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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4122668" data-attributes="member: 13892">After some thinking on this, I'll have to go with Dark Future. I have yet to find a game that captures the desperate feel of Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or the gritty, dark, noir of the film adaptation (Blade Runner, folks). Shadowrun has some dark -- but it's also littered with the highest of High Fantasy tropes, oozes magic in a way that would make Tolkien blush, and is hopelessly 1980s. The latest edition remedied some of this last bit, though not enough to make the setting a feasible future, IMHO. Regardless, it's still High Fantasy with magical technology at the end of the day and, while fun, that's not what I want out of a Dark Future RPG. I want a. . . uh. . dark RPG set, you know, in the future (not this fantasy world past as future stuff). SLA Industries tries far too hard to be serious, to the point that it's more a satirical look at the genre than anything else. It basically took Neuromancer, updated it for the 1990s, and then cranked the Wahoo up until the knob broke off. It's much like Underground but with more Gothic imagery and less political commentary. Until you know about The Truth it isn't much more than that and, once you do, the game feels real incomplete as written. Cyberspace. Honestly, if it weren't for the horrid system, this would probably be my Dark Future RPG of choice. But, again, that horrid system. For some reason, Rolemaster has never bothered me in a fantasy context but the rigid classes, levels, and critical hit charts all bugged the beejeesus out of me in a Cyberpunk sourcebook. And, later, when the sourcebooks started to veer into Mad Max territory, the line lost me entirely. Cyberpunk 2020 is stupid fun and a game that I love but it's not Dick's dystopian future, instead it's Brian De Palma's 1980s Super Badassitude in Black and White. Big guns, lots of chrome, Samurai, Yakuza, and other assorted mobsters with cell phones the size of shoe boxes and suits that would make 1970s street pimps green with envy. And, man, it rocks for that. Hardcore. But it's not the deadly serious, dystopian future that I wish it were. Cyberpunk 3.0 was a horrible, horrible, let down seeded with a wealth of truly bad humor (e.g, Disney-inspired mecha pilots and mechs) and stuff that wasn't remotely Cyberpunk as the genre is generally defined (errr. . . Disney-inspired mecha pilots and mechs). The asstastic Barbie photos as stand-ins for art pretty much cinched it for me along with the bad writing and pile of errors. Cyberpunk 3.0 is the Ultima IX of Cyberpunk RPGs.</blockquote>

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