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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolf1066" data-source="post: 5199485" data-attributes="member: 88680">However, such characters as the Punisher or Vader are outside the norm for society as a whole.  Not even Tarantino portrays the whole world as a Law of The Gun badlands.Cyberpunk 2020 freely (and inaccurately) mixes Post-Apocalyptic genre society with Cyberpunk ethos.The central characters in most Cyberpunk literature are also "outside the norm" - but the rest of the world is not too different from the average citizens of today (get up, go to work, avoid that section of town, don't tangle with the gangs, don't tick off your employer etc.)  IOW, a Specialist's World (to quote Peter Christian), where many do not have weapons, weapons can be purchased but are regulated, certain people (Police etc) carry weapons routinely and gangs and other criminals do what they bloody like.Cyberpunk 2020 is written in such a way to convey the idea that everyone can run about willy-nilly and shoot anyone that annoys them - a "Duelist's World" where the "right" goes to whoever most accurately shoots first.  In that regard, it is genre-breaking.There's plenty of scope to play vigilantes, criminals, cops, gangsters, soldiers, corporate killers etc in a Specialist's World - but the consequences are different and it's handled differently than in a Duelist's World.  In a Specialist's World you have constraints even against killing in self defence - like "obligation to retreat" or "shoot to stop" or "non-escalation" rules, you need to have the law on your side and/or a damn good lawyer.It means that the average citizen does not pose much of a threat to the team - who are, as SilvercatMoonpaw2 notes, doing things that the average Joe does not do (and therefore presumably better trained than John and Jane Doe).It also means that the players can't just shoot the place up like a B-movie cop.@SilvercatMoonpaw2: you are quite correct and this is where the mechanics of CharGen come in.  In AD&D type games the characters start out pretty green and inexperienced.  In Cyberpunk, Traveller, Serenity and a number of other games, they have a background that gives them various skills and they can start out quite proficient in a number of areas - more than capable of defending themselves should the need arise.In theory, the characters are of the calibre to be doing the kind of risky stuff they're doing.The only major problem is that the players aren't always trained cops, soldiers, solos or hardened gangsters and therefore don't necessarily know how a true professional, such as they are playing, would proceed under various circumstances - that can blow away the realism.I'm sure ValhallaGH's ex Military Cyberpunk character would behave a lot more realistically than any of my players...</blockquote>

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