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View Full Version : DM Help What makes a cyberpunk game fun/enjoyable?



OttoVonBigby
2016-05-03, 11:40 AM
I'm in the verrrrry early stages (like "not even sure I'll do this"-early) of planning a cyberpunk setting, in which I would DM small groups, almost certainly using d20 Modern. It would be a setting of my own design, incorporating concepts mainly from cyberpunk as seen in film and literature.

Having never DMed a campaign of this style, I'm curious to hear what people's experiences have been. I want the game to have the right *feel*. So, what in your opinion/experience makes a cyberpunk game fun?

(And don't say "Not using d20 Modern." That discussion can wait for another day.)

Comet
2016-05-03, 01:34 PM
A huge city with lots of personality.

Lots and lots of software and hardware.

Lots and lots of very, very poor people.

A few people who are filthy rich.

Rockers, idols and punks.

One or two AI gods to spice things up, maybe.

I think that's most of it for me.

LordFluffy
2016-05-03, 01:38 PM
A balance between "sense of always being one gunshot away from terminal failure" vs. "I am the ghost that topples giants"

Characters should always be on the edge, yet have a path to victory before them. That combined with the contrast between the high tech and dead simple, the ultra poor with the pristine rich, and using really impressive technology and tossing it like other people use tissues is what typifies the genre for me.

JAL_1138
2016-05-03, 04:30 PM
To some extent, the lawless underground has to seem like a viable, interesting, exciting world you'd be willing to give up normalcy and/or personal safety and/or personal comforts to live in. 99.9% of the time, cyberpunk PCs are criminals of some variety, or are otherwise on the fringes. You don't want the crushing poverty or brutality or misery of the slums to drive all the cool factor out of it with bleakness. It has to be the sort of world where you'd still want to go even if it meant living in a corrugated-tin shack in an abandoned parking garage near some buried utility lines and fiber cables you could leech off of.

Along those lines, some way to reintroduce or preserve anonymity. Some way to keep your DNA from being tracked at the scene, your fingerprints from being collected, your online presence from being tracked to the point where you can't get away with anything, to keep all that future-CSI stuff from catching up to you and making the life of a typical 'runner impossible. It sort of goes from 'punk to dystopian if you can't get away with anything ever unless you overthrow the authorities before they can drop the hammer and completely upend the social order.

Simsimillia
2016-05-03, 08:25 PM
Common themes in Cyberpunk apart from the obvious cool tech and such is how Capitalism and Consumerism was taken to it's absolute extreme, to the point where Mega Corporations are at least as powerful as Nations if not even more powerful or have completly replaced them. The gap between Rich and Poor is usually gigantic.

Another common theme is conspiracies, there is usually several conspiracies and plots and so going on.

As far as I'm aware many Cyberpunk RP Games (most notably Shadowrun I guess) have you play an outlaw or criminal of some kind. Why not go the complete opposite route and have them start as part of a MegaCorp. They could be a specialised team to keep the company save from espionage and attacks from the mentioned outlaws. Maybe they discover a conspiracy within their Corp and suddenly find targets painted on their heads or something like that.

DigoDragon
2016-05-03, 08:32 PM
As far as I'm aware many Cyberpunk RP Games (most notably Shadowrun I guess) have you play an outlaw or criminal of some kind. Why not go the complete opposite route and have them start as part of a MegaCorp. They could be a specialised team to keep the company save from espionage and attacks from the mentioned outlaws. Maybe they discover a conspiracy within their Corp and suddenly find targets painted on their heads or something like that.

There was a Shadowrun game I saw with the premise that the players were cops on the night watch. It's like still dealing with the corruption and conspiracies, but from the other side of the law (though not necessarily the clean good guys as crooked police officer was an option).

Vknight
2016-05-05, 08:29 PM
What has been noted.
Cyberpunk is a genre with a lot of cool ideas within it.
Further I got to say this

Gyroscopic body parts and other minor science fiction elements are awesome.
I remember a Shadowrun game with a machine gun in a penile implant and it was gyroscopic for added fun.

RazorChain
2016-05-05, 10:06 PM
Cyberpunk is a feeling, it is high tech low life dystopian future. Things are bleak, dark, hopeless and corrupt and then you add a dash of paranoia. Mega corporations have profited at the cost of a weak central goverment, the gap between the haves and have nots has become astronomical. The punk element is the sense of rebellion against the status quo or just to stick it to the man.

And of course there are body modifications, people who are ready to chop off their arms to replace it with cold gleaming metal. The disassociation from your humanity when you become more of a machine.

If you incorporate those things then you have yourself cyberpunk.

As for the fun part: Get more toys, more metal and stick it to the man!

Misereor
2016-05-06, 05:43 AM
Gyroscopic body parts and other minor science fiction elements are awesome.
I remember a Shadowrun game with a machine gun in a penile implant and it was gyroscopic for added fun.

"It's all in the hips! It's all in the hips!"
- /gratuitous Happy Gilmore reference

DigoDragon
2016-05-06, 08:19 AM
One part of the cyberpunk feeling that my players really got into was all the fun, colorful slang they used. Made up future words (or maybe stuff they borrowed from tv). Shadowrun has stuff like Chummer, Drek, Suit, Trog (there are entire guide books you can find online with terms). It makes conversations sound more authentic when everyone gets into it, and can be a much better alternative than real modern swear words should you be gaming in a public place. :smallwink:

TV can inspire some slang too. I remember that Batman Beyond had a few interesting words we borrowed (Slag, Shway).