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Subject: "speaking of Cyberpunk 2020"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-15-20, 11:16 PM (EDT)
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4. "RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020"
In response to message #2
 
   >Anyway, I've been reading the core rulebook for the last few days,
>with great amusement. One, because of the note saying "oh, this isn't
>a new edition, this is just a new printing with all the typos and
>errors fixed" combined with all the typos and grammar errors
>that are sprinkled across every page as though from a pepper shaker,

Well, let's be fair, these are not games that were produced on a stupendously high budget. Cyberpunk 2077 has probably had more spent on it in a year than the p&p games have had to work with since 1984, put together. :)

(That said, the "starter kit" for Cyberpunk RED, the current edition, is included in the CP2020 Humble Bundle, and it reveals that R.Tal still needs to hire an editor who knows the difference between its and it's, which is harder to excuse nowadays.)

The Cyberpunk 2020 core book has my favorite RPG rule in it, narrowly edging out the BattleTech Technical Readout 3026's note that "each grenade may be used only once." In the section about medical technology, there's a paragraph about how much it costs to have a surgeon increase your character's Attractiveness stat (spoiler: it costs a lot), and immediately following it is the immortal sentence:

"Want to decrease your Attractiveness? A straight razor costs fifty-nine cents."

>and b) the amusingly antique or simply wrong future tech. Cell
>access to the net is impossible unless you're in a city, and even then
>it's difficult? <Willy Wonka Meme> Tell me more.

That kind of thing is the bugaboo of all near-future sci-fi, but especially cyberpunk, since so much of its emphasis is on the tech. I mean, look at the original Bubblegum Crisis. It's 2032, there are intelligent robots and a space colony... and not a cellphone in sight.

That said, my favorite technological anachronism in Cyberpunk 2020 is also in BGC. Both correctly predicted that newspapers were a dead technology (although CP2020 thought they would be gone by 2020, which they are, well, not quite), but in both cases what replaced them was... a fax machine. You go to your nearest public DataTerm (in CP) or your home computer (in BGC) and... print a newspaper. Sorry, screamsheet. :)

Mind you, in Cyberpunk RED, the Net no longer exists, and the classical cyberpunk trope of "jacking in" with your whole sensorium is just a thing a handful of old-timers can reminisce about having done. Netrunners are reduced to wandering around the meat world screwing with wireless LANs, which seems like a pretty pathetic fate for the character class that launched the cyberpunk genre in the first place (in the person of Case in Neuromancer).

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
 speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 [View All] Gryphonadmin Dec-14-20 TOP
   RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 McFortner Dec-15-20 1
   RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 BobSchroeck Dec-15-20 2
      RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 StClair Dec-15-20 3
     RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 Gryphonadmin Dec-15-20 4
          RE: speaking of Cyberpunk 2020 Zemyla Dec-16-20 5


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