Quote from: Christopher Brady;887218The problem with that, was that the human brain cannot process information that fast.  VR Hacking would be as fast as it is today.

LOL I didn't say it made sense! Just saying that's what the thought was "back inna day."

I think Shadowrun and CP2020 both attempted to do the same thing, in trying to capture Gibson's view of cyberspace. Worked great in books. Heck even as a standalone item in CP2020 it worked pretty nicely - but as implemented in both games? It was horrible. Which is why you hear over and over how most tables just NPC'd all the netrunning stuff.

Internet Zero realized this and just did away with all the fluff, making it just straight-up dice-rolls. Which is what it should'a been. But y'know...

Quote from: tenbones;887233LOL I didn't say it made sense! Just saying that's what the thought was "back inna day."

I think Shadowrun and CP2020 both attempted to do the same thing, in trying to capture Gibson's view of cyberspace. Worked great in books. Heck even as a standalone item in CP2020 it worked pretty nicely - but as implemented in both games? It was horrible. Which is why you hear over and over how most tables just NPC'd all the netrunning stuff.

Internet Zero realized this and just did away with all the fluff, making it just straight-up dice-rolls. Which is what it should'a been. But y'know...

Oh, I agree completely.  It was a clunky system hammered on, without actually thinking about what it would do the game's pacing.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;886910Gibson (who, if not created the idea of VR hacking, certainly seeded the CP literature with it) has said that he wasn't really a computer guy and he was more creating something cool than predicting how computers would evolve.

In fact, I know Gibson wrote all his novels on a typewriter until at least the late 90s (maybe later) and didn't even own a computer until at least that same time.

Quote from: RPGPundit;888027In fact, I know Gibson wrote all his novels on a typewriter until at least the late 90s (maybe later) and didn't even own a computer until at least that same time.

as i guy who grew up in the computer age that makes a lot of sense to me
then again i find a type writer easier on my eyes

Locally there has been a shift in what gets the most play. When I was in college it was Cyberpunk (1e then 2020). We did a few games of Shadowrun, but went back to Cyberpunk. Now there is a Shadowrun group but I don't think anybody has even heard of 2020.

Cyberpunk as a genre feels kind of dated and late '80s to me anyway. It has lost its edge.

Shadowrun is more urban fantasy noir than cyberpunk.

And VR Decking/Netrunning was a bad idea from the start for game play. The ultimate in split the party. One player/character is off in cyberspace doing cool stuff their (at the speed of thought, so not even the time scale is in sync) while the rest of the group is in meatspace doing their thing and the poor referee is stuck trying to cut back and forth between them and keep the game moving and involving.

I used a typewriter throughout high school till 96. Computers became a thing in 1997 at the university. The PC age was a thing that I came into late comparatively. Of course, I was that guy who played Command & Conquer on Playstation never knowing that the game was so much better with a mouse until far later as one repercussion of this late adoption of PCs.

In the end Shadowrun did cyberpunk better than Gibson.

Am I the only guy who actually really enjoyed the Netrunning parts both in SR and Cyberpunk, and actually saw it managed in the former (in 5e though) without a hitch in play? I see it not terribly different from splitting a party mid - combat if someone enters a Dream Realm to battle their enemies or something like that.

Quote from: Rincewind1;888824Am I the only guy who actually really enjoyed the Netrunning parts both in SR and Cyberpunk, and actually saw it managed in the former (in 5e though) without a hitch in play? I see it not terribly different from splitting a party mid - combat if someone enters a Dream Realm to battle their enemies or something like that.

I did enjoy it. But the first few times I ran CP2020 I didn't have a handle on how to integrate it better into my game without *always* having to split the party up every single time my lone netrunner decided to go "do stuff" in the net.

The more we got into it - the more time it took from everyone else and the game in general.

I finally figured out that you don't need to really be a netrunner to do significant things in the net. A few of the non-netrunners were expert programmers, so they could tag along (just not use the menu effectively) but they participated.

Even then - it still ate up too much time do so things that could be handled more efficiently. Or as most people I know did - just NPC it.

Quote from: Omega;888817In the end Shadowrun did cyberpunk better than Gibson.

Galactus strike you down for your blasephemy.

Quote from: Rincewind1;888824Am I the only guy who actually really enjoyed the Netrunning parts both in SR and Cyberpunk, and actually saw it managed in the former (in 5e though) without a hitch in play? I see it not terribly different from splitting a party mid - combat if someone enters a Dream Realm to battle their enemies or something like that.

My players enjoyed it.  We usually didn't "go to another room while everyone plays Xbox".

People roleplaying characters whose lives, reputation, and livelihood depended on what the Decker/Hacker was doing...actually were interested in what the Decker/Hacker was doing.  So odd...

Quote from: Omega;888817In the end Shadowrun did cyberpunk better than Gibson.

Well, we know now that since Cyberpunk literally means "Only that written by Gibson (except all the mystical parts...and the Space AI thing)" well then what you said can't be true.

Quote from: Rincewind1;888824Am I the only guy who actually really enjoyed the Netrunning parts both in SR and Cyberpunk, and actually saw it managed in the former (in 5e though) without a hitch in play? I see it not terribly different from splitting a party mid - combat if someone enters a Dream Realm to battle their enemies or something like that.

That's pretty much the part that people are complaining about. One character goes off and does stuff (and may in fact have to be almost exclusively dedicated to that, if they are built at the same 'level' as the rest of the group) while everyone else sits and waits to find out what happens in that side venture. If a fantasy game had one character who routinely went off to do Dream Realm battle and the other characters weren't involved (and potentially that one character wouldn't have the build points to be good at non-Dream Realm activities), I'm sure it would draw the same complaints.

I haven't played either SR or CP recently enough, but my hazy memory says that the actual in-the-VR-net minigame wasn't in any way a bad game. Kind of a mini-dungeoncrawl with enemy programs/monsters you either evaded or defeated, right?

Quote from: Rincewind1;888824Am I the only guy who actually really enjoyed the Netrunning parts both in SR and Cyberpunk, and actually saw it managed in the former (in 5e though) without a hitch in play? I see it not terribly different from splitting a party mid - combat if someone enters a Dream Realm to battle their enemies or something like that.

No we liked it in our games too.  There were big parts where the mage would be off doing astral stuff, the face would be doing social stuff, and the samurai would be out procuring gear.  So fair was kind of fair that the decker get their turn.  I'm not sure how people were running it such that only the decker was eating up time all by their lonesome.  Maybe everyone was friendly with everyone else's contacts and were never jumpy at having a whole team of highly skilled and heavily armed runners at the meet?

Someone liked the netrunning part enough to make a PC game based on it. Decker. I did some sprite work for it way back.