Cyberpunk is a tabletop role-playing game in the dystopian science fiction genre, written by Mike Pondsmith and first published by R. Talsorian Games in 1988. It is typically referred to by its second or fourth edition names, Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red, in order to distinguish it from the cyberpunk genre after which it is named.
Setting
Cyberpunk exists within its own fictional timeline, which splits from the real world in the 1980s. The timeline has been extended with each major edition of the game, from the first edition set in 2013 to Cyberpunk Red set in 2045.
The backstory for Cyberpunk begins with the United States becoming embroiled in a major conflict in Central America in the 1980s. This conflict ends in a military coup and causes a significant economic collapse. As a result, the Soviet Union is itself preserved from collapse, and the European Common Market and Japan emerge as global superpowers. In tandem with economic collapse, other disasters have wreaked havoc across the globe, including food blights and devastating famines, as well as the destruction of entire regions of land as a consequence of war. By the late 1990s, the Middle East has become a radioactive desert in the fallout of nuclear conflict.
With the lack of government and police enforcement due to the Central American wars and subsequent economic collapse, casual violence has become endemic in many parts of the world. At the same time, megacorporations have risen to power and fight amongst themselves for dominance, and orbital habitats have begun to develop and form into independent states, both causes and symptoms of the increasing fracturing of civilization. Bioengineering, against a backdrop of warfare, has resulted in the rapid development of cybernetic prosthetics and direct human-machine interfaces, and many now suffer from "technoshock," an inability to cope with a world of synthetic muscle tissue, organic circuits, and designer drugs.
The main location for Cyberpunk is the fictional Night City, situated on the West Coast of the United States between Los Angeles and San Francisco. With a population of five million, it presents a stratified society of gang warfare, corporate rivalries, and political machinations in which the players must survive.
System
The rules of Cyberpunk are built on R. Talsorian's Interlock system.
A core game mechanic is the concept of Difficulty Values, used to gauge whether a player succeeds or fails at any given task. A player takes the value of their most appropriate character attribute, adds the values of any relevant skills or modifiers, and then finally adds the value of a ten-sided die roll. In order to succeed, they must beat the Difficulty Value assigned to the task by the gamemaster. Cyberpunk was one of the first tabletop games to use this concept.
Character creation
As cyberpunks, the players embrace body modification, cybertech and bioengineering. They live by four tenets: Style over substance. Attitude is everything. Always take it to the Edge. (Break) the rules.
There are ten key roles, each with their own special abilities. These include charismatic musicians ('rockerboys'), bodyguards and assassins ('solos'), computer hackers ('netrunners'), road warriors ('nomads'), street experts ('fixers'), investigative journalists and reporters ('medias'), mechanics ('techs' or 'techies'), doctors ('medtechs'), corporate executives ('corpos'), and police officers.
A choice of rules are provided for character creation, either by assigning points to purchase skills or by rolling d10s for a more random outcome. A system called Lifepath is provided to develop each character further, by generating goals, motivations, and events from their past. Finally, they gain money, cyberware, weapons and other equipment, including fashion and lifestyle goods.
Further character development is skill-based rather than level-based; for successful play, players are awarded points to be spent on improving their characters' skill sets.
Combat
The combat system is called Friday Night Firefight (FNFF), and emphasizes lethality. Unlike role-playing systems where characters amass hit points as they progress, allowing them to survive higher amounts of combat damage, the amount of damage a character can sustain in Cyberpunk does not generally increase as the character develops.