Cyberpunk 3.0 released

[Byrons_Ghost]

I noticed on Drivethru RPG that the newest edition has been released as a PDF:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=3209

From what review I saw, reactions seem to be mixed. There were two positive reviews, and two negative ones. The only common thread they all had was that everyone hated the "action figure" photo artwork, which apparently is intended to be the final artwork for the work.

All in all, I'll be waiting until I can look through a print copy at leisure do decided whether or not I want to make the switch. RTG's site says that the book is at the printers and they expect to have it back in a couple of weeks.

From what I've seen so far, this isn't something that I'm going to be jumping at. I never followed the Corp Wars metaplot, and I hated Cybergeneration. I'm intersted in some of the nano rules and the conversion to Fuzion (which I prefer at least for it's customizable character creation; don't know whether that'll be in the game or not). But the setting details just leave me really apathetic. And somethings, like shapeshifters and programs manifesting avatars (read: monsters) in the real world just strike me as way too D&D-ish for a dark future game.

Anyone picked the PDF up? Any thoughts or reviews?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I didn't much care for Cybergeneration either.

The combat system in the earlier versions was very nasty and based on "real life". Which only goes to show that real life makes for a crappy RPG. Pretty much everyone had firearms, when you shot you pretty much missed, and when you did get hit it hurt. Very grim & gritty.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that I don't have Cpunk 3.0.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Interestingly enough, from what I've seen on the Talsorian bbs people still think the game is too deadly. So that hasn't changed much. Personally, I always liked the deadliness of the combat myself, at least from a setting genre standpoint. Theoretically, it was supposed to make PCs think before going into combat. In practice, it generally just let to them using BFGs on people who don't see it coming, which may be realistic but not overly dramatic, unless you want to explore the moral nuances of your PCs being cold-blood assassins.

For that matter, something always bugged me about any cyberpunk-style game that's been published...

<HERESY>
There's way too much emphasis on guns. From what I've read in the literature, most of the authors have guns as extremely uncommon, and in the hands of only the military or the megacorps. Gibson, Stephenson, etc, pretty much all their protagonists had very little in the way of weaponry. Case's rental of a firearms in the early chapters of Neuromancer is a good example.

Firearms on the Street were such a rare commodity that one had to have special connections just to get one for a short time, and no one would have the money to purchase one because they were literally priceless. Street muscle like Molly didn't just get wired reflexes or razor fingers because it was cool. They did it because guns were impossible to get, so one had to rely on personal weapons and martial arts, and had to be deadly in close quarters as possible.

Then we have 2020, Shadowrun, and just about every other cyberpunk-based game out there, which features tons and tons of firearms which just about overshadow more key setting elements such as cyberware or the Net. Maybe it's something to do with RPG wargaming elements, I really don't know. But the games always felt more like paramilitary games with advanced tech than actual cyberpunk settings.

</HERESY>

At least, that how it seemed with the games as written. Individual GMs can still alter things in their home games. I've wanted to do a 2020 game without firearms for a while, but never really gotten around to it. Not too many 2020 players in my neck of the woods.

 

[Wil]

I used to be a huge CP2020 fan. I will not be getting this - the game travelled into it's own realm a long time ago and became it's own genre. It just happens to be a genre that I don't enjoy.

As for the PDF, it is missing a dozen or so "non-essential but cool" pages that the print version will have - and I'm still not aware of any notice of what the content of those pages are. That alone is enough reason to not buy the PDF.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Yeah, on the boards I'm seeing a lot of complaints about missing pages, typos, hyperlinks which don't work, layout problems, and the dreaded "Page XX".

It's too bad, really. You'd think a game set in a highly-computerized future would be able to take advantage of existing technology. :\

Oh, for those interested, I did find a list of likes/dislikes someone had which highlight a few of the game changes:

Good
====

I like the layout. Reading the stuff on a tablet PC is fun.

The Rules clean up most problems I had with the old CP while still being fast and resonably straightforward

I like the various In-Jokes 

Getting rid of the roles and offering talents is a major plus, allowing more freedom in chargen

Getting rid of the point sink (Attr) and the monster (Ref)

Redefing Hackers

One single point pool for building characters

Average
=======

The Background is nicely layed out and the groups clearly seperated. But this is the part I will most likely ignore like I did in CP2020 using the "Future History meets Cyberpunk" version we always used

The "artwork" is acceptable but I liked the stuff in the CP2020 books better

Typos and minor rules errors. Having access to a healthy dose of Common Sense it's not that difficult to get along

The restriction of gear to certain groups is debatable

No more humanity loss 

The fast combat system 

Bad
===

No prices for cyberwear etc

No old cyberware

No moneygiri conversions


What I would like to see
========================

A short list of old cyberware or a "play the 2020 world with 203x system" article. Sure I can do that on my own but an "official approval" would be nice.

Money to Character points chart for the above

 

[Wil]

No, you misunderstand (although what you mention is bad too). RTG intentionally left a dozen or so pages out of the PDF version, but has not indicated (that I'm aware of) what, exactly, the difference between the pring and PDF version is.

 

[Numion]

The combat system in the earlier versions was very nasty and based on "real life". Which only goes to show that real life makes for a crappy RPG. Pretty much everyone had firearms, when you shot you pretty much missed, and when you did get hit it hurt. Very grim & gritty.

It was a strange game. Surprising that we played it so much, there were stacks of characters made. A solo named just "Adolf" was a legend because he lasted so long - thinking back now it might've just been 5-6 sessions.

Or was he a legend because he used the Colt-Mauser shoulder fired cannon?

 

[Sir Brennen]

<HERESY>
There's way too much emphasis on guns. [...]
</HERESY>

Yeah, I had this same conversation with the Atlas Games guys years ago at GenCon (Atlas was one of the biggest producers of adventures for CP and CP2020) I mentioned I'd rather see more sci-fi concepts addressed in adventures, more of the "big ideas" brought up in the literature, because as it was, I too often felt I was just playing a game of "futuristic gang warfare."

For example, my favorite home-brewed adventure, which I've run with two different groups, combined the plots from Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers and the origianl Terminator movie. Yeah, there was a robotic bad guy and lots of gun fights, but the premise of one player being secretly from the future and the origin and ultimate goals of the "terminator" gave it a much different feel than a typical Cpunk game, and one I hope was closer to the source literature.

If I wanted to stick with a slightly futuristic, gritty military/gang-warfare/corporate espionage game, I would play Twilight 2000 or something.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I always thought the nonavailability of guns seemed a little off, though, in the source material mentioned above.

I mean, you can find a "street surgeon" to implant amazingly complicated technological wonders inside your nerves, but you can't produce pipe rifles?

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

No, you misunderstand (although what you mention is bad too). RTG intentionally left a dozen or so pages out of the PDF version, but has not indicated (that I'm aware of) what, exactly, the difference between the pring and PDF version is.

I saw where it was intentionally, I was just stating that a lot of people were complaining about it. "Unincluded" probably would have have been a better term than "missing."

It seems like the intention is for this PDF to be a limited-time, rough draft sale for those interested in a preview. That might be a good way to get some buzz going, except that a lot of people seem to think that the PDF is a little too rough.

At any rate, I'm generally not much of a PDF person anyway so I'd be waiting to look at the printer version no matter what. Mostly I was just surprised to find that this had been out for a week and no one seemed to know about it, especially since there's been some talk about the game on these boards in the past.