What are the Differences between High-Fantasy and Futuristic/Cyberpunk Games?

[GlassJaw]

Shadowrun is my favoured setting and system (I'm a SR 3rd ed sort of girl). I find once you have a handle on it - it has a brisk feel and about the right risk of injury to payoff for my play style. I'll freely dump rules I don't care for or am fuzzy on. Decking for example - I'll either use an Excel sheet that does the target calculations for me - or if my player is a programmer like myself - we'll go 'old school' and plan our attacks based off of actual computer security issues. I prefer 2nd or 3rd ed SR over 4th b/c I feel 4th is just a thinly veiled White Wolf system with d6s. But then again I never let my groups get so out of hand that I ran into the powergaming 3rd is supposedly vulnerable to.

I thought the same thing about SR4...until I actually started playing it. It's a great system. I played SR3 for a long time but if I started playing SR again, I would definitely play SR4.

 

[WayneLigon]

To clarify what I mean, I'm talking about things like scrying, and how it impacts a game dramatically. I'm talking about wizards focused around mind-affecting magic, and how that changes a great many encounters. I'm talking about having players that want to play monster races, and how that sort-of changes the dynamic of the group and how the rest of the world reacts to them.

I'm not sure what you mean, here. There are no wizards or monster races per se in a cyberpunk game unless you're specifically playing ShadowRun.

That said, there are analogs. 'Scrying' certainly exists within the genre; taking control of a remote camera and making it see what you want it to see, or moving it to show you what you want to see is a staple of the genre. Assume that this will be one of the first things players will do.

There might be 'monster races' if the setting also includes advanced biological manipulation: people with animal traits or upgraded biological enhancements granting them night sight, radio hearing, making them stronger or faster, etc; depends on the technology level they've chosen.

So are there any "trouble areas" that are a part of futuristic settings? Guns? Power level balance issues? Vehicles? How vehicles affect travel time? Money and wealth? Accessibility of information? Anything else?

Assume the players will try to use the internet analog for a lot of things, constantly. The cyberpunk genre is one drowning in information; making sense of the firehose of info constantly bombarding you is what seperates the sheep from the wolves.

Money is power and in most instances it's the only real power. Never forget this. Wealthy players are important. They are also targets.

The main thing you need to decide on is: what path did technology take.

You are almost guarenteed at least one player who will try to say 'they can do that now, of course I can do it'. Your answer to this is: let me see your source. More often than not they'll have misread or misunderstood an article and think something is possible when it is not, or is not available for public consumption.

You will also have one player who will try to convince you that Technology X will certainly exist by Year X. Decide early on what's possible and what's not. Most of the 'cyberpunk' fiction and games were written in the early to mid-Eighties and frankly it's more than a little dated. SF has historically been an astoundingly poor predictor of the future, so don't feel bound by a lot of the tech in the books you've read. The attitude is the important thing, the feel of how people and societies react to the massive influx of cheap connectivity and access to all the libraries of the world at once.

Also remember that technology can have all sorts of drawbacks that prevent it from being used or in common circulation. We have suits of body armor now that would make a person virtually invulnerable to small arms fire. Do troops and cops normally use them? No. Why not? Because they're very expensive, too expensive to make and not enough demand to drive down the price.

Also, it might just be impossible to do something. We can clone mammals now. It takes hundreds of tries to get one that even lives to be born, and then there are still other problems. Maybe this never gets solved. We've been told every year for forty years that AI is 'just around the corner'. It's proven to be vastly harder than anyone ever thought. The SCRAMjet was suppossed to give us a runway-take-off-and-landing space vehicle by now. No SCRAMjet test has succeeded yet to my knowledge.

 

[Deekin]

What do you suggest for ease of use? Playability?

For a System to use, it depends on what you are familer with. Considering you have never run anything other than D&D, I would suggest D20 Modern +D20 Future +D20 Cyberscape. The differnces between the 2 are summed up HERE
for handy player and DM reference. The Plus side of D20 of Cyberscape is that it has plenty of pick and choose options to pull upon, and has a framework for building your own cyberpunk game. The Downside of D20 Future is that you will want to be clear what parts of the material you are using and what parts you are not. If you go this route, I would recomend picking up some of the Blood and ... books from Rpgnow and the like.

 

[Clueless]

I'm not sure what you mean, here. There are no wizards or monster races per se in a cyberpunk game unless you're specifically playing ShadowRun.

I took him to mean that as an example. All of the things he listed are things that cause 'problems' in regular DnD games. And surely the cyberpunk genres have things that cause problems too, - so he's looking to find out what those things are since he's unfamilar with it. So, not direct equilivants to those things but stuff that can trip up someone in a like fashion.

 

[Deekin]

Problems in strait cyberpunk?
1. In D20 Modern, Subdermal armor.

Other than that, Clueless has pretty much nailed all the problems.

 

[DarkKestral]

WayneLigon: I know there was a sourcebook for CP2020 that did elves, vampires, werewolves and whatnot in CP2020 which did fairly well when it was released. And SR's crazy popular, and w/ Urban Arcana + d20 Cyberscape, a d20 Modern cyberpunk game has all it needs to have fantasy races in a cyberpunk setting. So going slightly D&D-ish isn't necessarily a bad thing! It can add some serious flavor.

OP: Honestly, most of my experience with gaming has been cyberpunk games, so I think I'll chime in here.

I do agree with Clueless about choosing your feel early, because in this case, mechanics tend to affect feel a lot. Games which let players get more 'chromed' (if cyberware has obvious and generally useful game effects) easily are vastly different than games which don't, and unlike D&D, generally, most cyberpunk games start out at a basic power level and never have characters rise much up from there. A D&D game, with it's level boosts, can provide an easy way to re-balance; if you're thinking characters are too weak, you generally can either up the XP or up the treasure and things will eventually equal out. In a cyberpunk game, if the characters suck compared to the enemies, chances are good that they will continue to suck through the entire game. Shadowrun, at least in it's 4th ed. incarnation, flat out states that the game is not one of drastically increasing power over time in something like the 2nd-3rd chapter of the book... which is also the one in which character gen starts, and the one right AFTER the core mechanic. Characters, sans equipment, are pretty static in that game, true to the statement in the book, and they recommend using higher-than-normal BP (their character creation point system) at the beginning if you want increased character power rather than try to make it back up elsewhere.

Likewise, cyberpunk games usually have DEADLY combat systems, and since many systems don't let the players gain too much extra damagesoak ability, (in the form of HP, damage meter size, damage saves, yadda yadda yadda) PCs can and will get hurt, mangled, or otherwise incapacitated relatively commonly. Modifications done to troupe play, so that every player has multiple characters at any given time, help this by preventing character damage recovery downtime from affecting play. d20 Modern's a bit more D&Dish there, and less lethal in some, but not all ways, so it can still be a good idea to consider.

Modern's cyberware systems are.. funky, and some can be fairly high-powered. This can go against a gritty feel. Likewise, at higher levels, making an MDS roll is not uncommon, which also makes character survival far easier. So if you do go w/ Modern but still want players to fear the massive damage by level 20, then you might wanna consider some houserules. For example, the base MDS is what would be in the book, but for every additional +5 damage in an attack beyond the MDT add another +1 to the save DC is a rule that will make even high level players fear combat a bit. An easier one on the players is every 10 damage above the MDT.

As for more common problems... big guns should be a blessing and a curse. Most people, corporations and governments wouldn't be happy with a guy toting a LAW around in public. So the bigger the gun, the more stink they should make if he does ANYTHING improper, so don't make big guns too easily available w/o negative consequences. So pistols and hunting rifles should probably remain the 'safe' options, with big guns being a more powerful, but risky option. Do include them; it's always fun when you get to use a rocket launcher.

Wealth is relative; just like in D&D, if your characters are too much more wealthy and powerful than the NPCs, it's just going to lead to them being overpowered. If they're too poor, they're just gonna die. A good rule of thumb is keep the PCs wealthy enough to buy most of the stuff they need but poor enough that they can't buy everything they need.

Travel speeds usually shouldn't be an issue; if it is, make sure there's a good cinematic reason for it. (A random traffic jam is not fun. A traffic jam when the characters are trying to escape from the cops after pulling a heist and stealing from a big corp is. There's a difference.)

Information should usually have a cost; most cyberpunk involves either info theft or bribing informers for info. If the cost isn't monetary, it should still involve an element of opportunity cost.

Furthermore, the classic 'scry and fry' has it's Cyberpunk equivalent: hacking combined with fast-attack combat teams. Likewise, a highly booby-trapped tower with a hefty security guard makes for a good dungeon replacement. Both are very good ways of making mincemeat of PCs and NPCs alike.

My personal system of choice for a cyberpunk game would probably be SR 3rd ed. or CP2020, with some updates to make it more 'modern' and add things that we have already + a few items that are logical extensions of modern tech. A favorite idea of mine is EMP grenades to knock out cybernetic combat systems, and another in the same vein is the non-lethal goo guns that spray out sticky foam.

 

[Clueless]

I never really thought of SR character development as *entirely* static but I can see how it could come across as such. Your physical abilities might not do much increasing ut your skills should be able to. It's just that your characters will get a steady curve of increase as opposed to the stop/go hitch of a level based system. It's harder to tell when you've 'gotten better'. Of course, my groups tend to get 'better' not based on what their numbers say but rather based on who they know and what they do. They gather black mail material, they buy their contacts drinks and turn them into buddies... that sort of thing. Power in a cyberpunk game is rarely associated with how good you are with a gun or how much you can benchpress.

 

[tylermalan]

I'm not sure what you mean, here. There are no wizards or monster races per se in a cyberpunk game unless you're specifically playing ShadowRun.

I'm just referring to things in traditional D&D that are "game breakers" or that are game altering - a game including scrying is way different than a game without, but by the core rules its still a perfectly viable option for players to use. I didn't mean to infer that a cyberpunk game would have scrying or whatever, just giving examples.

As for the other stuff, that's good advice, thank you!

 

[tylermalan]

Problems in strait cyberpunk?
1. In D20 Modern, Subdermal armor.

Other than that, Clueless has pretty much nailed all the problems.

Subdermal armor?

 

[tylermalan]

Man, I'm starting to think that this is going to be really hard for me to run! I can imagine a million environments and whatever that would fit into D&D, but half the time it sounds like you guys are talking gibberish! Not from a "I don't know what that mean/is" standpoint - more from a "Wow, I never thought of that..." standpoint.