Im thinking about running a CP2020 game that is a mix of cowboy bebop and firefly...

I liked having some bits of Fuzion chargen for CP3 and some other rules bits though I don't care for the metaplot or increased emphasis on the setting which I don't use. Cared less for most of the art (a few pieces worked) and the text is hard to read in places. I did like that it could be used for Neal Stephenson though.

I really should check out the CP2020 books like their near orbit/deep space and the novel-based sourcebooks. I'd completely forgotten how little obvious cyber and how much space/orbital there was in Neuromancer until I recently reread it.

I want to run a game of post-humans starting in a dystopian megastructure. I'm currently thinking Burning Wheel with bits from the Under a Serpent Sun (the delusion and downward spiral) & Jihad setting pdfs + Spite from The Path of Spite pdf to chart growing apathy. Is that cyberpunk? It's a bit higher on the tech scale than most and most of the player characters would be in some way part of the problem but they'd still be against the established order. Still has some of the same themes.

The Night Land meets BLAME!. Necromunda mixed with Bladerunner taken to an extreme where the Sun is going out (from Humanity's excesses?), The Matrix played out in a Gormenghast Castle that's possibly grown beyond the Earth...



(caffeine is the killer of sleep)

If I were Mike Pondsmith I'd do as has already been suggested.  I'd do "Cyberpunk - Rebooted", and start from scratch.  Set it 30 years from now instead of 30 years from then.

Quote from: StumpydaveIf I were Mike Pondsmith I'd do as has already been suggested.  I'd do "Cyberpunk - Rebooted", and start from scratch.  Set it 30 years from now instead of 30 years from then.

  If he had proper balls he'd write a cyberpunk game and set it NOW.  But I think Pondsmith has been a remarkably poor custodian of the cyberpunk name.  The initial game showed a clear misunderstanding of the genre by effectively filtering it through the lens of fantasy and since then he's marched further and further from reality to the point that effectively the shit he's writing about has nothing to do with cyberpunk literature anymore and has just become a world-building vanity project for him to work on between spunking out lacklustre Xbox titles.

I think that cyberpunk looks best when seen through the lens of the 1980s, just as a Flash Gordon game without 1930s sensibilities would feel...um...

...hoverboardy.

Not sure I agree with that... I think the game's artwork was massively 80's but I don't think that's really true of other visualisations of it.  It's certainly not overly present in the literature.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!I think that cyberpunk looks best when seen through the lens of the 1980s, just as a Flash Gordon game without 1930s sensibilities would feel...um...

...hoverboardy.

So is cyberpunk (and indeed any genre of science fiction/fantasy) dependent on the time of it's birth for its tropes or can the identifying factors of the genre be updated in line with the changing times.

Does Pulp only work in the context of of the 20's and 30's or can we use Buckaroo Banzai as an example of pulp in the 80's?

If this is the case then surely the fear of technology's ability to outpace society's understanding is what makes Cyberpunk cyberpunk, as opposed to the fact that the futuretech proposed back in 1988 is now already obsolete.

Quote from: StumpydaveIf this is the case then surely the fear of technology's ability to outpace society's understanding is what makes Cyberpunk cyberpunk, as opposed to the fact that the futuretech proposed back in 1988 is now already obsolete.

I agree with this idea. While the usual visions of cyberpunk have been attached to an 80s aesthetic and view of the future, I think it sells the over all point of the genre (techno-shock) short if it can't escape that outdated convention.

Same themes, but a different approach. Maybe it isn't even cyberpunk anymore.

Yesterday, people worried about a mechanical society = Cyberpunk
Today, I think people worry about a future driven by genetic biological advances: Genetic screening and tailoring, bioweapons, cloning = Biopunk?

I've never been all that sure that cyberpunk was ever all about attitudes to technology.  I think it's more about social and political problems such as poverty and the gap between the rich and the poor and how even with the best technology you can't really solve that problem.

I don't think it's ever been about being afraid of technology, I think that's an aspect that was brought into the genre by games with their idea that you trade your humanity for the technology.

Post-cyberpunk is broadly positive about technology, suggesting that many of today's problems can be solved by new technologies just out of our reach.  There's also been a real attempt to embrace the can-do spirit and optimism of the internet.  but the stories these authors tell are ultimately human stories because while we might solve some problems with technology, the flaws in human nature will inevitably result in those problems taking on different shapes.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI've never been all that sure that cyberpunk was ever all about attitudes to technology.  I think it's more about social and political problems such as poverty and the gap between the rich and the poor and how even with the best technology you can't really solve that problem.

I guess I was reading my books pessimistically. I saw it as how the advances in technology made those issues worse by giving people even more excuses to ignore them. It not quite technology = bad, but technology yields consequences when you haven't taken the time to think about them.

Hmm... which books in particular are you thinking of?

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalHmm... which books in particular are you thinking of?

Damn it's been so long, you may have me right there. It was Gibson's books though. Neuromancer, Idoru, M.L. Overdrive. Maybe I should revisit them.

It's hard to nail down anything universal about cyberpunk, aside from agreeing to a small canon of core authors who were identified and identified themselves with the cyberpunk group at that time (John Shirley, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and Rudy Rucker are the top names; but that leaves out important writers like Bruce Bethke...I digress). There was a fair bit of cross-pollination and collaborations within that group.

Yeah, the 80's angle is purely a personal preference.  

See?  This is why I shouldn't be talking cyberpunk.