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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ Cyberpunk Games

Posted by: Demon_Bob Jul 18 2006, 04:43 PM

A buddy of mine wants to run a Cyberpunk game but prefers that it not be set in the shadowrun universe.

Someone posted a link to one that had Psyonics instead of magic, but I can't seem to find it.

What are your suggestions to a non-ShadowRun Cyberpunk style games.

Posted by: Brahm Jul 18 2006, 05:44 PM

QUOTE (Demon_Bob @ Jul 18 2006, 11:43 AM)

A buddy of mine wants to run a Cyberpunk game but prefers that it not be set in the shadowrun universe.

To get a better bead on what he's looking for, what part of the universe is he adverse to? The fans?

Posted by: Tanka Jul 18 2006, 06:15 PM

Seems like he doesn't like mixing up fantasy with his cyberpunk.

Well, there's the d20 Modern lineup of Cyberpunk (Cyberscape, which requires Future). It's not totally cyberpunk, but it's fairly close, all things considered.

There's also Cyberpunk, which is made by R. Talsorian games.

GURPS, I'm told, does well with Cyberpunk as well.

Posted by: SL James Jul 18 2006, 07:00 PM

There's also Ex Machina (although the example setting on GoO's website are all post-cyberpunk), but it's Tri-Stat.

Posted by: eidolon Jul 19 2006, 05:50 PM

What's the Tri-Stat set like? I've seen Ex Machina and thought about picking it up, but I never take time to read through the mechanics.

Posted by: Adam Jul 19 2006, 07:26 PM

A couple of Ex Mach reviews:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10835.phtml

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11053.phtml

Personally I was never a huge fan of the Tri-Stat system, but Ex Machina is in many ways one of GoO's best books, and even if you never end up using the rules material I think that the book has a lot to offer, between the discussions of the cyberpunk genre and the four settings.

Posted by: SL James Jul 19 2006, 10:10 PM

That first review is hilarious.

QUOTE

So why am I looking at a new Cyberpunk game, when I have this bias that the genre is, in essence, a deader horse than the Japanese economy?

Yes, that silly Japanese economy. Only the second largest in the world behind the U.S. with a lot less based on shadow wealth (based upon credit).

QUOTE

Largely because this game seems to agree – this is the cyberpunk genre, and you will recognize it fairly quickly upon opening the book, but it is the genre as we see it in today's science fiction, and not trapped in the 80s like older competing games and some of the other new rivals.

Thank you for missing the very essence of cyberpunk. Moving on...

QUOTE

This is a very intriguing entry into the field of Cyberpunk gaming. It is also, in some ways, only the second actual Cyberpunk RPG to ever be published, with GURPS Transhuman Space as the the first. The rest of the entries – what gamers have grown to think of as Cyberpunk, are really in my opinion just action adventure games about Cybered Punks.

Uh, sure. A post-Cp and a transhuman space game are Cp, but Cyberpunk (any version) isn't... Right. I have to seriously wonder how much thought this person has ever actually put into any game if they can't see beyond hack and slash (which, apparently, means that every RPG game is the same D&D ripoff to extend his line of thinking). There is a great deal of thought into pretty much any real Cp game (CP20xx; GURPS CP; SR1, 2 and part of 3). Unfortunately, he presumes that players are so stupid they need it force-fed to them.

Pthbbbt, on that.

QUOTE

Even in Heaven over Mountain the way a person thinks will be notably different from how a person in the modern world thinks, whereas a Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2013/2020 character is often not much different from an action hero or villain in any other genre.

Gee, generalize much? And every RPG character is a brain-dead action hero killer.

QUOTE

The chapters covering the genre's history and how to run it are very welcome items. When you really do sit down to do actual Cyberpunk gaming you will find yourself dealing with a thinking person's genre that can really fall into some serious traps of disassociation from what your character is experiencing. You need to learn to think like a future person, and the text here really helps you do that.

Ooh... He actually gets it! The problem is that Ex Machina presumes that all the old Cp fiction is so silly and useless that you have to work from a perspective of settings which are all based on Wired articles or GWB-ear left-wing nutjob paranoia (Underworld). The other problem is that it just feeds the reader simplistic overviews of what they should effectively be thinking NOW, and miss the boat when the issue is the vast wealth of issues that served as a basis for the actual genre.

Which is basically the same thing most of the other Cp games have done (e.g., CP203x and SR4). It amazes me how far away the games have slipped from trying to represent the "punk" part as well as the "cyber."

The second's pretty amusing, too.

QUOTE

The included history of the genre, ranging from the 1970s to the present day, shows that what makes cyberpunk cyberpunk isn’t the 1980s fashion statements. Instead, it’s the social effects of new technology and the struggles of outsiders to find a place in this new society.

No, actually it isn't just the social effects of new technology. It's the social, political, and economic effects of a world where the world when the punk movement formed continued unabated in conjunction with the advance of technology designed for the "fascists" and not for consumers or the people.

QUOTE

Most of the settings lack an obvious villain, and the corporations (typically the source of all evil in older cyberpunk games) don’t have an obvious, ominous agenda.

Well, so much for being cyberpunk. The original V for Vendetta comic is more cyberpunk than any of the settings. The movie version is the kind of dreck that gets left with when trying to incorporate modern biases and completely unrelated events to the existing material. Ultimately, the genre is based on a punk conflict that has, at it's core two extremes which are in complete conflict with each other (politically, socially, economically, militarily, etc.): anarchism and fascism (real, honest to god fascism. Not "George W. Bush is a fascist" crap).

To be fair, the Underworld setting is pretty damn close except for the fact that it betrays any sort of punk spirit that you may be able to actually change part of the world for (the perceived) better. It's just dystopic instead. Cp relies on some measure, however small, of faith in the protagonists. Otherwise, what's the point?

Daedelus is as close as the games comes to "getting" it when viewed in this conflict. However, it does lack the assumptions that there is an intentionally-created underclass and that the "square" world lives in far more fear of, well, everything.

Posted by: Demon_Bob Jul 20 2006, 04:46 AM

QUOTE (Tanka)

Seems like he doesn't like mixing up fantasy with his cyberpunk.

That and he isn't really thrilled about the history.

Posted by: eidolon Jul 20 2006, 08:07 AM

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately (unfortunate because I was looking forward to a different CP game, just to try) it seems that the mechanics are sorely lacking in depth. Granted, I'm basing that solely off that second review's short blurb on them, but still I am left feeling a resounding "Meh".

Posted by: SL James Jul 20 2006, 09:11 AM

Any specific part? I've tried rewriting it, and it's damn near impossible to get to the game time of SR if you change the big stuff.

Problem is that, really, between SR, CP201x/2x/3x, and GURPS Cyberpunk (which was written by one of the original SR devs, Paul Hume) - SR's is the least batshit.

Posted by: Ancient History Jul 20 2006, 10:36 AM

QUOTE (SL James)

Ultimately, the genre is based on a punk conflict that has, at it's core two extremes which are in complete conflict with each other (politically, socially, economically, militarily, etc.): anarchism and fascism (real, honest to god fascism. Not "George W. Bush is a fascist" crap).

No. There is a very visible anti-fascist or antiauthoritarian plot element in several cyberpunk books and short stories, often combined with a DIY, rebellious underground; cases in point include the Eclipse Trilogy. However, it is a mistake to say that this one small conflict is the central conflict of the genre.

Posted by: SL James Jul 20 2006, 11:18 AM

Oh, really? Then what, pray tell, is the central conflict, oh Enlightened One?

Alienation? Yeah... Please. Fritz Pappenheim covered that ground long ago in Alienation and the Modern Man - and that was based on an analysis of Marx. And no, I cannot believe for the second that alienation is limited to technology. It's shortsighted and just ignorant. Alienation is a symptom, not a thesis, of the genre.

The conflict would appear to be at its core about Power and Control - something which pretty much fits into the conflict in which I described. And something which was a matter of pretty much everything, including one's own self, humanity, place in the world, as well as the world itself.

I also said it was based on, not comprised of. The various punk themes (not just DIY, but all manner of them) fill all of the early books. And then somehow they just... Went away.

Posted by: Ancient History Jul 20 2006, 01:13 PM

I'd like to know what your specific list of "all the early books" is.

The truth is, nothing really new happened in cyberpunk. The various science fiction elements and themes were present in preceding fiction. There were no universal common themes. If there was a unifying element to the fiction it was a pervading attitude and a sense of community - as demonstratably noted in the Mirrorshades anthology and the wide number of collaborations between group members.

Posted by: eidolon Jul 20 2006, 04:05 PM

QUOTE (SL James)

Any specific part? I've tried rewriting it, and it's damn near impossible to get to the game time of SR if you change the big stuff.

I think you were asking me? In which case:

I don't particularly care for the idea of the three main stats, and the skill system seems underemphasized (which even comes up in the review specifically). Sure, you could fix it, but why bother when there are already better, more encompassing systems?

Posted by: Birdy Jul 20 2006, 05:09 PM

CP games from best to worst:

Cyberpunk 2020 from R. Talsorian:

The world makes a lot more sense than most others, the system is fast-paced and rugged. Nice, strong system that gives you either a "weak state, big corps" environment with the US or a "jackboots and leather raincoats" setting with corporate Europe. Well-developed space setting also.

GURPS 3rd Ed from SJ Games

GURPS had a world book (Cyberworld, CW) and a Genre-Book (Cyberpunk, CP) out. Most of the Cyberware could also be found in the two UltraTech books. CW is a low cyber, big states take on the world in general and the US in specific (Thing the wet dream of Cheney's owners and Adolf Eichmann combined) Cyberware is new and often experimental. CP is a "build your own" book with some nice ideas and Cyber-Packages.

Cyberpunk 3.0 from Talsorian:

Sadly 3.0 goes into the direction of the bodily wastes known as "Transhumanism". The rules system is a modernised version of Cyberpunk 2020 as is the world. Some good ideas to plunder but still too young

Shadowrung 3rd Ed from "That company":

Easily the "worst game system ever" with a so-so background. Before the last SotA books the balance between Cyberpunk and MagesRUs was somewhat present and as long as you ignored whatever product came from the german side of "That company" it was playable in general.

Cybergeneration by Talsorian:

The worst because of the background (playing mutated children in a post Cyberpunk 2020 background) and the dumbed down game system.

Posted by: nezumi Jul 21 2006, 02:18 PM

I have read a ton of cyberpunk and the entire CP2020 manual and still couldn't run it. There's a lot of background stuff the manual doesn't get into, which means unless you already know your world and you're just looking for a backdrop, you're almost certainly going to go against the intended game world. It also suffers from tremendous power creep with the cyberware.

Birdy - are you being sarcastic about Shadowrun? If it's such a bad system, why are you posting on a Shadowrun forum?

Posted by: Kagetenshi Jul 21 2006, 03:34 PM

QUOTE (SL James @ Jul 19 2006, 05:10 PM)

(real, honest to god fascism. Not "George W. Bush is a fascist" crap).

QUOTE (Robert Paxton)

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." (Anatomy of Fascism, p 218)

Mr. Bush's fascism is real and honest-to-god, though certainly less… advanced? Immoderate doesn't seem like the right word. …than many.

As for cyberpunk, it has always been about the '80s, even when it (or rather its prototype) was being written by Philip K. Dick in the '60s.

~J

Posted by: Birdy Jul 21 2006, 05:26 PM

QUOTE (nezumi)

Let's just say it this way: If you can not GM Cyberpunk 2020 after really reading the basic rules book and one or two novels, you can't GM ANY Cyberpunk-style game!

And no, I am not sarcastic about SR. It has been steadily going towards

Mage: The Overpowered

for the last years and the german products (and lately the Stuff FanPro brought out) are to blame for it.

Occasionally GM'ing a (heavily skewed against Mages&Metas) Shadowrun is for me like selling cheap Mariuana is for a Dealer: You get some of the D&D crowd hooked by promising them their Magic&Feys fix, than you get them to taste the real good stuff like CP 2020.

Posted by: eidolon Jul 22 2006, 04:47 PM

Bah, you might not like the mechanics much, but someone that can say

QUOTE (Birdy)

Let's just say it this way: If you can not GM Cyberpunk 2020 after really reading the basic rules book and one or two novels, you can't GM ANY Cyberpunk-style game!

and

QUOTE (Birdy)

And no, I am not sarcastic about SR. It has been steadily going towards

Mage: The Overpowered

for the last years

in the same post isn't paying attention.

Posted by: nezumi Jul 22 2006, 05:04 PM

QUOTE (Birdy)

Let's just say it this way: If you can not GM Cyberpunk 2020 after really reading the basic rules book and one or two novels, you can't GM ANY Cyberpunk-style game!

Err... Thanks. I've only been running Shadowrun for three years, but I guess that doesn't count for anything.

I'm also really not sure how you can complain about Shadowrun being overpowered when Cyberpunk has rules for hands that shoot tiny missiles.

Posted by: Jrayjoker Jul 24 2006, 01:28 PM

Yeah, but they are tiny, how overpowered can they be?

Posted by: Tanka Jul 24 2006, 05:25 PM

QUOTE (Jrayjoker)

Yeah, but they are tiny, how overpowered can they be?

Welcome to Rules Creep. The bane of any game that keeps on putting out expansions and new versions.

Posted by: nezumi Jul 24 2006, 06:36 PM

Precisely. Shadowrun has done a very good job of largely keeping back the power creep in exchange for rules creep. Someone who has MitS isn't light years more powerful than someone without, but can be tremendously different, allowing him more options in play.

Posted by: Tanka Jul 24 2006, 07:54 PM

Ah, Power Creep, that's the right term. Power Creep is hands with tiny missles Rules Creep is rules for your own spells, initiation, metamagics, foci... You get the point.

Posted by: Grinder Jul 26 2006, 09:24 AM

Sr did get the point too.

Posted by: Jrayjoker Jul 26 2006, 01:56 PM

Hey, just because I want to hace 8 layers of somtimes conflicting rules governing the mechanics of my character....No, wait, I don't want that.

Posted by: Grinder Jul 26 2006, 02:42 PM

But you like it! Come on, we know you do. We all do. It's not that difficult, just say "Hello, I'm Jrayoker and I like Rules Creep."

Posted by: nezumi Jul 26 2006, 04:11 PM

QUOTE (Grinder)

Sr did get the point too.

I never really felt that Shadowrun suffered rule creep in the conventional sense. It did in that new books gave more options, so someone who wants to put more punch into his err... punch can spend more cash on more things to do precisely that. But there aren't a lot of things that came out that made you completely disregard stuff from the older books. The only examples that leap to mind is the SL2, artwinkulation, and boosted reflexes/synaptic accelerators over wired reflexes. People with all the books still use predators and ingram valiants, they still summon elementals and play as hermetics, they still buy the same programs and the same decks.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Jul 26 2006, 04:19 PM

SAs aren't a clear advantage over WR the way the SL2 is over the SL1, or the way Artwinkulation is over anything involving not having Artwinkulation. They've got a slight advantage in that you don't have to turn them off to be non-twitchy and scanners can't find them easily, but they're significantly more expensive for a smaller benefit and they cap out sooner.

Validate, however, was one of those "I supersede all that came before me" things.

Edit: oh, and the vehicle stuff in SR3 ceases to exist when Rigger 3 hits the table. Then again, that's because the vehicle stuff in SR3 was pathetic.

~J

Posted by: Iron Guardian Aug 4 2006, 01:02 AM

Let's see, I have Cyberpunk 2020 plus the newest installment Cyberpunk Ver 3, Shadowrun 1st through 4th edition, CyberHero (Hero System, 4th ed.), GURPS Cyberpunk, 2300AD (which did have a cyber installment), and D20 Modern's Cyber installment sourcebook. Of these, I am currently and strongly leaning toward Shadowrun 4th edition because of the rules system.

Other systems that might be fairly good and interesting are White Wolf's new WOD system which is similar to Shadowrun 4th (D10's in place of D6's) and Savage Worlds (fairly rules light, plays fast, and easy on the wallet when compared to other systems). The former might be interesting because instead of Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls, and Elves...you would have Vampires, Werewolves, Constructs (Promethean), and Human Mages...lending to a much darker cyberpunk setting. The latter would allow an enterprising GM to create his/her own world/vision especially for those who prefer less rules heavy games.

Just my humble opinions...

Posted by: Iron Guardian Aug 4 2006, 11:03 PM

Oh, must add GURPS: Transhuman Space and Blue Planet (both regular 2nd edition and GURPS version). The former looked really interesting as a setting though I would probably find a different rules set to use (no knock against GURPS intended for GURPS fans out there). The latter I have run and my players have enjoyed though it has more of a "wild west" flavor than "cyberpunk." My only real quibble with it was the utter lack of underwater combat rules!?! (Blue Planet is set on a water world)