Cyberpunk 2020

Cyberpunk 2020 or CP2020 is a role-playing game published by R. Talsorian Games (also famous for various games based on Japanese anime and mecha) in 1990. It was the second edition of R. Talsorian's orignial Cyberpunk game (later known as Cyberpunk 2013) and was succeeded by Cyberpunk V3.0, also known as Cyberpunk 203x, in 2005. The Cyberpunk 2020 core rule book was re-released in 1993 with some revisions, including new artwork taken from the Italian edition of the game.

There was also a spin-off called Cybergeneration, originally published as a supplement to CP2020 in 1993, then as a stand-alone game in 1995. In Cybergeneration, players played teenagers with super-powers which they have developed as a result of infection by something called the 'Carbon Virus'.

Style

CP2020 is, obviously, a cyberpunk genre game, inspired by the literary fiction of William Gibson and others and films such as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The game was set in the 2020 (2013 in the original version, that is the year in which this entry is being written), when corporations rule the world, the USA has fractured and most of the population have been left to fend for themselves on the mean, dirty streets in the shadows of the glittering corporate towers. The philosophy of the game is summed up in 'The Rules' (not the actual rules), attributed to someone called 'Ripperjack', on page 4:

1) Style Over Substance

2) Attitude is Everything

3) Always take it to the Edge

4) Break the Rules.

'The Edge' is where the characters are meant to exist and operate, and so they are called Edgerunners. Scenarios usually involve the characters getting mixed up in some business which is either legal but deeply unethical, not strictly legal, or downright illegal. Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. Violence and mortal danger are central elements to Cyberpunk adventures.

Being a cyberpunk game, there are lots of disturbing concepts thrown into the mix, such as artificial intelligences, digital copies of people's personalities (trapped on corporate mainframes or loose in the internet), genetically engineered bio-weapons, human cloning, body-snatching and organ-harvesting, and individuals willingly replacing healthy body parts with cybernetic equivalents just to make themselves better computer hackers or killers.

In fact it is obviously assumed that characters will have cybernetic 'enhancements', since the rules for them are dealt with under character creation. There is a huge variety of cybernetic options, including such gems as the Mr Studd Sexual Implant ("All night, every night, and she'll never know" -- what, you mean she won't notice your whirring Terminator cock?) and the Cybersnake, a telescoping prehensile tentacle weapon that can be installed in "any orifice greater than one inch" -- one inch what? Deep? Wide? Are we talking about Anal Circumference? The only one inch-wide orifice in the human body is the mouth -- are they suggesting that you can have this thing up your arse or down your hog's eye? Needless to say, no-one I ever played with got that monstrosity.

The rulebook and supplements are written in a mixture of savvy cool, technobabble, amiable banter and deadpan seriousness. The writers thought up various colourful personalities to populate the cyberpunk world and illustrate its idiosyncrasies. An awful lot of them have names which are combinations of the words 'ripper', 'hand' and 'jack': Morgan Blackhand, Johhny Silverhand, Ripperjack, Ripperdoc etc.

Unlike its main contemporary rival Shadowrun, CP2020 does not cross over into fantasy, superheroic or high-science fiction genres (with the exception of Cybergeneration).

Rules

Each of the three editions used a similar rules system with some significant differences. The CP2020 ruleset is known as the Interlock system, whereas the third edition used the Fuzion system.

In CP2020/Interlock, each character has a set of statistics: Intelligence (INT), Reflexes (REF), Cool (CL), Technical Ability (TECH), Luck (LK), Attractiveness (ATT), Movement Allowance (MA) and Empathy (EMP). Stats have a minimum value of two and a maximum of 10. Stat scores could generated by several methods: the 'random' method of rolling 9D10 for a number of points, which are then assigned to the stats; the 'quick' method of rolling a D10 nine times, ignoring rolls of a 1, and assigning the scores as desired; and the 'cinematic' method whereby the Referee (the Games Master) decides how many points to give the players to spend on their stats.

Characters then have to choose a Role (a character class). Each role has a list of ten core skills, including a 'special ability' unique to that class. They have 40 points to assign to those skills, to a maximum skill level of 10. A player could take all ten skills to level four, or just four of them to level 10.

A character's level in their special ability indicates their place in the pecking order for their profession, and therefore how much money they start with. Money is important in the game (the world is meant to have believable economics), and the special ability is what makes your character tick, so players tend to take a high level in it at the expense of other skills. This leads to the paradox that higher-ranking members of each profession have inferior skills to lower-ranking ones.

After that, each character gets a further number of points, equal to the sum of their INT and REF scores, to spend on 'pick-up skills' not on their core list. This is where most characters get skills like Drive or Swim, or combat skills if they don't have any on their core list. This is also the first indication of which stats are most important in the game.

The character roles and their corresponding special abilities are:

Rockerboy (Charismatic Leadership) -- musicians-cum-political agitators

Solo (Combat Sense) -- gun bunnies

Netrunner (Interface) -- hackers

Techie (Jury Rig) -- grease monkeys

Medtechies (Med Tech) -- healers, ha ha!

Media (Credibility) -- journalists

Cop (Authority) -- er, cops

Corporate (Resources) -- business managers and executives

Fixers (Streetdeal) -- gun-runners and drug dealers

Nomads (Family) -- Mad Max-style road warriors

All skills are linked to a stat. Tasks are resolved by rolling a D10, adding your skill level and stat score plus any positive or negative modifiers for the situation, and trying to beat a difficulty number for the task (usually a multiple of five). A roll of a one on the D10 is an automatic failure, with a roll on the mishap (fumble) table to see is something bad happens to you. A roll of a 10 is an exploding die: You roll the dice again (ones are not automatic failures this time) and add the score to that of the first die. A second roll of a 10 means another re-roll. If you roll enough tens in a row you can succeed at any difficulty of task.

Combat starts with everyone rolling D10 plus their reflexes for initiative. Solos add their Combat Sense ability to the roll as well, which makes them far more powerful in combat than any other role. Shooting is a task like any other, although there are special rules for suppressing fire (hosing down an area) and some unusual weapons. Hand-to-hand combat is an opposed roll between the two enemies. Rounds are three seconds long, but characters can take multiple actions at a cumulative -3 modifier for every action after the first. This rule is wide open to abuse.

Weapon damage is rated as a number of D6s or D10s to roll, often plus or minus a few points. Armour and cover have a Stopping Power (SP) number, which is subtracted from weapon damage. Each character has a Body Type Modifier (BTM) from 0 to -4 or more based on their BOD. BTM is applied to damage that gets through cover and armour, but cannot reduce the damage to less than one.

Body locations are used for hits (so make sure you wear leg armour) which is either determined randomly or by a called shot to a location (with a corresponding penalty to hit). However, while locations have their own SP, damage is applied to a single wound track, with boxes to cross off for each point of damage taken. The boxes are arranged in blocks of four, which correspond to different wound states: Light, Serious, Critical, Mortal 0, Mortal 1 etc. When a character takes a Light wound, they have to make a Stun/Shock save (rolling under their BOD on D10) to keep from passing out or collapsing. At Serious, they must save against their BOD -1, at Critical against their BOD -2 and so on. At Mortal 0, the character also has to make a Death Save against their BOD to avoid dying, and then again every round until thay are stabilised by a First Aid task or they die. At the Mortal 1 wound state the Death Save is against BOD -1, at Mortal 2 against BOD -2 and so on.

Any hit to a limb or the head that does a total (after all modifiers) of more than eight points of damage either severs the limb or mangles it beyond repair, so that it will have to be amputated. The character has to make an immediate Death Save at Mortal 0. For head hits this means instant death, and damage from head hits are doubled (so wear a helmet!).

There are two problems with this rule. The first is that, since a 9mm handgun does 2D6+1 damage, a good roll can blow someone's leg off -- which probably doesn't happen very often in real life. The second problem is that a shot to the chest is less likely to kill or incapacitate you than one to the arm or leg. Another implication is that characters in CP2020 will soon end up with multiple cyberlimbs, which is perhaps intentional on the part of the authors.

The three most important stats in the game are Reflexes, Reflexes and Reflexes. After that comes Body Type, which helps you soak up damage, and this can be increased by up to 4 via a couple of bioware and graft implants. Intelligence is important because it gives you more starting skills. Furthermore, most of the skills are based on INT or REF, with hardly any based on Cool, Attractiveness or Body Type. ATT can be raised from two to ten by spending enough money at the plastic surgeon. Movement Allowance is useful but can be increased to 12 by buying the Speeding Bullet cyberlegs from one of the Chrome Books.

A high Empathy is important because having cybernetics installed gradually reduces this stat. When your EMP reaches zero you enter cyberpsychosis and go on an uncontrollable killing spree -- which probably describes your pre-cyberpsychosis lifestyle quite aptly -- and the GM takes control of your character. Basically, Solos start life with the personality of Oprah Winfrey and end up like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ed Gein. Just as in Call of Cthulhu Sanity loss is a great source of character attrition, in Cyberpunk it is Humanity loss.

Every character gets a number of points equal to their Luck stat every session, which they can use to modify die rolls.

The Net

A central concept of the cyberpunk genre is the internet and computer hacking. One article in R. Talsorian's referee's supplement Listen Up you Primitive Screwheads asserts that the internet is the minimum technology required for a cyberpunk setting. Not surprisingly, the chapter on Netrunning (hacking) is the longest in the CP2020 rulebook.

The game takes a 'classic' 1980s approach to the subject, with the internet described as a three-dimension grid (complete with fluorescent gridlines on a black background) through which move icons representing users and programmes. Servers are referred to as 'data-fortresses' protected by 'data walls' which the intrepid Netrunner knocks down with a programme like a medieval battering ram. Referees are encouraged to design datafortresses using blank crossword puzzle grids as maps.

A second line of defence is Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics (Black ICE -- straight outta Gibson) programmes, which can chase the hapless Netrunner back through the net to their 'deck' (laptop with a modem) and kill them with a surge of electricity down their phone line!

On the one hand the whole thing is laughable (like the 400 'Eurobucks' price tag for a mobile phone the size of a packet of fags on which you can't even send text messages), but on the other hand it's entirely in the spirit of the works of William Gibson, who didn't have a clue about the internet.

Supplements

A veritable plethora of supplements were produced by R. Talsorian, including splatbooks for the different character roles, sourcebooks for Europe, the UK, the Pacific Rim, orbital space and various major corporations, and the four Chrome Books, containing new equipment (often taken from articles in the game's companion Interface magazine). In keeping with the game's focus on high technology and ultra-violence, the Maximum Metal book introduced rules for designing all sorts of military vehicles and powered armour (PA) suits. The last supplements were the Firestorm campaign series, which ended with the destruction of the CP2020 world. This paved the way for V3.0, which did not surface for another seve or eight years, by which time the players had moved on.

Conclusion

Cyberpunk 2020 was a great, classic role-playing game. It had both style and substance. It was far more popular than its sequel, and many websites dedicated to the game, featuring homebrew rules and source material, are still active on the net. CP2020 deserves a seat in the pantheon of tabletop role-playing games. In the wake of the development of a computer game based on R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk, a new edition of the game, entitled Cyberpunk 2077, is in the pipeline. Fingers crossed!