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Looked for a thread, couldn't find it. Opening a new one.
I am a passionate player of cyberpunk 2020. Ever since i began to play rpg's, one of my first systems was cp2020. It was fast, it was brutal, it was shiny, it was grimy. It was everything that a system should be. I still sometimes crack open my old systems chest and take the books out, dust them off and get my crew to play a session or ten :D
Any opinions on this one? Any interesting anecdotes?
I'm still loving cyberpunk -- unfortunately it is hard to find anyone that knows about this great game in my area, much less plays it. It doesn't help that the books are so old, the tech has gotten a bit... well dated, and the latest version they had put out was absolute trash.
However 2020? Still love it.
IF you want some newer stuff the guys over at Datafortress 2020 have been working on revamping the old cyberpunk rules slightly and expanding the material a great deal. Don't get me wrong -- some of them are very... eccentric but they are mostly decent folk (as in the decent part is what they are mostly... except when they aren't).
CP2020 is one of the great games.
Interlock is a system of supreme simplicity and beauty that captured the spirit of cyberpunk.
Some of my best experiences as a gamer where playing this game.
Zombie you have perked my interest -- how does that fit into the 20xx stuff -- or does it side step it? Mind giving us a review when it comes out?
I was burned hard on the 20xx newspaper garbage when it came out and I'm leery of spending money on the system now without more info.
Zombie you have perked my interest -- how does that fit into the 20xx stuff -- or does it side step it? Mind giving us a review when it comes out?
I was burned hard on the 20xx newspaper garbage when it came out and I'm leery of spending money on the system now without more info.
My rather sleep addled understanding at this rather late hour is that it has sweet f.a. to do with 20XX. If I have understood what i have read and heard on pod casts it is a pure new setting for CP2020, much in the spirit of hardwired.
Thematically, it sounds like it will be to CP2020, what virtual light is to neuromancer. Lower, but more modern tech. Less chrome,more shanty town. Fractured states and poverty, eroded middle class leaving only the super rich and the very poor.
I'll do some digging and get back to you with detail. And yeah, once i have a copy i'll let you know what it is like.
That looks very cool. I loved Cyberpunk 2020 and my favourite games were always the ones that happened on street-level. It was when the power armour showed up that every thing tended to fall apart.
Thanks for linking to this, it's definitely going on my list of things to pick up.
Yeah, so everything i can find says CP2020.
This is a licenced product, and I think most of the community looks at CP20XX and said no thank you, it would be a bad idea to base a licensed product on that.
I thought CP2020 was great, but that CP2013 was outstanding.
I agree. This was the game that brought the core of my current group together when it came out. The names of those first four player characters still come easily to mind.
Glazer
Dancer
Steelgrave
and Harrison Factor AKA Justin Case
We round robin GM'd. Each time a different GM would take over from the previous week's game. Plots were chaotic. Favorite NPC's were disposable. What was true for two weeks became lies in the third week. I think the revolving GM method actually enhanced the play for us with this game. We always felt on the edge.
I bought the latest incarnation hoping to rekindle the love, but was sorely disappointed. We tried playing it, but ...well, the "magic" was not there.
Greg
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Well, i changed the technology by adding current stuff like tablet pc's and flash drives and modified data terms to have touchsreens and wifi. I also changed the net since i never really liked the tron-ish way they described it, and, of course i changed the weapons to real modern day ones, but caseless. I used this site: world.guns.ru/main-e.htm
Well, i changed the technology by adding current stuff like tablet pc's and flash drives and modified data terms to have touchsreens and wifi. I also changed the net since i never really liked the tron-ish way they described it, and, of course i changed the weapons to real modern day ones, but caseless. I used this site: world.guns.ru/main-e.htm
Changing the tech kind of misses the point, though. The tech-era of the Cyberpunk world never escaped the whole 1980's-Blade-Runner-Meets-Ghost-In-The-Shell, which is part of the attraction of the thing. It's entirely possible to leave out most modern "advances" in technology and still get the leaps-and-starts incongruity of the 'Punk technology curve. Enormous CRT televisions sidling up next to nano-factory toothpaste dispensers, for instance.
Don't get me wrong, I do it, too... but what did you do to keep the anachronistic feel? :)
Well, i changed the technology by adding current stuff like tablet pc's and flash drives and modified data terms to have touchsreens and wifi. I also changed the net since i never really liked the tron-ish way they described it, and, of course i changed the weapons to real modern day ones, but caseless. I used this site: world.guns.ru/main-e.htmChanging the tech kind of misses the point, though. The tech-era of the Cyberpunk world never escaped the whole 1980's-Blade-Runner-Meets-Ghost-In-The-Shell, which is part of the attraction of the thing. It's entirely possible to leave out most modern "advances" in technology and still get the leaps-and-starts incongruity of the 'Punk technology curve. Enormous CRT televisions sidling up next to nano-factory toothpaste dispensers, for instance.
Don't get me wrong, I do it, too... but what did you do to keep the anachronistic feel? :)
Rust, paranoia, bullets, and meat killing metal killing meat killing meat killing metal killing metal.
Plus some more paranoia, pollution saves, random gasses wafting in and poisoning things, and low tech pirates/gangs with random pieces of highly dangerous "low tech".
Even had a few times where low tech answers worked better than the high tech ones. Such as rather than having a net runner attempt to out do an AI and wipe all the video footage the group simply stopped the cameras from functioning.
Don't get me wrong, I do it, too... but what did you do to keep the anachronistic feel? :)
A friend once described CP:2020's error as using actual terminology. In a game like Traveller, for instance, a room-sized TL 15 optic interface computer has remained a room-sized TL 15 optic interface computer since 1977, since the idea has scales alongside our ideas of 'computer.' If you provide a different scale, people go along with it quite smoothly.
Besides, cyberpunk is an idea. The tech's irrelevant.
Not all cyber-punk is chrome. You can get the feel of syber punk with little other than current technology, see Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, where the only technology just about the only technology that isn't current(or currently achievable, or in the early stages of commercial development) is a small amount of nanotech.
Not all cyber-punk is chrome. You can get the feel of syber punk with little other than current technology, see Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, where the only technology just about the only technology that isn't current(or currently achievable, or in the early stages of commercial development) is a small amount of nanotech.
Everything in the first half of Virtual Light(save the virtual light glasses, which we are starting to achieve the same effects with AR anyway ) can be produced now.
Cyberpunk is really about society. And our society is becoming increasingly cyberpunk. Growing gap between rich and poor, growing corperate power, slow decline of the nation state, anthropogenic climate change, ecological disaster, cyber-warfare, all this and more we find in the real world. You read a newspaper these days, and you could be reading a low chrome CP setting from the late eighties.
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Adding a +1 Vote for 2.0.2.0.
Any one know if they ever finished/printed the third and last in the "Shockwave" series?
Now, seeing Paizo do a D20/Pathfinder version...*drool*
It would suck...cp 2020 wouldn't be cp 2020 without interlock and the ease of dying. IN d20, on higher levels, it is an impossibility that a single bullet can kill you, unless it rolls more than 50 damage and you fail a dc15 fort save, which is very difficult to fail on high levels.
Don't get me wrong, I do it, too... but what did you do to keep the anachronistic feel? :)
Well, if you remember, everybody had the flatscreen tv's and hd video in the old system. I just made the tech more current. The world is stilla grimy, dirty, deadly, bloody, corrupted, polluted cesspit it always was. I generaly play 80s music and ask my players to dress in 80s style. We also talk with 80s slang incorporated with cp slang. So fun.
Adding a +1 Vote for 2.0.2.0.
Any one know if they ever finished/printed the third and last in the "Shockwave" series?
Now, seeing Paizo do a D20/Pathfinder version...*drool*
The third Stormfront Book was incorporated into V3's backstory.
To be fair, I'm very biased as far as Cyberpunk goes, because I've worked very closely with RTG on it over the years. A lot of my submissions made it in (credited or not) to various supplements and books over the years. You can thank the intense campaign myself and my playtesters launched to have Tinmen be a viable evolved type in a combat for the reduction in their Shaping time in Cybergeneration 2.0, for instance. I'm also responsible for some of the gangs in the V3 Gangbook and have made a repeated attempt to get RTG to give me the greenlight on an update to V3 that would take care of most (not all) of the more serious issues with the new version.
Beyond that I can't say much because I signed papers saying I wouldn't.
All that being said, however...
I don't really think a d20 version of Cyberpunk 2020 would be a good idea, for the same reasons that Hama brought up. It's a matter of scale. A Solo with 400 IP under his belt can still only take a couple of bullets from a really skilled sniper (or a very large gun), just like a Solo with 0 IP living in his skull. The "you really can die at any moment, it's nothing personal" feel of Cyberpunk is part of what makes the game fun. That, and of course the very simple, very open combat system, really set it apart from D20 (I know there are a lot of other things that set it apart, but I'm talking combat, here). A combat between four punks and a psyched out Borg in 2020 will take maybe three minutes of play time, most of which can be summed up with "We shoot it. A lot."
In D20, that would be dozens of rounds of combat, with feats and AOO's going off and lots of tactical maneuvering and... No, I just don't think it would be the same feel.
A friend once described CP:2020's error as using actual terminology. In a game like Traveller, for instance, a room-sized TL 15 optic interface computer has remained a room-sized TL 15 optic interface computer since 1977, since the idea has scales alongside our ideas of 'computer.' If you provide a different scale, people go along with it quite smoothly.
Besides, cyberpunk is an idea. The tech's irrelevant.
I'm talking strictly the GAME, here, not the culture, the fiction, nor the philosophy.
I completely agree with the previous statements about the nature of the Cyberpunk "ideal," mind you. But you missed my point, just a bit. My point was that the -game- is set in a particular type of low-high tech mishmash, and that changing that too much can lose (and has lost in many cases) the overall feel and vibe of the game.
Also, Max Headroom. Hell yes.
Not all cyber-punk is chrome. You can get the feel of syber punk with little other than current technology, see Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, where the only technology just about the only technology that isn't current(or currently achievable, or in the early stages of commercial development) is a small amount of nanotech.
Yeah that's the beauty of the "-Punk" setting... you can do it with anything.
Magic-punk
steam-punk
barbarian-punk (think Conan)
Renaissance-punk (phoenix guard book)
Neo-Renaissance-space techno-punk (death stalker series)
And so on -- any setting can have punk thrown on it.
The only way actual cyberpunk could be done with a the d20 system though is in an e6 kind of way.
cp 2020 was one of my favorite games. I remember once I was the sniper and I hit the cyberpsycho in the head. Remember the scene in Split Second where the cop is yelling "I need a bigger f@#%&*^* gun." well that was my character. When I escaped him by running the rooftops, my main goal was a better gun with penetration power. The first step in any gun battle was to take cover, so I agree with every one who said that PF/D20 would not work. It is just not lethal enough.
I still have and cherish the original boxed set and jelously hunting CP materials has become a full time hobby =)
you cannot get better advertizeing than having the creater of a game go to federal prison for createing it and having all unsold copies pulled from the shelves.
I still have and cherish the original boxed set and jelously hunting CP materials has become a full time hobby =)
you cannot get better advertizeing than having the creater of a game go to federal prison for createing it and having all unsold copies pulled from the shelves.
Except that never happened.
Neither Mike Pondsmith, creator of Cyberpunk (2013, 2020, V3), nor Steve Jackson, who greenlit GURPS Cyberpunk, have ever gone to Federal prison, nor were the unsold copies of their work pulled from shelves.
While it's true that the Secret Service did raid the offices of SJG, and they did in fact crack open the laser printers at the SJG offices looking for "ribbons," it is not true that anyone went to prison for any reason over these games. The Secret Service was found in the wrong, the words "unlawful search and seizure" were used, and much money exchanged hands.
But don't take my word for it:
In 1990, in a convergence of cyberpunk art and reality, the United States Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games's headquarters and confiscated all their computers. This was allegedly because the GURPS Cyberpunk sourcebook could be used to perpetrate computer crime. That was, in fact, not the main reason for the raid, but after the event it was too late to correct the public's impression.[40] Steve Jackson Games later won a lawsuit against the Secret Service, aided by the new Electronic Frontier Foundation. This event has achieved a sort of notoriety, which has extended to the book itself as well. All published editions of GURPS Cyberpunk have a tagline on the front cover, which reads "The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service!" Inside, the book provides a summary of the raid and its aftermath.
I do still think that you should zealously buy all the Cyberpunk material you can find, though. It really is worth it. :)