Cyberpunk

Best and worst things about Interlock (the Cyberpunk 2020 system):

>BEST
>Great cyberware selection
>Simple 1d10 rolls
>Lethal yet simple combat
>Lifepath character creation is great fun

>WORST
>Too many skills
>Broken combos of cyberware/guns
>REF the god-stat; ATTR the dump-stat
>Roll over/Roll under mixed together (no unified mechanic)
>Special Abilities restricted to Classes
>Netrunning in cyber dungeons is a game killer
>Lifepath character creation is very long

Other urls found in this thread:

vkDELETEME.com/doc146425670_242916669?hash=7f30bfe24010ed93d6&dl=74781071351e72e7ca
drive.google.com/open?id=0B8Y0G31SFHCZQzRZSVdDcGZBMFk
kickstarter.com/projects/821979583/interface-zero-20-cyberpunk-action-for-the-pathfin
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Alright, post cyberpunk pix then.

That I can do, never played much 2020, but now I'm trying to look into it. Don't suppose anyone has any PDFs they're willing to pass along?

Haven't heard a ton about CP2020. How is it in general?

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The system's pretty good (except for the fuckton of skills) but the setting is extremely edgy 1980s, so it's dated. But it can be updated fairly easily.

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Looks like the core book is right here:

vkDELETEME.com/doc146425670_242916669?hash=7f30bfe24010ed93d6&dl=74781071351e72e7ca

The link doesn't seem to work, but thanks anyway.

Don't forget the ridiculous humanity rules, the very low threshold for near perfect lethality in a given combat action, and the badly matched armour/damage system.

Playable, but seriously, seriously dated. And a lot of the mechanics are very janky.

Might take a look, then.

I'm surprised that nobody's taken a hand ad reworking it, since it's been around for a while.

What would you recomend instead? Barring shadowrun, I took a stab at it, but it wasn't really for me.

Well, there was V3, but we don't talk about V3.

Interface Zero

How bad was it?

I've heard the name crop up here and there, what's it like? And where can I can my hands on the books?

You deleted the DELETEME part of it, I hope.

Just google search for "cyberpunk 2020 pdf". Something will come up.

>I'm surprised that nobody's taken a hand ad reworking it
I'm doing a reworking. Still in playtesting.

>ridiculous humanity rules

YMMV though I agree they don't really make sense in our current cultural climate.

>the very low threshold for near perfect lethality in a given combat action

What do you mean by that? Everybody maxing REF to 10 and using gyroject weapons?

>and the badly matched armour/damage

Some of that needs work, especially Skinweave.

>a lot of the mechanics are very janky.

Which other ones specifically?

>You deleted the DELETEME part of it, I hope.

Did I ever tell you I'm a retard?

user, you should seriously consider looking at that link again, before pasting it.

This bad. Speak of it no more, lest you turn into a doll.

>YMMV
Randomness, arbitrariness, and a very goofy approach to technology.
>lethality
I was thinking more ET ammo from one of the heavy pistols/rifles. But high REF, high weapon skill. Anything but a one, and it's stupidly easy to headshot at least one person, often two. And given headshots double damage, you only need 4 damage after BTM and armour to instantly kill anyone. So unless nearly everyone has serious amounts of head shielding, combat is over very quickly, and strongly, STRONGLY favours solos because of their initiative bonus.

Or, you start with a skin weave, lined coat, and a helmet, and find yourself immune to most guns.
>Janky
Combat was the main one I remember, but the randomness of cyberware was another. Armour/Damage. Grenades did almost nothing unless you were next to naked. AP rounds were almost never worth it, and REF and INT were way, way too good.

Mother of fuck

What user mentioned, plus a very schizophrenic approach to the fluff, and a metaplot that would have been better written as a totally different setting.
>Janky
A lack of a proper defence mechanic as well didn't help. Jury Rig, IIRC, was something you almost never wanted to use. And corporate influence was entirely the wrong scale for most games.

>So unless nearly everyone has serious amounts of head shielding, combat is over very quickly, and strongly, STRONGLY favours solos because of their initiative bonus.

All true, but I think the designers wanted it that way. Solos are supposed to be one-shot super-killers; everyone else is a pleb who should be diving for cover the second a Solo frowns. That's kind of true to the novels, at least. They wanted combat very lethal combat and say repeatedly that life is cheap.

IIRC Maximum Mike said something along the lines of "you should keep killing your players until they learn to duck."

>grenades
Yes, underpowered.

>Skinweave
Yea, overpowered.

But these are things that can be fixed with a little tweak or two, not major problems with all combat. IMO, at least. I think I fixed them in my homebrew.

>lack of a proper defence mechanic
Do you want people dodging bullets? Range and cover are the best defences in real life.

>Solos are supposed to be one-shot super-killers
More like 2 shot. And you have 2 Solo's in the party, so in our case, it was more like the first 4 guys without helmets in any given fight were dead on the surprise round. Combat was a very rudimentary affair, without much depth one way or another, the mechanics didn't really support it well.
>defence
This is CP2020. It isn't real life, it's a cartoon of what writers through the 80s were like, but 40 years in the future. And it doesn't have to be doing the Matrix (although that IS a pretty relevant text in the context), and offence can typically be more reliable, but it would make combat a lot less boring, and make all those reflex enhancers a lot more interesting and practical. Shadow run did a good job on that score. On average, offence is stronger, but good reflexes can turn a lethal hit into a graze, and a good street samurai trying to avoid hits can be a has hard to hit as a greased pig, particularly if you're on single shots.

Oh man, multiple shot weapons. I just remembered how slow THAT particular clusterfuck was.

>not major problems with all combat
It was, because damage didn't need to be high to remove limbs or heads, heads were easy to hit, and armour was thus either useless, or made you invulnerable, to say nothing of most basic armours rendered half the gun book useless.

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>the first 4 guys without helmets
OK, but enemy Solos, corporate security and the police would all be wearing helmets. The only people without 'em would be dirt-poor street gangers, and killing them with headshots is... just fine. And if you're ambushing people and doing it well then a turkey-shoot is...just fine too.

I mean, if the cyberpunk future is so shitty that 50 people getting killed per night is normal and everyone's walking around with assault weapons, then armor would be standard for anyone who could afford it (see corporate armor suits), not to mention the sensory/comms advantages of high-tech helmets.

OR corporate zones are high-security in which case your solo wouldn't be carrying anything bigger than a pocket knife and only the slums are a free-fire zone. You can't just let your player Solos walk into a corporate arcology holding assault rifles. The setting dictates many of the rule interactions.

>OK, but enemy Solos, corporate security and the police would all be wearing helmets.
Sucks to be them, 6D6 pistols, upgrade to 8-9D6 with ET rounds, don't give a fuck about most helmets. You only need 4 damage to kill them. Plus, there's always aimed shots to the eyes. Not hard for most solos.
>armour would be standard, assault weapons
Yeah, then the game turns into random encounter dungeon world. Probably why the GM chose a really shitty part of Britain to play, it's a good medium between the Eurozone and Night City.
>corporate armour suits
Yeah, one of the Solos tended to give the image of a professional bodyguard. Metal Gear armour all the time. SP25 don't give a shit about most guns. Arms race time for the GM.
>bigger than a pocket knife
Yeah, so the Solo's now kinda useless, because everything is being watched and guards with exoskeletons and railgun are behind every door and the alarm is super widespread and every corporate drone has a poison sack to prevent extraction and the building is surrounded by the anti-psycho squad.
>walk into a corporate areology
Nah, you finesse it. Or you don't. You're either equipped as normal most likely, or nearly stripped. Either option's bad. It's a very excessive setting, I found. One way or another.

>Oh man, multiple shot weapons. I just remembered how slow THAT particular clusterfuck was.
Yeah, that is damned slow. I haven't had any success in speeding it up. Any ideas?

Instead of counting bullet hits I tried multiplying damage by a rough factor (x2 for 3-round bursts, x3 for full-auto) but that gets excessive on good damage rolls.

Maybe get a bit baroque about it. If you penetrated their armour, the first shot is the base damage. Then each subsequent shot adds a number based on the caliber. An average weapon would add 2 damage to the hit for each subsequent bullet. or 1, or 3, depending on how it worked out, and the type of gun.

In practise, it means getting hit is the important part, but getting a burst is still going to have a more significant effect, because that's post-armour and BTM damage, most likely. And you don't need much damage to sever to the location.

Your weapon is either enough to get through the armour, in which case the small bonus from burst works well in practise, or it isn't, in which case more bullets shouldn't help. 3 damage doesn't change the armour relevance mechanics much, but it might be the difference between a test and not, or a severed limb or not.

>Yeah, so the Solo's now kinda useless, because everything is being watched and guards with exoskeletons and railgun are behind every door and the alarm is super widespread and every corporate drone has a poison sack to prevent extraction and the building is surrounded by the anti-psycho squad.

That's entirely appropriate for the setting and its conceits, and the genre too. This isn't a rules problem, it's setting fluff mitigating some rules problems. For hard targets the Solo isn't "useless", he's just stumped and needs a better plan. That's the fun of it.

CP2020 PCs are front-loaded and don't really level the way D&D classes do, so you have to manage them like you would a party of 7-10th level D&D PCs. They can fuck up a goblin tribe really easily, but they can't take on the King's royal archmages and paladin corps just yet.

>That's entirely appropriate for the setting and its conceits
It needs more gradients than that.
>genre
CP2020 is a cartoon of Cyberpunk, not the genre itself.
>front loaded
Oh, yeah, the lack of limits on the class skill when starting. And the XP system, wasn't that great.
>Manage them
There's a term for that.

For fuck's sake, stop bitching about the skill list. Characters have 10 professional skills, 2 to 4 hobby skills, and up to 5 chipped skills. That's somewhere between 12 to 19 skills. And you spot them easily on the character sheet as they are sorted by stat, and they have a number behind.

Having a lot of stats is also normal for a game where you can play completely different characters, ranging from corporate salarymen, to mercenaries and netrunners.

And each stat's association with a given skill made calculating the dice bonus pretty easy. Single dice rolls helped with that.

>CP2020 is a cartoon of Cyberpunk, not the genre itself.
It is only if you treat it that way. I prefer it to be more serious. Neuromancer rather than Bubblegum Crisis. Stand on Zanzibar rather than Snow Crash.

Of course everyone has different takes on this.

This is Veeky Forums, motherfucker, I'll bitch about whatever I want to.

The skills list is retarded, and not because (as you straw-manned) players can't find skills on their character sheet. It's retarded because:

>it separates out skills like Paint/Draw that are totally superfluous to the core cyberpunk experience. Might as well add Flower Arrangement and Fly Fishing to it.

>It has redundant and overlapping skills which create confusion: "hey, this guy's liver got shot", do I use Medical Tech (which only Medtechs get) or Diagnose Illness or Biology or First Aid or what the fuck?!? There's no Surgery skill!

>Dancing isn't Performance? What about Singing?

>It has Fencing and Brawling skills, but all other martial arts are in generic Martial Arts boxes. Why separate those two out anyway, they're forms of martial arts.

>History is a skill, but not Literature
>Zoology is a skill, but not Botany
>Physics is a skill, but not Astronomy
>Stock Market is a skill, but not Finance or Marketing
>Electronics and Electronic Security are that different? Really? No.
>Cryotank Operation?!? Pilot Dirigible? You have to be that specific? Why not "Gene Splicer Operation" and Pilot Canoe too?

And on and on...it's really bad design.

>Electronics and Electronic Security are that different
they are though

they aren't though

Good argument, we should do this again.

>Too many skills
not a big issue

>Broken combos of cyberware/guns
they exist but there are enough weapons to take any cyborg PC out. it allows for anime-style play.
>REF the god-stat; ATTR the dump-stat
yeah, REF is way too good, half the bonus. no issue with ATTR, if handled right

>Roll over/Roll under mixed together (no unified mechanic)
why is that an issue?

>Special Abilities restricted to Classes
i like it

>Netrunning in cyber dungeons is a game killer
i never minded that as a non-runner. provided it was kept short and to the point

>Lifepath character creation is very long
yeah, that's an issue since mortality tends to be high

it's GREAT for anime-style play - with high lethality

>google search for "cyberpunk 2020 pdf". Something will come up.
>not using the archives
pleb

jesus, just increase the difficulty of headshots. and reduce the ref bonus of solos. every system needs some tweaking. including shadowrun.

STATS

The problem of dump stats and god stats (REF and INT) could be avoided by having different stats.

My idea would be to replace attractiveness by sex-appeal, which would be something between charisma and looks. It's used to seduce, con, look good, and distract others, as well for style and grooming. It would be a useful staff for assassins, prostitutes, strippers, pimps, con-artists, reporters and corporates. On the character sheet it would be noted as SEX. Then one stat would have to be added - perception (PER on the character sheet). It's used for shooting, archery, awareness/notice, searching, different arts and crafts (photography, drawing) that previously went under TECH.

A few skills could be grouped or taken as specialty skills like Expert or Martial Arts are. Biology, Zoology, Geology, and all other sciences skills could be specialties of the Science (INT) skill.


CHARACTER CLASSES

This was already an outdated concept when Cyberpunk 2013 came out. My suggestion is to simply cancel the class system if you don't like it. Let the players choose ten skills that represent their character's profession. The old character classes can be used as template. Special skills become normal skills. Should a character have two special skills (ex. Combat Sense and MediTech for a combat medic), use the higher value to determine starting cash (or the lower one).

>It needs more gradients than that.
they exist if you don't allow your players to munchkin out. if you have 2 Solos with REF 9+ in your group, what do you expect but black and white gameplay? don't be dense. a GM has to set up campaign guidelines and they effect chargen.

Should shitposting and trolling be treated as separate skills?

>it separates out skills like Paint/Draw that are totally superfluous to the core cyberpunk experience.
so what, faggot? it includes hobby skills, no harm being done.

>It has redundant and overlapping skills which create confusion
if that creates a problem for you, you're not an experienced gamer

>Dancing isn't Performance? What about Singing?
that is your problem, really?

>Why separate those two out anyway, they're forms of martial arts.
because (mainly eastern) martial arts are supposed to be better. brawling and fencing are for babby's

>And on and on...it's really bad design.
no, you're just a giant faggot about skills that are mostly there to fluff out your character

It's streamlined Cyberpunk 2020 for the savage worlds system.

drive.google.com/open?id=0B8Y0G31SFHCZQzRZSVdDcGZBMFk

>increase the difficulty of headshots
They're at -4 now, IIRC. Make it -8. With all the cyberware/gun sights/etc bonuses it will even out.

>would be noted as SEX
It would be noted as magical realm, although the concept isn't bad. I'd do the opposite: just have a single CHA stat; there are few enough skills associated with ATTR and EMP as it is.

None of the groups I played CP2020 stuck to rigid class boundaries, so I suspect most Cyberpunk gamers already de facto dropped them long ago. The problem then becomes that everyone wants to take Combat Sense as a skill given it's huge advantage in combat.

if you can't distinguish between the two, you're simply not a good gamer.

>interface zero
>320 pages
>streamlined

I own and like it, but it adds a lot of complexity to Savage Worlds, so I'd say it has the same medium-crunch as CP2020.

Well the combat flows nicer while maintaining the grittyness and the hacking isn't a bitch.

not to mention a large portion of that book is worldbuilding and gm advice.

>Zoology is a skill, but not Botany
It is you gigantic faggot. Rulebook 2nd Ed., Page 30, Master Skill List.

>Electronics and Electronic Security are that different? Really? No
Electronic security also covers the use of electronic surveillance measures. Electronics would only be used for installing or disabling.

>History is a skill, but not Literature
That's because literature is so fucking useless it didn't even made it in the bloated CP2020 skill list.

>Physics is a skill, but not Astronomy
Astronomy was added in Near Earth Orbit and Deep Space, if I'm not mistaken. If it's used for orientation purposes, it's under Wilderness Survival.

>Cryotank Operation?!? Pilot Dirigible? You have to be that specific? Why not "Gene Splicer Operation" and Pilot Canoe too?
Pilot Canoe is under navigation. Gene splicing could be a new skill or go under MediTech.


What a retarded gun design.

Performing isn't singing, playing a music instrument or inserting ketchup covered wieners in your rectum while singing Das Rheingold while Japanese noise is playing in the background. Performing is specifically acting and roleplaying.

not that guy but im posting this in hopes to irk you

Awesome guns. 10/10 would shoot at Replicants.

>With all the cyberware/gun sights/etc bonuses it will even out.
For who? REF12, "Firearm" 10, fully decked on on Cyberware? Yeah, he's going to hit everything. REF 10, Firearms 6? It's getting more interesting.

>Performing is specifically acting and roleplaying.
omg, how horrible

Hunh, Interface Zero is being converted to Pathfinder. That could be good or very very bad.

kickstarter.com/projects/821979583/interface-zero-20-cyberpunk-action-for-the-pathfin

>d20
>modern
hmmmm...
is there a good d20 based cyberpunk system at all?

Are you fucking stupid? It's the skill an actor character would have. Of course it doesn't replace the player's roleplaying.

So what else can be improved in the Cyberpunk ruleset?

Why would anyone use a .357 Magnum revolver in a cyberpunk setting. .357 Magnum revolver have already been supplanted by 10mm Auto handguns. And if it has to be a revolver, why one with only 6 rounds in the cylinder? Smith & Wesson already has 8 shot .357 revolvers for years.

A .357 Magnum silenced revolver would need subsonic ammo to be efficient. Guess what cartridge is comparable to .357 Magnum subsonic? The good old 9mm subsonic (and it doesn't matter if it's 9x19mm, 9x18mm or 9x17mm).

Because it looks cool, sillydingdong.

>anri retired
Don't wanna live on this planet anymore.

sauce?

So soon? Dang, she makes a good MILF.

Anri Okita. Now this thread has something we can agree on.

Oh well there's always whatshername too.

Back to cyberpunk pictures.

>retarded
Its basically a Welrod pistol mixed with a MP412 Rex revolver.
Its actually pretty fuckin' neato and feasible.

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>Daenerys Netborn.

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A car with square wheels is feasible, too. It's feasible, but it's shit. First, it's longer and bulkier than a comparable 10mm Auto handgun. Secondly, the choice of caliber is retarded for a suppressed handgun as it will have about as much power as a suppressed 9x19mm pistol. Thirdly, I see nothing to cock the hammer. Therefore it must be DAO, which is a shitty action.

Neat picture.

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You don't see much of modern architecture in cyberpunk but it's a perfect fit.

I posted some collages in a previous cyberpunk thread. Sadly, I all have them on my computer at work.

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Right at the end?

They were good

I'll grab some pics from that thread, or the archived version thereof, in a bit.

Anyone got any pic requests, my cyberpunk folders are fairly big?

One thing I heard about CP2020 was that Netrunning was pretty tedious and that there was the option to integrate the Netrunner Trading Card Game with it - does anyone have any experience with that?
I'm quite a fan of the reboot of Netrunner, and wondering if something can be done with that

You can integrate the card game, but it's even slower and still keeps the netrunner away from the other players. And it's still a dungeon crawl.

Yes, at the end. Sadly the thread reached image limit before I could post the slum collages. If this thread is still alive in like 10 hours, I can reupload them.

For Cyberpunk 2020's netrunning some user gave me an epiphany. I always viewed netrunning as the boring minigame we all know. But actually there's more to it. Netrunners can hack into any connected device in a 400m radius and use them, provided they have the right software. You can hack cybercars and let them crash in your opponents, hack phones to listen to conversations, etc. It's pretty cool and pretty simple.

>Netrunners can hack into any connected device in a 400m radius
I've been doing something similar in my homebrew games and it worked very well.

Even combat characters can take a little hacking and some custom modules and hack their opponents in combat, glitch their cyberware, blind their sensors, etc. Letting anyone who wants to hack things is fun and works well as a game mechanic.

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Well that sucks

The task of bumping not too much, not too little

>It is only if you treat it that way.
It treats itself that way. You can take it more seriously if you prefer, but the core fluff can't be described as anything but goofy. They tried too hard, and ended up making a satire of themselves. They tried to copy Neuromancer and Zanzibar, and ended up with the superficialities and not the substance. They made a saturday morning cartoon version of Cyberpunk.

Keep it alive. I'll upload.

Burn the hacking chapter to the ground. Long distance call rates and electronic hacker dungeons have no place in this world.

That's the reason why I prefer playing using only the basic book. Supplements brought too much goofiness for my taste.

Kek, Studweiser

We usually just had an NPC hacker. Smoothed everything right out.

As a civil engineer this building triggers me

>Burn the hacking chapter to the ground. Long distance call rates and electronic hacker dungeons have no place in this world.
i disagree

>2 inch suppressor
Why would you even bother?

But hacking the cyberspaces is half the fun in cyberpunk!

>But hacking the cyberspaces is half the fun in cyberpunk!
But all the mechanics I've seen suck ass and are horribly un-fun for anyone who isn't the hacker. The two sides of cyberpunk don't mesh well.

And the mechanics are all written by artists and dreamers rather than anyone who fucking knows a damn thing about computers.

>And the mechanics are all written by artists and dreamers rather than anyone who fucking knows a damn thing about computers.
Isn't the most realistic way to do anything with computers like that just to beat a guy until he lets you see/access whatever?
Ironically this would be the method of hacking most likely to involve everyone else.

But really, no-one who's not into computer science gives a shit if fictional computers don't work like IRL ones, and I've yet to hear of anyone who's good at CS make a system for hacking that's fun for anyone who's not into CS (or at all...)

I don't know, I reckon there's a place for a cyber-dungeon every now and then

Just helps if you can integrate it to the rest of the team

I fucking love CP2020.

There is a free app called "Friday Night Firefight" that makes combat a breeze. I highly recommend it.