Cyberpunk2020 vs Shadowrun

Because people have no idea how to cyberpunk, so they just have some fantasy with guns to scratch the ich.

Cyberpunk 2020 being so terribly outdated does not help at all.

This never stopped OSR or other wacky fringe groups from bringing old editions from the muck and animating them like Frankenstein's wet dream.

cyberpunk is a dystopia, a dystopia doesn't necessarily have to be cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk as a genre is very much tied in with the time period it came out of, being the late 80s and the 90s. We later saw transition to post-cyberpunk, which varies in style and tech level much more than regular cyberpunk, so it's more difficult to make a standardized system and setting for the genre.

Shadowrun is more of its own thing than Cyberpunk 2020, which is more coached in default cyberpunk aesthetics. As cyberpunk shifted into post-cyberpunk, it was much easier to just update the setting of Shadowrun to keep it up to date with modern scifi. This is opposed to Cyberpunk 2020, which, with its stated being the simulation of the cyberpunk of the 90s, was much harder to update and keep its spirit and continuity in setting.

Underrated post senpai

I ask myself this question almost every day, and every day I get the same response: because people can't handle too much reality; they need magic to make it palatable.

Shadowrun handles the transition from the biggest game on the market (accounting for somewhere around 80% of the market) much more smoothly than CP2020. If you want to play CP2020, you need to at least have a passing familiarity with cyberpunk literature. To play Shadowrun, you just need to know what a dwarf and fireball are, and maybe what a cyber-limb is. SR is more accessible, via other genres such as Urban Fantasy (Dresden Files and all that shit) plus if you're coming at it laterally from World of Darkness or Warhammer there's quite a bit of commonality; Cyberpunk 2020 stands alone and isolated from most other genres. THe book are old, and dated, and make references to shit that nobody except 40-year-olds will remember, live and not nostalgia-regurgitated.

I thought maybe Cyberpunk 2077 might revive the game, but the vidya is taking so long, and has had basically zero previews, updates or sneak peeks, so if/when it comes out it'll drop a bomb of RPGing need, but right up to that point it's still a dead game.

Cyberware and uhh, punks fighting against megacorporations (The Man).
Cyberspace/netrunning/hacking of some kind.
Social alienation, drugs, societal anomie.
Rebellion against the system/conformity.

Well if you want old-school revival for cyberpunk there's this (shinier than the original though): hunter-seeker.obsidianportal.com/

Is having your legs crossed like that an occult symbol or something? That's on a few tarot cards I've seen.

>symbol of ineluctable virginity

Well, Cyberpunk 2077, as the name implies, will be released 2077.

cyber-lol

>Seriously though: Most pick-up SR games I've ever been part of were nothing more than D&D with magic and guns.

I have literally no idea how this is possible.

I'm serious here: Shadowrun as it is presented in the books is a heist movie.

> You get hired by a mysterious benefactor/asshole
> To do a job which involves breaking in somewhere and doing a specific probably-illegal thing.
> You're a team of mismatched weirdos with highly specific skillsets
> You have access to some intel and do legwork to get more
> You construct a detailed plan with the rest of the group
> You attempt to execute said plan
> Everything goes to hell
> "Benefactor" screws you over
> You (usually) get away with your hides and some cash to tide you over until the next time

That is the structure the game gives you.

obligatory.

>Like Apple. Or Google. Whatever, they'll both end up causing the machines to destroy mankind.

Looking more prescient by the day, my main man.

There was actually a CP2020/Paranoia crossover which was pretty fun

Let me help you then:

>Team gets hired to do X at Y location
>Team goes to Y location
>Team goes about Y location like your archtypical dungeon crawl. IE, kick down door, kill monster, get loot.
>Absolutely no concept of law enforcement response.
>Every Y location always turns out to be a massive slog, like your archtypical D&D dungeon, as opposed to anything you could possibly quickly hit-and-run like a heist movie.
>Nearly all "encounters" have a magical or fantastic slant to them. DM and players typically forget there's such things as guns and cyberware in the universe except for the players playing Street Samurai
>Nobody ever plays a Decker or Rigger.

>Why did the game with the better system* die and fall into obscurity while the shittier system become the standard for the cyberpunk genre?
CPv3 happened.

That is a sign of a shitty GM.

1. Mike Pondsmith is so autistic, he almost makes Kevin Siembieda seem normal.
2. Shadowrun's first edition had a more defined style than Cyberpunk 2020, who's a heterogenous mix of everything Mike Pondsmith likes (Bladerunner, The Warriors, Punisher, Mad Max, Streets of Fire, Outland, Akira, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, Mega Zone 23, Neuromancer).
3. Mike Pondsmith never bothered to publish a new edition (unless we count the abortion V.3 was) - while Shadowrun got constantly updated.

Embrace the future. Embrace The Sprawl.

>Cyberlimbs are suboptimal and thus useless, and characters are encouraged to either never put on cyberware (REEEEEE get out of my cyberpunk) to keep essence at full, or give zero shits about it and not care as long as it doesn't reach zero.

This is exactly the opposite of true. 'ware is so good that adepts (who actually CARE about essence, being magic users) routinely take cyberlimbs. Even dedicated magicians often take things like cyber-eyes, because of how useful they are.

That said, SR's system is shiiiiit.

>Mike Pondsmith never bothered to publish a new edition (unless we count the abortion V.3 was)
You know CP2020 is actually the second edition of Cyberpunk, right?

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Because Shadowrun at its core is just D&D in a different time period. You're a ragtag group of fantasy misfits expected to go on what are effectively dungeon crawls. This is not difficult for most gamers to grasp as a concept, and so has wider appeal.

And before someone responds by being unable to see the forest for the trees, I'll just ask they envision what a D&D campaign set entirely in a major metropolis would look like.

Couldn't you say the same thing about cyberpunk 2020, save that it also doesn't have magic?

Nah. Cyberpunk is just a game about playing characters in a cyberpunk setting; Shadowrun is more tightly focused around the run.

Cyberpunk 2013 was so short lived (2 years) - it gets zero recognition and same goes for Cybergeneration (another failed Mike Pondsmith game). The fact is that Cyberpunk 2020 didn't get any new edition between 1990 and 2005. Even that steaming pile of shit V.3 is didn't get any new edition, and it was published 12 years ago.

By comparison here is Shadowrun: 1989 (first edition), 1992 (second edition), 1998 (third edition), 2005 (fourth edition), 2013 (Fifth Edition)

Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen an urban D&D game focus on dungeon crawling/anything even vaguely resembling runs.

Also this.

Only because you're focusing on the details. Stop looking at the trees.

>The fact is that Cyberpunk 2020 didn't get any new edition between 1990 and 2005
2020 was released three times between 1990 and 1993.

New editions aren't related to game success, anyway. AD&D went through two editions in 23 years, and GURPS stayed on 3e from '88 to '05.

The trees of 'The campaign structure doesn't resemble the one you've said it resembles'?

Those were reprints, not new editions (the last reprint incorporated a couple of minor "corrected" errata).

>Why did the game with the better system* die and fall into obscurity while the shittier system become the standard for the cyberpunk genre?

Novelty aside is because Shadowrun gives players and DMs a focus point for a game, an default reason as to why the party exist.

Cyberpunk 2020 tells you to make anything from a rocker to a cybered up razor girl but then how this people of varied background, social class and maybe morality form a "party" is up in the air.

In contrast Shadowrun tells you the same but adds "oh and you are all Shadowrunner who do runs" thus a easily structure to grasp.

Not saying Shadowrun is better for it though, because the problem is that Shadowrun whole Shadowrun system (the social construct on how they work) makes players engaging with the plot difficult.

The whole system is designed for Shadowrunner to just be hired muscle and not be tied in any way or form with the run after is done. And when they do is mostly because one of the parts is stupid. Either the Johnson betraying you or the enemy faction putting way WAY too much work into killing you when leaving you alone would have been better. For example Shadowrun Dragonfall.

Also it causes the problem that all the setting is tough in relation with the one unifying aspect instead on things that make sense.

>so autistic he makes Kevin Siembieda seem normal

You're going to have to elaborate on how such a thing is possible, user.

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One was done by FASA, and the other by R. Talsorian.

FASA was so much bigger and had a larger fan-base.

The guy in charge of R.Talsorian basically is a retard. He has no marketing skills, nor a plan to expand any game line. Creatively, he fell apart after FUSION. Before that, he made some great games. Just not as many books as FASA put out.

But then again R.Talsorian didn't go under. So... there is that.

It's a little similar to the Hanged Man pose?

He's autistic enough to think GTA3 is "more cyberpunk" than Deus Ex.

To me both CP2020 and Shadowrun are fucking terrible systems that need to be dumped for something superior. Like Savage Worlds

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>Savage Worlds

That's a funny way of saying GURPS

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Came here to post an identical comment. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. SO GET ACTUAL MAGICS AWAY FROM MY CYBERPUNK REEEEE

Both systems are superior to the current incarnation of ShadowRun and CP2020.

I was wondering how changing dice rolls in Cyberpunk 2020 from 1d10 to 2d6 (or 3d6) would change the game. Would it improve the game? Did anyone try it?

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1. Cyberpunk's third edition was legendarily shitty and killed interest in the game until CD Projekt kind of revived it by licensing it.

2. Supplements were put on hold in anticipation of the Corpwar event that leads into aforementioned legendarily shitty third edition, and I don't think that event was ever properly finished.

3. The world was in dire need of an update that it never got. Currently it's this weird retro "future as imagined in the 80's" thing where nobody uses cell phones and fax machines are still a thing. This may be a plus if you're really into that sort of aesthetic, but it puts a strain on suspension of disbelief.

anydice.com
output 2d6
output 1d10
Basically, there'd be a lot more 7's, and when a medium task is 15 on a roll + stat + skill means you got good chances all around. Better than just the standard 10% across the board 1d10. 3d6 would break the game because 10's would be the standard, not the exception

>3. The world was in dire need of an update that it never got. Currently it's this weird retro "future as imagined in the 80's" thing where nobody uses cell phones and fax machines are still a thing. This may be a plus if you're really into that sort of aesthetic, but it puts a strain on suspension of disbelief.

This. In fact, I would argue that CP2020 needs to be shitcanned entirely as among anybody's choice of what to play for a cyberpunk setting these days, unless they want to play in a retro-future.

Something entirely new has to be written, given what we know technology is capable of here in 2017. It can be done - the last couple Deus Ex games are arguably a testament to that. Hm... wonder if a Deus Ex RPG (in the era of Adam Jensen, not JC Denton) would sell?

Anyway, nobody get their hopes up for CP2077, They're actually letting Mike Pondsmith have a say in it, and that is NOT a good thing. And there is the strong possibility that the Polish developers are going to cling to the "retro future" worlds of no cell phones but fax machines everywhere.

Cyberpunk 2020 with 3d6 is actually Fuzion. Can take the TNs from there.

>it puts a strain on suspension of disbelief
If you're such a millennial that you can't imagine any other progression of technology than the one that occurred in our history, yes.
The sheer shenanigans pulled by Shadowrun's 4e hackers and 5e deckers shows that the setting's society isn't built on the same fundamentals - for example, most communications are wired not because no one ever imagined wireless (wrist-phones were a thing even in spy novels from the 60's, and wireless wrist computers were there since before Gibson), but because of the Awakening, VITAS and goblinization allowing the corporations all the information security they'd ever want as well as a lot of things to keep hidden. With a public so equipped with Matrix-capable devices, it's obvious to see why the paranoid corps would control wireless.
When CGL then put in poorly-considered wireless everywhere without rhyme or reason, it ripped up the system and the setting to the point where it isn't even sustainable anymore. There are so fucking many plotholes born from wireless Matrix shenanigans that it's not even fucking funny.
You're the kind of person who gets mad at alternate history and sees D&D as inherently more realistic than an urban fantasy system that makes some slight compromises, right?
CP2020 is a genre piece and an alternate history - because it operates on the same foundations as our world. If it's really impossible for you to suspend disbelief because technology took a different turn, you should look to other hobbies than roleplaying games.
Sometimes, the obvious remains hidden and the obscure seems obvious. Take genetics as an example - Gregor Mendel was the first to codify it, but it could have been discovered as soon as humans learnt to distinguish between different plants.
Leaps of thought are dependent on the zeitgeist, the culture, the society and its people. One of those isn't right, and a whole society can miss an obvious invention for centuries.

>If you're such a millennial that you can't imagine any other progression of technology than the one that occurred in our history, yes.

Wow rude

>You're the kind of person who gets mad at alternate history

It's not supposed to be alternate history, doofus. It's supposed to be our world in the future. When the game was written, that's what it was. There were no alternate history elements.

>This. In fact, I would argue that CP2020 needs to be shitcanned entirely as among anybody's choice of what to play for a cyberpunk setting these days, unless they want to play in a retro-future.
Honestly, that's not a huge task. 99% of everything available in Cyberpunk 2020 is still extremely futuristic for us. The outdated stuff is, with the exception matrix/netrunning, extremely minor - no one gives a fuck about how many numbers your phone can memorize, what your character uses to listen to music, etc. The biggest challenge would be to change computer stuff to something more up-to-date (wireless networks, cloud storage and computing...), but the rest is piece of cake.

Reminder that magic and technology in SR both go together to complement the inherent themes of cyberpunk.

>Deus ex games
>Adam Jensen is literally a copy paste rule 63 of Molly Millions
>A character from Neuromancer that came out in 1983
>The entire game is basically entirely old ideas from Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, and I mean sprawl trilogy and Snow Crash old, because Virtual Light goes on to get a weird plastic and nanotech and complete lack of cyberware and cyberspace feel to it.

Ye oke, you seem like you really know your cyberpunk fella

3d6 would work if you simply raised every target number by 5 across the board.

I don't see the point though, I don't masturbate to bell curves. I like the simple elegance of "1d10 (die) + 1-10 (skill) + 1-10 (stat) versus target number". That's also why I think CP is a strong system at its core. All it needs is a world overhaul, culling of the skill list by like 75%, rebalancing of weapons and armor and a few other tweaks here and there. Which may seem like a lot of work, and it is, but it's worth it if we get to keep dat rng(10)+rng(10)+rng(10).

Fallout is a retro post apocalyptic that did well. Same for Wasteland. I think there's space for retrocyberpunk and a new, iPhone-white-cyberpunk (Mirror's Edge).

The wireless is just obvious. Even today, top secret data is kept in offline computers in wireless-protected rooms, that would require a decker on site. But at the same time, wireless and smart-tech (and Big Brother Facebook Brave New World common folk) allows for good connection with real life events.

You know what defines "history" and "past"?
The period the observer lives in.
If you can say CP2020 is out of date (because you live in the modern world), I can call it alternate history because I'm seeing it from the point of view of a modern citizen too. You're deciding things about the game based solely on the time period you're living in, which no one would have thought when the game was released. I'm doing the exact same thing.
If the nature of the game can change from "modern" to "out of date", and if the genre can change from cyberpunk to somehow not-cyberpunk like so many people claim, the genre can also become alternate history because all those things are basic extensions of the viewer's right to make judgments about the setting.
People don't only have the right to think in the exact way you think.

Saying that technology in Cyberpunk 2020 is outdated is pretty retarded. There's full-body cloning, flying cars, biofuel made from genetically engineered crops, cyberware and neural interfaces, braindance technology (SimStim), hyperrealistic virtual realities, self-aware artificial intelligences, nanomachines, orbital colonies, androids, fusion power, smart weapons and biosculpting, but hey, let's concentrate on the fax machines, music chips, expensive cellphones and pictures of CRT computer monitors in the sourcebooks.

>Adam Jensen is literally a copy paste rule 63 of Molly Millions
No he is not.

>The entire game is basically entirely old ideas from Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, and I mean sprawl trilogy and Snow Crash old, because Virtual Light goes on to get a weird plastic and nanotech and complete lack of cyberware and cyberspace feel to it.
No shit retard. All cyberpunk is derived from those in one way or another. The question is that do you want cyberpunk that makes sense or is a goofy alternate comic-book universe? Because CP2020 has become the latter. Shadowrun is less goofy than what CP has aged into.

This is genuinely triggering
different person here. Also yea he was rude, but at the point where the game came out, it was definitely not a legitimate view into the future but moreso based on already established cyberpunk tropes and media. I think phones and such aren't really a staple of the series. The whole reason why cyberspace is a thing is because originally netrunning was seen as extension of humans maneuvering cyberspace. You can still do it manually, but a mind operates a thousand times faster than a keyboard, so if you wanna be legitimate in the ICE coding, or hacking or SIMSTIM creation or whatever else business, you gotta adjust to industry standards (again, meaning phones and pc's and such are entirely viable to put into the setting)

This is what I was about to say.

SR has more familiarity, more depth. 2020 was relatively basic and your characters were easier to kill/be injured. And getting injured can be a death knell as well. It's easier to get into SR than 2020 from a casual perspective.

I run a 2020 campaign, and have played the system for the greater part of a decade. It sucks that it's so rare to see it played (read: forever GM)

>99% of everything in CP2020 is extremely futuristic
The thing is, it's the wrong kind of futuristic.

Like for example automated penny news vendors that got their news sources from telephone cables and printed out the news so people could buy it from machines on the street.

Or a cybereye that could record data up to twenty minutes or take 100 high res pictures and then you could download it onto a disc to slot it into a computer to see what the pictures were.

Or a portable satellite phone that could fit in your suitcase (if your suitcase was large enough) and also a graphing calculator instead of a computer.

Or the eurozone and Japan mattering.

I used 2d6 instead of 1d10 for my Cyberpunk 2020 mod for a while.

It slowed down combat as people calculated d6+d6, but made crits/fumbles much rarer. Results became more predictable as everyone was always rolling 6/7/8s. Eventually I went back to 1d10 as it's just faster and the more-varied results made for more interesting situations.

Obligatory "Cyberpunk 2020 2nd Ed. link"

mediafire.com/file/r5zp80d36y89qs5/Rulebook, 2nd Ed.pdf

> "She shook her head. He realized that the glasses were surgically inserted, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial."

Guess what, the nails are fake, she has knives that can extend under them, you know, nothing unlike Jensen's extending knife rod :^). Oh and she's a mercenary that used to be a bodyguard. And also dresses in leather. Try harder fuckboy.

As for the other point, you have to do almost no work to bend cyberpunk as presented in CP2020 to literature style cyberpunk, but I can see how doing that little would present a problem to a retard like you so no worries

>Guess what, the nails are fake, she has knives that can extend under them, you know, nothing unlike Jensen's extending knife rod :^). Oh and she's a mercenary that used to be a bodyguard. And also dresses in leather. Try harder fuckboy.
And jesus christ is a tyrant from resident evil because both have super healing powers, both come back from the dead, and you eat their blood and body to become something like them (christian/zombies).

If you describe something in barebones terms you can get anything to sound like anything else.

>culling of the skill list by like 75%
Like this?

>Even today, top secret data is kept in offline computers in wireless-protected rooms

It's funny that the general public thinks that's true.

There are almost no parts of even the SIPRnet that cannot be reached via the net. It's all massively porous, which is why we got the OPM and Equation Group hacks.

Bit of a straw man here. I don't think anyone is arguing that everything in CP2020 is outdated, just that the aesthetic look-and-feel (the presentation) of the books and tech therein has many outdated elements, like fax machines and CRT monitors. It creates an anachronistic design presentation to the reader that ruins suspension of disbelief that this is our near future.

Yes and no. A lot of parties are so accustomed to the steady iv drip of combat that they effectively cant understand the idea of NOT using their combat skills. A utility/diplo only mission bores them, made worse by D&D 3.pf depriving 99% of Martial players social utility, leaving them basically nothing but "murder" as a skill.

But a GM does need to encourage non-fight responses and make a world conducive to that.

Again, you put importance on non-important stuff. It's all stuff that happens in the background, with exception of EU and Japan - but this is also something possible. If the EU gets its shit together (which for now it isn't doing), it will be an economical and military powerhouse - we're speaking of 500 million people with a technology and educational level on par with the US. Japan on the other hand, is more of a problem.

I won't deny he's also a mish mash of Robocop and Decker and a bunch of other dystopian cyberpunk characters but the similarities with Molly are the most apparent and blatant.

>STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEE: The Thread

waow

While their importance in CP2020 is vastly exaggerated, the EU is still the 2nd-largest common economic area in the world, and Japan is still the 3rd-largest national economy on the planet. They may be stagnant and aging fast, but they're not small or dead.

But really, in a cyberpunk setting everyone should be FUBAR'd via economic collapse and/or civil war and/or AI revolt, etc., so CP2020's designation of the EU as a beautiful utopia is rather incongruous.

That's every cyberpunk on Veeky Forums ever. Didn't you know?

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That's going from one extreme to the other. If the skill list is too limited, you have the risk of having all characters being very similar (a problem I had with a Mini Six Resident Evil conversion). A large skill list isn't a huge problem, but the Cyberpunk 2020 skill list could be cleaned up (grouping science skills like expert and language skills, grouping a couple of other skills).

The EU isn't a utopia - far from it. Romania is a giant toxic landfill, the rest of Eastern Europe is poor as fuck. Germany is a bureaucratic hell. Riots break out all the time everywhere. European troops are stationed in North Africa and have to fight Muslim rebels. The nicest places are probably the Scandinavian countries.