Hacker News Reader

Comment by formalsystem | Hacker News Reader

How does it compare to Cyberpunk 2020? I wanna run a cyberpunk campaign for my friends next year and wanted to understand which ruleset and setting is most fun. We already play a lot of DnD.

View on HN

GURPS for me is the quintessential cyberpunk role playing experience. Its gritty realism suits the genre way better, in my opinion, than systems like Cyberpunk 2020. The bionics / cybernetics systems and point based character creation really opens things up for creating the kind of character you want versus being stuck in an archetype that the genre defines. GURPS is an amazing toolbox for simulating a lot of gritty and deadly combat. A lot of people don't like that you can calculate what you need to roll in order to shoot a person in their left eye as you drive past at night on your motorcycle and prefer a more abstract system. In that case, I'd move towards the Apocalypse World system. It's a much more modern role playing experience without a lot of the issues that GURPS or D&D style games face.

http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/title/The_Sprawl

GURPS is way to crunchy (numbers focused) for me, personally, but I'm seconding the Sprawl recommendation.

Hack The Planet is another great modern cyberpunk RPG, based on the Forged in the Dark rule set.

I like my RPGs crunchy enough to not be a barrier to role playing or abstract enough to not be a barrier to role playing. I feel like I've never been limited in what I can do or what I can create in GURPS. Games like D&D are the worst of both worlds for me. Not abstract enough to do what you want, and not crunchy enough to have rules for all you want to do. To me D&D is more like playing a board game than a role playing game.

You could look into Pathfinder, it's very crunchy with lots of options so it should fit.

On the other hand, how you experience D&D depends heavily on the GM. If social solutions to problems are not rewarded, players may feel like playing a board game. Same for GMs that railroad the story too much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com