As the sales for Amethyst Renaissance come in, I started thinking about our upcoming espionage / cyberpunk setting, NeuroSpasta. Originally, it was designed for 4th Edition, but the book is mostly fluff and not much more would be required to develop a Pathfinder variation for simultaneous publication.
Being a newcomer to the community, I honestly don't know if this ground has been already covered. Has there been a cyberpunk game developed for Pathfinder? And if so, was it good? Not saying mine would be better, but I can try, and we have pretty pictures.
Dias Ex Machina.
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Personally I have to admit that I wouldn't be interested.
At the end of the day I don't find the system especially capable of handling anything other than fantasy. For cyberpunk and other genres I choose other systems.
I'm tossing my hat in as well, the genre has always had a special place in my heart lol. Going to have to go find all my cyberpunk books in storage now to reminisce... It's been forever.
Well, we're not looking to recreate the feel of the classic 2020 system. I place that on a pedestal along with most everything RTG have done. If you rate game companies, I've personally owned more RTG products than any other. I got my start in homebrew gaming writing for that company, 2020, Mekton, and FUZION.
But I digress. The feel we are looking to recreate is that of the Shirow Masamune works of Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. To that end, we decided to make hacking non-grid/map-based and more about abilities, programs, viruses, and die rolls. We have a good number of cybernetics as well. We're also introducing four races based on your extent of transhumanism. Any questions people have I'll be happy to answer.
I would be VERY interested in a PF Compatible Cyberpunk book ;)
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Heh. I took part in an epic Cyberpunk game back during the '80s. EPIC, I tell you.
Man, I still remember just about everything that happened. Night City was home to our group (really, your's wasn't based there?) but we travelled near and far. I was playing a Solo named Aleksandyr Suvorov, the child of parents who had immigrated from Russia.
Now, the group I was with (a Cop, a Nomad, myself, another Solo, a Rocker, and a Fixer) had been playing for about a year straight and we made this major haul. I'm talking we were rolling in it.
So we decided to take a vacation, get some R&R, chill a bit and spend some of our ill-gotten gains sipping Mai Tai's and watching the girls walk by in bikinis.
And so we somehow wound up at Walt Disney World down in Florida. So there we were, having fun and just relaxing and enjoying the rides with the crowds and the sun and chillin'.
And then it happened. We came up to It's a Small World. The Nomand (Johnny Black) kept saying he didn't want to do boats, but the rest of us wanted to go (our Fixer, Honda, was back in the hotel room). Well, JB should have told us WHY he didn't want to get on the boats! Turns out, he had a bad experience with small boats on the Oricono River down in South-Am during his tour.
And sure enough, when the little puppets starting singing "It's a Small World, afffffffffterall! It's a Small World, affffffffterall!" he started having flashblacks.
Scared the children, rocked the boat, and caused one of the parents to hit him. Wrong move. JB drew his piece and then all HELL broke loose.
You see, Disney World in Cyberpunk 2020 doesn't have people walking around inside those famous Mickie and Minnie and Goofie suits. No. No, in this game, those characters that were ALL OVER THE FRIGGING PLACE were full-body replacement cyborgs that not only entertained but served as security! Complete with internal weapon systems, up to and including light machine-guns!
Before we knew it, we were in a firefight with Mickey Mouse, and Minnie Mouse and Goofey and Huey, Dewey, and Louie!
Well, Honda is back in the hotel room and he has hacked into the Disney's internal cams and has been watching us from the safety of air-conditioning (he had this thing about open spaces and sunlight; go figure). Well, he gets onto the phone to his bookie back in Night City.
"Jim," Honda says in a 80s hong-kong-fu accent. "Give me odds on Space Mountain in Disney World Florida being blown up in the next ten minutes!"
"Wait wha-"
"Space Mountain! Boom! Ten minutes! Odds!"
"Ah . . . quiet day down there," the Disney World folks were keeping the information about the fire-fight out of the media, "1000 to 1."
Honda laughed. "Transer fifty thousand from my account. Put it on Space Mountain going boom in ten minutes from . . . mark."
"Done."
So it was that in the middle of a fire-fight against cartoon cyborgs running from Small World to Epcot, that we got a phone call from Honda.
"Space Mountain! You need to blow up Space Mountain in the next . . . nine minutes and thirty-four seconds!"
"Honda, wha-"
"No time! Space Mountain! Boom! Nine minutes and fifteen seconds! 1000-to-1 odds! Packing! Car out front!"
Gentlemen, I *bleep* you not, here. So almost out of the Park, we turn around, head for Space Mountain, and then I ask the question. "How exactly are we going to blow up Space Mountain?"
And the Nomad, reloading his auto-matic shotgun, looks at us sheepishly and grins. "I brought twenty-five kilos of plastique with me. I feel naked without it."
So Operation Space Mountain launches into Orbit was a GO.
Sigh. Those were the days, my friends. Those were the days.
Master Arminas
So not much different than modern Disney World then?
;)
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I was never actually a fan of the rules of Cyberpunk 2020 nor was my group. But we loved the setting and adapted it to several other games. I like Ghost in the Shell though I would personally like to see more of the punk and urban sprawl from cyberpunk thrown in, like perhaps the two blending well to meet in the middle.
Is Josh Frost's upcoming game a Pathfinder/cyber punk?
Here's a link to the Kickstarter of Joshua J. Frost's "Quantum"
For what it's worth, it doesn't say "Pathfinder Compatible" anywhere, but there IS a free download of the beta for you to check out for yourself. :)
Another cross post from EnWorld...
This project began because of the work DEM did with Amethyst Renaissance, our Pathfinder product. Amethyst is a science fantasy with eight classes already created. Our plan was to use them as the baseline and transfer their basic structure over while also adding in the new hacking class, the manipulator.
NeuroSpasta would be released for 4th Ed and Pathfinder about the same time. The GSL version would be smaller because it uses our previously introduced Ultramodern4, which people can purchase or download for free. Because we're not doing that with our Pathfinder book, and since we can't ask people to buy Renaissance to play NeuroSpasta, we are including all the elements from that book you need. This would make the Pathfinder NeuroSpasta book larger than the GSL NeuroSpasta but we plan on making their prices the same to compensate those who already own Amethyst Renaissance.
As for the setting, we are in now way attempting to emulate the setting of 2020. This is a wholly new idea in the genre, though obviously, the rules will be present for people to homebrew a more classic cyberpunk game. Our game attempts to create a "plausible" geopolitical atmosphere 90 years in the future after a devastating environmental collapse.
I'm going to put myself at a pass as well given my experience with other settings that insist on using Fantasy D20 chassis in a modern era game.
Ah, but what about something Shadowrun-esque?
A viable Cyber-Punk d20 ruleset plus the Pathfinder magic rules would create a much more nuanced future magic setting.
Shadowrun = My favorite setting ever.
I would have great interest in a Pathfinder based Cyberpunk setting. Would this be a Magic/Cyber combo ala the aforementioned Shadowrun or would it be no magic?
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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But I digress. The feel we are looking to recreate is that of the Shirow Masamune works of Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. To that end, we decided to make hacking non-grid/map-based and more about abilities, programs, viruses, and die rolls. We have a good number of cybernetics as well. We're also introducing four races based on your extent of transhumanism. Any questions people have I'll be happy to answer.
Yes! That sounds awesome!
I'm not a huge fan of mixing magic and Cyberpunk together, but riffing on GitS and Appleseed would be right up my alley.
Well, it looks like it's going ahead. We'll need playtesters if anyone is interested.