I'll be DM'ing my first session of 2020 soon Veeky Forums and was wondering if you had any advice. Are there certain things I should avoid outright, tweak so that the game isn't broken, etc.?
This is the first time I will be DM'ing 2020 or anything for that matter, and the first time my players will be playing 2020 as well.
First, congratulation for your excellent taste!
Now, to your question. Cyberpunk 2020 is a pretty old game. Therefore, many people with many different tastes and expectations have played and modded it. Some added crunch, others simplified the system, etc. Even if you ask here, people will give you different and contradictory advices.
My first advice is to play the game as it is, first - it works. Have your player do a short and simple campaign that will let them explore the game world and the different options that are available to them (cyberware, drugs, guns, vehicles...). This way you can identify the things that bother YOU and your players. You can then search for mods to fix them.
Pretty much everyone comes to develop a set of houserules for this game, but like suggests you really have to find what suits you. Personally I never liked the career system and let players built their own, for example. If I would give some advice, it's that you should be very careful incorporating the sourcebooks without putting some checks in place first.
That with the sourcebooks would have been a next tip. The "flavor" of the different sourcebook doesn't really match. Also, the info found can be contradictory.
Ex. Home of the Brave starts by saying that the USA are completely broke, but then it explains how its military is super-powerful and can easily destroy any corporation - that soldiers would be payed like only every three months, that there is no money for spare parts for jets and submarines, that pilots cannot fly because theres no jetfuel, that computer systems didn't get any upgrade during the last 5 years, etc. is completely missing. Deep Space pushes it even further by describing the NASA as a super-powerful organization, the only space agency on earth with kickass military spaceships, not even the ESA has - we don't exactly understand how the Euros could gain the supremacy of orbit with only some shitty transport shuttles and cutters.
Another example is the rulebook saying that Earth is completely polluted - oceans have become oily swamps, birds have died, etc. Yet, the Night City sourcebook claims that the beaches of Night City are good to swim - we're not speaking of swimming pools, but of the ocean. Somehow, Night City is completely broke and can barely maintain one police station, the US government is broke, but the beaches can be cleaned and the water purified so people can go swimming? Some people will say that it's a tourist attraction. But what tourists do you hope to attract in the world's most dangerous city?
I had made some rough cyberpunk aesthetic guides a while ago.
It could be a good idea for you and your players if you would do the same. Search pictures of buildings, people, guns, vehicles, equipment... that fit your vision of cyberpunk. This will allow you to streamline your universe and avoid the big hodgepodge cyberpunk melting-pot Cyberpunk 2020 is.
Here is the guide I had made for earlier cyberpunk aesthetic. There should be one more that would come in-between (mid-90s to early-2000s), but I had no time to make it, yet.
Here is another doc I had made to show my vision of a cyberpunkish city.
Is that Rocky being beaten up by Molly Millions?
lol
What's a good way to keep it things 'classic' cyberpunk without going full 80s retro?
Simply replacing Neo Tokyo with a Neo Bombay or Neo Hong Kong ( which even ghost in the shell did) feels pretty uninspired, I'm sceptical the Asian economic bubble is going to last that long.
It looks like it, yes. It's the DM screen from the French edition. The rulebook was absolutely dreadful, but the editor, Oriflam, managed to make the best looking screen of all editions.