Game: Cyberpunk 2020
Publisher: R. Talsorian
Series: Cyberpunk 2020
Reviewer: migo
Review Dated: 2nd, March 2005
Reviewer’s Rating: 9/10 [ Something special ]
Total Score: 58
Average Score: 8.29
This review originally appeared on RPG.net
I just picked up Cyberpunk and I must say that despite the fact that the system is at its core around 15 years out of date I was still very impressed.
As far as style goes, this is one of the most impressive RPG books I’ve ever read. Most products published 10 years ago would would seem obviously dated, and while the style is somewhat unusual the quality is very high – much better than most RPG products I’ve seen. Unfortunately this high quality doesn’t continue throughout the book, but most of the interior art is still good. The cover proudly proclaims “Features New Artwork”, and the intro explains that for Version 2.01 they took some of the art that was used for the Italian release of Cyberpunk. The art is generaly quite good, but there is a rather amusing trend. With a few exceptions, all the drawings of women are really hot. Likewise, with a few exceptions, all of the drawings of men seem to be really ugly. For example one of the pictures of the corporate makes him look like he’s gone psycho. However, even the bad art is several levels above the art used in a lot of RPGs, and it’s leagues ahead of the art used for GURPS.
The layout was very well done overall. They placed a large number of tables together in various chapters, instead of placing each individual table next to the text they were for. This was a bit annoying for reading through the first time, but I can see it would make things a lot easier for referencing if you know all the tables are in a few places instead of scattered across the book. There were a few pages of tables that didn’t have page numbers on them though, between 75 and 80. It’s a minor issue but it probably should have been caught considering this was version 2.01 and not version 2.0.
In terms of coolness, well the book definitely tries to promote a feeling of coolness. It’s written in a semi-formal fashion, whith Cyberpunk slang strewn throughout, to give the feeling of the setting. It’s still written professionally, which I was impressed with, and the really informal parts of the text were restricted to sidebars quoting various Cyberpunk personalities.
Overall it was enjoyable to read and there weren’t any areas where I got annoyed or confused reading it, so I give it a rating of 5 for style.
Now, for the content. First page is a table of contents. And that’s the whole ToC. It’s complete enough although I’m used to several page ToCs. Completely absent from the book is an Index of any kind. Fortunately the ToC is quite good so I haven’t had any difficulty looking anything up, but I imagine I’ll run into some problems sometime due to the lack of an index.
The first chapter is either Roles, if you look at the sidebar on the left page, or Soul & The New Machine if you look at the chapter title on the right page. This trend of dual naming for each chapter continues throughout the book. More bland, descriptive titles on the left and more flavorful titles on the left. It gives a brief introduction to the type of game that Cyberpunk is, and then goes straight into describing the character types.
Cyberpunk uses a loose class system. Each class has it’s own special skill that no other class can use, and has access to 9 class skills that other classes also have access to. The classes are: Rockerboys/girls who are rock/punk musicians with the ability to sway their fans. Their special skill is “Charismatic Leadership”. Solos, who are essentially fighters – their special skill is “Combat Sense” which is applied to initiative. Netrunners are cyber computer hackers, their special skill is “Interface” which allows them to hack. Other characters can only navigate the net but can’t affect it significantly. There are 2 types of Techies, regular Techies which get the “Jury Rig” ability, to fix or modify tech, and Medtechies who get the “Medtech” ability, to install cyberware and heal. Medias are field reporters/journalists. Their special skill is “Credibility”, which they need to be believed. Corporates are low to mid level corporate business men and women – their special ability is to draw on the large amount of corporate resources. Fixers are fences, informats, etc. Their special skill is “Streetdeal” which allows them to make deals and gather information. Nomads are homeless people, I would equate them to wandering biker gangs. Their special ability is “Family” which allows them to call in other members of their nomad group if necessary.
Chapter 2 is Characters/Getting Cyberpunk. It describes how to generate your basic stats. It uses a character point system, except the number of character points you have for stats is randomly generated. The 2 methods available to characters are rol 9 d10s, total the results and distribute among the 9 stats according to liking, or roll 9 d10s rerolling 2s and 1s and place in stats according to liking. Available only to GMs is a flat character point total to create NPCs exactly how they like them. The Cyberpunk system uses d10s most of the time for task resolution, and d6s for some other rolls such as damage. The 9 stats are Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool (the ability to keep ones cool, not how cool one is) Technical Ability, Luck, Attractiveness, Movement Allowance, Empathy (how you relate to other people, also how “human” you are) and Body Type (Strength, Endurance etc.) Body Type determines your Save Number as well as your Body Type Modifier which affects how much damage you take from an attack. There’s also a quick system for GMs to generate goons. Stats range from 1-10, although with the second generation method stats under 3 aren’t possible so it’s not recomended to chose any stat of lower than 3.
Chapter 3 is Lifepaths/Tales From the Street. The lifepath system allows you to either chose your characters background from the options (or make your own up within reason) or roll randomly for it. There are a couple sections where you can’t chose and must roll randomly. Components of the lifepath are your dress and personal style, which is just how you look, and your ethnic origin which determines which language you can speak natively and fluently (all characters can speak streetslang, which is a hodgepogde of a couple dozen languages – I wonder why Esperanto wasn’t chosen). There is also a streetslang sidebar which includes all english slang terms with a tech background, to add some flavor to the game. Next part you chose your family background, whether you have one, whether they’re still alive or not, how many (if any) siblings you have and your relation to everyone in your family. You can either chose this or roll randomly. Next section is motivations, which includes what kind of person you are, who you like, what you think of people and your most valued posession. This can also be chosen or rolled randomly. The last section, life events can’t be chosen, it must be rolled randomly. Either good stuff or bad stuff can happen to you, anything from losing money, being imprisoned, injury which reduces some ability scores or developing an important contact, making a fair amount of money or improving or gaining new skills. Other options are making new friends, or making new enemies, as well as events in your romantic life. Alternatively on some rolls, nothing significant happens. Some people might not like this system, but at least it’s not like the original Traveller where you can die during character creation. It also provides some plot hooks and makes the character’s integration into the world seem more real.
Chapter 4 is Task & Skills/Working. It explains the skill mechanics and describes the skills. The skill mechanic is quite simple. There’s a task difficulty that you have to roll over, and to reach this number you add your stat, your relevant skill (if there isn’t one just use your stat) and a roll of 1d10 together. If you beat the difficulty you succeed, if you don’t you fail. If you roll a 1 you have a fumble, which has a 60% chance of something bad happening. On a roll of 10 you get to roll another d10 and add that to the roll. On some tasks multiple people can team up, adding their stat and skill scores together, but they only roll a single d10. Like stats, scores of +1 to +10 are possible, and you have a total of 40 points to distribute across the 10 class skills (1 special skill and 9 class related skills) however you like, although a high score in your special skill is a good idea, as you need a score over 6 to make more than the base amount of money. The skill descriptions are usually as detailed as necessary, but certain stats are obviously more important than others – there are only 2 skills related to attractiveness while there are many related to reflex and intelligence. They also give a general gauge of what your score means in real world terms. Ie, for the leadership skill they say that +2 means you can manage a small office successfuly, +4 can lead a small band of troops into battle, +7 allows you to run an empire, and James T. Kirk of Star Trek has leadership +11 but you’ll never get that high. I thought that was a nice bit of humour thrown in. There are a couple errors as well, I only noticed a few and they aren’t big, but I imagine there are a few more that I haven’t noticed. For instance, under the Know Language skill they say the following “Each language known requires a separate Know Language skill, however, one may use the knowledge of a particular Language with up to 1/2 (round down) proficiency with any language in the same linguistic family (example: knowing Cantonese at +4 will give you the ability to understand and speak Mandarin at +2).” Anyone who knows anything about Mandarin and Cantonese knows that they are mutually unintelligible, and that being completely fluent in one doesn’t mean you could understand anything more than a few words in the other. Someone who isn’t a linguist isn’t going to care, but they could have used a better example, like Romance languages (Speaking French at +5 allows Portuguese at +2). Another example is with the martial arts skill. They say that Judo was designed as a sport form, which is not the case – it was designed as combat and then was made into a sport after WW2 when all martial arts were outlawed in Japan and Judo would only become legalized again if it were to become an olympic sport. I’m also surprised that choking isn’t included into the skills for Judo, as it is rather integral, and that it is in wrestling, where it is illegal. It won’t get in the way of game play, but there are minor in some places.
I like the advancement system, there are no levels, and you don’t get character points at the end of an adventure to spend however you like. Instead you get improvement points, which are gained either by studying, being taught or by learning through experience. So the only way you advance a skill is by using it lots. I think this is a realistic system. The cost varies, but it is a minimum of 10 Improvement Points to raise the skill to +1, 40 IP if the skill has a difficulty of 4 (like Muay Thai, which I also find odd, I’d put it at 2 or 1, but oh well), up to 90 IP to go from +9 to +10 for a basic skill to 360 IP to raise Muay Thai from +9 to +10. It gets progressively harder to improve the skills, and improvement points aren’t given out at a rate that allows you to improve very rapidly. Any improvements will be fairly gradual.
Chapter 5 is Weapons Armor Gear/Getting Fitted for the Future. It’s standard equipment section, gives you some ideas of mundane items you might be carrying around, and for the most part covers a very wide range of weapons and armor. The Encumbrance system is nice as it just gives weight categories (under .5kg, under 1kg, under 3kg etc), so you don’t deal with the exact weight and everything is easy to add up. Weapon information is given conveniently in weapon codes, so a single line gives a whole lot of information. At first you’ll be doing some checking on the tables, but afterwards it’ll become much more streamlined. It’s similar to the planet codes used in Traveller, except there aren’t as many categories so the codes are actually related to what they mean. Stuff covered includes accuracy, concealabilyt, available, damage and rate of fire, among other things. Pretty much anything anyone would be concerned about. They’re nice and included some older weapons (which makes sense, we still use weapons from the 50s and 60s nowadays) including my favorite the H&K MP-5. Some basic descriptions of normal gear are also given, although the text size is smaller than the rest of the book, which not only makes it a bit harder to read but it also is a bit distracting.
Chapter 6 is Cyberwear/Putting the Cyber into the Punk. This, as well as the Netrunner chapter is the biggest reason anyone is going to be buying this book. Not because it’s incredibly stellar compared to the other chapters, it’s just as good, but because anyone playing a cyberpunk game is going to want to play some form of cyborg. The first part is about Cyberfashion – exactly what it sounds like, getting modifications to improve your look and make you look better. The next section is Cyberpsychosis. Essentially if you put too much cybergear into your body, you begin losing your humanity, until eventually you go psycho and lose control over your character. I think it’s mainly there as a game balancing mechanism, so characters don’t go overboard with the cybergear, but there is some justification for it as well. Exactly what justification you want to use is up to the GM and/or players, but reading some Cyberpunk novels would be a good source for ideas. The meat of the chapter is cybertechnology. Each type of improvement has a variety of factors that need to be taken into account, The type of surgery necessary, which determines the difficulty as well as the damage taken and recovery time. An augmentation with a surgery code of negligible could be installed in an hour at a local mall while one with a critical code would have to be installed at a hospital. Each augmentation also has a humanity cost, which can range anything from 0 for a simple replacement hand that works exactly like a normal hand, to 3d6 humanity cost for claws like Wolverine from X-Men (called “Wolvers”) to 4d6 for a cybersnake (an autonomous weapon that could be hidden inside the mouth or another orifice). Each character starts with humanity equal to their Empathy score X10. The humanity cost is subratced from the humanity score, and each 10 point loss of humanity = a 1 point loss of Empathy. When they Empathy drops to 3 or lower the character starts to suffer from cyberpsychosis. Anything from color changing eyes or hair, to a subdermal led watch to hidden weapons in a cyberarm or leg to an exoskeletan and external armor plating are available. Needless to say there is a large degree of customization available to characters, and of course villains and other NPCs.
Chapter 7 is Combat/Friday Night Firefight. The combat system is designed to be gritty and realistic, based on research from police files, as opposed to a cinematic hollywoodesque combat system. The combat system is skill based, so task resolution is determined like any other type of skill (Stat + Skill + 1d10). Damage is dealt in d6s depending on the weapon, and depending on the hit location (rolled randomly unless you want to take a called shot at -4) and sometimes on the stat and/or skill. Armor doesn’t provide a deflection bonus but it does stop damage. Heavy armor has encumbrance and therefore makes you easier to hit. The damage system is a combination of the hit point system and the wound system. All characters have an equal amount of hit points, but they are divided into 4 point groups of Light, Serious, Critical and 7 degrees of mortal damage. As soon as the character takes more than light damage (5 points or more) they start suffering penalties, when a character takes critical damage, (9 points or more) they are unable to act effectively and upon taking mortal damage they must make saves each round to avoid dying. The greater the damage the more likely the character is to fail their death save. Of course, even at Mortal 0 the character will eventually roll low and die unless they receive assistance. This is a system where you don’t want to get hit and once you start getting hit you don’t have much time to hurt the other guy more or run.
Chapter 8 is Medical/Trauma Team. This chapter covers administering first aid after the likely serious damage one would sustain from the Friday Night Firefight. It also covers paramedic services (Trauma Team) as well as hospitalization. Since at best you can heal 2 points of damage/day with proper medical treatment and drugs, it’s obvious that taking any serious injuries will put you out of comission for quite some time, avoiding combat unless absolutely necessary is a good idea – just like in real life.
Chapter 9 is Drugs. The sidebar on the left has the following Question: What’s a Cyberpunk game without drugs? Answer: A lot healthier. This chapter covers a variety of street drugs with dangerous side effects, it also allows for the creation of new drugs, with even nastier side effects. This is a chapter that likely no characters will be making use of personally, but there will undoubtably numerous NPC drug addicts which could pose problems for the PCs, either in the form of an epidemic to investigate or a crazed drug addict with increased strength and reflexes who attacks them. Drugs are painted in a very realistic light – they’re not pretty, but neither is the Cyberpunk world.
Chapter 10 is the Netrunner chapter. It covers everything a netrunner would want to do – hack into secure, secret computer systems and steal and/or change information. The chapter provides a net geography which corresponds to the world geography. It allows for simple mapping of cyberspace. Various aspects of netrunning are covered, such as gear required (Cyberdecks), interaction in cyberspace, various programs to help the netrunner achieve his goals, security and dangers to the netrunner. Cyberspace combat is also covered which works very much the same as regular combat, except if you’re hit then you’re finished, like everything else that is binary in the computer world, you are either alive or dead – there’s no in between. Rules for creating Virtual Realities and other cyber fortresses are also provided, both in a detailed format as well as a quick format.
Chapter 11 is History/All Things Dark & Cyberpunk. A 30 year timeline from 1990 to 2020 is provided, of course at 2004 there’s almost 15 years of history that didn’t happen. It also covers various aspects of daily life, from laws to common technology as well as global interaction of corporations and various nations. If the timeline is largely ignored or changed around to reflect the real past 15 years of history everything would work quite well. It is interesting to note that they predicted a large portion of the middle east getting nuked. Who knows, they might have just been a few years early with their prediction.
Chapter 12 is Hot Tips/Running Cyberpunk. It’s essentially a GM’s tips chapter but the players would benefit from some of the information as well. It’s as sparse as most GM’s tips sections in RPGs, but instead of giving the generic tips that everyone’s heard a dozen times, it gives advice specific to cyberpunk campaigns. Kudos to R. Talsorian for stepping out of the norm.
Chapter 13 is Never Fade Away. Never Fade Away is a Cyberpunk short story that covers a few different archetypes as well as giving a taste of the variety of possible encounters in the Cyberpunk world. It also provides some maps and game stats for important characters if the GM wished to run it as an adventure or use some of the characters as NPCs with an existing back-story. It was a decent story, nothing stellar but it wasn’t craptacular either. I also don’t expect high story-writing skills from RPG makers. If they were good authors they’d be writing novels instead.
Chapter 14 is Megacorps. It describes the life of working for a corporation, and provides a significant amount of detail on a variety of corporations. A common theme in Cyberpunk games is that Megacorporations run the world to a great degree, so Corporations are an integral part of a Cyberpunk game. Corporations and inter-corporate rivalry will provide a significant amount of jobs and income for PC teams. 14 corporations are detailed in all, with mention of how some of them interact.
Chapter 15 is Night City. Night City is essentially an original campaign setting for Cyberpunk, although with some modification Cyberpunk could be used to run a number of games modled after Cyberpunk novels or movies such as Neuromancer or Blade Runner. A brief history of Night City is provided, as well as a map with a variety of locations, and some specifics about getting around the city. There’s 2 pages of random encounters in Night City that the GM can use to add some action to a session that’s turning somewhat dull. (Tying these encounters in with the lifepaths of one or more PCs is another option). 18 personalities for Night City are also provided. It’s not incredibly detailed as far as campaign settings go, but it provides a lot more of a setting than most RPG books do, but the setting also takes up less than 10 pages, so there isn’t a huge amount of wasted space if you want to run a game in your own campaign world or in a game based off a movie or novel.
The last section of the book is the Screamsheets scenario. One of the staples of the Cyberpunk world provided is that news is distributed quickly via fax to various locations across the city, which essentially creates a real-time newspaper. The screamsheets are provided to be given to the PCs to add some flavour to the campaign but also as background for some adventure hooks. A total of 10 adventure scenarios are provided that are related to the scream sheets. So the characters will be going about their business as usual, occasionally reading news about related topics here or there and then eventually they become involved in the situation, although it’s not always as expected. It’s definitely a neat idea and provides a lot of starting ideas for a GM to work with, as well as giving them some material to work with to keep the session going if an adventure doesn’t go as planned or they just suffered a mental block.
The last 2 pages are duplicates of Character Sheets presented throughout the book. And like I mentioned already, no index.
The material throughout the book is solid, clearly written and easy to understand. The system is streamlined sticking to a loose class system while essentially being skill based. The task resolution system and combat system appears to be quite fluid and easy to understand, there’s no complex calculations that have to be done or any other complex consideration that have to be taken into account. Common sense rules. The system is flexible within the Cyberpunk genre and can be used for a variety of campaigns with Cyberpunk themes, although obviously some campaigns will be more suited to Cyberpunk than others. The inclusion of the Night City campaign setting as well as the adventure scenarios was a nice bonus, which allows the GM to run a campaign if s/he didn’t have a specific one in mind and doesn’t want to create one from scratch. All in all, it’s a great system. The biggest reason I’m giving it a 4 for substance instead of a 5 is the lack of an index of any kind, which I think was a major oversight, but some mistakes as far as accurate information goes also contributed to it. I didn’t penalize it for being 15 years out of date, as the content was perfectly reasonable for when it was developed.
