All the Matrix's Many Faces: Cyberpunk RPGs

The cyberpunk genre always lends itself so naturally to an RPG context. I guess it's not too surprising -- there are lots of gameable aspects to it. And, to be honest, I'd be surprised if there was some established genre that wasn't being mined for content by game designers. It walks that edge between a dark, near-future dystopianism that's very relatable to a modern audience and far-side, high-tech science-fiction -- and walks it in a way that feels very natural and is invariably appealing. And, of course, liberally peppering it all with a hearty dose of the film noir aesthetic will only make it even more appealing to a gamer's palate. Multiple great tastes that taste great together: it's like a role-playing sundae. (In which case, what's the butterscotch? The gritty, urban landscape? Certainly, though, the cherry at the top has a monofilament stem.)

I decided that, instead of doing another installment of my prior RPG Tasting Menu series, I would share a few, quick thoughts on the cyberpunk RPGs that I've played over the years, then focus some future posts on a connected project that I've been working on. 

Shadowrun

Like many, this was my first foray into cyberpunk RPGs. Back in the late 80's, I picked up the Shadowrun core rulebook and quite a few of the supplements. My gaming group at the time found it intriguing, but just not as much as I did (I think they were drawn more to the overt medieval fantasy setting of D&D). However, I really enjoyed its weird hybridization of fantasy and high-tech futurism and dystopian leanings. We only ended up playing it once -- a short adventure I drafted that was supposed to lead into a larger campaign -- but I recall everyone having a good time with it. This early edition of the game didn't have quite as much rules-bloat as later ones, so the core rules were still pretty manageable for a kid. I ended up throwing out all my Shadowrun books a few years later, during a roughly 16-year phase in which I distanced myself from RPGs, thinking they were "for kids" and "not my style anymore." (I had foolish conceptions of identity and what was "acceptable" for an adult.) I still wish I would have reconsidered before tossing them in my apartment building's dumpster.

The Sprawl

The years that followed brought me back to a wildly renewed interest in RPGs and, with it, a hankering for more cyberpunk. Enter The Sprawl: a game built on the Apocalypse World engine that aims to create an experience closely modeled on the roots of the cyberpunk genre. It lacks any of the fantasy elements of Shadowrun and leans heavily into the dystopian, late-capitalist, technocratic vision of the future seen in the works of William Gibson and other established creators.

I will say this: when it comes to cyberpunk RPGs, I consider The Sprawl to be the gold standard. I've looked at some really great games in the cyberpunk genre that take a lighter approach when it comes to rules (or at least lighter than well-known, contemporary games, like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk Red), but The Sprawl just hits every note, nuance, and archetype in a pitch-perfect way.

I got to run my gaming group through a one-shot mission for The Sprawl and I felt it worked really well. Especially effective was the collaborative sprawl-building exercises that were built into our Session Zero. (It's this aspect of The Sprawl that completely sold me on collaborative world-building between GM and players for my future games -- something I'll delve more into in future posts.) However, in the end, while my player enjoyed the adventure overall and seemed to dig our urban setting, they were less enthused about the overall PbtA system (also more on that later). Since I was enthused about our setting, this led me to start looking around for alternative systems that I could swap in for future continuations of our game.

Mirrorshades

It was right around this time that I became familiar with The Black Hack. (For a more in-depth dive into my thoughts on this game, have a look at this previous post.) As I explored the variety of hacks and spin-off games, I discovered Mirrorshades. This seemed to be a perfect match -- for some time, I was making preliminary notes for a follow-up mission that ported our sprawl over to the Mirrorshades system. But, as time went on, I began to find that I was grafting more and more system parts onto the core game, as well as homebrewing multiple classes (which ultimately became heavy revising of several of the game's core classes). In the end, I decided that the best option for me was to create my own hack of the game.

Now, it's important to say: I really like Mirrorshades. A lot. It's a fantastic game and utilizes some really innovative and elegant approaches to handling elements of cyberpunk gaming that can (and often do) get extremely bogged down in tedious details and crunch (I'm looking at you, cyberware and hacking!). So this is not in any way a critique of the game, which is great. It's just that, ultimately, I realized that I wanted this one to have and do a little more, as well as to incorporate some of the more recent mechanics of the Black Hack's second edition and a few functions that I liked from The Sprawl.

So what this post is really doing (kind of) is setting us up to discuss the hacking that I've been working on. In the upcoming series of posts in my RPG R&D series, we'll get up close and personal with the new elements and classes that I've drafted.