The Inside Scoop on Gaming

0. STARTERS

Over in the Forum, someone suggested a review of Cyberpunk 2.0 (henceforth CP2020). As I have the game close at hand, and have actually read AND played it, I thought, "Hey, I'll mouth off on that, too."

Cyberpunk, of course, is a media-created term to describe the darkish-future street-level high-tech low-life megacorp-dominated-potential-future-run-by-Japan-type sci-fi that was being written in the glorious 1980s by such writers as William Gibson ("Neuromancer"), Bruce Sterling ("Islands In The Net"), Rudy Rucker ("Wetware"), and others, not to mention the seminal film "Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott. If you haven't seen "Blade Runner", I don't like you, so go watch it. The review will still be here when you get back. Cyberpunk is usually a moody, violent affair with lots of brand-name flash and cybernetic replacements to make people into bad-asses.

This is the second edition of R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk RPG boxed set, which came out c.1988. It's a one-volume affair, containing all the rules you need to play. The cover art features a neat car, this spiky-haired glowy-eyed dude, lots of delicious neon and a girl who looks kinda cute but is too far away to get a good look at. Oh, well.

1. SYSTEM

CP2020 uses R. Tal's celebrated (or at least, oft-used) InterLock system, which has existed since Mekton in, like, 1987, and which was (for better or for worse) rammed into HERO to make Fuzion. Wheee! Game History fans, write that down!

Anyway, InterLock is like really really easy to use: roll 1d10 and add modifiers, beat a difficulty number set by the GM -- or, in CP2020 parlance, the "Ref", short for referee. The Ref gets to wear a black-and-white-striped shirt, blow a whistle and get trampled by rioting soccer fans.

No, he doesn't. I'm kidding.

The 1d10+mods thing can make for some pretty unpredictable results, which is good -- it reinforces the dramatic, cinematic style that CP2020 claims it's going after (More on THAT little remark later on...).

The combat and cyberspace rules are just expansions upon that. Cyberspace rules get kinda squirrelly, though, because you hafta pile on modifiers from all over the place depending on what task you're attempting, and it gets a little weird sometimes. The combat system (called "Friday Night Firefight") is fast and deadly, and uses a wound/shock system to kill you. Well, you kill people with it, too, but you get the idea. Nicely, the damage section of the combat system gives real-world examples of WHY a wound/shock system is used, so it makes more sense to you, the Ref. Add a slew of tactical options and you've got a pretty rad combat system in your hands. Use your powers for good!

2. SCHMOES

Well it kinda figures you want a character to play, right? Good news -- like most RPGs, CP2020 makes allowances for that little quirk.

You pick out a "Role", which means "class" or "archetype" or "what you do when you're not doing other stuff". Choose from Solos (fighters), Fixers (fences, street-dealers, etc -- basically, a thief/merchant thingie), Netrunners (the archetypical "console cowboy" created by William Gibson), and others. Each role gets its own special ability which is EXCLUSIVE TO THAT ROLE AND NOT USEABLE BY OTHER ROLES. (Note that I capitalized that -- I'll come back to it.) Hold on, there's something in my throat...*gaaaagh* *hack* Geez...is it flu season? Uh, anyway. If you're a Solo, you get a combat-related special ability; Fixers get one called "Streetdeal", and Netrunners get "Interface", which assists them in, um, interfacing. You know, with computers. Cyberdecks, really. Get some character points; buy ranks for each of the ten stats, ranked 1-10; do same for a bundle of skills, ranked +1 to +10; figure how much money you've earned doing what you do; buy some stuff; whack ass.

Oh, but wait! There's also the Lifepath. Yes! The Lifepath! This is a series of charts (think "Central Casting Ultra-Lite") that you roll on to determine some stuff about your character's past, personality, etc. It's not mandatory, but it's helpful in a pinch. I mean, Mike Pondsmith won't come to your house and chew on all your giant robot toys if you don't use it.

Not ANYMORE, anyway. Not since I coated mine with raw habanero oil.

3. SETTING

The whole enchilada takes place in a fictional place called Night City, which exists somewhere on the West Coast, where, it seems, it is mandatory for all cyberpunk cities to take place. (Gibson's BAMA, Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, however, is an exception. Gibson't the exception to a LOT of Cyberpunk RP gaming...why no one sets their cyberpunk games in Mexico City, a town which, having lived there, I can tell you is tailor-made for suchstuff, is beyond my ken. Um...I digress.) It's history is sort of tragic: it started off as a clean, safe city, into which lots of corporations were invited. Of course the corps brought corruption and rot; drugs soon followed, and now the whole thing's a mess.

That's a nice touch, and I'd bet that most CP2020 Refs don't take into account Night City's origin. To those that do, I offer kudos for their insight and craft.

It's the year 2020, by the way (2.0...2020...get it?), and there's flying cars and a super-duper internet -- and a brand-new way to interact with it, called "cyberspace". Basically, instead of looking at stuff on a monitor, you can plug your brain into a "cybermodem" (more commonly, "cyberdeck") and experience full sensory feed, digitally, bypassing eyes, nose, ears, etc.

YOU DO NOT PROJECT YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS INTO THE NET -- YOUR BRAIN AND ITS CONTENTS STAY RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE. I like that better than Shadowrun's approach, which mimics astral projection.

Anyway, the corporations run everything, life is hard, violence is common, you know. You've all seen "Robocop", right? And you saw "Blade Runner"? Well there you go.

4. STUFFING

There's a whole chapter on cyberspace stuff, which goes into deep, efficient detail on how andwhy cyberspace works the way it works. It's stuffed with programs for your cyberdeck, some tactics, random mainframe generation tables, a sample run and tons of nifty diagrams for making the abstract concepts of netrunning a little more concrete.

"Never Fade Away" is the title of a cheesy fluff piece which actually serves a purpose -- it has gaming notes and NPC stats for running it as an adventure! Hoody-Hoo! It will NOT work, by the way, for some roles, unless you tweak it.

After you've run "Never Fade Away" (assuming you do -- I haven't), there are some kinda clever adventure hooks, complete with mocked-up "screamsheet" (read "newspaper") handouts, with stories related to each adventure. These need work on the Ref's par, and contain some good ideas, but, uh, well, I'll get back to these, too.

The artwork is nice, too. The printing that I have includes some nifty pieces from Italy, as well as some stuff from the 1st edition. There're a number of pieces that remind one of quintessential 80's artist Nagel (you know, the cover of Duran Duran's "Rio" album), which makes me all happy and glowy inside. The amount of pictures of people with noserings and tattoos is thankfully small, so I spent little time wretching in disgust.

5. SUPPLEMENTS

I'm not reviewing any. But I'll say that there are LOTS of them, and they're kinda hard to find. I recommend "Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!" (the Ref's guide), "Rache Bartmoss' Brainware Blowout" (a cyberdeck/programs catalogue), and maybe one of the old splatbooks for the different roles. There are also "Chromebooks", which detail gear and toys and such, but I have a problem with those, which I'll get two after this next section called --

6. SCORE!

Let me tell you something, cousin, this bugger's PLAYABLE. I mean, BAM, you grab the book, ZING, you read it, FWISH, you make some characters, and ZOOM, you're playin'. (Those of you who just thought of the old 1960's "Batman" TV show deserve, for your impertinence and lack of culture, to eat the pork fritter sandwich I had for lunch, which I think is what's making my throat feel weird.)

So the system's fast, right? Task resolution is easy to set and arbitrate. On TOP of that, you don't have to stick to the Roles provided in the book -- you can make up NEW ones, and the book even makes up two of 'em FOR you to show you how it's done! (Yeah, it adds the "Model/Actress" and "Politician" roles. Interesting choices, really -- I'd like to play a Model, that'd be fun. That's not sarcasm, BTW.) New skills, and special abilities, are a breeze to conjure up. Plus, the book contains some OK advice for Refs. It's just OK, though.

Which leads me to The Promised Section:

7. SUCKS!

CP2020 has a few things wrong with it. Because I'm an opinionated bastard, I'm going to tell you what they are, and why they're problems -- I'll even tell you how to fix 'em.

A) First off, there's that whole idea that Roles get exclusive Special Abilities that other Roles can'tuse. That makes sense, to a point: a Rockerboy isn't going to have the kind of Authority abilities that a Cop has. Still, if you want a Solo who kills things AND can hack into a corporate mainframe...

...you're pooched.

Why? Because the book states that non-Netrunners can use the Net for stuff, but they can't do all the cool intrusion stuff that Netrunners can. And why the hell can't my Corporate character (special ability: Resources) have a measure of Credibility, which is the Media's exclusive skill? Lots of suits get to the top by convincing people that they're right about a project/plan/strategy/whatever.

Well, you could give the Corp character the Persuasion & Fast Talk skill, which is open for all. But then, what's the Media's Credibility good for? Plus, if you equate the Special Abilities to other skills, Interface still stands out as something of a super-power.

THE FIX: Either refine the special abilities so that they are MORE special...or chuck 'em. Instead, give a role bonuses or character-point cost breaks on buying the skills that equate to the old Special Abilities, to reflect their expertise in the matter.

B) The Interfacing rules are...well, screwy. Like I said, the modifiers to your rolls keep coming from different places, and often, the stats/skills that you'd THINK would be of use in a task *aren't*. A really, really good Netrunner with an interface of +10 gets to use that +10 for one thing and one thing only: anti-personnel attacks. That's it. Other combat, initiative, and miscellaneous 'Net tasks are bare of Interface. I dunno about you, but I think that if a Netrunner is good, and has A WHOLE SPECIAL ABILITY ALL TO HIMSELF, it oughtta do *lots* of good.

THE FIX: Re-write the c-space rules, or use Interface for everything.

c) My biggest pet peeve is more personal -- it's the game itself in practice. It's in the way that I see a lot of people playing it, and, in a sense, CP2020 and its supplements kind of encourage this mode of play above others.

I refer to the "You've been hired to..." style of play, otherwise called the "Mission: Shopping List" Adventure.

I've played CP2020 games where the objective was, essentially, to buy lots of stuff and use it on a mission for which we received tons and tons of cash. We identified the obstacles to a goal, bought stuff to overcome them, shot some people, and got paid.

Snore.

Granted, this was a Ref's decision, as far as the style of play. But, like I said, the CP2020 game materials sort of encourage that: the afore-mentioned adventure hooks are mostly of that type, where you're hired for a job. And the Chromebooks...sure, they're full of cool stuff, but isn't that kinda like saying, "You should use all this stuff in your CP game because that's what it's about"? Thanks to the Chromebooks, CP2020 is often run as a collection of mooks with big guns/cyberware/cars/blimps/programs/etc., with a disregard for the potential cinematic, dramatic tales that, as I said, the game SAYS it's all about. The designers cite "Casablanca" as a good template for a CP game -- I agree, it'd be very, very cool. But Rick and Ilsa did NOT, I'm pretty sure, go shopping for a top-of-the-line sniper rifle in order to hide some transit papers from the French.

THE FIX: Ignore the shopping lists and tell a good story, damnit. Get the PCs involved in the steam, the neon, the sweat, the energy, the rain and the struggle inherent in the setting. Make it live! Let the stories be driven by the people in them. Let them make their own choices, and fumble around in a high-tech world of opression and hidden hope.

I once ran a CP game, my fave so far, that started, roughly, like this:

"There's a smell here in the alley -- blood, maybe, and something chemical. Like caseless ammo, burning away. Alley's full of steam, glowing green from the neon sign of a chinese take-out place on the corner. You notice then a dim shadow clawing at the steam, scraping against the wall, and a scratchy noise like a cheap radio. The shadow turns into a man in tattered flak armor. He nurses one of a hundred bullet wounds on his body, and falls flat on his face before you. In his right hand he clutches a black ceramic case, like a data cartridge, unmarked. He lets out a final breath, falls silent...the only sounds are an urgent, barking voice in German coming from his radio, and the far-off sound of sirens. That data cart is probably very important. Okay, guys, your move."

Again, this is a personal matter. But I dislike the way in which CP2020 *doesn't* encourage the kind of hook I just laid out, but rather the "mission/shopping/pay-off" model that, honestly, gets stale.

7. SO?

CP2020 is well worth your money. It's complete in one book, playable, fast and fun. It can stand some tinkering, but that's up to you. Buy it, yeah, I reccommend. But I ALSO reccommend snagging a book of Gibson short stories, a couple of Devo and Billy Idol CDs, a copy of "Miracle Mile" on video (teach yourself a bit about making people REALLY nervous REALLY fast), a plate of cheap supermarket sushi and GURPS Cyberpunk to go with it.

There are two ways to go with this game.

Munchkin gun-monkey with metal arms...or a deep, exciting, fast-paced and giddily nervous coaster-ride through the steamy, disposable future.

"Okay, guys, your move."

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.
Author: Mike Pondsmith, Colin Fisk, Will Moss, Scott Ruggels, Dave Friedland, Mike Blum Category: game Company/Publisher: R. Talsorian Games Line: Cyberpunk Cost: US $19.95 Page count: 254 ISBN: 0-937-279-13-7 SKU: CP 3002 Capsule Review by Dr. Rotwang! on 10/28/99. Genre tags: Science_fiction Espionage Conspiracy	0. STARTERS Over in the Forum, someone suggested a review of Cyberpunk 2.0 (henceforth CP2020). As I have the game close at hand, and have actually read AND played it, I thought, "Hey, I'll mouth off on that, too." Cyberpunk, of course, is a media-created term to describe the darkish-future street-level high-tech low-life megacorp-dominated-potential-future-run-by-Japan-type sci-fi that was being written in the glorious 1980s by such writers as William Gibson ("Neuromancer"), Bruce Sterling ("Islands In The Net"), Rudy Rucker ("Wetware"), and others, not to mention the seminal film "Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott. If you haven't seen "Blade Runner", I don't like you, so go watch it. The review will still be here when you get back. Cyberpunk is usually a moody, violent affair with lots of brand-name flash and cybernetic replacements to make people into bad-asses. This is the second edition of R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk RPG boxed set, which came out c.1988. It's a one-volume affair, containing all the rules you need to play. The cover art features a neat car, this spiky-haired glowy-eyed dude, lots of delicious neon and a girl who looks kinda cute but is too far away to get a good look at. Oh, well. 1. SYSTEM CP2020 uses R. Tal's celebrated (or at least, oft-used) InterLock system, which has existed since Mekton in, like, 1987, and which was (for better or for worse) rammed into HERO to make Fuzion. Wheee! Game History fans, write that down! Anyway, InterLock is like really really easy to use: roll 1d10 and add modifiers, beat a difficulty number set by the GM -- or, in CP2020 parlance, the "Ref", short for referee. The Ref gets to wear a black-and-white-striped shirt, blow a whistle and get trampled by rioting soccer fans. No, he doesn't. I'm kidding. The 1d10+mods thing can make for some pretty unpredictable results, which is good -- it reinforces the dramatic, cinematic style that CP2020 claims it's going after (More on THAT little remark later on...). The combat and cyberspace rules are just expansions upon that. Cyberspace rules get kinda squirrelly, though, because you hafta pile on modifiers from all over the place depending on what task you're attempting, and it gets a little weird sometimes. The combat system (called "Friday Night Firefight") is fast and deadly, and uses a wound/shock system to kill you. Well, you kill people with it, too, but you get the idea. Nicely, the damage section of the combat system gives real-world examples of WHY a wound/shock system is used, so it makes more sense to you, the Ref. Add a slew of tactical options and you've got a pretty rad combat system in your hands. Use your powers for good! 2. SCHMOES Well it kinda figures you want a character to play, right? Good news -- like most RPGs, CP2020 makes allowances for that little quirk. You pick out a "Role", which means "class" or "archetype" or "what you do when you're not doing other stuff". Choose from Solos (fighters), Fixers (fences, street-dealers, etc -- basically, a thief/merchant thingie), Netrunners (the archetypical "console cowboy" created by William Gibson), and others. Each role gets its own special ability which is EXCLUSIVE TO THAT ROLE AND NOT USEABLE BY OTHER ROLES. (Note that I capitalized that -- I'll come back to it.) Hold on, there's something in my throat...gaaaagh hack Geez...is it flu season? Uh, anyway. If you're a Solo, you get a combat-related special ability; Fixers get one called "Streetdeal", and Netrunners get "Interface", which assists them in, um, interfacing. You know, with computers. Cyberdecks, really. Get some character points; buy ranks for each of the ten stats, ranked 1-10; do same for a bundle of skills, ranked +1 to +10; figure how much money you've earned doing what you do; buy some stuff; whack ass. Oh, but wait! There's also the Lifepath. Yes! The Lifepath! This is a series of charts (think "Central Casting Ultra-Lite") that you roll on to determine some stuff about your character's past, personality, etc. It's not mandatory, but it's helpful in a pinch. I mean, Mike Pondsmith won't come to your house and chew on all your giant robot toys if you don't use it. Not ANYMORE, anyway. Not since I coated mine with raw habanero oil. 3. SETTING The whole enchilada takes place in a fictional place called Night City, which exists somewhere on the West Coast, where, it seems, it is mandatory for all cyberpunk cities to take place. (Gibson's BAMA, Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, however, is an exception. Gibson't the exception to a LOT of Cyberpunk RP gaming...why no one sets their cyberpunk games in Mexico City, a town which, having lived there, I can tell you is tailor-made for suchstuff, is beyond my ken. Um...I digress.) It's history is sort of tragic: it started off as a clean, safe city, into which lots of corporations were invited. Of course the corps brought corruption and rot; drugs soon followed, and now the whole thing's a mess. That's a nice touch, and I'd bet that most CP2020 Refs don't take into account Night City's origin. To those that do, I offer kudos for their insight and craft. It's the year 2020, by the way (2.0...2020...get it?), and there's flying cars and a super-duper internet -- and a brand-new way to interact with it, called "cyberspace". Basically, instead of looking at stuff on a monitor, you can plug your brain into a "cybermodem" (more commonly, "cyberdeck") and experience full sensory feed, digitally, bypassing eyes, nose, ears, etc. YOU DO NOT PROJECT YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS INTO THE NET -- YOUR BRAIN AND ITS CONTENTS STAY RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE. I like that better than Shadowrun's approach, which mimics astral projection. Anyway, the corporations run everything, life is hard, violence is common, you know. You've all seen "Robocop", right? And you saw "Blade Runner"? Well there you go. 4. STUFFING There's a whole chapter on cyberspace stuff, which goes into deep, efficient detail on how andwhy cyberspace works the way it works. It's stuffed with programs for your cyberdeck, some tactics, random mainframe generation tables, a sample run and tons of nifty diagrams for making the abstract concepts of netrunning a little more concrete. "Never Fade Away" is the title of a cheesy fluff piece which actually serves a purpose -- it has gaming notes and NPC stats for running it as an adventure! Hoody-Hoo! It will NOT work, by the way, for some roles, unless you tweak it. After you've run "Never Fade Away" (assuming you do -- I haven't), there are some kinda clever adventure hooks, complete with mocked-up "screamsheet" (read "newspaper") handouts, with stories related to each adventure. These need work on the Ref's par, and contain some good ideas, but, uh, well, I'll get back to these, too. The artwork is nice, too. The printing that I have includes some nifty pieces from Italy, as well as some stuff from the 1st edition. There're a number of pieces that remind one of quintessential 80's artist Nagel (you know, the cover of Duran Duran's "Rio" album), which makes me all happy and glowy inside. The amount of pictures of people with noserings and tattoos is thankfully small, so I spent little time wretching in disgust. 5. SUPPLEMENTS I'm not reviewing any. But I'll say that there are LOTS of them, and they're kinda hard to find. I recommend "Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!" (the Ref's guide), "Rache Bartmoss' Brainware Blowout" (a cyberdeck/programs catalogue), and maybe one of the old splatbooks for the different roles. There are also "Chromebooks", which detail gear and toys and such, but I have a problem with those, which I'll get two after this next section called -- 6. SCORE! Let me tell you something, cousin, this bugger's PLAYABLE. I mean, BAM, you grab the book, ZING, you read it, FWISH, you make some characters, and ZOOM, you're playin'. (Those of you who just thought of the old 1960's "Batman" TV show deserve, for your impertinence and lack of culture, to eat the pork fritter sandwich I had for lunch, which I think is what's making my throat feel weird.) So the system's fast, right? Task resolution is easy to set and arbitrate. On TOP of that, you don't have to stick to the Roles provided in the book -- you can make up NEW ones, and the book even makes up two of 'em FOR you to show you how it's done! (Yeah, it adds the "Model/Actress" and "Politician" roles. Interesting choices, really -- I'd like to play a Model, that'd be fun. That's not sarcasm, BTW.) New skills, and special abilities, are a breeze to conjure up. Plus, the book contains some OK advice for Refs. It's just OK, though. Which leads me to The Promised Section: 7. SUCKS! CP2020 has a few things wrong with it. Because I'm an opinionated bastard, I'm going to tell you what they are, and why they're problems -- I'll even tell you how to fix 'em. A) First off, there's that whole idea that Roles get exclusive Special Abilities that other Roles can'tuse. That makes sense, to a point: a Rockerboy isn't going to have the kind of Authority abilities that a Cop has. Still, if you want a Solo who kills things AND can hack into a corporate mainframe... ...you're pooched. Why? Because the book states that non-Netrunners can use the Net for stuff, but they can't do all the cool intrusion stuff that Netrunners can. And why the hell can't my Corporate character (special ability: Resources) have a measure of Credibility, which is the Media's exclusive skill? Lots of suits get to the top by convincing people that they're right about a project/plan/strategy/whatever. Well, you could give the Corp character the Persuasion & Fast Talk skill, which is open for all. But then, what's the Media's Credibility good for? Plus, if you equate the Special Abilities to other skills, Interface still stands out as something of a super-power. THE FIX: Either refine the special abilities so that they are MORE special...or chuck 'em. Instead, give a role bonuses or character-point cost breaks on buying the skills that equate to the old Special Abilities, to reflect their expertise in the matter. B) The Interfacing rules are...well, screwy. Like I said, the modifiers to your rolls keep coming from different places, and often, the stats/skills that you'd THINK would be of use in a task aren't. A really, really good Netrunner with an interface of +10 gets to use that +10 for one thing and one thing only: anti-personnel attacks. That's it. Other combat, initiative, and miscellaneous 'Net tasks are bare of Interface. I dunno about you, but I think that if a Netrunner is good, and has A WHOLE SPECIAL ABILITY ALL TO HIMSELF, it oughtta do lots of good. THE FIX: Re-write the c-space rules, or use Interface for everything. c) My biggest pet peeve is more personal -- it's the game itself in practice. It's in the way that I see a lot of people playing it, and, in a sense, CP2020 and its supplements kind of encourage this mode of play above others. I refer to the "You've been hired to..." style of play, otherwise called the "Mission: Shopping List" Adventure. I've played CP2020 games where the objective was, essentially, to buy lots of stuff and use it on a mission for which we received tons and tons of cash. We identified the obstacles to a goal, bought stuff to overcome them, shot some people, and got paid. Snore. Granted, this was a Ref's decision, as far as the style of play. But, like I said, the CP2020 game materials sort of encourage that: the afore-mentioned adventure hooks are mostly of that type, where you're hired for a job. And the Chromebooks...sure, they're full of cool stuff, but isn't that kinda like saying, "You should use all this stuff in your CP game because that's what it's about"? Thanks to the Chromebooks, CP2020 is often run as a collection of mooks with big guns/cyberware/cars/blimps/programs/etc., with a disregard for the potential cinematic, dramatic tales that, as I said, the game SAYS it's all about. The designers cite "Casablanca" as a good template for a CP game -- I agree, it'd be very, very cool. But Rick and Ilsa did NOT, I'm pretty sure, go shopping for a top-of-the-line sniper rifle in order to hide some transit papers from the French. THE FIX: Ignore the shopping lists and tell a good story, damnit. Get the PCs involved in the steam, the neon, the sweat, the energy, the rain and the struggle inherent in the setting. Make it live! Let the stories be driven by the people in them. Let them make their own choices, and fumble around in a high-tech world of opression and hidden hope. I once ran a CP game, my fave so far, that started, roughly, like this: "There's a smell here in the alley -- blood, maybe, and something chemical. Like caseless ammo, burning away. Alley's full of steam, glowing green from the neon sign of a chinese take-out place on the corner. You notice then a dim shadow clawing at the steam, scraping against the wall, and a scratchy noise like a cheap radio. The shadow turns into a man in tattered flak armor. He nurses one of a hundred bullet wounds on his body, and falls flat on his face before you. In his right hand he clutches a black ceramic case, like a data cartridge, unmarked. He lets out a final breath, falls silent...the only sounds are an urgent, barking voice in German coming from his radio, and the far-off sound of sirens. That data cart is probably very important. Okay, guys, your move." Again, this is a personal matter. But I dislike the way in which CP2020 doesn't encourage the kind of hook I just laid out, but rather the "mission/shopping/pay-off" model that, honestly, gets stale. 7. SO? CP2020 is well worth your money. It's complete in one book, playable, fast and fun. It can stand some tinkering, but that's up to you. Buy it, yeah, I reccommend. But I ALSO reccommend snagging a book of Gibson short stories, a couple of Devo and Billy Idol CDs, a copy of "Miracle Mile" on video (teach yourself a bit about making people REALLY nervous REALLY fast), a plate of cheap supermarket sushi and GURPS Cyberpunk to go with it. There are two ways to go with this game. Munchkin gun-monkey with metal arms...or a deep, exciting, fast-paced and giddily nervous coaster-ride through the steamy, disposable future. "Okay, guys, your move." Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.