The Roleplaying Game of The Dark Future

The Corporations control the world from their skyscraper fortresses, enforcing their rule with armies of cyborg assassins. On the Street, Boostergangs roam a shattered urban wilderness, killing and looting. The rest of the world is a perpetual party, as fashion-model beautiful techies rub biosculpt jobs with battle armoured roadwarriors in the hottest clubs, sleaziest bars and meanest streets this side of the Postholocaust. The Future never looked so bad.

But you can change it. You've got interface plugs in your wrists, weapons in your arms, lasers in your eyes, bio-chip programs screaming in your brain. You're wired-in, Cyberenhanced and solid state as you take it to the fatal Edge where only the toughest and coolest can go. Because you're CYBERPUNK.

CYBERPUNK: The original roleplaying game of the dark future; a world of corporate assassins, heavy-metal heroes and brain-burning cyberhackers, packed with cutting edge technology and intense urban action. Within this game, you'll find everything you need to tackle the mean streets of the 2000's - in a game system that combines the best in realistic action and playability.

Featuring:

Rockerboys: Hard-rock heroes fighting for change with music & revolution!
Solos: Corporate cybersoldiers – more machines than men!
Netrunners: Superhot hackers who can crack any Data Fortress!
Medias: Hightech reporters going to the wall to get the truth!
Nomads: Cyberbiking renegades crusin’ the lethal highways of the Postholocaust!
Corporates: Slick business raiders playing the deadly corporate power game!
Techies: Masters of cybernetics in the heavy-metal age!
Fixers: Streetsmart middlemen who know all the angles!
Cops: Maximum lawmen in the big-city jungle!

- From the Cyberpunk 2020 Rulebook -

“It was a night, Hell of a night. L.A. It really was. Oh what a riot! I said yeah, come on! It makes my life feel real. Fear police and civil corruption.”

- Billy Idol, ‘Shock to the System’

In a world where the economy has utterly collapsed, and nuclear holocaust has changed humanity forever, crime thrives. The mega-cities of neon-coloured heavy metal pubs are surrounded by barren wastelands, patrolled non-stop by psychotic gang-bangers riding stolen Japanese motorcycles. In the city, foreign urban corporations rule politics and control the police. In the country, agro-corporations take the land and evict people whose ancestors have farmed for generations.

Wherever you stand, the only protection and justice you see, is in the barrel of your loaded gun. Armoured from head to toe, and carrying tons of ammo and various automatic pistols, you stand half-ready to endure the Future. The other half comes from cyber implants. That’s where the “cyber” part of Cyberpunk comes from. With arms of light metal and plastic and skill-chips in your skull. With eyes that contain the latest cyberoptics and can see as far as any camera, you are ready to make the scum of the Earth pay. Hey… maybe you think of yourself as a piece of scum, but you’ll make damn sure anyone who tells you that never draws another electronically controlled breath.

Cyberpunk is a RPG set in a dark sci-fi world. It can be easily compared to “Akira” or “Ghost in the Shell” and other Japanese movies. As a matter of fact, Cyberpunk is a sci-fi sub-genre that was born in the 70s and still attracts fans. One of its best-known writers is William Gibson, who wrote pieces such as “Neuromancer”, “Mona Lisa Overdrive” and “Johnny Mnemonic”. This last story was adapted as a movie in 1995, directed by Robert Longo and starred by Keanu Reeves. Another very Cyberpunk movie is the 1982 Harrison Ford film “Blade Runner”, which was based on Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Robotic Sheep?” and directed by Ridley Scott.

Yet, while the cyberpunk stories mostly deal with the horror of humanity mingled with machinery and the fear of what the machine society has become, Cyberpunk Roleplay adventures deal mostly with the greedy corporations that rule the cities and the corruption within.

As for the Shadowrunner’s among you. No… there are no elves, no magic, no vampires, no psions. Only cold hard metal and shining neon. Only the precision of a hi-tech engineered gun fitted with a laser-beam targeting system and the fury of a hydraulic metal arm to smash the face of the enemy. The only magic in cyberpunk is in the Virtual Reality. Computer wizards, called Netrunners design and re-design the virtual space while killing the NetWatchers (virtual policemen) and hacking into the Corporations’ virtual fortresses.

Live in the world of Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere in Time” cover art. Fight the Corporations. Taste the drugs that will drive you over the edge. Draw the guns that could take down a building with a couple of bullets. Plug into the machine with your quarter metal, quarter plastic, half flesh, body. Live the dream, or more accurately, the nightmare of the Future.

Enough about the setting. You’re probably itching to play it right now. So, we’ll get to the system. Cyberpunk uses pretty simple mechanics, based on D10s and D6s. You calculate your Stat + Skill add a D10, and the final value must be equal or higher than a target number. The D6s are used for the application of damage. The health system is one of the best I’ve ever seen. You can be both unstoppable or die with a single bullet. Anytime you get hit, you lose hit points, but also roll two save rolls, to avoid being stunned, and yes, to avoid death. This harshness is what I love of the system. Cyberpunk is dark, difficult and gritty, there’s no way you can brave the Future unscarred. Sooner or later, you will die pal. You, as the with everything in the Future, are disposable.

The down side of the game comes in with the VR system, which is completely outdated and sucks. When this game was designed, the Internet was not what it is today. I can understand why the designers let things like ‘long distance calls’ and ‘there’s no way you can avoid paying the Internet bill’ slip into the system. Unluckily, that makes the game totally unrealistic, since it is set in 2020 and its ‘truths’ are false even in 2002.

According to the book, if you play a hacker, you must buy (???) your software (come on, even today, Warez sites are commonplace, as is piracy). Your computer deck can also only store a few programs at a time, another fallacy, as we know, in the era of 100 gigabyte hard disks. Let’s be honest, in twenty years our 100 gigabytes will be a laughing matter, in the same way that Bill Gates "640 kB should be enough for anybody" idea is today.

So, I don’t recommend you waste your time reading that section. Leave VR control to NPC’s or reconstruct the VR system for your players to use more realistically. If you do, send me a copy! Back to the good aspects of the game though. Unlike most games I’ve reviewed so far (not mentioning any names…), Cyberpunk doesn’t require you to buy hundreds of sourcebooks that force you to ‘play canon games’, as buying the rulebook will suffice. And, as with all RPG’s that have this attitude, the sourcebooks they have brought out are great, especially the Soldier of Fortune and Chrome series.

Enough said. Plug your cables in, load your 10mm and swallow a pint of Smash. You sure will need it. The only regret you have is that by the end of the night - you won’t care whether you're human or not anymore.

Reviewed by Matías Timm