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Cyberpunk 203X Coming Soon

Posted by Zonk on from the one-of-them-tabletop-games dept.

Pax00 writes "R. Talsorian released Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020 in the 90's, and it quickly became one of the most popular sf roleplaying settings of all time. There has been talk of a new version for years. The new version is almost out and there is a pdf preview from R. Talsorian, along with an interview with Mike Pondsmith on the forthcoming book." From the interview: "Shelf date is February (I hope). What you can expect: Cyberpunk with the gain turned up. Night City is now the largest City in the world. The Net has collapsed, but there are new net things even cooler. Rival groups (including the megacorps) are vying for world control. There are new cybertechnologies that reflect the changes in the genre. New weapons, new tech, new characters, new goals. Netrunners, rockers and solos will still be around, but in multiple forms depending on the altcult."

5 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. For those of you asking WTF... by forkazoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    A little googling brought me here, http://www.cyberpunk2020.de/

    This seems to be a pretty informative site aboute the current release. Any players care to talk about the previous CyberPunk games, and what makes them so special?

    1. Re:For those of you asking WTF... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Only ever played the 2020 release. It was nice - one of the only cyberpunk rpgs at the time, and in my view, a pretty damn good play.

      Shadowrun was a little too fantasy-mixed for my tastes, and I had no experience of the GURPS cyberpunk system - so I'll ignore that :)

      It was simple, but with all the cyberpunk elements you'd expect from books of the same genre. It had a dark sense of humour to it, and at the time was a nice break from the AD&D cycle of constant revisions and expansion books...
      (Though it had its own share of extras as well).

      It has a good d10/d6 setup that worked great with its skills system. And it was fun.

      I'm glad to see it making a comeback :)

    2. Re:For those of you asking WTF... by Bishop · · Score: 4, Informative

      Cyberypunk2020 has a great back story. The world is dark and dangerous. The writers did a good job of capturing the feel of William Gibson's early cyberpunk works (Neuromancer and related short stories), elements of Blade Runner, and bits of Max Headroom. The world had most of the elements needed for a good RPG. Characters have to struggle against staggering opposition, but characters had the potential to become minor gods. There was one missing element that I will discuss below.

      The mechanics of the game were not very good. I never had a chance to see the original rules, but I did have the v2 rules. I was told that the v2 rules were a major improvement, which does not bode well for original. The rules were combersome and as I recall some parts felt tact on. I will freely admit that I only played the game briefly. Perhaps experience made the mechanics work more smoothly. There was a "port" of Cyberpunk 2020 to GURPS.

      GURPS is well refined set of game mechanics. However I am not sure it was an improvement. In all RPGs the game mechanics have a large effect on the style or feel of the game. The mechanics must be crafted to reflect the game world or the game won't work. All games I saw based on GURPS felt like GURPS. Some element of the game world was lost.

      Despite the problems I don't think that Cyberpunk 2020 v2 mechanics were that bad. There are worse systems. As a game I think that Cyberpunk was only missing one element that prevented it from being a great game: Cyberpunk 2020 was not a fantasy RPG. Nearly all RPGs set in present-day and future worlds suffer from the same problem. It is hard to be a hero when anyone can pick up a Desert Eagle or equivalent and take the hero down.

      The Cyberpunk 2020 game world was special. It captured the essence of the bleak cyberpunk dystopia. As a game Cyberpunk 2020 was not that special.

  2. Netrunner was a cool game by xenocide2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Netrunner was pretty cool. It had a great style and theme, and the game was well balanced (mostly), despite the fact that the two players had vastly different goals, and means of achieving them. No side is ever out of the runnnig and at a huge disadvantage. What Netrunner boiled down to is taking risks and bluffing, whereas Magic comes down to rules lawyering, buying expensive cards, and painstaking attention to deck contruction principles.

    The true barriers to mass market appeal is that it had to compete with Magic, and there weren't many obvious multiplayer rules. I'd be interested to see the Netrunner concepts turned into a game somehow, but I can never get my head around how to drop the card concept.

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    1. Re:Netrunner was a cool game by funkhauser · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I agree with you in regards to Netrunner. It was a fantastic game. But your complaints about Magic are rather off base.

      In all three cases, if Netrunner had become an extremely popular game with an established competitive scene, you would see that (1) rules lawyering would be necessary to ensure legitimate competition (2) the cards would end up as expensive as Magic cards and (3) to maximize ones competitive chances, theoretically sound deck construction principles would have to be developed and "painstaking" attention would need to be paid to them.

      Other than that, yeah. It's a shame Netrunner failed. It really was a brilliant game in my opinion.

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