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Author Topic: What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model? And Shadowrun is NOT Cyberpunk.  (Read 26466 times)

ArrozConLeche

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According to a conversation posted in TBP:

Quote
Cyberpunk wanted to model Case and Molly making love in a coffin hotel, it wanted to model Michael Pare and Diane Lane kissing under a street lamp, and it wanted to model some guy welded into his car becoming more inhuman as he quested for revenge while the Knight Sabers hunted him down. But it didn't make that imperative in the game, possibly because it didn't know how, and the emergent play that resulted is the Nakitomi theft from Die Hard and the Sense/Net run, over and over again.


I call bullshit. I don't see anything at all in its core about being that. I see rules for firefights, cyberdecking, etc. Hell, I don't even see what is being claimed above in the fluff surrounding it.

Am I blind?

Also ,  Shadowrun is science  fantasy .
« Last Edit: February 28, 2016, 06:12:30 AM by ArrozConLeche »

crkrueger

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2015, 03:13:15 PM »
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827423
According to a conversation posted in TBP:



I call bullshit. I don't see anything at all in its core about being that. I see rules for firefights, cyberdecking, etc. Hell, I don't even see what is being claimed above in the fluff surrounding it.

Am I blind?


No, that's just a butthurt storygamer/wannabe novelist.
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Gabriel2

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2015, 03:19:21 PM »
Pondsmith has stated this kind of thing for many years (decades even).  If you're looking for a print example, then look at Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads (the GM advice book for Cyberpunk).  He also does a brief aside about it in Cybergeneration, and has posted a few times online about his dissatisfaction with how players made Cyberpunk about "James Bond meets the Six Million Dollar Man" rather than what he envisioned.
 

MrHurst

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2015, 03:27:29 PM »
It's funny, I always saw cyberpunk in general being a great way to highlight the absurd amount of damage a small group of people could manage with creative applications of technology. I've found almost nothing from period stuff or what's followed trying to imitate what cyberpunk became that does it. It's all neon and corporate overlords, not one competent person who's decided something should be a crater now.

But in more acceptable by other people, cyberpunk is supposed to be the hyper violent, globalized, humanity as a commodity future we were supposedly promised back in the late 80s. Only all the hype was for more or less nothing. Except the globalization, that's kinda kicked the US in the pants.

crkrueger

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2015, 03:27:40 PM »
Quote from: Gabriel2;827432
Pondsmith has stated this kind of thing for many years (decades even).  If you're looking for a print example, then look at Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads (the GM advice book for Cyberpunk).  He also does a brief aside about it in Cybergeneration, and has posted a few times online about his dissatisfaction with how players made Cyberpunk about "James Bond meets the Six Million Dollar Man" rather than what he envisioned.


You're comparing apples and oranges.  Pondsmith criticized players for not making more of their characters and campaigns.  The quoted poster is blaming a lack of metagame narrative rules to deal with things like relationships and dramatic personality arcs.

There's no Vampire game you can make that couldn't turn into Trenchcoats & Katanas if that's where the players and GM want to take it.  Same thing with a Cyberpunk game where the players want to go to Pink Mohawk or Heat/Ronin.  

You can do a Silverhand/Alt, Molly/Case whatever campaign with Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun, I've done it.  Hell, the Lifepath system in Cyberpunk 2020 alone gives you enough beats for a whole season of cable tv if you wanna go there.  Not a single OOC metagame storycreating mechanic needed.

The game "didn't know how" - Christ what a fucking load of shit.
Even the the "cutting edge" storygamers for all their talk of narrative, plot, and drama are fucking obsessed with the god damned rules they use. - Estar

Yes, Sean Connery's thumb does indeed do megadamage. - Spinachcat

Isuldur is a badass because he stopped Sauron with a broken sword, but Iluvatar is the badass because he stopped Sauron with a hobbit. -Malleus Arianorum

"Tangency Edition" D&D would have no classes or races, but 17 genders to choose from. -TristramEvans

ThatChrisGuy

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2015, 03:28:30 PM »
I wonder if the designers of the White Wolf games got equally butthurt that almost everyone used Storyteller for Trenchcoat-and-Katana Supers.
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crkrueger

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2015, 03:31:48 PM »
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;827436
I wonder if the designers of the White Wolf games got equally butthurt that almost everyone used Storyteller for Trenchcoat-and-Katana Supers.


Yeah, Justin Achili certainly did.  Also, supposedly the writer's disdain is behind all the original WW adventures being Diablerie dungeoncrawls.
Even the the "cutting edge" storygamers for all their talk of narrative, plot, and drama are fucking obsessed with the god damned rules they use. - Estar

Yes, Sean Connery's thumb does indeed do megadamage. - Spinachcat

Isuldur is a badass because he stopped Sauron with a broken sword, but Iluvatar is the badass because he stopped Sauron with a hobbit. -Malleus Arianorum

"Tangency Edition" D&D would have no classes or races, but 17 genders to choose from. -TristramEvans

ArrozConLeche

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2015, 03:36:33 PM »
Quote from: Gabriel2;827432
Pondsmith has stated this kind of thing for many years (decades even).  If you're looking for a print example, then look at Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads (the GM advice book for Cyberpunk).  He also does a brief aside about it in Cybergeneration, and has posted a few times online about his dissatisfaction with how players made Cyberpunk about "James Bond meets the Six Million Dollar Man" rather than what he envisioned.


all I remember of Cybergeneration was how the grownups had fucked up the revolution, blah blah, and an introductory setup where the characters would get humilliated by a pretty boy who was also a fighting god.

other than that, i don't recall the game being about those things in the quote (i.e. romance). do you have actual quotes?

Future Villain Band

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2015, 03:46:23 PM »
Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;827436
I wonder if the designers of the White Wolf games got equally butthurt that almost everyone used Storyteller for Trenchcoat-and-Katana Supers.


As the butthurt storygamer/wannabe novelist who wrote the above, that's my point, and I specifically mention WW later on.  The play that people latch onto at tables is often quite different than designers intended when they started writing the thing.  

I'm the biggest fucking fan of Cyberpunk there is, starting from the day the Big Black Box hit my shelves, and over the years I've owned every sourcebook and run years worth of campaigns, and I've read shitloads of stuff by all of the people involved.  Hell, start by looking at the recommended references.  Cyberpunk was all about heart and rebellion, according to the books, but what a lot of people used it for was different.  That's my sole point.  

Now, butthurt overly defensive gamers who don't know their shit may choose to argue with me because they perceive some kind of new front opening in their timeless bullshit battle against storygamers, but since that is largely something occurring in their imaginations,  I don't need to respond to it, anymore than I'd want to address somebody else's tinfoil hat paranoid fantasies.

ArrozConLeche

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2015, 03:49:20 PM »
What I want to know is where you find that it ", it wanted to model Michael Pare and Diane Lane kissing under a street lamp"?

I don't see it, and maybe like so many gamers, I just missed it?

Future Villain Band

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #10 on: April 22, 2015, 03:49:59 PM »
Quote from: CRKrueger;827435


The game "didn't know how" - Christ what a fucking load of shit.


The game is a bog-standard Stat + Skill + die against target number game.   It was decent game design, but as time went on, R. Tal definitely added more rules for modeling what it wanted players to use to model genre.  (Witness Mekton Zeta's timeless and awesome young hotshot/grizzled veteran mods to character generation, for example, or just about anything in Castle Falkenstein.)  

I strongly suspect, given what I took as the game's intentions, and especially the plot hooks in the Lifepath system, that if the game were done today, there'd be far more mechanical support for things like doomed romances or your girlfriend being turned into an AI.

Exploderwizard

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #11 on: April 22, 2015, 04:06:42 PM »
Having played with Friday Night Firefights when it first came out I think it wanted to model those who have good armor surviving combat and those without screaming and dying.

It succeeded.
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Panjumanju

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #12 on: April 22, 2015, 04:10:31 PM »
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827444
What I want to know is where you find that it ", it wanted to model Michael Pare and Diane Lane kissing under a street lamp"?

I don't see it, and maybe like so many gamers, I just missed it?


I would have loved a game that emulates Michael Pare and Diane Lane kissing under a street lamp. I love "Streets of Fire"!

I agree with you, though, I don't see how this applies to Cyberpunk 2020...

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Gabriel2

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #13 on: April 22, 2015, 04:10:59 PM »
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827444
What I want to know is where you find that it ", it wanted to model Michael Pare and Diane Lane kissing under a street lamp"?

I don't see it, and maybe like so many gamers, I just missed it?


Streets of Fire.

I no longer have Cybergeneration, but I know he says in that book he had wanted CP2020 to be more like Streets of Fire than what it is.

The two mechanics which are in Cyberpunk which could be interpreted as trying to enforce the game type Pondsmith wanted are:

Lifepath.  It was borrowed straight from Mekton, and it works just as well here.  The catch is that RPGers, being what RPGers are, ignored all these charts in favor of their friendless familyless mercenary characters who just killed shit all the time with no emotion.

Empathy.  This one utterly failed.  It was supposed to model characters losing their humanity and falling prey to cyberpychosis.  The third chapter of the original AD Police seems to have directly inspired this one.  However, that's not what it ended up doing.  Instead the cyber-whores maxed out this stat so they could max out their cyberware.  At best, it just put a limit on cyberware.  At worst, it did the exact opposite of it's intended goal.
 

Christopher Brady

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What did Cyberpunk 2020 want to really model?
« Reply #14 on: April 22, 2015, 04:11:29 PM »
Let me find the Cyberpunk 2077 video that Pondsmith released in conjunction of the video game (and apparent reboot of the pen and paper.)

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYxt7cwDk4E

Too long didn't watch:  Future Noir.
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