Conquest of the Isle of Misfit Role-Playing Games
As a movement, cyberpunk's been a hard sell for quite some time. At its best, it was a way to address some very real, very interesting ideas and a way to commercialize the techniques and concepts of avant-garde science fiction. At its worst, it was anachronistic self-congratulatory whack-off fiction for misanthropic man-children who believed that having a gun, a leather jacket and the ability to code could make one a l33t muthaphuqua.
At its best, cyberpunk worked as a postapocalyptic movement, finding narrative strength by chronicling the friction point where paradigms meet and shift. The eternally brayed chestnut that "the street finds its own use for things" was a reminder that technology, rather than a reified savior, would continue to be a tool. The ability to transfer vast quantities of data across the world at the speed of light wouldn't build a web of love and unity between all mankind- it'd be used just as much for bookkeeping as for theft as for transmission of eel porn. High-tech prosthetics would be used to help people walk, but they'd also be used to kick the hell out of innocent strangers in the eternal struggle to prove one's alpha dog status.
System failure, cyberpunk whispered. The center cannot hold! Chaos, disorder, discord!
It presented an almost touching nihilism, all considered. You almost want to chuck cyberpunk under the chin, give it a cookie and tousle its hair before sending it off with Gernsbackian zeppelin-fic and Victorian scientific romance to play in the sandbox of anachronistic fiction. That wouldn't be entirely fair, though, as the form works very well as a way to examine the shrinking gulf between the First and Third Worlds and to play with noir tropes without confusing those with less of a sense of history. It was a way to wrestle with Joshua Ellis' Grim Meathook Future and feel some degree of grim, survivalist satisfaction.
And, thus, R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk. I picked up the first edition the week it came out in 1988, followed designer Mike Pondsmith through the second generation and the "alternate alternate future" of Cybergeneration and advocated for the game and the genre after its meaning had faded from common thought. I'd largely abandoned the game itself, though, as it was somewhat clunky and not as responsive as I'd like. Thus, while I knew of the promise of a sequel to Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0, I really didn't care about it one way or another. My purchase of the game on the cheap was an impulse, yet another bit of misty-eyed gaming nostalgia like many of those that have populated the Isle of Misfit Role-Playing Games.
Cyberpunk V.3 is an interesting experiment. It's an extension of the ongoing Talsorian Cyberpunk continuity, working with an honest-to-whoever End Of The World As We Know it as infocalypse and corporate wars shatter states, gut nations and turn everything from financial records to history into so much second-guessing and hand-waving.
Well done, there. Well done, indeed. Welcome to Year Zero. Takes a bit of a set to start a game by saying "Once upon a time, the world ended. Go!" The netrunner no longer gets to hog the spotlight while the rest of the gaming group waits for a door to open. So much the better.
Into this Brave New World was thrust a wide range (well, five) of AltCults, unique tribal meme-states with their own cultures and Kewl-Azz Powerz illustrated using action figures with carpet remnants and bits of vinyl hot-glued on. They took liberally from previous incarnations of Cyberpunk, pulling nanotechnology, telepresence, genetic engineering and other exciting, gamer-friendly buzzwords into the mix with gleeful disregard for their real-world implications.
Once again, fine. Cyberware without emotional damage, Kirbyesque nanohippies rolling on their own Mountain of Judgment, whale-people and mechajocks. Gamerish and silly? Yes. Workable? Definitely. Cybergeneration taught us that ostensibly cheesy, broad-strokes gaming allows for high-action and easy characterization. All right, then. Heinous, ridiculous artwork aside, it's doable.
And then, alas, the game outthinks itself.
The foreword to the book declares v.3 a new style of game-play, more suited to the fast-paced, plug-and-play world of MMORPGs. How, one may ask? By providing "templates" that give little room for individuality, a half-clever GMless gaming system in which the "winner" of a conflict chooses what revelation comes to the fore and and two maps for general game-play use.
Much of what's wrong is the standard R. Talsorian sloppiness: sentences disappear, recycled rules show that no thought beyond a text swap of "203X" for "2020" took place in their editing and huge, gaping wounds are left unsutured throughout the document. It's a sloppy book, but that's nothing anyone who's followed the line should hold as a surprise.
The main thing that chaps my hide about v.3 is the coyness with which it presents its new rules. We're shown a range of things without a feel for how they work together. We're not told how to create new things, although the individual elements of those new things are laid out before us; while we can wing it, we can't make the rules our own. Rather than a home-cobbled DIY computer that whirs and clanks when it's running, we're given a smooth, unbreakable whole that gives no real openings for hacking.
I wonder if this is a sign that Pondsmith spent too much time with Microsoft.
At its best, cyberpunk worked as a postapocalyptic movement, finding narrative strength by chronicling the friction point where paradigms meet and shift. The eternally brayed chestnut that "the street finds its own use for things" was a reminder that technology, rather than a reified savior, would continue to be a tool. The ability to transfer vast quantities of data across the world at the speed of light wouldn't build a web of love and unity between all mankind- it'd be used just as much for bookkeeping as for theft as for transmission of eel porn. High-tech prosthetics would be used to help people walk, but they'd also be used to kick the hell out of innocent strangers in the eternal struggle to prove one's alpha dog status.
System failure, cyberpunk whispered. The center cannot hold! Chaos, disorder, discord!
It presented an almost touching nihilism, all considered. You almost want to chuck cyberpunk under the chin, give it a cookie and tousle its hair before sending it off with Gernsbackian zeppelin-fic and Victorian scientific romance to play in the sandbox of anachronistic fiction. That wouldn't be entirely fair, though, as the form works very well as a way to examine the shrinking gulf between the First and Third Worlds and to play with noir tropes without confusing those with less of a sense of history. It was a way to wrestle with Joshua Ellis' Grim Meathook Future and feel some degree of grim, survivalist satisfaction.
And, thus, R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk. I picked up the first edition the week it came out in 1988, followed designer Mike Pondsmith through the second generation and the "alternate alternate future" of Cybergeneration and advocated for the game and the genre after its meaning had faded from common thought. I'd largely abandoned the game itself, though, as it was somewhat clunky and not as responsive as I'd like. Thus, while I knew of the promise of a sequel to Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0, I really didn't care about it one way or another. My purchase of the game on the cheap was an impulse, yet another bit of misty-eyed gaming nostalgia like many of those that have populated the Isle of Misfit Role-Playing Games.
Cyberpunk V.3 is an interesting experiment. It's an extension of the ongoing Talsorian Cyberpunk continuity, working with an honest-to-whoever End Of The World As We Know it as infocalypse and corporate wars shatter states, gut nations and turn everything from financial records to history into so much second-guessing and hand-waving.
Well done, there. Well done, indeed. Welcome to Year Zero. Takes a bit of a set to start a game by saying "Once upon a time, the world ended. Go!" The netrunner no longer gets to hog the spotlight while the rest of the gaming group waits for a door to open. So much the better.
Into this Brave New World was thrust a wide range (well, five) of AltCults, unique tribal meme-states with their own cultures and Kewl-Azz Powerz illustrated using action figures with carpet remnants and bits of vinyl hot-glued on. They took liberally from previous incarnations of Cyberpunk, pulling nanotechnology, telepresence, genetic engineering and other exciting, gamer-friendly buzzwords into the mix with gleeful disregard for their real-world implications.
Once again, fine. Cyberware without emotional damage, Kirbyesque nanohippies rolling on their own Mountain of Judgment, whale-people and mechajocks. Gamerish and silly? Yes. Workable? Definitely. Cybergeneration taught us that ostensibly cheesy, broad-strokes gaming allows for high-action and easy characterization. All right, then. Heinous, ridiculous artwork aside, it's doable.
And then, alas, the game outthinks itself.
The foreword to the book declares v.3 a new style of game-play, more suited to the fast-paced, plug-and-play world of MMORPGs. How, one may ask? By providing "templates" that give little room for individuality, a half-clever GMless gaming system in which the "winner" of a conflict chooses what revelation comes to the fore and and two maps for general game-play use.
Much of what's wrong is the standard R. Talsorian sloppiness: sentences disappear, recycled rules show that no thought beyond a text swap of "203X" for "2020" took place in their editing and huge, gaping wounds are left unsutured throughout the document. It's a sloppy book, but that's nothing anyone who's followed the line should hold as a surprise.
The main thing that chaps my hide about v.3 is the coyness with which it presents its new rules. We're shown a range of things without a feel for how they work together. We're not told how to create new things, although the individual elements of those new things are laid out before us; while we can wing it, we can't make the rules our own. Rather than a home-cobbled DIY computer that whirs and clanks when it's running, we're given a smooth, unbreakable whole that gives no real openings for hacking.
I wonder if this is a sign that Pondsmith spent too much time with Microsoft.