Cyberpunk?

RandomAtom

I've wanted to get into CP2020 for quite some time, but I'm wondering if anybody here knows of any other (more regularly updated and more readily available) games. Some of the books to CP2020 are pretty hard to find and can get quite expensive.

Auralynx

I don't know CP2020 at all, but Shadowrun exists and I can bet you've heard of it.

The other game somewhere in that genre space, if loosely, that I know of is Eclipse Phase, which is explicitly trans-humanist in focus as opposed to grit and grime and corporate oppression and hackers, man.

RandomAtom

I've certainly heard of Shadowrun and have looked into it, the only thing that turned me off was the involvement of magic. Eclipse Phase sounds pretty rad.

Iron Weasel

You can play Shadowrun sans magic elements really easily. I played in two such campaigns since the most recent edition came out and it works very well.

JohnnyCache

We used it for "cyberpunk" once and even included the base races as gene mods - orcs were soldiers, elf stats represented a "charisma" package the rich were fond of, dwarves were a a high gravity mod and trolls were an illegal/high end military package

Iron Weasel

That's pretty cool, actually.

We just dropped meta-humans altogether, along with magic. The exception was adept, which we used so that people could be awesome without turning into cyborgs.

RandomAtom

Maybe I'll give it a go next game night.

AlfredR

Another really fun option for cyberpunk (in my opinion) is Technoir. It's fun, quick-paced, and simple enough. While the main moving parts behind the game is actually its mystery/conspiracy web system, that is easy to ignore if you want to write your own plots/missions. That said, the mystery system is actually pretty fun to roll with.

Currently Technoir is a PDF for $5 I think, so not a bad grab, and comes with three city packets. A free Twin City Metroplex packet is on the Technoir website, and an expansion game with packets called Mechnoir adds mars colonies and mechs to the game.

Lord_Asmodeus

Auralynx wrote: »

I don't know CP2020 at all, but Shadowrun exists and I can bet you've heard of it.

The other game somewhere in that genre space, if loosely, that I know of is Eclipse Phase, which is explicitly trans-humanist in focus as opposed to grit and grime and corporate oppression and hackers, man.

Eclipse Phase is more focused on transhumanism than specifically corporate oppression, but man does it have corporate oppression, and hackers, and corporate hacker oppression. It's got crazy corporate oppression! I mean, mostly in the inner systems, but still!

I suppose if you wanted a really oppressive atmosphere, you could focus on playing inside a heavily monitored Corporate owned habitat, or on something in the Jovian Junta, those guys are crazy oppressive.

And there's even a new Eclipse Phase book coming out with its own kickstarter campaign, and it looks really promising. It's going to include faster ways of creating characters using like packages you can purchase and put together for a quicker simpler feel, which as they say is good especially for newer players and GM's who want to create some quick NPCs. Plus there's going to be new morphs and a section on how to create/customize morphs, as well as some other stuff.

So I mean

I'm looking forward to it :P

Auralynx

Yeah. The concept behind Eclipse Phase is a great one, but man, the rules are beastly unreformed grognard stuff to my recollection; been a while since I looked it over.

I'd argue that transhumanism is a logical and somewhat less bleak heir to cyberpunk, honestly. Neuromancer, for example, has some definite transhumanist elements. The -punk part is sooner or later going to be recognized as an artifact of the same zeitgeist that produced grunge, as opposed to a necessary part of the genre,

Lord_Asmodeus

Auralynx wrote: »

Yeah. The concept behind Eclipse Phase is a great one, but man, the rules are beastly unreformed grognard stuff to my recollection; been a while since I looked it over.

I'd argue that transhumanism is a logical and somewhat less bleak heir to cyberpunk, honestly. Neuromancer, for example, has some definite transhumanist elements. The -punk part is sooner or later going to be recognized as an artifact of the same zeitgeist that produced grunge, as opposed to a necessary part of the genre,

The rules for Eclipse Phase get a lot better once you're actually playing IMO, when you've got all of your stuff established and understand how rolling works everything is a lot less complicated.

I think it really depends on what stage of Transhumanism you look at. I think a big thing about Eclipse Phase is it puts the player right in the middle of Transhumanism, after its' tumultuous beginning, right where Transhumanity's path to the future is being decided. The way Eclipse Phase is established also gives players a chance to experience all ends of the spectrum I feel, from the sort of more cyberpunky oppressive government feel, the repression of technology and the slavery or near slavery of the populace to governments and corporations, but it also allows for the sort of post-scarcity autonomous collective sort of thing, and it also gives a broad range of Transhumanist issues, all the way from dealing with or breaking away from the previously mentioned oppression, to dealing with alien beings and exploring alien worlds, to the nature of humanity itself the direction transhumanity will take in the future.

Edith Upwards

Roleplaying Public Radio ran a campaign called Know Evil. It's really good. The second episode is fucking amazing.

The Firewall team barely escapes the hellish space station known as Thought, only to find themselves at the edge of a massive conspiracy. In order to learn more, they must make connections with the criminal underworld in order to track down the human trafficker that led them into Thought in the first place. There are two ways to gain the favor they need – to win an underground gladiatorial fight or win at Mahjong vs powerful criminal bosses. The crew decides to try both. Find out if their luck holds out in this episode!