Cyberpunk 2020

So, I got my old Cyberpunk 2020 RPG material out this evening and sat there for a good hour pondering the fate of this great game. I played the original black box 2013 version, then the 2020 version, and yes I even played the terrible 203X version that Mike released after legions of fanboys and fangirls spent years and years whining for on the R.Talsorian forums and on many other RPG forums like RPG.net. I GM’d games at GenCon and dozens of other conventions in both the USA and Australia. I even had the unique opportunity to be one of 4 writers invited by R.Talsorian themselves to put forward a manuscript for a ‘third’ 4th Corporate War book. It’s core helped in the transition from 2020 to 203X, and yes even explained much of the new ideas that seemed so different than what Mike had created with such a landmark gaming system as 2020. The book was never released, and it seems that since the day we submitted the manuscript, R.Talsorian has gone dark.

That seems such a shame considering that much of what was contained in that alternate timeline is now more relevant then ever. It might be twenty years late, but I really do think that there is an incredible insight in that game that perhaps many never really appreciated. I guess this was the reason I actually got these books out in the first place tonight.

I wonder whether there isn’t still a lot of mileage to be gained from the old 2020 system? Perhaps a ‘new’ version of 2020 called 2042 or something equally esoteric. I think if we took the timeline diversion that occurred back in the mid 80’s and began to apply it now, wouldn’t a new game seem eerily ‘real’? After all we are in the throes of a massive economic collapse, and if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, we’re being told that economic calamity on a global scale never before witnessed will befall us all. Isn’t that kind of what 2020 laid out for 1994? We’ve already had the collapse of the old Soviet Union, CHOOH2? Hello Ethanol.

The core rulebook, gives us this – “The collapse of the United States. Weakened by losses in world stock crash, overwhelmed by unemployment, homelessness and corruption, many city governments collapse or go bankrupt. The U.S. government, snarled in a staggering deficit and the machinations of the Gang of Four, is totally ineffective.”

Mike wrote that ten years before he predicted it in Cyberpunk 2020’s 1996, and almost 25 years before it may very well happen in reality. Uncanny. And that is why I wonder whether there is more to be gained from such a game. Are we at the renaissance of a new version of ‘Cyberpunk’? What would a new timeline look like if we started now and took it forward progressively to 2042?

Mike, if you’re still out there contemplating that ‘Classic’ Cyberpunk 2020 release, here’s a tip, rebadge it. Call it Cyberpunk 2042, and pretend that 203X never happened. You’re not reinventing the wheel or rehashing an old classic or even flogging a dead horse (OK so I went overboard on the catch-phrases), you’re creating a game from the ashes of another that has perhaps more relevance and real-world playability right now than 2020 ever did throughout the 90’s. And of course you have a dedicated group of fans out here that would at a moment’s notice help you.

Do it, before someone else does.