Rant |
Role-Playing Games |
Text |
Graphic |
Video |
Audio |
HardSF
- Subtext
- So far I've only been totally impressed by two cpunk RPGs, despite
having played all of them (AFAIK)... I'm also firmly of the belief that
rules should simulate the genre conventions accurately. I don't care that
a good GM can fudge results left and right and run a good game "in any
system" (even if in name only)... Those who disagree are advised to
move on now, because they'll just raise their
blood temperature if they read this...
- Cyberspace
- A greatly simplified version of Rolemaster/Space Master, with a much
easier character creation system. Rules-wise, it's hard to get more
detailed and, in most cases, realistic, than this. The setting, though
set too far in the future (2090? Not likely!), is VERY hard-edged cpunk.
It has the best cybernetics, equipment, and computer rules I've ever seen,
and netrunning rules that are both fast and realistic (out the router, up
the comsat, down into Bob's DNI-jacked cell-phone, hypo a virus into his
brain...)
It uses "professions" to determine where a character's development
points will be most efficient, but you can develop any skill. It uses
"levels", but only to spread out gaining new DPs. It's also trivial to
make new professions or let the players design their own. Social class
plays an important role in initial skills, also, something missed by all
of the others.
If you do need more detail, it's compatible with Space Master, and if
you need tanks or powered armor you can use the Space Master Armored
Assault boardgame (or Star Strike if you need space combat, though some of
the technologies there would need to be modified - much lower MT ratings
and no energy shields, for instance).
Contrary to common rumor, ICE systems are rather easy to use - all
players really need to know how to do is roll open-ended d100 and add a
bonus, and look the result up on one of a small (in the case of CSpace,
anyway) handful of tables or charts (or just see if you got over 100, for
pass/fail tasks). For this, you get a broad range of results from total
failure to partial failure, to partial success, to total success, often
rated in percent of task completed... One of the best task resolutions
around. And the chance of critical failure is only a few percent (how
much depends on what you're doing and how skilled you are).
There aren't many supplements, but they're VERY good, I highly
recommend them (Chicago Arcology and CyberEurope especially).
The only disadvantage, really, is that it's out of print.
- SLA Industries
- I love this game. This is what cyberpunk used to be about, taken 90°
off-kilter and played back at fast-forward. See my
detailed review for more
information.
- CP2013/2020
- While the basic source material is fine, the rules are not so fine. It
has restrictive classes (just a single skill exclusive to each, but
they're essential ones like netrunning and contacts, and there are no
standard or balanced rules for multi-class character), a slow and
unrealistic netrunning system (thus most CP players think netrunners are a
waste of time, even in good game systems), and a task system that makes
everyone fail at anything at least 10% of the time... Often known as
"Three Stooges 2020", once you've seen how the system runs (remind me to
tell y'all about Gutterman and the AV-20 someday).
The original CP2013 had a great combat system derived from the FBI's
statistics, but it was toned down in lethality (and chances of hitting
increased), because apparently many people don't like realism, they like
cinema. CP also foisted that ridiculous "Humanity Cost" concept on the
genre because the original playtesters were munchkins (here's two questions
for anyone who likes HC: How many grannies have gone psychotic and shot up
grocery stores lately, just because they have an artificial hip, a hearing
aid, and a pacemaker? How many cyberpunk novels can you name that have
that concept in them?) It's a game hack, and a very bad genre-destroying
one. Sadly, it's infected almost every other system since, but this is
where the virus started.
Worse, the supplements have a steady increase in power - giving PCs
tanks, powered armor, full body conversions, and the like may not be in the
best interests of the genre, other than a very few limited settings
(Hardwired, Appleseed), and the later source material assumes that that
power increase *IS* part of your setting.
The Alternate Reality supplements and adventures from Ianus Games
(especially Dark Metropolis) are VERY good, by the way, and may be worth
picking up for any cpunk game, even if you don't use any horror or
supernatural elements in yours (they mostly focus on personal horror, like
rape, domestic violence, and serial killers, anyway). DM has great
sections on the stress of daily life, hardware malfunctions and
maintenance, privacy, pirate media, disasters, heat waves, riots, "asylums"
(places to hide out), and sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. You can't live
without it. Well, you can, I guess, but why would you want to?
With the upcoming conversion of CP20xx to
Fuzion, the
system complaint will soon be going away, though the humanity cost
delusion and the munchkinizing are sure to remain, and I wouldn't be
shocked by their retaining the restrictive character classes somehow.
- Shadowrun
- 1st and 2nd Ed had a horrid game system, unbalanced magic rules (too weak
in the original, too powerful in 2nd Ed), netrunning rules derived from
CP2020, terrible combat rules (though the DMZ boardgame makes a tolerably
realistic replacement for it).
3rd Ed has more balance across the board, combat is now moderately
hazardous (not up to the level of Cyberspace, but it's no longer safe to
stand up in a firefight), and almost all of the system uses the same task
system now. 3rd Ed doesn't suck, for what it does. Note that you will
need the GM screen to use 3rd Ed, because it has the critters section.
I'd complain about this, but the main book *IS* only $25 for 300+ pages
covering riggers, netrunners, mages, cybernetics, spirits and dragons,
and a ton more. $40 for the complete game is still reasonable.
Of course, it's not really cyberpunk (you can DO cpunk in it, but the
setting itself is just hack-and-slash fantasy in a near-future world),
though it does have potential. I've successfully run something like the
setting under CSpace with Rolemaster magic and races, and that works quite
well, though. Some of the older adventures and supplements are interesting
(Harlequin, The Universal Brotherhood, and Sprawl Sites,
especially).
- Cyber Hero
- Uses the same setting as CSpace, but with a somewhat lighter tone in the
rules. The Net rules aren't realistic, but they are fairly fast and fit a
Snow Crash-style Metaverse somewhat. The cybernetics and computers are
not as well-developed as CSpace's, but the equipment list is better. It
expands on CSpace's essays on what a cpunk setting is about, and the
character creation works very well for the setting. On the down side, the
editing is terrible, I mean, REALLY bad. Overall, it's a good alternative
to CSpace if you like Hero and dislike ICE, or makes a good sourcebook for
other systems, though in most ways CSpace is superior.
- Underground
- Homeless superheroes created by the military on the streets of LA. Great
setting, hilarious material (Tastee Ghoul fast food franchise!), and
incredibly bleak politics, leavened with the heroic notion that you CAN do
something about it. Unfortunately, it uses a variant of DC Heroes for the
rules, which makes all normal-level characters look identical, and past a
certain point it becomes obscenely powerful. More of a parody of the
cpunk genre than anything else, but worth getting for the source material
(and a lot of it does fit into a normal cpunk game).
- CyberGeneration
- A variant of CP2020 heading in the direction of Underground, but it takes
itself more or less seriously. Blatantly hokey setting, without the
redeeming humor or insightfulness of Underground. My thought was that
it's the stilted and inferior ripoff Virtual Light by an established but
past-his-prime artist to the much better Snow Crash by a young upstart.
YMMV.
- TORG Cyberpapacy & Tharkold
- Not really independent cpunk worlds, as they're a full part of the
Possibility Wars, but they have a lot of very good ideas, and with some
work at combining them they make a pretty good cyberfantasy setting.
TORG's really too cinematic to run cpunk, though.
- GURPS Cyberpunk
- As a sourcebook, fairly good. It was a bit too in touch with modern
trends and didn't have enough wild extrapolation for my taste, but that's
me. The "realistic" netrunning rules were rather decent, though.
Rules-wise, I despise GURPS, and I don't think this was even the best of
the GURPS books, but... Do what you have to do.
- TWERPS Robo-Punks
- Hey, it's fast, simple, doesn't violate genre conventions, and comes with
really nice teeny little d20s. Not much setting material, but presumably
you can read a book... It's only really suited to the lighter parts of
the genre, but whaddaya want, it's The World's Easiest Role-Playing System!
I could easily see running Rucker's Software setting in TWERPS - ignore
the details, just focus on speed and style.
- Bubblegum Crisis
- The Fuzion system
is pretty spiffy. It's not quite perfect yet, but it's better than
most of the systems listed here, and while BGC doesn't have the most
current version, you can pick it up for free on their web page.
There's quite a bit of useful material here on MegaTokyo and Genom, and
while the cyberpunk themes are diluted by the superhero and anime
aspects, they're not gone entirely. If you ditch the bimbos-in-suits
parts (running AD Police or any of the other non-superhero campaign
styles they discuss), it'd be quite functional for cpunk. A nice
additional note is that Fuzion is compatible with the Hero system and
the Interlock system from Cyberpunk, so you can rip off elements of
those games and paste them right in, and yet you're not crippled by the
horrible Interlock task resolution system.
- Dark Conspiracy
- A hybrid horror/cyberpunk system, with a fairly interesting setting, but
it takes too much of a "big guns and high explosives" approach to dealing
with the supernatural to be good horror, human technology is neither
invasive nor shocking, in fact it encourages a '50s retro look and gung-ho
attitude. Also, the system is one of GDW's lousy "house rules" systems,
but I have to admit it's marginally better than some systems above, at
least after the later change to a d20 instead of d10 for task resolution
(combat is still broken, though). It might be good material to borrow
from, but it's no cyberpunk system. Avoid the supplements, they're even
further from cyberpunk, and are unbalanced and illogical to boot.
- Rifts, Ninjas & Superspies
- Not even remotely cyberpunk, despite Siembieda's claim in the intro to
Rifts. Technology doesn't make cyberpunk. On the other hand, they
have most of the rules and technology to SUPPORT a cyberpunk game (the
netrunning rules are finally available in an issue of The Rifter
magazine/sourcebook), if you had a background to run it in.
- Ratings
- The ratings below are for each game's value for cyberpunk only, by the
way - in several cases they are better or worse at other genres. There are
also many universal (FUDGE, CORPS) or science fiction systems that could be
used to run cyberpunk games, but I can't justify excluding house-rules
fixes or free-style gaming and yet including them.
| as a CP system | as source material |
Cyberspace | Superb | Superb |
SLA Industries | Great | Superb |
CP2013 | Poor | Fair |
CP2020 | Terrible | Good (Ianus supplements: Superb) |
CP20xx/Fuzion | >= Good | unknown, presumably >= Good |
Shadowrun 1st-2nd | Terrible | Mediocre |
Shadowrun 3rd Ed | Fair | Mediocre |
Cyber Hero | Good | Great (editing: Terrible-1) |
Underground | Fair | Superb |
CyberGen | Terrible | Terrible-1 |
TORG | Fair | Good |
GURPS CP | Poor | Good |
TWERPS | Fair | Poor |
Bubblegum Crisis | Good | Fair |
Dark Conspiracy | Poor | Mediocre |
Palladium | Good | N/A |
|
Links:
+-Mark Damon Hughes: Software Gallery
+-Mark Damon Hughes: Software Gallery Blog
+-@mdhughes on Twitter
+- iPhone Games:
+-Perilar: Role-playing game for the iPhone.
+-Castles: Strategy wargame for the iPhone.
+-DungeonDice: Tabletop RPG dice roller for the iPhone.
+-Nexus Worlds: Multiplayer Online Adventure Game for the iPhone.
+- Computer Games:
+-Java Perilar: Adventures in the Dragon Kingdoms.
+-Hephaestus: Computer RPG construction kit.
+-GameScroll: Simple interactive fiction authoring.
+-Aiee!: "An Interactive Environment Engine" text adventure system.
+-Umbra: Post-apocalpytic computer RPG.
+- Utilities:
+-JICB: Portable ICB client written in Java.
+-ThoughtPad: A tiny note-taking utility.
Site Pages:
+-Audio
+-Blank page
+-Camera
+-Cyberpunk
+-Game Design
+-Hacker
+-Java
+-NetRexx
+-Python
+-Hello Kitty
+-Quotes
+-Religion
+-RPG
+-The Bomb
+-DUDE
+-G.P.A.
+-Phobos
+-SIX WORD RPG!
+-Weapons
+-What's Wrong With AD&D?
+-Text
+-H.Beam Piper
+-Snow Crash
+-Universal Search
+-Video
+-Videogames
+-Virus Warning
Blog Topics:
+-News
+-Cocoa
+-Mac
+-Media
+-Personal
+-Quotes
+-Religion
+-Roleplaying
+-Science
+-SecondLife
+-Society
+-Software
+-Toys
+-Web
|