 
Does anybody else think so?
What are your experiences?

*I've been trying to write a response to this all morning, but it keeps turning into a multi-page rant.*
 
CP2020, with a few house rules, a decent GM and players who dont think world.guns.ru is a hardcore porn site, can be a terrific game.
Sadly much of my CP2020 experience has been with the wrong players, and it's not easy to maintain enthusiasm for a broken game when a significant amount of the players want to indulge their Columbine fantasies on paper.
 
The biggest conflicting thing in CP2020 is Mike Pondsmith.
On one hand, he brags about the realism of the combat rules and sneers at lesser systems, then offloads steaming piles of turd like the Netrunning rules, Cyberpsychosis, the Techie class (Jury rig? FFS!) and the easy availability of milspec weapons and armour. Then instead of encouraging GMs to stand up to players who seize the opportunity to munchkin out that he's just handed them on paper, he just tells them to send bigger and badder foes against the players (the cannon adventures are filled with overpowered mooks) - because no player confronted with unrealistically badass foes will ever think of building a more badass character to start with. Then he makes the comment that he can't beleive the sort of characters folks are playing CP2020 with. :rolleyes:

Quote from: O'Borg. . . just tells them to send bigger and badder foes against the players (the cannon adventures are filled with overpowered mooks)

there's something called "the cannon adventures"?  i'd make a munchkin combat monster too, for something like that!  "next, the 36-pounder, and his sidekicks, the culverins"

;)

couldn't resist

and whaddya mean, world.guns.ru isn't a porn site?

There actually IS a Streetfighting adventure anthology, that´s canon as well as cannon!

are ken and ryu in there?  and sagat as a boss?

Quote from: beeberthere's something called "the cannon adventures"? i'd make a munchkin combat monster too, for something like that! "next, the 36-pounder, and his sidekicks, the culverins"
 
;)
 
couldn't resist
 
and whaddya mean, world.guns.ru isn't a porn site?

D'Oh! :o
This is because I referred to Blackhands Street Weapons as a book of canon cannons in a prep email for my PBeM game recently :)

Necroing this thread to let everyone know that Cyberpunk 2020 is up on Bundle of Holding. (https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Cyberpunk2020)

Quote from: Settembrini;123767I´ve been thinking about about inherent contradictions in Cyberpunk lately.

I´d say there are several conflicting things in the published materiél.

Does anybody else think so?
What are your experiences?

Looks like a fun necro-thread! Challenge accepted!

Quote from: Settembrini;123767lethality vs. damage/armor ratio

I think they nailed it. The conceit of the cyberpunk milieu is that life, like the rest of the crass adornments of society - cheap and replaceable. The lethality of the game is by default supposed to be high-octane as a measure of making players be damned sure they want to draw-down because whatever meager protection you have is likely going to be insufficient to deal with prolonged combat.

Another misconception is that everyone is running around with military-grade hardware. Sure you can run your games like that - but that's like playing D&D and handing out +4 weapons to everyone at 1st level. Yes the game can and often should escalate to that level of lethality, but there is a huge gap between the conceits of a starting game and this level. This is not a contradiction in mechanics - most body-armors cannot withstand prolonged fire from high-caliber rounds.  

Quote from: Settembrini;123767prevalence of heavy weapons and armor vs. combat rules and their implications; linked to the first point

The vast majority of character-available weapons are not heavy-weapons. In fact, in the base-book outside of the Barrett-Arasaka .50-cal, which is used exclusively by C-SWAT and military personnel against full-body conversion, the only heavy weapons are explosives. There are variants of these weapons in later books - but they all occupy the same class and use of weaponry of the setting: highly restricted military/paramilitary hardware. If you're letting your PC's run around with these things in broad daylight in Corporate Sectors without some really good reasons (like - being C-SWAT or some other appropriate personnel), you're probably not understanding the setting conceits.

Quote from: Settembrini;123767professionals vs punks

This is quintessentially cyberpunk. Granted they operate at different ends of the social spectrum. Professionals in the game are those trying to work their way up the ladder, and it is very useful to have contacts on the streets for various things that might help that rise. Whether that means having street-friends that can land you some good blow for the boss's private party, or new un-licensed street-tech you can nab for R&D, or whatever. The reverse is true too - being a street-rat with a friend in the Corp Sector means a *safe* crash-space, possible means to a steady income, or just some scratch for the near future. Who knows? Maybe a nice corporate job. The idea is that these are not contradictions as much as they symbiotic poles of a very stratified assumed culture.

Quote from: Settembrini;123767tactical approach vs. cinematic, fast paced action

A little from column A, a little from column B. The mechanics are definitely tactical. The cinematic is pure narrative touch to simulate the relative short curve on the math. You can land a virtual kill-shot 10% of the time (barring armor etc). This too isn't a contradiction, just a license to be creative. And the tactical part never goes away. If you aren't being tactical in your approach to combat in CP2020, you are going to *die*.

Quote from: Settembrini;123767internal logic/"realism" vs. combat zone

If you read "Home of the Brave" (a fantastic sourcebook for CP2020) it goes into superb detail of why this is. It's basic economics. The nation is essentially bankrupt, it doesn't have enough wealth to feed everyone. More to the point, corporate interest is strong enough to allow zoning rules that demand and can pay for the security to keep undesireables out of corporate zones. How? Simple. Corporations support their own security in their own zones. Unless you have a reason to be there - you're not allowed in. Multiply this by the number of corporations in your city and you'll create a patchwork of places streetscrubs simply can't go to. The "Combat Zone" is essentially nomenclature that is an expression of those places where the disenfranchised are stuck. And in CP2020 it's dog-eat-dog.

The internal logic of the setting is sound - except for where it expressly has the state acknowledging these places as some form of legitimate locations within the municipality. As such - it's a reflection of the deep cynical corruption inherent to the setting (which imo is very appropriate for the genre) than it is to being a contradiction.

Quote from: Settembrini;123767detailed NetRunning vs. fast paced action

/sigh. You got me on this one. Chalk this up to late-80's understanding of computer-technology and relatively new game-design. Internally it works great IF you're a Netrunner. If not - it sucks. If you'd like to see a great way to see how it should be done - check out Interface Zero for Savage Worlds. Their hacking rules are *excellent*. All meat, no fat.

Quote from: Settembrini;123767style vs. substance

CP2020 is a setting whose conceits are that over-commercial society has bred a culture that values the style of things over almost all else. This is part of what drives the cyberpunk pathos. The PUNK in cyberpunk is the attempt of exalting the individual over the clamor of the calcified banality masquerading as pop-culture. The raging against the machine, so to speak. Looking good doing it is the paradox that makes it fun. And if you don't care about all that stuff - that's what the bullets are for. Lead is all the substance you need, in the end.

I could argue that the Game posits a conflict between style and substance, rather than demanding an answer.  The fluff text and in-character bits scattered about inevitably fall on the side of Style, but the rules encourage a substance approach.  Spending an additional d6 humanity to chrome plate your arm is the Style way to go, but in the rules/Substance world it's foolish and pointless... its not like pursing Style actually gains you anything within the realm of rules... no bonuses to social interactions, no meta-rules increasing rep... nada. You just get to tell everyone how very shiny your arm is.

That's not universal, few things are, but it is pretty consistent. Almost everything stylish is tactically (substance) a bad choice, mechanically bad.  

So as a conflict, as established in the very sentiment, its actually a brilliant expression of the theme.

Quote from: Spike;970202I could argue that the Game posits a conflict between style and substance, rather than demanding an answer.  The fluff text and in-character bits scattered about inevitably fall on the side of Style, but the rules encourage a substance approach.  Spending an additional d6 humanity to chrome plate your arm is the Style way to go, but in the rules/Substance world it's foolish and pointless... its not like pursing Style actually gains you anything within the realm of rules... no bonuses to social interactions, no meta-rules increasing rep... nada. You just get to tell everyone how very shiny your arm is.

That's not universal, few things are, but it is pretty consistent. Almost everything stylish is tactically (substance) a bad choice, mechanically bad.  

So as a conflict, as established in the very sentiment, its actually a brilliant expression of the theme.

That is exactly right. The reason why, from a game standpoint, is because players will almost *always* err on the side of what is substantially better. Style be damned! The trick is for the GM's to make it matter socially.

Well, from there the setting is built to favor Style, which is why the initial emphasis is on Street characters and stories, why the Rockerboy is a serious archetype (as is the Nomad which is presented as an alternative to the Solo... when in reality its real role is either as a mover (vehicles) or in support (summoning hordes of useful NPCs)...).

We tend to dismiss the psychological aspect of setting design and presentation on table play, but I wouldn't be surprised to find most players did sacrifice at least some tactical utility for 'flash' simply because the book(s) were so relentlessly clever about hyping style.  I mean: Tactical Guy may win all the fights in the rules (or not... the system is unforgivingly lethal after all), but everyone remembers Johnny Silverhand!

Without getting all meta about it, CP2020 really does encourage you to find a style for Your Guy... and that means balancing out Substance.

Quote from: Spike;970204Well, from there the setting is built to favor Style, which is why the initial emphasis is on Street characters and stories, why the Rockerboy is a serious archetype (as is the Nomad which is presented as an alternative to the Solo... when in reality its real role is either as a mover (vehicles) or in support (summoning hordes of useful NPCs)...).

We tend to dismiss the psychological aspect of setting design and presentation on table play, but I wouldn't be surprised to find most players did sacrifice at least some tactical utility for 'flash' simply because the book(s) were so relentlessly clever about hyping style.  I mean: Tactical Guy may win all the fights in the rules (or not... the system is unforgivingly lethal after all), but everyone remembers Johnny Silverhand!

Without getting all meta about it, CP2020 really does encourage you to find a style for Your Guy... and that means balancing out Substance.

Hah! but it does balance out in it's own weird way. Johnny Silverhand gets slagged. Morgan Blackhand, the posterboy to Substance vs. Silverhands Style, is the one that survives. Even in their thin metaplot, reality asserts itself. But! Silverhand is the one that is still remembered most.

In the corebook: Drugs are bad. Even beer. In the future, beer is obsolete, people drink Smash instead, which is just as addictive and damaging to your health as heroin, and makes you go into a berserk killing rage besides.  

Also in the corebook: All the cool bars in Night City just brew their own old-fashioned beer, so that PC's can actually go to bars in search of adventure and quest-givers without having to drink a mug of rage-heroin. Nobody in any of the supplements or adventures ever drinks Smash, and Smash is never mentioned again.

Derp.

And then you pick up Nights Edge and all hell breaks loose. :cool:

I mostly remember the cyborg stuff, language and guns. Now that I have the Core book again I'm looking forward to revisting it. How did y'all find its netrunning/hacking rules? I don't recall them but they're usually the weak point of most cyberpunk RPGs in my experience.

One of my players has it and looks ok really. Im not seeing what the complaint is over? Whats supposedly wrong with it?

Quote from: tenbones;970207Hah! but it does balance out in it's own weird way. Johnny Silverhand gets slagged. Morgan Blackhand, the posterboy to Substance vs. Silverhands Style, is the one that survives. Even in their thin metaplot, reality asserts itself. But! Silverhand is the one that is still remembered most.

When I was first reading the core rules, I thought that COOL and Attractiveness would be more important to the game than they turned out to be-- especially the latter. The latter seems more like a charisma dump stat.

Quote from: Ronin;123782Yeah this is one I have struggled with my self. I never played a net runner, and none of my players every did either. I theory it should be just as high pace as any combat. (obviously depending on the situation)  But in practice I have not been able to achieve that myself.

Most of the time, my players made combat characters, but if I were running 2020 today, I think I would lean towards netrunners being like D&D thieves who use wifi to hack electronic locks and cameras and leave the matrix part out of it. Just make it a simple skill roll and move on.
Maybe put an ICE encounter on an important hack.

*Edit* I am not ashamed to fall for a necro!

We played a year-long game of CP2020 with PC cops (using Protect and Serve) and our four-man group was regularly losing characters. The game is plenty lethal.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;970317When I was first reading the core rules, I thought that COOL and Attractiveness would be more important to the game than they turned out to be-- especially the latter. The latter seems more like a charisma dump stat.

Depends how you run your game. I've had players using the Rockerboy variant - the Rabble-rouser, start gigantic riots and all kinds of mayhem to cover the group's real criminal shenanigans. Media reporter PC's on the street creating their own news via the groups adventures and serializing it for guerrilla networks. The money he generated became a big part of the groups finances as well as enhancing their street-cred. It didn't stop the action, it gave rise to it.

Attractiveness originally turned out to be the big dumpstat. Because PC's, once they had the money, could raise their Attractiveness rating through surgery. So when a couple of players went that route, I treated them accordingly as 1-attractiveness people in a world that valued beauty and style. Making that money was a lot harder when no one wants to work with you because you're fugly as fuck. So in that regard, it made for interesting gaming. They got what they wanted. I got what I wanted. Fun stuff.

Cool is a stat that I used frequently for social situations. They used to have Cool checks in CP2016 when things got dicey. It affected your reactions (penalties) to represent fear, gunshock etc. People that dumped cool in my games did poorly in firefights. So that's how I reigned that in. Likewise I treated characters with high Cool ratings as just that - cool. Low Cool PC's were treated uncool. I never had much problems afterwards heh.

Quote from: Voros;970278I mostly remember the cyborg stuff, language and guns. Now that I have the Core book again I'm looking forward to revisting it. How did y'all find its netrunning/hacking rules? I don't recall them but they're usually the weak point of most cyberpunk RPGs in my experience.

Netrunning is really it's own thing. Basically you could go full-consciousness into the net. Your deck carried programs (they acted like spells), and interacted directly with constructs in the net, including other netizens, and even programs.

The key thing I found most people ignored was that people assume only Netrunners could actually do netruns. It's true Netrunners were far more powerful (they could access the Menu which was the tools that allowed them to hack the algorithms that governed the environment of the Net itself), non-Netrunners could still be useful. The key here is Netrunners could react much faster, use their programs. Granted non-netrunners with the Programming Skill could create programs. They could do anything most people assume only Netrunners could do programming-wise. They just can't use them as effectively.

Overall though the problem was that Netrunning was a game within a game. It sidelined most other players that weren't skilled at it. And it detracted from gameplay. While fun in itself - I always wanted to do a Netrunner-only campaign. I never got around to it. I chalk up the design to good intentions, bad unintended results, though there are redeeming qualities to it.

Quote from: tenbones;970357Netrunning is really it's own thing. Basically you could go full-consciousness into the net. Your deck carried programs (they acted like spells), and interacted directly with constructs in the net, including other netizens, and even programs.

I really liked that aspect of the setting and felt like a lot more could be done with it as a bizarre Dreamland setting that would draw in a big chunk of the populace. Was it CP2020 that had all the mods for customizing the VR appearance of the Net experience?

Quote from: Simlasa;970424I really liked that aspect of the setting and felt like a lot more could be done with it as a bizarre Dreamland setting that would draw in a big chunk of the populace. Was it CP2020 that had all the mods for customizing the VR appearance of the Net experience?

Don't think so on the VR part. CP2020 you could make your avatar look like anything you wanted. Same with Datafortresses. But yeah - otherwise it was basically a setting within a setting.

If I were to "fix" it - I'd give more options for non-Netrunners to go there. I'd include concepts from Interface Zero as well to "streamline" general hacking vs. doing the full datafortress infiltration that would require the more in-depth mechanics of the CP2020 netrunning rules. This would give Netrunners more stuff to do outside of the net (though they did have rules for doing mini-netruns to hack smart-guns etc. they were too cumbersome).

This might get into non-game interference and super-minutiae, the biggest contradiction for me was the economic reality of the game. Especially lensed through modern era economics. The reality is that the world of CP2020 would have imploded into far worse of a situation than it ended up being had the events of the setting happened in succession as they did.

- Limited nuclear exchange wiping out the majority of the middle-east and slagging instantly the oil-reserves?
- civil war in the US, leading to the economic collapse of the largest economy in the world?
- South American meltdown with brushfire wars
- International corporate warfare

These things *alone* would have plunged the world into a stagnant hellhole. Granted... that's most of the fun in how they surreptitiously replaced a lot of these things going into a quasi-post-scarcity society using hydrogen-based hybrid fuel. Either way, the setting is magnificent and fun as hell to play with.

Quote from: tenbones;970429Don't think so on the VR part. CP2020 you could make your avatar look like anything you wanted. Same with Datafortresses. But yeah - otherwise it was basically a setting within a setting.

Maybe I'm thinking of Cyberspace for Spacemaster... like, it had a mods that would interpret everything into film noir visuals or a shiny-glowy Tronland... and there was a blackmarket one that put a Lovecraft twist on it.

QuoteIf I were to "fix" it - I'd give more options for non-Netrunners to go there.

I kind assumed advances in tele-dildonics would have made it into a Second Life playground of VR avatars... green rabbits in orgies with chinese ogres and elaborate Furry games.

Quote from: Voros;970034Necroing this thread to let everyone know that Cyberpunk 2020 is up on Bundle of Holding. (https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Cyberpunk2020)

Ooooh! :cool: Should I plunge? Is the How To DMG really that epic?

I already got black hack Mirrorshades and I am tempted to get this. You know, I can end up in full cyberpsychosis trying to chase the sublime experience that is the movie Nemesis. Is it worth it? :cool:

I'd say so, it is a bit crunch heavy as I recall like most 80s/90s games but there's lots to like too and the source books are good for fluff mining. I've heard good things about the GM book, from CKrueger I believe, but haven't read it myself yet.

I *highly* recommend the "How To GM" (Listen up, you Primitive Screwheads!) - it obviously is slanted towards Cyberpunk, but it is rock solid for GMing period.

My current players in Edge of the Empire mine the Chromebooks for cybertech (they also mine the Shadowrun books too - don't feel left out, Cyber-Elves). It's worth owning.

Gotta double down on that Listen Up! You primative screwheads!  Recommendation.  There is very little CP specific advice and hands down it is one of the best sources for GMing advice I've ever seen. One thing that it avoids is one-tru-wayism. There are some four or five authors, each gets a whole chapter, and they explain how they handle various issues rather than giving a list of proscriptions or, for that matter, claiming that certain types of players are 'trouble', as so many other games did back then (and I assume still do!).

Its like it takes the idea of giving advice seriously and it does just that, gives advice, and its peppered with examples from the writers own experiences.

Quote from: Simlasa;970439Maybe I'm thinking of Cyberspace for Spacemaster... like, it had a mods that would interpret everything into film noir visuals or a shiny-glowy Tronland... and there was a blackmarket one that put a Lovecraft twist on it.

I kind assumed advances in tele-dildonics would have made it into a Second Life playground of VR avatars... green rabbits in orgies with chinese ogres and elaborate Furry games.

In Shadowrun your cyberdeck could have a custom reality filter that imposed your own VR experience over the one of the system you connected to.

Quote from: Voros;970544I'd say so, it is a bit crunch heavy as I recall like most 80s/90s games but there's lots to like too and the source books are good for fluff mining. I've heard good things about the GM book, from CKrueger I believe, but haven't read it myself yet.

I've mentioned it, but tenbones and spike are probably where you heard it.