Finally started up my latest Cyberpunk campaign with (mostly) new players and even more house rules along with alternative rules pinched and modified from various online resources (Blackhammer, Ocelot et al) and alternative sources (Cyberpunk 2013, Ianus Games' Dark Metropolis etc) - and a number of other mods.
The new character sheets look quite interesting with tick boxes for stress and fatigue points (a la Ianus Games), CP2013 wound status and hit locations/percentages loosely based on CDC reports of actual firearms assaults (so D100, natch.)
Every time I've GM'ed Cyberpunk 2020 I've tweaked and modified something as I find the source has a number of flaws and I'm constantly finding more the more I GM.
Humanity Loss? The first thing to go ages back. Roles and skill sets? Abandoned ages back in favour of Ocelot's system. Hit locations? Tried a number of systems and now trying my own. Task resolution? Came up with a D20 system based on the difficulty levels from Cyberpunk and 6 levels of "proficiency" - "Untrained", "Novice", "Adept", "Expert", "Guru", "Lesser God".
Previously, I based a character's "proficiency" on STAT + Skill points + relevant DMs (from Ocelot's advantages and disadvantages) but the problems were: some characters' stats were such that they were automatically at "Adept" before taking any levels in the skills and it meant that characters who should be better at something than others were not because of where the divisions between proficiencies lay.
It seemed to me that it was ludicrous that a person with a year's experience/training could be far better at a skill than someone with 4 years' experience just by having sufficiently higher stats.
That's an inherent flaw in the Cyberpunk system - REF 10 + Drive 1 has an advantage over REF 6 + Drive 3 any day, regardless of how the CP2020 book might describe the skills - and it took adding the figures together and clumping them into "proficiencies" to realise it.
Sure, a person with higher dexterity will be better at fiddly work than a person with lower dexterity - but not to the degree that it equates to years more experience.
I wanted to change the system so that the number of years experience or training actually meant something but that still factored in the characters' natural abilities so this time, I decided to expand out Cyberpunk's own attribute bonuses for BOD to cover all attributes except LUCK (which is spent to bump up die rolls): -2 for 2, -1 for 3 or 4, 0 for 5-7, +1 for 8 and 9, +2 for 10 and +3 for 11 and 12 (superhuman, if the attribute can be boosted above human maximum). No attribute can be boosted above 12... Munchkins: Read it and weep!
I then had the proficiency levels purchased with SPs during character creation - 1 point for Novice, 2 for Adept and so on up to five points for Lesser God (but with a GM's limit of 3 points ("Expert") for any skill). Available skill points as per Ocelot's alternative character generation.
After this modification, two "Experts" in a given skill have both expended the same number of skill points (3) to reflect the same amount of training/experience but the one with a relevant stat of 10 is at a +2 advantage (die modifier) over someone with a relevant stat of 5,6 or 7.
It makes a lot more sense to me: those who are more dexterous than average are at a slight advantage, those with more than their share of thumbs are at a slight disadvantage; those who have put in the same number of years (SP or IP) are more or less at the same level.
Other mods: Netrunners and Fixers are not character classes. Why not?
Because why would someone who spends their entire time coding, cracking systems and traversing the world at close to light speed want to go far from their extremely fast internet connection and risk being shot when they can help the party from the safety of their fortress (or parents' basement) via phone or internet? Cellular phones - not as prevalent in CP2020 as they turned out to be in real life - mean your netrunner easily reached from most places thanks to the magic of VOIP and similar phone/internet links.
Likewise, why would a Fixer be running around risking his/her arse in a dark alley when there's more money to be made by being at home when any random adventurers turn up looking for some decent hardware. A fixer that's following a team on the off chance they might need something (s)he can supply is going to miss out on a lot of business from other sources.
So I play both of those as NPCs - characters contact them, use their services and pay their money.
Everyone running around armed to the teeth, armoured up and shooting the hell out of each other is not an option - firearms are available to civilians with certain restrictions (no auto weapons, ten-round magazine maximum, licensing and registration required, different jurisdictions have different rules etc), cops and other armed forces have better access to weapons that the civilians aren't permitted to own and the criminals have what they want as they don't care what the law says.
Much of the OTT stuff pitched at munchkins in the various supplements - full-body conversions etc - is plain unavailable. You don't need "Humanity Loss" to keep munchkins in check, just a firm "WTF? No way, you can't have it." Too expensive, will take ages to heal after surgery, just doesn't exist - all ways to limit.
PCs with ACPA? Tanks? Attack helicopters? Sheesh, a clapped out second-hand AV-6 that's been well and truly hammered by TraumaTeam for 10 years, deemed unsafe and then stripped should be out of the average Edgerunner's price range.
Trying to keep the campaign as low and edgy as possible where a cranked-up junkie with a knife is an actual threat to character safety, rather than the PCs going through battle-seasoned Elite Forces like they were popcorn.
The new character sheets look quite interesting with tick boxes for stress and fatigue points (a la Ianus Games), CP2013 wound status and hit locations/percentages loosely based on CDC reports of actual firearms assaults (so D100, natch.)
Every time I've GM'ed Cyberpunk 2020 I've tweaked and modified something as I find the source has a number of flaws and I'm constantly finding more the more I GM.
Humanity Loss? The first thing to go ages back. Roles and skill sets? Abandoned ages back in favour of Ocelot's system. Hit locations? Tried a number of systems and now trying my own. Task resolution? Came up with a D20 system based on the difficulty levels from Cyberpunk and 6 levels of "proficiency" - "Untrained", "Novice", "Adept", "Expert", "Guru", "Lesser God".
Previously, I based a character's "proficiency" on STAT + Skill points + relevant DMs (from Ocelot's advantages and disadvantages) but the problems were: some characters' stats were such that they were automatically at "Adept" before taking any levels in the skills and it meant that characters who should be better at something than others were not because of where the divisions between proficiencies lay.
It seemed to me that it was ludicrous that a person with a year's experience/training could be far better at a skill than someone with 4 years' experience just by having sufficiently higher stats.
That's an inherent flaw in the Cyberpunk system - REF 10 + Drive 1 has an advantage over REF 6 + Drive 3 any day, regardless of how the CP2020 book might describe the skills - and it took adding the figures together and clumping them into "proficiencies" to realise it.
Sure, a person with higher dexterity will be better at fiddly work than a person with lower dexterity - but not to the degree that it equates to years more experience.
I wanted to change the system so that the number of years experience or training actually meant something but that still factored in the characters' natural abilities so this time, I decided to expand out Cyberpunk's own attribute bonuses for BOD to cover all attributes except LUCK (which is spent to bump up die rolls): -2 for 2, -1 for 3 or 4, 0 for 5-7, +1 for 8 and 9, +2 for 10 and +3 for 11 and 12 (superhuman, if the attribute can be boosted above human maximum). No attribute can be boosted above 12... Munchkins: Read it and weep!
I then had the proficiency levels purchased with SPs during character creation - 1 point for Novice, 2 for Adept and so on up to five points for Lesser God (but with a GM's limit of 3 points ("Expert") for any skill). Available skill points as per Ocelot's alternative character generation.
After this modification, two "Experts" in a given skill have both expended the same number of skill points (3) to reflect the same amount of training/experience but the one with a relevant stat of 10 is at a +2 advantage (die modifier) over someone with a relevant stat of 5,6 or 7.
It makes a lot more sense to me: those who are more dexterous than average are at a slight advantage, those with more than their share of thumbs are at a slight disadvantage; those who have put in the same number of years (SP or IP) are more or less at the same level.
Other mods: Netrunners and Fixers are not character classes. Why not?
Because why would someone who spends their entire time coding, cracking systems and traversing the world at close to light speed want to go far from their extremely fast internet connection and risk being shot when they can help the party from the safety of their fortress (or parents' basement) via phone or internet? Cellular phones - not as prevalent in CP2020 as they turned out to be in real life - mean your netrunner easily reached from most places thanks to the magic of VOIP and similar phone/internet links.
Likewise, why would a Fixer be running around risking his/her arse in a dark alley when there's more money to be made by being at home when any random adventurers turn up looking for some decent hardware. A fixer that's following a team on the off chance they might need something (s)he can supply is going to miss out on a lot of business from other sources.
So I play both of those as NPCs - characters contact them, use their services and pay their money.
Everyone running around armed to the teeth, armoured up and shooting the hell out of each other is not an option - firearms are available to civilians with certain restrictions (no auto weapons, ten-round magazine maximum, licensing and registration required, different jurisdictions have different rules etc), cops and other armed forces have better access to weapons that the civilians aren't permitted to own and the criminals have what they want as they don't care what the law says.
Much of the OTT stuff pitched at munchkins in the various supplements - full-body conversions etc - is plain unavailable. You don't need "Humanity Loss" to keep munchkins in check, just a firm "WTF? No way, you can't have it." Too expensive, will take ages to heal after surgery, just doesn't exist - all ways to limit.
PCs with ACPA? Tanks? Attack helicopters? Sheesh, a clapped out second-hand AV-6 that's been well and truly hammered by TraumaTeam for 10 years, deemed unsafe and then stripped should be out of the average Edgerunner's price range.
Trying to keep the campaign as low and edgy as possible where a cranked-up junkie with a knife is an actual threat to character safety, rather than the PCs going through battle-seasoned Elite Forces like they were popcorn.