Cyberpunk revisited
I got home from short break today and (as is my custom) made a quick check of some of my faovurite initernet haunts. When I got to Rob Lang’s excellent Free RPG Blog I found word of a new free rpg competition, this time to “revive cyberpunk”. Now, it took me less than a nano-second to get excited about this and ideas are buzzing in my head already. Anyone interested in cyberpunk, or free rpg’s, or game design with parameters should go check out the lively 1KT1KM forums where this competition originated.
Now, I am about to go back to work for another busy year, and things on the home front a just a little more than busy, and I am curently fiddling with wargame and RPG rules, but this has got me excited. Cyberpunk is a favourite genre of mine and the R. Talsorian Games’ Cybergeneration is one of my all-time favourite games. To me it is far better than the revamped 3rd edition Cyberpunk rules. Some will disagree with me, because it doesn’t have long lists of cybernetics and huge guns, but that is the beauty of it for me – it cuts away this crap and gets right to the heart of things – the powerless individual against THE MAN. I guess it is a little more hopeful than most cyberpunk fiction, which may make it a sub-genre of sorts, but to me it is still great.
At last count I have at least seven cyberpunk inspired games on my shelves (Cyberpunk 2020, Cybergeneration, Cyberspace, Kromosone, Shadowrun, SLA Industries and Interface Zero), not to mention d20 and Savage Worlds supplements and some less obvious games (Dark Conspiracy, Twilight 2000). Oh, and Misspent Youth. That is a top game with Cyberpunk overtones – you should check it out.
I am a bit of a junky I guess. I think it will be hard for me to resist doing something for this competition, but it is something I would want to do “right”. I have attempted cyberpunk games before, but have abandoned the projects becuae I idn’t feel I could do them justice. Maybe this time round?
What do you think needs to be a part of a “modern” cyberpunk game? Go to the Peril Planet forums and let me know.
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I sincerely hope you enter. Cyberpunk needs you!
Remember it’s only 30 pages, a lobotomised goblin could write 30 pages! 
about 1 year ago
The 30 pages isn’t what I am worried about. Actually, it is what I am worried about. My raw text may well fit within 30 pages, but if I want to go the design / presentation road that I am thinking of this may well blow out enormously! I am writing the game and will be sharing it one way or another though.
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Nathan,
I’d recommend getting some friends together and doing the Authority, Dystopia, clique, and YO creation stuff from Misspent Youth. That should give you a really cool setting that you can then reverse engineer into Cyberpunk. (And maybe play through that world in Misspent Youth anyway.)
about 11 months ago
I love Misspent Youth, though I have only ever read it. To me, Misspent Youth is a cyberpunk game and reminds me of the coolest parts of my favorite cyberpunk game “CyberGeneration”. I am off to re-read the game.