Just in case any CP:2020 fans are here...
...Cubicle7 are releasing a setting called Genesis Descent.


Enjoy !!

unless it captures the 80s feel perfectly, it will get voted into oblivion

Hm. Looks neat, but my biggest hope for it would be rekindling some CP:2020 interest in general. It's one of my favorite games/setting as-is, but it's damned hard to find a game.

Cubical 7 has some great settings. Wonky mechanics! I love most of the ideas in SLA Industries and Victoriana though, just not super fond of the systems. I also heard they got the license for the next middle earth based rpg. If they would marry SLA to the Ubiquity system I would have a peice of heaven.

i suspect this do not touch on the cp2020 setting. The blurb on the page makes it sound like a free standing setting that uses the cp2020 system (odd choice in a way, as cp3 went fuzion. but then i have been virtually spat at for my defense of cp3).

kinda like the sla system, wonky as it is. But then i am a system hound, and somewhat agree with the notion that the system is part of the feel of a game (games using d20 for instance usually ended up with d&d with new classes).

I can agree with that. Like for Shadowrun, 2e really feels like Shadowrun to me. The later editions while improved don't feel quite the same. I think d20 (license) is a bad example of system marrige. In order to get the d20 label you had to basicly sacifice your game to the D&D system. Most companies should have done what Mutants and Masterminds did. They didn't let their game get shoehorned into d20 but at its heart it is still d20, just not enough like it that they could use the label. You never want a system to force your game in a direction it was not designed, you always want the system to enhance your design.

iirc, there was the cheap and easy d20 license, and then there was the more cumbersome ogl license. The former meant you where required to use the players handbook for the basic rules, while the latter meant you could reprint the rules in your own book, or something like that.

what i think happened with m&m tho, was that they only made use of the dice mechanic, but reworked everything else, creating what they called true20.

as for the SR2 feel, that could be a result of the initiative system, as SR3 reworked it towards game balance. There was also the removal of grounding, and the neutered anchoring. Hard to say really.

Yeah it was the initiative combinded with loosing the skill web and changes to magic. The changes were not a bad thing (heck I when I wasnt a street sam I complained about going last to.) but the gonzo nature of the SR2 mechanics was part of something that was uniquely Shadowrun. Much like SLA is uniquely SLA, despite my complaints of the wacky system.

heh, i do wonder if the over the top nature of combats is what drags me towards both SLA and corporation (combat chainsaw? check. rules for severing limbs? check! both comboed in one messy melee? hell yea!!).

i wonder if also thats why i keep pounding my head against the desk in relation to all these "realism" threads of late...

I don't think they're trying for the traditional 80s cyberpunk feel. Which make sense, since the gaming world's larger demographics probably were in grade school if that during the 80s.

One of my favorite game books is still "Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads" which is essentially the Cyberpunk writiers getting pissed that people were playing their game wrong, because even by the mid 90s most new players didn't "get" it.

I get the distinct impression that this game is taking place in the dark future foretold by Al Gore that people these days can easily wrap their heads around.

Gameplaywise, I'm intrigued by the "three levels of play".

if thats the case, expect a whole lot of flaming from the cp2020 grognards...

The mechanics for CP V3 needed a bit of work....but I fiddled witht them and put my own spin on what was provided. Turned into transmetropolitan on acid

and here i thought transmetropolitan was artists rendering of a acid trip