I know it has horrible dolls for art. I know the greenish layout is horrible.
Has anyone actually played the damn thing?
I am ok with Fuzion as a system, have read the Cyberpunk 3.0 rule book but have never played...
Fully confess that I never have and don't really see the point.
If you want transhumanist stuff then there are better games out there that tackle those themes and are built to do so from the ground up, rather than awkwardly cramming those ideas into a setting which previously worked on different assumptions.
If you want gloriously cheesy 80s/early 90s throwback cyberpunk stuff, then all the modifications to CP 3.0 take you away from that and you're better off going with CP 2020.
I agree with everything you have said.
Cyberpunk 3.0 is a terrible game -- beyond the simple "the dolls suck" and the crappy layout.
But...
That does not mean that anyone has played it. That anyone has even enjoyed it.
People have done stranger things...
The idea of things on land getting so shitty that humans begin to return to the sea was intriguing. I'd probably pick up a copy just out of curiousity if I ever saw one cheap.
But no... never played it, never met anyone who had played it, never met anyone who even just owned it, never saw it on sale in any brick & mortar shop or con. It died FAST.
The lack of hype surrounding it was breathtaking - I only found out about the doll nonsense years after the fact.
Quote from: LouGoncey;862151I know it has horrible dolls for art. I know the greenish layout is horrible.
Has anyone actually played the damn thing?
I am ok with Fuzion as a system, have read the Cyberpunk 3.0 rule book but have never played...
The issue is not actually Fuzion, it's that it's got some of 2.0.2.0's rules mashed in without any thought towards compatibility. It's a mess of rules that need to be reworked.
Quote from: Warthur;862173The lack of hype surrounding it was breathtaking - I only found out about the doll nonsense years after the fact.
Super agreed. It was like one of those movies that you heard was in the works, thought "huh, I'll have to find out if it's any good when it comes out," and the next time you hear about it, it came out three years with no fanfare.
I can't say I've played it, though I did buy the PDF when it came out. The Doll Art was embarrassingly bad, sure.
I never found Fuzion to be as... is elegant the word I want? I don't quite think so... as the old Interlock system, but I was familiar with it. I've got quite a few Fuzion books, being an old cyberpunk fan, and an early adopter of 'internet fan-supplement hunting', but it never quite lived up to its promise for me.
But CP3?
This is a clear case of Pondsmith losing the ball. Out of the game design business, working with/for Microsoft in some capacity (he was never very clear on that in his infrequent essays on the Rtalsorian website), and he just suddenly jumped in with.... that.
I'm not one for 80's nostalgia for its own sake, but there is a certain something that makes cyberpunk setting cyberpunk, aside from colorful hair and clothes, and CP3 has none of it. Its been a few years since I revisited it, of course.
The setting is simply... strange. The 'Magic of Nanotech' is taken to logical extremes, which is fascinating in its own right, but it does make the setting weird. I gotta admire Pondsmith's vision, his dedication to doing it his way... but to answer your question, in addition to not being 'Cyberpunk' in any meaningful way, it was also unplayable. Not the rules, the setting.
Also: Doll Art.
Tried.
First hurdle: No one was a fan of Fuzion.
Second hurdle: No one was a fan of the setting changes. They were too severe for anyone used to the previous edition. And that was the real problem. It did not feel like Cyberpunk anymore to them. I came into it with no prior knowledge of the game. But one of the players was a fan of 2nd ed. So is one of my current players and their reaction to 3e was much the same.
Oddly neither did more than quirk an eyebrow at the art. It was the setting changes that gave them pause.
Much like d20 Gamma World, the 3.0 setting has some neet ideas and would have been fun as its own game. But as a continuation of the franchise it falls flat.