What are some good systems for a good cyberpunk game? Been watching some different movies lately, particularly Total Recall, John Wick 1 and 2 (not particularly cyberpunk, but it's well themed and intense action) and the new trailer for Ghost in the Shell and it's been making me crave some of that action in RPG form.
From my understanding, and the one game I've played, Dark Heresy first edition is surprisingly good for making a gritty cyberpunk neo-noire campaign if set in a hive world.
I've heard Shadowrun is pretty good as well, but I haven't got my hands on a rulebook to read it over yet.
There is a Shadowrun general thread you can find. Ask for some basic tips and health, I remember stuff like not allowing Deckers for your first game.
*Important* Shadowrun, while magic heavy, has lots of decent lore snippets. There's lots you can steal and blame the rest on CRISPR kiddies.
Cyberpunk 2020 I am not familiar with. A friend is running it and they seem to like it.
Matthew Moore
There are zillions, but most are very niche.
>Shadowrun >Cyberpunk 2020 >Interface Zero >Wyred >Tech Noir >Zaibatsu >Remember Tomorrow >The Sprawl >Corporation More in pic.
Levi Moore
I wouldn't really call Eclipse Phase cyberpunk, mainly because it's meant to be played largely as a horror game.
Angel Diaz
You can also try my unfinished homebrew version of CP2020.
Charles Jenkins
I agree, but opinions vary, yada yada
Luke Gutierrez
Never played it, but it seems to be a good alternative to classic Cyberpunk 2020. I also like the look of it.
Personally, I'm a diehard CP2020 fan. Of course, as any CP2020 GM, I modified it quite a bit over the years.
I don't have a lot of experience with Shadowrun (mainly 1st and little bit of 3rd ed.). Reading 5th Ed. it seems to me that it evolved into a massive clusterfuck of rules.
If I was a new player, I'd probably play Interface Zero. It features a good amount of fluff with very reasonable crunch. Or I'd maybe give TechNoir a try.
Parker Butler
Interface Zero is a good compromise between Shadowrun's crazy rules bloat and CP2020's dated look-and-feel.
Tyler Young
This.
I also found The Sprawl interesting, but it's PbtA.
I think Shadowrun is way too messy. Too many stats, skills and dice overall, also weird hacking mechanics.
Which reminds me, Cryptomancer is a sort of fantasy hacking game, has great cryptology based hacking mechanics, worth a read.
Jaxon Jackson
There are many people who dislike Savage Worlds, for various reasons. But as I played and enjoyed Deadlands: Hell on Earth, I have no aversion playing its "heir".
SW is, for me, a simpler GURPS. It offers almost as much character personalization while remaining less crunchy.
Ex Machina is something in between, with relatively light crunch and basically no crunch. What I didn't like about it, is that everything is trait based. You don't have SkinWeave or Subdermal Armor, but you take an advantage that gives you more health points or more armor and say that it's this or that aug who does it. It works, but I prefer to have predefined cyberware.
A cyberpunk D6 game could also be interesting, but I haven't found anything serious, yet, apart of a Mini Six homemade game.
Andrew Gomez
Speaking of cyberpunk. I'd like to make a game, vaguely inspired by Japanese cyberpunk. The idea is to have one major technological breakthrough that will influence the world. I'm faced with a choice of two: androids or clones. I like clones because they are pretty much like slaves. They are human, but count as spare parts. On the other hand, androids seem easier to make and less of a problem to maintain. What do you guys think?
Kevin Sanchez
Android clones?
Robert Ross
Android are robots. They cannot be cloned.
Jackson Williams
It says here that this is Cyberpunk RPGs collage2. Where #1? I WANT IT user
Eli Clark
Might as well bump with a full-borg loli (something I couldn't do with a clone loli on a SFW board).
Henry Long
#1 had some classic games missing
James Ward
Forgot to mention that the game should be set in a near future (20 to 25 years).
Asher Watson
Shadowrun is even better if you get rid of the elves and other fantasy crap first
Jeremiah Thomas
Still way too crunchy, and removing the magic kills the setting (and party balance). Might as well just start from scratch.
Carson Harris
>John Wick 2
Tyler Butler
Also I guess things were different back when Shadowrun was first thought up or something, but the idea of the native americans having enough power or influence, even with the aid of magic, to take land from the American government is completely laughable today.
Levi Mitchell
Don't worry, it was laughable back then too. It's a fantasy world.
Hunter Cox
>2060 >still using mercator The future is truly dark.
Julian Perry
At least Aztlan has the excuse of being run by a megacorp.
If I was making my own world though I'd have the Mormons attempt to rise up and reclaim Deseret, and coastal separatists trying to leave American with Cali and the western half of Oregon and Washington. And the US government refusing to intervene in border conflicts between the Pacific States and Deseret.
Jace Flores
Mormons. Running Phoenix and San Diego?!? That's even more fantastical.
Dylan Wood
Well the pink is the actual Mormon territory, the orange line is what they wished they had so they could create their own Theodemocratic nation.
Benjamin Butler
There's an estimated six and a half million Mormons living in the United States as of 2012, if they all had a reason to concentrate to a single area and fight to form their own nation they could have a sizable amount of power, especially when you consider the Mormons have one of the higher birthrates among American demographics, there could be a lot of Mormons in a cyberpunk setting.
The real question is what would need to happen in America for the United States to fall apart like that.
Hunter Sullivan
Why not both?
... I've only just realised that there's no image I can think of from netrunner, or even the whole Android universe, where there's both a bioroid (robot with an electronic brain based on a human) and a clone (not a direct clone, a biological android with some entirely non-organic DNA).
Jaxon Torres
That is a lot more mormons than I thought there were. Perhaps the LDS Church really would be a powerful force in the American West in the event of a collapse of the Federal government. Like the Catholic Church after the fall of the West Roman Empire
Cooper Martin
I never liked how much the devs just left Europe undeveloped in contrast to USA in Shadowrun. I had thought up of a kick-ass campaign set on the Balkans in the aftermath of another, this time MAGICAL ex-yu ethno-religious war, that shifted everything to even more shit creating all sorts of weird political situations; here are the factions:
Resurgent Austro-Hungarian Empire - now under the moniker of a corporation (AHC Combine) - that ended up annexing (putting under a "protectorate"), Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia;
Sarajevo is a free demilitarized zone, something akin to Berlin right after the WW2, with AHC hungrily trying to annex them too
Serbia/Republika Srpska/Macedonia/Montenegro broken up in a thousand paranoid little theocratic or outright mad states, full of conspiracy theorist and islamophobia, beset by enemies on all sides (real, internal and imaginary ones) desperately trying to defend what's left of their post-apoc lands; most common mutations here are orcs
Third Bulgarian Empire is a major power on the Balkans in this timeline, supporting what's left of the orthodox legacy, full on with knightly orders and orthodox crusaders
Albania achieves the dream of greater Albania just to be nuked twice by Serbia in the chaos of Awakening by smuggled belarus nukes; the nukes were so strong in fact that they've sunken their capital and most of the surrounding coast straight down to the seabed; the radiation though backfired somehow (MAGIC) making elves the most common mutants herem, and albanians now re-imagined their culture as a new sylvan nation Tir A Na (that no other elven nation recognizes); the self-styled islamic (dark) elves are masters of organ, drug and gun black markets
Ryder Taylor
cont.
Romania is fucked up with Transylvanian vampire (or worse) princes and barons eating most of their territory and the gov and pop is locked in an unending nightmarish civil war against the creatures of the night
Constantinople was separated from the main land mass and now is an aquatic megalopolis called Corporatinople; a waypoint for most of the worlds corporations for this part of the world, cybernetic and stuff
Greece reemerged as Neobyzantyum and after a while initiated a war with Italy (actually the Papal states) as a vendetta for the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders, winning most of the south Italy and coming closer and closer to Rome.
Most of these nations are either in some form of active war are in very tenuous cease-fire agreements. PCs jumped in the story as agents of some corporation that sent them to rob a shipment of a rare and very powerful item acquired by one of the albanian drug lords on Kosovo...great times.
Brody Moore
Germany should have had a lot more dwarves. Like seriously where are the Dwarven countries in the setting? It would have been cool for the mountain ranges to be home to dwarves, with the Cascade range and the Rocky Mountains being dwarf land instead of the nonsensical NAN, and a Dwarf Enclave in the Appalachian range, coal miner redneck dwarves.
Christopher Phillips
Some great ideas here.
Nathaniel Sullivan
There were several sourcebooks about non-US locales. In fact, Germany went nuts for SR and pumped out a ton of official German-language books.
Andrew Green
>The real question is what would need to happen in America for the United States to fall apart like that.
Julian Brooks
>orcs >mutations Check your fucking privelege, breeder scum.
Camden Martin
>LSD Church
Now there's a plot hook
Colton Anderson
>zero mormons in the whole state of New York What happened there?
Elijah Kelly
Is there anything you guys would like to see from a Finances and Licences tab in Chummer? Ideally it would include all your bank accounts/credsticks with their nuyen amounts (Including any outstanding loans from In Debt), and appropriate licences, with the items they cover.
Jose Miller
I dunno, maybe the election of a batshit crazy right-wing celebrity who provokes legions of equally batshit anarchist rioters who then battle attack anyone who disagrees with them, leading to marshal law and the suspension of heabus corpus, which then leads some states to secede, etc.
Highly improbable, I know.
Austin Howard
I was recently looking for Ex Machina in the share thread, but it's a bit hard to find. If anyone's got a download link handy, I'd appreciate it.
>I've heard Shadowrun is pretty good as well, but I haven't got my hands on a rulebook to read it over yet.- 43 posts and 18 image replies shown. Shadowrun is as far from Cyberpunk as you can get. Exactly zero of the political climate or philosophy.
Owen Thompson
Dragonfall feels pretty cyberpunk.
Nicholas Green
Is their something wrong with PbtA games? I'm not familiar with them and The Sprawl looks pretty cool since I like Neuromancer
Isaiah Ortiz
... Apparently still have another 2 months to wait here.
Matthew Taylor
The thing that irks me the most is how it seems like the folk in charge of Shadowrun's setting were mostly just playing the "What if" game with the map. It seems like they did a lot of stuff with the places they knew pretty well, ignored others, and then oversimplified places they knew nothing about.
>What if elves in America? >What if Native Americans? >OOoh! What if America falls? >Central America isn't all Mexico? Oh fuck, right, Guatemala and Panama and stuff. Eh, fuck it. it's all Mexico now. >Africa? Uh... Shit, dude, I dunno. It's all just one place now.
Brandon Gonzalez
...
Tyler Adams
Because I don't want a cyberpunk that is too high-tech. When there are too many technologies available, a single one has less impact.
Elijah Phillips
To emulate John Wick-style gunplay, I'd recommend a game that allows for multiple actions per round and that has deadly combat. Example: you make an initiative roll and for every 5 or 10 points of initiative you can make one action. I remember that Shadowrun 1st Edition had such a system, don't know if they kept it in the new editions. The problem with Shadowrun 1st Edition was that it was almost impossible to kill with only one shot.
Caleb Evans
You're wrong, but that's okay. Being wrong is permitted.
Dominic Foster
There's nothing wrong with them (aside from fluctuating quality), but there seems to be a strong aversion to them in some gaming circles.
Oliver Carter
...
Liam Watson
SLA isn't cyberpunk. In-universe cybernetics are a 15-year-old fad, and bioengineering is the technology of the day.
Matthew Davis
Why did Kishiro ruin it all with the Last Order?
Levi Miller
...
Carson Morales
...
John Kelly
Currently reading through this little thing, based on the Apocalypse World system. Picked it up on drivethrurpg, liking it so far in how it presents itself, with an almost matrix-like world which also reminds me of the old Syndicate games, with neurochips being implanted in every citizen and thus having full connection to the Veil which is super internet and also a way to keep everyone from not seeing what they shouldn't be seeing. Also got central mechanics of Giri, or the exchange of favors, and the importance of having Giri on others to control them and call in those favors.
Lucas Allen
>Giri
Very old school, this fascination with Nihon. Cyberpunk V3 had giri, probably cribbed from that.
Post the PDF, omae.
Sebastian Torres
Who's this semen ayylmao?
Michael Scott
...
Landon Young
...
Asher Smith
Don't tell the feds, omae
Henry Diaz
>implying that cyberpunk isn't meant to be terrifying What is Dr.Adder and Tetsuo?
Chase Moore
...
Joseph Phillips
...
Brayden Miller
Mormon buildings even look perfect for a neo-utopian Cyberpunk "savior" religion to enlighten the disheveled masses.
Liam Lee
Is there a cyberpunk game that places a lot of importance on mental health. Cyberpunk 2020 Dark Metropolis somehow does it with stress levels, but it's badly implemented.
Kevin Price
Valentine's Day. Wife is working until midnight. I'm too broke to go to a whorehouse. Have to resort watching Burst City - without subtitles. Such is life in the zone.
Xavier Russell
>Constantinople It's Istanbul not Constantinople. The vast, vast, VAST majority, like 9X% of the city is muslim, there's no reason they'd change the name unless someone bought the whole fucking city after the natural disaster. Which is what happened didn't it? Damn. Anyways, there'd be Islamic rebels in the city, trying to restore Turkish control to Istanbul, and maybe a sect trying to bring back the Ottoman Empire starting right in the city.The tomb of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror is the center for a great ritual to remove the infidels. Problem is there's a dozen other rituals being planned by competing rebels cells, at sites like the old palace of Justinian, the Haghia Sophia, the broken Galata Bridge, Taksim Square and Topkapi Palace.
Turkey really wants the city back, but is badly fucked up and dealing with its annexation of Syria, and Kurdish rebels (lol) so it has no military power to spare. Turkish Armed forces would have to take on the Istanbul Corpsecs, rebel cells in the city not aligned with the Turkish Republic, and the Greeks (Neobyzantyum) and maybe even the fucking Bulgarians.
Jace James
Cool, thanks, choombatta.
Just from the illustrations this looks more far-out scifi than cyberpunk.
Austin Cook
I ran a cyberpunk one-shot using FATE. It was mediocre, although that's mostly because I'm not a very good DM
hey guys, not OP and still pretty new too Veeky Forums Doesnt anybody have a copy of shadowrun 5e i can grab? The concept really interests me and some of aspects of the game really appeal to me, but I simply don't have the cash to buy the book Thanks!
Gabriel James
We have a Shadowrun general.
Liam Phillips
Thanks! Took me a hot minute to find it, since the intro paragraph was a bit roundabout.
Owen Reyes
Good luck! You're into 500 pages of pure rules.
Andrew Harris
Has anyone tried to run a cyberpunk game in a future version of the Hawaiian Isles? Playing with climate change, native resentment towards a massive influx of mainlanders, and overly rushed, stopgap urbanization seems like it could be a lot of fun. That and having the party crawl through the ruined attempts at converting the Big Island into an arcology.
Kevin Howard
Never did anything with Hawaii, but the PCs raided the arcology of Samoa.
Colton Rivera
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Matthew Gray
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Mason Thomas
>the arcology of Samoa The WHOLE of Samoa? Or even one whole island?
As a single arcology?
Kayden Cruz
A big arcology that covered a good part of Savai'i Island - mainly Palauli district and Mount Silisili. Being far from everything the corporation thought be relatively safe.
Anthony Davis
>The real question is what would need to happen in America for the United States to fall apart like that.
Native americans with super-magic?
Blake Reed
Nuclear war with the Chinese.
Mason Cruz
Is it me, or are all Mormons concentrated in the area closest to the Yellowstone Super Volcano? Does their presence prevent it from erupting, or will it erupt once they do something special?
Dominic Cooper
Nuclear war with China would be pretty underwhelming. China could probably vaporize some major cities but that would be it - the Chinese nuclear arsenal has only 300 warheads. The USA, on the other hand, with their nuclear arsenal of about 7000 warheads could transform most of China in a nuclear wasteland.
Camden Morgan
Might be an improvement for China.
Aaron Collins
And catastrophic for everyone else who relies on china to mass produce shit.
And of course, the nuclear fallout over most of Central Asia probably wouldn't make Russia happy.
Anthony Brown
>On the other hand, androids seem easier to make and less of a problem to maintain. But human beings will self-assemble from just a pair of cells given the right conditions and can automatically repair themselves over time, how are androids better in either of these regards?
Logan Morales
Why do you say this? Chinese cities look romanticism paintings from the early 19th century.
Henry Barnes
Maybe you could make nanomachines with the goal of creating new android parts and repairing androids over time.
Benjamin Hernandez
>the suspension of heabus corpus Already been done, try to keep up user. Mr Hope and Change has taken away rights that were once held by the more fortunate of medieval peasants. God only knows what Captain Fanta will take.
Bentley Taylor
Clones take a lot of time to grow. Even if we speed up the process using growth hormones, steroids and whatnot, it will still take a few years for a clone to mature. An android could be assembled within some hours - they could even be mass-produced like cars (you choose what options you want: male/female, built, eye color, hair color, skin complexion...).
Then, there's the problem that clones are exactly like humans. They get ill, develop cancer, have bad breath, become fat, they age... Most of those things can be more or less fixed with super-vaccines, special clone food, and hormonal treatment, etc. but it's still more complicated than plugging your android to a power socket and bringing him once a year for a check up.
Brandon Phillips
>And catastrophic for everyone else who relies on china to mass produce shit. At least everyone else will get their jobs back, gotta look on the bright side.
Levi Morales
>implying
Ayden Torres
What is Vietnam? What is Indonesia? What is India? What is Brazil? What is Mexico? What is Turkey? What is Bulgaria? Manufacturing jobs won't come back unless Western wages sink massively.
