Why did the game with the better system* die and fall into obscurity while the shittier system become the standard for the cyberpunk genre?
*arguably the better setting too. I don't particularly take offense to SR's addition of myths and magic, but the way it handles cyberware always rubbed me the wrong way. 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.
I agree with the magic bit. How balanced is Cyberpunk2020 vs SR5? And would it be worth getting a team together to play?
Noah Barnes
I don't know. Fellow 2020 player, we are a dying breed. Keep the A E S T H E T I C alive and remove elves and magic. Keep fantasy out of cyberpunk.
Parker Cruz
>Why did the game with the better system* die and fall into obscurity while the shittier system become the standard for the cyberpunk genre?
Because elves and magic and shit.
Seriously though: Most pick-up SR games I've ever been part of were nothing more than D&D with magic and guns. So it was easy for them to make the transition, and wrap their heads around.
Gamers had trouble mentally grasping how "adventuring" as a criminal in a metropolis with a great amount of law enforcement should be done. It's as if nobody ever bothered to watch any crime related movies, ever. Well, back then during first and second edition anyway.
Nathan Miller
people can't stop wanking to elf waifus long enough to play good games
Jaxon Cooper
Because Shadowrun is fucking nuts, and that's more fun to play.
Two people in your group want to play cyberpunk. One isn't into cyberpunk, but is into modern fantasy. One just wants to play something really weird.
You wind up playing Shadowrun. You get hired as security for a concert where the star performer is a sasquatch. You have sex with a robot and then find out a hacker was diving it at the time and things get super awkward. Discarded human body parts from cyber upgrades are being piled on a weird shrine in an alley, and a Spirit of the Discarded has begun manifesting at night, and it knows fragments of knowledge from the people the parts are from so a megacorp has put out a hit on it. The building is on fire, and it's not your fault.
