Cyberpunk 2020
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| Cyberpunk 2020 | |
|---|---|
 The cover of cyberpunk 2020 2nd edition |
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| Designer(s) | Mike Pondsmith |
| Publisher(s) | R. Talsorian Games |
| Publication date | 1990 |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction, Cyberpunk |
| System | Interlock System |
Cyberpunk 2020 is a cyberpunk role-playing game written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian Games.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Based on the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other authors of the "mirrorshades group". The game includes a number of elements now associated with the 1980s, such as the idea of "style over substance" and glam rock. The fictional timeline also includes some notable omissions such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the adoption of cell phones as the preferred mode of communication.
The game tends to emphasize some aspects of the source material more than others, with much attention being paid to combat, high tech weaponry and cybernetic modification, while both performance enhancing and recreational drug use is either played down or discouraged, and Artificial Intelligence, genetic engineering, and cloning barely mentioned.
The range of characters players can adopt is very diverse, ranging from hardwired mercenaries with psycholinked weapons and boosted reflexes, to Armani-wearing corporate mega-yuppies who make and break national economies with the stroke of a pen.
The game setting has been licensed twice for a collectible card game. The first time for Richard Garfield's Netrunner, published by Wizards of the Coast in 1996, and later for Cyberpunk CCG published by Social Games.
[edit] Cyberpunk 2013
Cyberpunk 2020 is the second edition of the original game, Cyberpunk 2013, often just called "Cyberpunk." It was originally published as a boxed set in 1988, and R. Talsorian released a few supplements for this edition, including Rockerboy, Solo of Fortune, and Hardwired, the latter based on the Walter Jon Williams novel of the same name.
The second edition featured rules updates and changes, and additionally moved the timeline forward by 7 years, from 2013 to 2020.
[edit] Game Mechanics
The basic rules system of Cyberpunk 2020 (called the Interlock System) is skill-based instead of level-based, with players being awarded points to be spent on their skill sets. New skills outside their expertise can be learned but in-game time needs to be spent on this. A large part of the system is the player characters' ability to augment themselves with cyber-technology and the ensuing loss of humanity as they become more machine than man.
Cyberpunk 2020 lends itself to play in the street level, dark film noir genre, although certain aspects of the basic system can make game sessions devolve into a high body-count, 1980s action movie style.
Although each player must choose a character class or "role" from those given in the basic rules, there is enough variation in the skill system so that no two members of the same class are alike. Because Cyberpunk 2020 is skill-based, the choice of skills around the class-specific special ability allows a wide range of character development choices including non-combatants.
The combat system, called Friday Night Firefight, emphasizes lethality. No matter who the character is, a single bullet can result in a lethal wound. This encourages a more tactically-oriented and sneaky game play, which is accordance to the rough-and-gritty ethos of the Cyberpunk genre. Also, the amount of damage a character can sustain does not increase as the character develops. The only way a character can become more damage resistant is to either become better at not being hit, physically augment their body with armour or muscle or wear armour.
[edit] The World of Cyberpunk 2020
Cyberpunk 2020, as the name implies, takes place in North America in the year 2020. The game's default setting is the fictional Night City located between Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast of the United States. Later supplements to the game have contained information about the rest of the US and the world.
Following a vast socio-economical collapse and a period of martial law, the United States government has had to rely on several megacorporations to survive. This has given them a veritable carte blanche to operate as they will.
[edit] The Megacorporations
- Arasaka, a Japanese zaibatsu conglomerate whose megalomaniacal CEO wishes to realize his dream of Japanese world power.
- Biotechnica, an Italian biotechnology, pharmacology, and cybernetics firm.
- Euro Business Machines (EBM), an information technology corporation (an obvious nod towards IBM).
- Kendachi, a Japanese armament company.
- Merril, Asukaga & Finch, financial analysts. Quite probably an allusion to Merrill Lynch
- Microtech, a computer and electronics manufacturer.
- Militech, American arms and mercenary contractor.
- Mitsubishi-Sugo, a major transportation manufacturer.
- Petrochem, an energy company.
- SovOil, a neo-Soviet oil giant, controlling a vast percentage of the petrochemicals market
- Zetatech, a computer, cyberdeck, robotics, and cybernetics manufacturing company.
[edit] Meta-Characters
The game's backstory had a series of powerful characters that influenced the world of Cyberpunk.
[edit] "Good Guys"
- Alt Cunningham: A brilliant Netrunner and programmer, she invented the beta version of Soulkiller, a program that would make a digital emulation or copy of a netrunner's mind. Arasaka kidnapped her, extracted the information from her, and made a more deadly version that would simultaneously fry the netrunner's mind after backing it up, allowing a Sysop to interrogate it at will. They then used it on Alt since she was of no further use to them, but her digital "ghost" broke free into the Net.
- Johnny Silverhand: An idealistic Rockerboy singer and guitarist with a silver-chrome cyberlimb arm who opposes Arasaka for a grocery list of personal grudges from the loss of his arm to the death of many of his close friends and family. He is Morgan Blackhand's younger brother and Alt's ex-boyfriend. He also was in the band Samurai.
- Morgan Blackhand: A pragmatic Solo with an anodised black-chrome cyberlimb arm who often helped his little brother Johnny out in his personal vendetta on Arasaka.
- Rasche Bartmoss: The most brilliant (and paranoid) hacker in the Net, he was the "narrator" of the Guide to the Net and Brainware Blowout sourcebooks (postumously edited by his rival, supreme hackerette Spider Murphy). Rasche was finally flatlined by a lucky Arasaka Sysop. Fortunately he had top-of-the-line life support to maintain him. Unfortunately, he was too paranoid to trust anyone with his location or leave any means of recovering him. He spends his time deteriorating in a cryogenic freezer (disguised to look like a refrigerator) while still managing to be one of the best hackers in the Net.
[edit] "Bad Guys"
- Saburo Arasaka: The devious head of the diversified Arasaka Corporation, which not only dominates most of the Third World (including America), but also Japan. He has united factions of the Japanese government, the military, organized crime and various lesser corporations under his control. Some have begun calling this era in history the "Arasaka Shogunate".
- David Wyndham: The head of Arasaka's Night City division. He was personally responsible for Alt Cunningham's original death.
- Doctor Dreff: A psychotic programmer and neurophysiologist that invented the Zombie and Liche programs. He opposes Alt.
[edit] Sequels
[edit] Firestorm Series
Firestorm was supposed to be the bridge between Cyberpunk 2020 (the 2nd edition rules and milieu) and Cyberpunk V.3 (the 3rd Edition rules and milieu). Its purpose was to shake up everything and get players prepared for the new background they were cooking up.
[edit] Firestorm I: Stormfront
Set in 2022, the backstory has two deep-ocean-based megacorporations duelling for control. When it escalates into open warfare, they each hire mercenaries. One hires the Japanese diversified technology and security services firm Arasaka and the other hires the American military technology and mercenary services firm Militech.
During the conflict, the long-standing bitter rivalry between Arasaka and Militech causes them to forget their contracts and go straight for each other. The covert war between the two heats up, becoming the Fourth Corporate War.
In the course of the adventure setting, the characters are hired to hunt down a pesky netrunner who is making their anonymous employer unhappy. Little do they realize that the hacker is the infamous (and already "dead") Rache Bartmoss. Regardless of what they do, their employer (Arasaka, of course) pinpoints the apartment with an orbital mass-driver and vaporizes it.
[edit] Firestorm II: Shockwave
The second part of the Firestorm series sees Arasaka mobilize the Japanese Defense Force to take on Militech and the American military in a big showdown. This is only forstalled by a double-whammy. First, Rache Bartmoss had mined the Net with custom Data-Krash viruses designed to activate after his death; the resulting meltdown fries the Net and killed anyone jacked in at the time. Then Arasaka released a nanotech "paper-eating virus" that would wipe out all treated paper it came in contact with; the US government's backup hardcopy depots become vaults of slag in a matter of hours. These two events cripple the American government and the tide seems to be turning Arasaka's way.
To retaliate, Militech gathers together the surviving meta-characters and a Special Forces team played by the player characters into a "super team". Their job: to take out Arasaka's Night City arcology with a tactical nuke to destroy the last viable data storage mainframe in the world to deny it to Arasaka.
Then they find out that Alt Cunningham, who was captured by Arasaka earlier, is trapped inside the mainframe. Of course, Johnny won't let Alt die a second time, so the team tries to break her out.
The end result is that the meta-characters go out in a blaze of glory. Johnny Silverhand dies at the hands of Arasaka cyborg assassin Adam Smasher in order to buy Spider Murphy enough time to break Alt into a series of datapackets and downloads her into the Net. Morgan Blackhand then takes on Adam Smasher atop Arasaka Towers while the rest of the team gets extracted out. The outcome of the duel is greatly disputed because the low-yield tactical nuke set off the 2-kiloton "self destruct" bomb Arasaka had placed in its data core. This destroyed much of downtown Night City and contaminated the area and anything downwind of it with lethal fallout.
[edit] Cybergeneration
Cybergeneration is a follow-up to the original Cyberpunk 2020 game. "Cybergen" was originally published as a supplement for Cyberpunk, but later re-released as a fully featured game in its own right. It is set in the year 2027, 7 years after the events in 2nd Edition and is considered an "alternate" universe (independent of the general Cyberpunk timeline, see V3 below). Cybergeneration is heavily dependent on the concepts and application of nanotechnology.
The backstory revolves around the "Fox Run" incident, in which an orbital transport that was carrying "scientific equipment" crashed in Night City. This accidentally released a weaponized nano-virus called the Carbon Plague. Fully matured humans who caught it died horribly after the virus rewrites their genetic code and warps their bodies. However the virus only mutates and morphs children and teenagers since they haven't fully matured, granting them nanotech-enhanced powers and making them immune carriers if they survive the illness. Society dramatically fears their capabilities and differences, which drives them underground.
In its altered timeline the 4th Corporate War never happened and all the good guy meta-characters are alive and well...but unfortunately so are the bad guys. Arasaka manages to dominate the US Government and gets David Wyndham elected President of the new Incorporated States of America (ISA). Its lassez-faire government works with the corporations directly, becoming their puppet. The "Bureau of Relocation" (BuReloc), is a paramilitary force that runs prison camps for "unproductive" citizens and hunts down the CyberKids.
To oppose this oppressive dictatorship, the good guy meta-characters run the Eden Cabal, a revolutionary movement that seeks to overthrow the ISA and BuReloc.
[edit] Cyberpunk 203X
Ever since the 1998 release of the Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebook Firestorm: Shockwave, fans of the game had been awaiting for a third edition of the Cyberpunk game, known as Cyberpunk 203X. Over the years, the entire project had at times been discounted as vaporware, its delays due to other projects and Pondsmith's involvement in the development of The Matrix Online.
The game was released first in PDF form on December 17, 2005 and as a conventional book on January 15, 2006 to generally disappointed reviews, which criticised the monochromatic presentation and artwork which was largely based around posed action figures. Later reviews of the game have been somewhat more favorable.
The setting has been heavily updated from its last event book series, Firestorm, which covered the opening of the Fourth Corporate War. The aftermath of the Fourth Corporate War has resulted in widespread corruption of the Net and major losses of hardcopied data, to the point that all data is intangible and recent recorded history is in doubt. An example that pops up in Pondsmith's demos at conventions, releases on the Internet, and in the finished game is that history has become so corrupted that many people in the world now believe Richard Nixon, instead of resigning over Watergate, committed suicide on camera and that memes such as the moon landing being hoaxed become prevalent.
The war has also lead to the collapse of nations, the world economy, and many of the staple megacorporations. This civil upheaval leads to the rise of the altcults, alternative cultures similar in vein to the phyles from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. In fact, Cyberpunk V.3 has more to do with the new postcyberpunk literary movement and transhumanism than with the Gibson-Sterling mirrorshades movement.
In addition to rules changes to the Fuzion system and background, the Cyberpunk V.3 also uses concepts taken Pondsmith's experience at Microsoft with computer and video games as well as corporate culture, such as a faster and simpler character generation system using templates, web-based active content URL links for updates, and making groups, organizations, and corporations their own "characters".
[edit] The Altcults
- Corpore Metal or Cee-Metal - a society of full-body cyborgs.
- Desnai' - Disneyworld-like series of amusement park arcology that strive to shelter themselves from the anarchy outside their walls and run heavily on automation.
- Edgerunners - the descendants of the anti-corporation cyberpunk movement.
- Reef - an undersea community whose members are heavily genetically modified to survive in the ocean.
- Riptide Confederation - a flotilla of Japanese floating cities that were cut off from Japan following a nuclear civil war inside the country.
- Rolling State - the descendants of the Nomad families in Cyberpunk 2020, who now use advanced nanotechnology and megatechnology to create land-based mobile cities.
In addition, there is also the Fallen Angels, space-bound scavengers, the Ghosts, people who have uploaded their minds, and the Neo-Corps, the surviving corporations of the CP2020 world that are now organized in the form of organized crime syndicates. However, the six listed above are the only ones that have been mentioned in deep detail.
[edit] Novels
Two Cyberpunk 2020 novels have been published, both written by Stephen Billias:
[edit] External links
- Homepage of R. Talsorian Games, publisher of the game
- The BlackHammer Project - one of the largest community fansites of the game
- The BlackHammer Project 3 - fansite with material for CyberPunk v.3
- Datafortress 2020 - The largest Cyberpunk 2020 website on the net
- Views From the Edge, a forum dedicated to Cyberpunk 2020 and the genre in general
