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Cover of Cyberpunk 2020

Cyberpunk 2020 is a cyberpunk role-playing game published by R.Talsorian Games, set in the near future.

Overview

Based on the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other "mirrorshades" authors, the feel of the game is meant to be very much style over substance, in what can be considered a distinctly 80's kind of way. The age of the game is today most easily seen from its timeline, which extends to before the fall of the Soviet Union. There are also some aspects of modern 21st century life (such as Internet and cell phones) whose existence in the game is noticeably divergent thanks to this.

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 basic rules system of Cyberpunk 2020 (called Interlock) is skill-based instead of level-based. With player 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 is a game with a dark film noir feel if played right, though certain oversights in the basic system can make the average game session devolve into a 1980s action movie with a triple-digit body-count.

What is significant about Cyberpunk 2020 compared to many other roleplaying games is the freedom given by the basic system in character creation. 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 meaning that no two members of the same class are alike. A character can also be a total non-combatant (something that is not quite possible in Dungeons & Dragons even to this day).

Another feature that endeared the game to players and Games Masters alike is the inherent lethality. A typical starter-level character facing off against three police officers is very likely to suffer a quick death. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, this is a factor that is not liable to change as the character gains experience (there are no "hit points"). 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.

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 city of Night City located between Los Angeles and San Fransisco on the west coast of the United States. Later supplements to the game have contained information about rest of the US and the world.

Following a vast 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.

The Megacorporations

• Arasaka, a Japanese zaibatsu conglomerate whose megalomaniacal CEO wishes to realize his dream of Japanese world power.
• Biotechnica
• Eurobusiness Machines (EBM), information technology corporation.
• Kendachi
• Merril, Asukaga & Finch, financial analysts.
• Militech, American arms contractor.
• Mitsubishi-Koridanshu
• Zetatech

Sequels

Cybergeneration

Cybergeneration is a follow-up to the original Cyberpunk 2020 game. It is set roughly 10 years after 2020 and is heavily dependant on the concepts and application of nano-technology. A nano-plague is mutating and morphing the youth of society, driving them underground, as society dramatically fears their capabilities and differences. "Cybergen" was originally published as a supplement for Cyberpunk, but later re-released as a fully featured game in its own right.

Starblade Battalion

Starblade Battalion, a setting for R. Talsorian's related Mekton RPG, postulates a more distant future to the Cyberpunk 2020 world (set in the year 2180), where the "primitive" ACPA technology of 2020 has evolved into 15-meter-tall giant robots called Mektons. Between Cyberpunk and Starblade Battalion, the Earth suffered a devastating global ecological disaster called the "Ecocollapse" and is now governed by a totalitarian Green government called the United Stellar States Alliance. Humanity's interstellar colonies are governed by a manipulative corporatist government called the Pleiades Confederacy. The Starblade Battalion setting has been noted for its similarities to Gundam, particularly in that neither antagonistic party is particularly "good", and the primary division is "My side" and "their side."

Cyberpunk V.3

Cyberpunk V.3 (also known as Cyberpunk Version 3 or it's working title of Cyberpunk 203X) is the next-generation of the Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing game. The setting has been heavily updated from it's 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 recorded history is in doubt (an example that pops up in Pondsmith's gatherings at conventions and releases on the Internet is that history has been corrupted that many people in the world now believe Richard Nixon, instead of resigning over Watergate, commited suicide on camera). 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.

Cyberpunk V.3 is notorious for its overtly long development period and often rumored release dates.

External links

• Homepage of R.Talsorian Games, publisher of the game
• Views From the Edge, a forum dedicated to Cyberpunk 2020 and the genre in general