Cyberpunk rpg

[ArgonianGamer]

My friends and I wanted to do a campaign but don't feel like doing D&D. We were looking for some kind of cyberpunk style tabletop rpg. Any ideas will help.

[SunderedWorldDM]

Getting the obvious out of the way: Shadowrun Shadowrun Shadowrun.

Were you looking for higher crunch or lower crunch? Do you want to make your own setting or use a prepackaged one?

[lightningcat]

Shadowrun is the big cyberpunk game anymore, although the retro future of the Cyberpunk RPG is horribly fun if you can find a copy. There are a few other old school cyberpunk games, such as Cyberspace, but you take your chances with games from the 80s.
Corperation is modern take on the cyberpunk genre. No magic, although there is at least some psionics.
The Sprawl is a PbtA cyberpunk game, although that might be a bit of a shift if you are not familiar with that style of game.
Corporia is King Arthur's knights reincarnated into a cyberpunk future. I only the quickstart, so who knows if it any good.
Eclipse Phase is very Altered Carbon, but with more existential horror.
Of course there are the various adaptions for the different generic games, be it FATE, GURPS, Savage Worlds (Interface Zero).
And while it is not finished, the human book for my Transformer game can be tweaked to be a cyberpunk game with only a little effort. Mostly cause I borrowed liberally from those sources to make it.

[Knaight]

How conventional do you want? There's the Cyberpunk 20XX line on one side, and the other goes all the way to Remember Tomorrow.

[LibraryOgre]

There's always Savage Worlds and Interface Zero, but a LOT depends on what you want your cyberpunk to be able to do, and what level of crunch you're comfortable with. Personally, I love Shadowrun's mix of magic and machine, but even in my crunchiest of days, I found it to be too crunchy.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

I'd also suggest the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG/Genesys (a generic system based on the same ruleset). It has fairly extensive rules for modern/futuristic play, including cybernetics, vehicles and hacking. The supernatural and space opera elements are easily excised or refluffed. And IMO it's a much better ruleset than most of the actual cyberpunk rpgs out there, and I find it's a good balance between rules-light and rules-heavy.

Additionally, there is a Genesys cyberpunk sourcebook (for the Android setting) coming out... soonish?

[Anonymouswizard]

There's always Savage Worlds and Interface Zero, but a LOT depends on what you want your cyberpunk to be able to do, and what level of crunch you're comfortable with.

IIRC there's also a Fate version.

@OP: as has been said it really depends on how you like your cyberpunk. I personally adore Eclipse Phase and it's brand of modern cyberpunk, although in my opinion even the 2e system stinks (my favorite version is the official Fate hack, which is the only one in which resleeving is relatively painless).

On the classic side the two titans are Cyberpunk 2013/2020 and especially Shadowrun (partially because it mixes in D&D style fantasy).

There is also the option of using a generic system and your favourite Cyberpunk sourcebook. Shout out to Transhuman Space here, for including enough GURPS rules to make the book technically standalone.

[Knaight]

IIRC there's also a Fate version.


If you're thinking of Psi-Punk (cyberpunk with psionics) it's actually Fudge. If you're thinking of the various micro settings (little 10000ish word settings) there's a few that are cyberpunk adjacent.

[Anonymouswizard]

If you're thinking of Psi-Punk (cyberpunk with psionics) it's actually Fudge. If you're thinking of the various micro settings (little 10000ish word settings) there's a few that are cyberpunk adjacent.

I was talking specifically Interface Zero.

[Beleriphon]

Keep in mind for Cyberpunk 20XX its a ludicrously convoluted game with modifiers to attack like what hat your wearing, combined with how far away you are, the weather, the time of day, and if you are dancing a jig at the same time.

[Rhedyn]

I personally would go Savage Worlds with Nova Praxis, but that only has cyberpunk elements.

Interface Zero is also pretty good and works as a "kitchen sink" cyberpunk settings. IZ0 also has tons of different system options if Savage Worlds isn't your thing.

[Nifft]

Eclipse Phase is very Altered Carbon, but with more existential horror.


Eclipse Phase is neat. Captures a lot of the cyberpunk tropes that I enjoy and throws them into space, with post-apocalyptic exploration and alien post-apocalyptic xeno-archaeology too.

[LibraryOgre]

Eclipse Phase and Altered Carbon are part of the newer cyberpunk (which I usually line as starting with Snow Crash, though I know it began earlier), which retains a lot of the punk aspect, but tends to be more transhuman... it's not that technology will make us less human and disconnected, but that technology will help redefine humanity and "person" in weird and wonderful ways. Altered Carbon (the book; I haven't seen the series) plays with physical sex, even though the gender of the characters remains largely unchanged, and has autonomous AIs running their body which is a hotel, to say nothing of the rampant genetic engineering that happen in Broken Angels (coupled with cybernetics in Woken Furies). Eclipse Phase has a wide variety of different people... natural-born Jovians, the genetically fixed masses, construct bodies of various types, plus uplifted animals and AI.

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 20xx are much more old style, where technology's cost is taken out of the psyche.