What is a good, straightforward cyberpunk RPG with simple mechanics?
Shadowrun has fantasy and the system is ultra crunchy; Eclipse Phase has a very elegant system which I really like, but my group isn't into the whole post-human/horror aspects of the game. Cyberpunk 2020 is a bit too 80s for our taste, too. Both aesthetically and mechanically.
Those are the only three options we've gone through so far. Based on what I've just said, which systems do you guys think we'd possibly enjoy?
You're best bet might just be a generic system like savage worlds.
Adam Jenkins
Nova Praxis or Interface Zero?
Easton Davis
>inb4 gurps
I'm currently running a hard sci-fi campaign (in the vein of MGS and Mass Effect, if that makes sense) using M&M. The only contingency I made with my players was that all powers had to be tech-based and within the realm of reason.
Insofar it's worked out rather well, probably because it's really quite flexible. It might work for you, I dunno.
Or Savage World, yeah.
Brody Garcia
>What is a good, straightforward cyberpunk RPG with simple mechanics?
>Eclipse Phase has a very elegant system which I really like, but my group isn't into the whole post-human/horror aspects of the game.
I personally don't like Eclipse Phase but if you find it good can't you run the cyberpunk game and use the system and not the setting?
Jack Foster
Dunno, haven't played either, but I think SW gives the level of crunch your looking for.
Jacob Bailey
*you're
Asher Johnson
I actually have the M&M 2E book laying around somewhere. Why are you using it for hard sci-fi? Honest question, I'm curious and it's a valid option.
Well, I could, but a lot of the system is directly related to the transhuman/horror aspects. Morphs and Egos being separate things, stress damage, cortical stacks, back-ups, etc. I'd have to do a lot of hacking, and I'd rather just learn a new system instead. If there really is nothing out there that suits my group, then I guess I could do that as last resort.
Michael Collins
GURPS Cyberpunk
t. not a GURPS fan
Noah Stewart
Mostly because of how open-ended it is. I've tried, several times, to stump it, but ultimately I'm always able to make what I want.
Beyond just that, I like how it only uses the d20 (and maybe percentile, if you want), and it's not so focused on number crunching like other systems.
The only downside is that it's easy to cross into the realms of ridiculousness. I've had to set arbitrary caps on things to keep that from happening.
Hunter Perry
You'd have to modify it to fit whatever cyberpunk world you're trying to emulate, but Dark Heresy 2e would probably work for what you're describing. mega.nz/#F!Pl0UgbJa!vDtTXMKnvZ26fUbuw4X9tg
Gabriel Gutierrez
Hm, I did greatly enjoy the first Dark Heresy's system, maybe I should give 2E a try.
Aside from Psyker/Warp stuff, what other fluff-related mechanics are there that I'd have to hack?
Hudson Thompson
My CP2020 heartbreaker is pretty simple and has all the cyberpunk elements you need, although it's a bit more sleek and "future espionage" than cyberpunky.
Oliver Reyes
This looks great, user. Good job!
I'll take a look, "future espionage" is pretty much what I'm looking for anyways.
How much did you iron out the original CP2020 rules? I kinda find them too fiddly for my taste.
Austin Brooks
Thanks. I dropped a look of superfluous attributes (like Luck and Movement) and simplified the skills and cyberware quite a bit. Took some ideas from various anons to make SP better and completely rejigged the netrunning rules to make them simpler yet not too simple.
My group is having fun with these rules. But it's still an unfinished work, so stay tuned.
David Ward
Sweet! Is there contact info in the .pdf? If we end up playing it, I'd be glad to send you some feedback.
Juan Wood
Sure, give me a shout at >> krypter
Lucas Thompson
bump
Brandon Gomez
>Cyberpunk >a bit too 80s for our taste Then you are not going to enjoy cyberpunk at all. At this point you either embrace retro-futurism, or go directly for post-cyberpunk.
Isaiah Roberts
>Cyberpunk 2020 is a bit too 80s for our taste, too. Both aesthetically and mechanically. While I get the complain about mechanics, did you just stated you don't like punk elements in cyberpunk? Because that's literally the only 80s element in those - being punk. Which is kinda-sorta the whole fucking point, you moron.
And while I fucking hate kids born in late 90s and furiously wanking to 80s (fucking synthwave with entire aesthetics), people who don't want punk in cyberpunk are literally missing the point. I guess I'm getting too old for this shit
Jack Myers
He probably means post-cyberpunk, given his choice of OP image. Post-cyberpunk is almost as cancerous as the variety of other words for cyberpunk that exist though. Are you really going to tell me something like Deus Ex or Syndicate isn't cyberpunk? Or far enough from cyberpunk that they deserve re-classification? It's like the pointless subdivisions of metal.
Matthew Ramirez
Way to not know what cyberpunk stands for at all. The punk doesn't stand for "PUNK ROCK", but for the low life aspect of a highly technological advanced society.
Exactly. "post-cyberpunk" is retarded. If it's about extreme social disparity in a near-futuristic setting, it is cyberpunk.
Focus on cultural developments brought about by this social disparity and the clash of financial misery with highly advanced tech is normally what makes something cyberpunk, not leather jackets and pink Mohawks.
Connor Jackson
Exactly. You won't find heads or tails of pink mohawks or studded leather in Neuromancer or the like. Except maybe in street thugs, who aren't the main characters anyway.
Robert Barnes
Actually, the street thugs in Gibson's novel look a lot like what thugs in "post-cyberpunk" art normally look like. Shaved heads, lots of piercings and chrome bling, etc.
Noah Baker
As someone who's read and tried to run IZ - the setting is full of neato ideas, but honestly the layout and editing of the book leaves a lot to be desired, at least the Polish one, dunno about English - it severely lacks some more generic guns and armors, ammo prices are nowhere to be found, hacking is pretty cool but honestly I found it to be a burden because you literally run two simultaneous games with two rulesets for characters at once when somebody goes "holographic". It might've not helped that I'm not big on cyberpunk myself, but I wasn't very fond of the presentation. Also, one of my players played a simulacrum mascot panda. While the rules allowed it and made a mention of similar characters, I found it a bit too silly.
TL;DR in my experience Interface Zero will require a fair bit of extra work before it's fully usable.
Carson Campbell
There are the panther moderns though, but they still work today as well. They kinda struck me as militant art students.
Brandon Ward
I get why you consider it cancerous, but post-cp is a thing. Even if 75% of Veeky Forums doens't understand how it works, while remaining 25% argues furiously about the most autistic definition of it.
Owen Flores
Please tell me you are just baiting. Especially with that stupid part about punk rock.
Let me guess - you weren't born until 80s were over and never caught up with the punk subculture, thinking it's some music-related shit?
Julian Howard
But post-cyberpunk doesn't focus on the disparity, wealth inequality, despair or dystopia; instead electing to go speculative on the tech and how people interact with it.
If you're going to be autistic, at least get your shit straight.
Benjamin Baker
I prefer High-Tech, Low Life to describe cyberpunk. It avoids these awkward generational problems and it doesn't let it get hung up on superficial aesthetic differences.
Jace Peterson
The division is pointless. Cyberpunk can just have a broader definition. High Tech, Low Life is all you need to know about it. Everything within that, even who's perspective you're seeing it from, still fits with the cyberpunk ethos.
Having pissy arguments over definitions does nothing to further actual debate except a smaller group masturbating about how they're in the know relative to the larger group.
Jack Gomez
They're the ones I was talking about. They struck me as a the techno-tumblr types that we see on more modern cyberpunk settings way more than 80s punk rockers.
How is it a thing? In what way is post-cyberpunk post at all? Just because it's modern? You don't call modern medieval fantasy post-medieval fantasy, even though it has elements that you wouldn't find in earlier fantasy novels.
Just because a genre evolves doesn't mean it turns into a completely other genre. The themes of modern cyberpunk fiction is still literally the same as they were in the late 60s, we just change minor setting and aesthetic elements.
It literally does.
> the term "postcyberpunk" to label the new works such writers produce. In this view, typical postcyberpunk stories continue the focus on social implications within a post-third industrial-era society, such as a ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information and cybernetic augmentation of the human body, but not necessarily with the assumption of dystopia. It is rather characteristic for postcyberpunk to portray a utopia or to blend elements of both extremes into a more mature (to cyberpunk) societal vision.
It's literally just "cyberpunk, but cleaner". It still focus on topics such as the cultural impacts that a high tech level has in a society that hasn't evolved sociol-politically.
In other words, high-tech, low-life.
Take GiTS for example, the prime "post-cyberpunk" example. Incredibly advanced cybernetics, incredible technology, but the characters are basically just regular cops. They take down drug dealers, terrorists and hackers that are all products of a failed society. We see all the time how this decadent part of society clashes with the tech level of the setting. Kidnappers who literally hack brains to hijack identities, black market cybernetic organ dealing, cybernetic virus plagues. If that's not cyberpunk than what the fuck is?
Ethan Kelly
Just to sum it up, the only way something could be correctly labeled as post-cyberpunk is when that work actually deconstructs and criticizes cyberpunk, while departing from it.
Something that shows us how all these cybernetic and technological advances actually create a perfect society with no social disparity and the complete eradication of current social problems; now that's post-cyberpunk.
Josiah Evans
Has to be some law: every cyberpunk thread degenerates into shitflinging about definitions of cyberpunk.
Mason Nguyen
The origin system, but all you'd have to do is swap out things like "feral world" and "adeptus astra telepathica" for origins and careers that are appropriate to your setting. You might also want to tweak the gear and some of the skills.
Nathaniel Stewart
And Dark Heresy 2e is significantly simpler and more open-ended than 1e, so these tweaks shouldn't be difficult to apply.
Jackson Smith
Post-cyberpunk is just regular cyberpunk but with a still functioning middle-class and less crazy stuff like body lotto, splatter-punk gangs, poser gangs, furries, etc.
Gavin Collins
He said 80s, you dimwit. This doesn't mean Mohawks and mirror shades (fashion trends come and go), but rather Xboxhuge cellphones, computers with 2 gigs of RAM and 250 MHz, neon signs, 9mm medium handguns with 12 shot capacity, CRT monitors, cassette players...
Tyler Morris
>I actually have the M&M 2E book laying around somewhere >2e Ew. 3e or bust for me, personally. It shreds out a lot of the bad D&Disms.
Dylan Richardson
I'd also recommend Savage Worlds and specifically interface zero 2.0. Have you tried interface zero 2.0? I've played it a ton and it's totally unlike your description.
The lore section could use a bit of reformatting but the system is complete and perfectly playable.
Grayson Carter
>shadowrun is too crunchy! >Try this encyclopedic bloated mess instead!
GURPS is nothing but a meme.
Matthew Turner
"GURPS is a meme" is a meme.
Levi Evans
I'm not a GURPS fan, far from it, but GURPS is 100 times more digest than Shadowrun 5th Ed. Also GURPS Cyberworld isn't less dated than Cyberpunk 2020.
Jaxon Russell
That does look pretty cool - not read all the way through, and some of the bits in the backstory look a little odd, but overall I like what I'm seeing - the 'ware trees, for example, IDK how balanced they are or anything, but it's a neat idea.
Also pretty amused at the "wait, I know that art" moments from Netrunner. Not that I blame you, it's good shit.
Jordan Diaz
>I never even saw GURPS, but heard it's awful Veeky Forums, why you are so Veeky Forums?
Henry Rogers
Just play 'Corporation' by Brutal Games op.
Or Interface Zero for Savage Worlds.
Lucas Rodriguez
Looks cool and interesting. Would play.
Cameron Cooper
Any change of having a conversion guide from things like Vehicles and shit?
Kevin Thomas
Gotta keep The Man down by rejecting his outdated views on genredefinitions.
Blake Rodriguez
If games based on Apocalypse World don't give you rash I could also suggest The Sprawl. Light on rules and setting it's, by default, structured around Shadowrun like group of operators doing mostly illegal shit for and against megacorporations.
James Phillips
Despite my loathing of PoweredbyApos games, I generally liked the rules of The Sprawl. It really hit the Gibsonian genre emulator button square-on.
Too bad it doesn't have an actual world setting, just rules.
Lucas Young
I'm quite fine with systems that lack concrete setting. I like to spew out my own shit, or alternatively, it's easy to steal one from other games.
Parker Clark
No you
Alright! Alright! I'll give it another chance. But only because I never want to look at shadowrun 5e ever again.
Hudson Scott
gotta admit I never played a single metal gear game, but this design does it for me.
Also the promo pictures always have the hands touching her in slightly inappropriate ways.
Joseph Gomez
Whatever do you mean?
Oliver Richardson
When my kids move out, sure. I'm a slow writer, but I am doing something with Maximum Metal. At some point there will be conversion rules or just a straight adoption of the existing ones. My players were asking about it too.
Anthony Cruz
I'm surprised we're not hearing the autistic screeches from the CP2020 fanboys.
Bentley Lee
Corporation? Except in that you are The Man.
Connor Young
Patience, little choombatter. They will come around.
Ayden Murphy
I like the CP2020 D10 rules mechanics, but I still wouldn't tell everyone that it's the right choice for all things CP. Your "Stop liking what I don't like" is showing...
Easton White
Not what I said.
Cameron Perry
Funny, I know a cyberpunk setting with a fair bit of lore, but no RPG...
How adaptable is The Sprawl, and what sort of tech is/isn't there?
Henry Lee
There's literally a game called Sprawl.
Jonathan Brooks
Aww, man, I wanted to buy that book but it sold out instantly.
The Sprawl is - like many PbtA games - intentionally vague on a lot of technology specifics, so it could be adapted to ANR fairly easily. The game encourages you to make your own corporations and antagonists, and has a very good "mission clock" adventure-building system. Android's visual imagery for cyberspace would be a perfect fit too.
I've always said that ANR really needs a good RPG, but FFG has not wanted to mix their properties.
Jose Martinez
The Sprawl has few things build in the rules, like that every player character has some cyberware. Of course, while the game presents that as something, somewhat thematically important it can be hacked away easily, maybe replaced with something else that can make characters to be owned or hunted by different factions.
Christian Hill
Amazon my man, that's where I got mine, and for maybe 10, 15 quid off - I still used vouchers for it though, it would be quite hard to justify to myself using "real" money. Anyway, I'm slowly photographing it to make into a pdf (if my scanner worked it'd be a lot easier), so it will eventually be going up in an /anrg/
Good to know it's adaptable and vague, seems like could be a decent fit. Though keeping hacking from literally being " play a game of netrunner" would probably be important
Gabriel James
One of the many Blades in the Dark variants will be a Cyberpunk game. I'm sure it'll fit perfectly.
Ryder Scott
My local Amazon has it ridiculously overpriced.
Thanks for the scan, man. I will be a loyal client when it's released.
John Ross
That game is different from The Sprawl.
Carson Campbell
Part of me wants to imagine that the arms are still somewhat semi-sentient and just like touching her of their own accord.
Matthew Thomas
Hmmm... Seems you took the armored Skinsuit from my CP "reedition" I had posted some years ago. Thinking about it, I think that the SP value should be enhanced to 4 or 6, in order to protect from fragments and spalling. Leather clothing should have SP 2 at best. Realistically speaking leather clothing should give no protection at all. PS. I really dig your augmentation tree.
Ian Perez
>the 'ware trees, for example, IDK how balanced they are or anything, but it's a neat idea.
Not that balanced yet, but it depends somewhat on what skills your PC has. I have to tweak some of the Aug bonuses and update the Aug chart.
>"wait, I know that art" moments from Netrunner. Not that I blame you, it's good shit.
It is. But if FFG comes out with an Android RPG I'll have to get some other art.
Adrian Ward
>... Seems you took the armored Skinsuit from my CP "reedition" I had posted some years ago.
Maybe? I don't remember, but I've had skinsuits in my games since, like 1994. I might have gotten it from the GITS conversion on DataFortress 2020. Mostly I just copy and update to more modern terminology and some new tech like shear-gel armors.
James Adams
Interface Zero 2.0: This is a quite good Savage Worlds Cyberpunk Setting. I would recommend using the core book and picking up the 1st edition core book for world background.
Ian Hill
Also. you should check out Interlock Unlimited. It's a fan-remake of the Interlock system from Cyberpunk 2020.
Kayden Mitchell
Why two books? The 2.0 version has all the world info too.
Thomas Wright
It does, but it doesn't have any of the historical background for how the world got so f-ed up in the first place.
Kevin Hall
Chimera stats when?
Kayden Flores
>hard sci-fi campaign >MGS and Mass Effect
Joseph Wilson
Technoir is more of the crime side than the cyber side, but it is very simple.
Logan Martin
GURPS mechanics are involved and complicated. Unless your group already knows GURPS, it's a bad fit.
If your group does know GURPS, it's very easy to start a cyberpunk game.
Jack Cruz
Seems to me like this might actually all call for a more freeform system like FATE, and this is coming from somebody that generally dislikes FATE.
Jack Murphy
I ran a game of Technoir for my group's last session before we were all scattered by travel and seasonal obligations, and I'm smitten. Won't be everyone's cup of tea but if it sounds good to you you should see about giving it a whirl.
Hunter Thompson
Additionally GURPS Cyberpunk is so cyberpunk that the secret service raided steve jackson games and seized it during development.
Cooper Green
... seriously?
Did he google some inappropriate stuff? I mean, for research purposes obviously.
Kevin Roberts
Interlock Unlimited is absolute dog shit. The guy who made it, took the worst from Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020, blended it together and called it Interlock Unlimited.
Xavier Allen
They got raided because they had contacts with hacker groups. They didn't get raided because the book is "so realistic".
Daniel Gonzalez
Lloyd Blankenship communicated with actual hackers while writing it.
Gavin Morales
..
And what did the secret service expect to get from seizing the game? Becoming updated on hacker lingo?
Cooper Brooks
They thought it was a 'manual for computer crime'.
Ian Morgan
On one hand, I always find secret services, the people who are in charge of knowing things being so out of touch with reality.
On the other hand, I can see how one can consider it a similar naming convention to "Anarchist's Cookbook"
Carson Garcia
He did. Which means nothing because the book still uses the old cyberspace paradigm and makes up shit left, right and center.
If you want outdated hacking circa 1989 (complete with "4 Mega-Bytes of Memory"), go ahead and use GURPS Cyberpunk. I own the book and find it almost completely worthless.
Angel Morales
>how dare a book written in 1989/90 to help you make a campaign set in this literary genre read like a book written in 1989/90 to help you make a campaign set in this literary genre
Camden Thompson
Remember Tomorrow and Ex Machina are two other cyberpunk games that might be interesting. Anyone has ever tried them. There's also Wyred, but the crappy 3D art is almost as bad as Cyberpunk V.3's.
Jack Martin
>space marine fashion designer
Jonathan Anderson
Remember Tomorrow and Ex Machina are two other cyberpunk games that might be interesting. Anyone has ever tried them. There's also Wyred, but the crappy 3D art is almost as bad as Cyberpunk V.3's.
Logan Lewis
Remember Tomorrow is collaborative storytelling, with a lot of tags, some ways similar to the more recent Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE games.
Ex Machina is mostly just 4 rather cliche cyberpunk settings. Very little in the way of rules, and those only for the now-defunct Big Eyes Small Mouth RPG. It has some good ideas for mining but each world is built around 1 gimmick and is too narrow for a complete campaign world.
Jordan Brooks
The main issue with Ex Machina, is that cyberware is not really listed. If you make a super strong character you have to explain why. It's kind of too much freedom for me. The short world's description isn't such a problem. In CP2020 sourcebook's the background is rather meager, too. Didn't prevent me from running kickass campaigns.
Landon Gomez
>Hard Sci-Fi >Mass Effect I might not understand what Hard Sci-Fi means anymore.
Assuming its out, the Inifinity RPG might be a place to look.
Kevin Evans
>I might not understand what Hard Sci-Fi means anymore. Remember, it's always user that's wrong, not you.
And in this case I'm not even joking, Mass Effect is definitely Space Opera, not hard Sci-Fi.