Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. The Second Edition is a role playing game supplement published by R. Talsorian Games. This is the core rulebook for the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. game.
The supplement is available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $15, as a softcover print on demand book for $28.75 or as PDF and softcover for $33.75. It is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed, although it was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle. The PDF has 258 pages with two being the front and rear covers, two the front matter and one the Contents.
Section 1: Soul & the New Machine starts by talking about the feel of Cyberpunk and the 9 roles, together with their special abilities. A note explains this isn’t a third edition and a sidebar, View from the Edge, something that runs through most of the book, talks, in character, about Cyberpunk and the early years of the technology that made it happen, all of which is now wildly inaccurate.
The nine roles are next. Rockerboys are the musicians of the future. Solos are assassins, bodyguards, killers and soldiers. Netrunners are cybernetically enhanced computer hackers. Techies are mechanics and doctors. Medias are newsmen and reporters. Cops are the police, of course. Corporates are the future equivalent of yuppies. Fixers make deals, organise things and broker information. Nomads are road warriors and gypsies of the future.
Section 2: Getting Cyberpunk starts with Character Points. Character points are used to buy character abilities. Three different ways of getting them are given; random, roll 9d10 and assign as desired, fast, roll 1d10 for each stat, rerolling 2s, and cinematic, which gives specific numbers of points for different types of character, from major hero to average.
Statistics covers the nine attributes a character has. These are Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool, Technical Ability, Luck, Attractiveness, Movement Allowance, Empathy and Body Type. A character sheet is inserted here.
Fast and Dirty Expendables is a short, five step process for rapidly creating faceless, and likely cannon fodder, NPCs.
Section 3: Tales from the Street (Lifepath) is a series of tables to create the background of a character, including nationality, ethnicity, life events, motivations, major problems and wins, friends and enemies and more. This is described as a flowchart of plot complications to create a dark future background.
Section 4: Working starts by describing how skill checks are done before moving onto skills themselves. Charts show the skills for each role and all the skills; skills are then described in detail. How new skills can be learned or existing ones improved is next, followed by reputation, how well-known a character is.
Section 5: Getting Fitted for the Future is items and equipment. It starts with the funds that the different roles begin the game with before moving onto encumbrance. Encumbrance just divides things into weight groups to simply the bookkeeping. Weapons, armour and special equipment are followed by a list of gear, then a list of other types of gear, from fashion to vehicles and housing.
Section 6: Putting the Cyber in the Punk starts by covering cyberfashion before moving onto cyberpsychosis – what happens when too much metal and plastic are added to someone – and how this is dealt with. A list of cybernetic enhancements is then followed by detailed descriptions of these, ranging from fashion to body plating, and several ways of making money.
Section 7: Friday Night Firefight (Combat) is, as it says, the section on combat. Combat is fairly complex, involving as it does modern, and futuristic, weaponry, some of which is inbuilt, as well as vehicles.
Section 8: Trauma Team starts by looking at death before going into healing, both medicinal and natural. Trauma Team Inc. is on the powerful corporation that sends paramedics in armed and armoured vehicles to the sites of incidents involving their clients in order to rescue them and take them to hospital. Finally, there is a section on bodysculpting, including as a fashion modification.
Section 9: Drugs covers a number of different drugs, with a variety of uses from purely recreational to combat drugs, with guidelines for creating more.
Section 10: Netrunner covers the Net, Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.’s information superhighway. The Net is divided into different regions, depending on the area covered, and long-distance links are needed to travel virtually between cities; rather unlike the internet of today. This section also covers getting onto the net, programs to use, including defensive and offensive ones, and how areas are covered. A city has its own grid with further subgrids on it. Combat, data fortresses – which characters are most likely going to be breaking into – programming and virtual realities are covered.
Section 11: All Things Dark & Cyberpunk starts with a history of the world from 1990 up to 2020 – a future history at the time, now rather inaccurate. Law and police, weapons, vehicles and information services are also covered; cellular phones, as described, are now very primitive.
Section 12: Running Cyberpunk is a short section of tips and tricks for a Cyberpunk game, both genre and Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.
Section 13: Never Fade Away (A Cyberpunk Adventure) is a cyberpunk short story accompanied by the details needed to run it as an adventure.
Section 14: Megacorps 2020 starts with some general details on megacorps followed by how they interact with governments, the stock exchange, activities against other corporations, including wars, before moving onto corporate profiles. The way these are laid out is described, then a number of companies are described, including their backgrounds, ownership, locations and certain assets.
Section 15: Night City gives an overview of this recently-built city on the West Coast of the U.S. This describes the city’s history, along with a map, places on interest, encounters and personalities. Night City has its own sourcebook, which describes it in more detail.
The Face of the City is essentially a collection of news articles.
Screamsheets has what are essentially newspaper pages – screamsheets – each of which is then accompanied by an adventure based on the major story.
Two pages have the character sheet, a single page has the record sheet for quick and dirty characters and one page is for cyberdecks.
Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. The Second Edition in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked, with major and minor sections linked. The Contents is to a similar depth. Navigation isn’t bad for a supplement that’s been converted to PDF, but could be a lot better. The text primarily uses a two column with sidebar format and some minor errors were noticed. The sidebar is sometimes left empty but usually contains other relevant details and additional information. There are a range of black and white illustrations, up to about full page in size, excluding the sidebar, some reused from previous editions but some new. Presentation and appearance are decent, especially as the PDF is created from scans of the original supplement.
Given that this was written in 1990 (and revised in 1991 and 1993) the depiction of the future, now the present, is not accurate (and the start of the timeline was inaccurate by the time this edition was released). In some cases, places where technology errors would have been made have been avoided, probably deliberately – computer memory isn’t referred to by such as KB, MB, GB, TB etc; 1990s estimates would have been way off – but there are other places where they do appear, such as, comparatively large, physically speaking, storage devices being only able to hold ten photos.
The Internet is also far more widespread and easier to access than even cyberpunk depictions predicted and, by and large, isn’t geographically isolated – today, a server for a website may not even be in the same country as the company whose website it is, let alone the same city.
Needless to say, this is not a game for running a cyberpunk future – Cyberpunk RED now does that – but rather an alternate cyberpunk present. Combat is as potentially deadly as it should be, given the use of heavy firepower, though the netrunning side may now be a little dated. However, some users do scavenge bits from Cyberpunk RED to fix that. Overall, this is a pretty decent depiction of a future that, fortunately, never was; a dark and bloody cyberpunk setting where life can be cheap – or expensive, depending on who’s doing the paying. Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. is still worth running today and it can be found by clicking here.
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