I recently gmed a Cyberpunk Red one shot and it was pretty cool! Now I'm wondering if the ddb people also enjoy Cyberpunk and maybe share their experiences with it 

Stormknight, do you prefer Cyberpunk or Shadowrun? I personally prefer Shadowrun because of the magic elements, but I’m curious to read your thoughts.

Cool. I hope it goes well for you. Please keep us updated if you don’t mind.  

That sounds awesome. I have never used a VTT before, as I typically prefer theater of the mind, but for something like shadowrun, or cyberpunk, I think it could work for me. 

I used to run Shadowrun starting with 1st edition. It was my favorite RPG game at the time. Over the years (and editions), I've pretty much left it behind. I'm in agreement with Stormknight that as the editions changed, the game "feel" has gotten away from what I liked best about it as the rules were revised. I have Cyberpunk RED and although I haven't run it yet, I really like the system. It seems elegant.

I do miss my Shadowrun stories though, but mostly for nostalgia's sake. I really loved the lore and how elves, orcs, etc came back into the world as the magic levels rose.

I haven’t seen the new rules, I never upgraded from Shadowrun 2e. 🤷‍♂️

Ha! Probably for the best. I had a lot of fun with the second edition.

Quote from Stormknight >>

Cyberpunk is my favourite TTRPG genre, and I have played and run many games of Cyberpunk, going back to the early 90s. I'm playing in a regular Cyberpunk:Red game also, which is a lot of fun.

Fun fact - the early Cyberpunk game was called "Cyberpunk 2020" as that was the point in the future that they'd picked to set the game.

One of the core things about Cyberpunk as a genre is that it's in "the near future" so is something that could happen within our lifetimes.

Cyberpunk ... that brings me back, Choomba (though to be honest, no one ever used that slang in any of my games).

I've probably played R Talsorian's Cyberpunk games more than any other TTRPG ... largely because it was my main game in middle-high school, so probably talking about 5-6+ hours sessions pretty much weekly for three years.  Local comic shop would even put dibs on random issues of Interface magazine (I forget it's relationship with RTG, but it's distribution was janky) knowing there was a table that buy it.

Funner Fact: Cyberpunk 2020 was actually the 2nd edition of Cyberpunk RTalsorian put out.  Prior to the 2020 book, and I want to say years prior, Cyberpunk came in a black box, with three staple bound manuals (players guide, ref guide/lore guide (screemsheets) and Friday Night Firefight.  It was set in 2013, and that's where you first see the Silverhand/Alt/Soulkiller tragic story "Never Fade Away."  2013 is the edition that had sort of alt setting books with setting specific rules for Walter Jon Williams Hardwired (I think he even wrote some of it, had the Panzerboy role) and Effinger's When Gravity Fails (which I remember got props for doing a decent representation of Muslim cultures, at least in comparison to western representations in the late 80s early 90s, those were always cool elements in RTG's world design).  Solo of Fortune first showed up then too in its parody of Soldier of Fortune glory.  I think Rockerboy did the same thing copying sort of garage band guitar aspiration magazines (not sure why RED edition couldn't just go with "Rocker" this time around)  

2020 brought in the Chromebook, and while 2013 had "Posergangs" and some discussion of body modification, it was in the Chromebooks that fully (non cybernetic) body mods became a thing (you want to be reptilian with a tail, you can if you can afford it).  2020 also I think had a more hit points within area of body sort of thing whereas combat in 2013 was much deadlier with a very rapid wound progression to death.  Plus unless GMs enforced rules of cool, everyone in 2020 was walking around with metal gear grade armor.

I liked 2013's Lifepath more than 2020's and both more than Red's (which is more reflective of the D&D background notes).  

New Years Day 2013 and 2020 I got so many messages and voicemails from people I hadn't heard from in a decade asking saying things like "AV-4 to the rooftop, do our thing, drive out out of their basement garage in one of their own vans ... easy money, what could go wrong?  Yes the Netrunner's in a secure location ... I think.", '

Then came Cybergeneration, which is now spoken of as a "alt history" of RTG's Cyberpunk post 2020.  It was kinda X-menny, you played teenagers and youth powered up by a nano plague basically, the edge runners of the 2020s are your parents.  

Then there was Cyberpunk 203x ... which we don't really talk about.  I have a pdf from Drivethru, I think, never saw a physical copy.  It was the first setting that posited a Cyberpunk world after Bartmoss or Spider breaks the 'net, it's 203x because no one can really agree on what year it is.

I've liked Red, and if you liked the starter set one shot, I'd go in for the core book.  Martial arts rules aren't as elaborate as what you finally saw in 2020s PacRim sourcebook, but I think they're more efficient and flavorful.  Equipment and cyberwar are less diversified, but I think that's ok, and I know there are a few official RTG things floating around about adapting 2020 weapons to Red.  It's a more streamlined game, and I miss some of the old stuff, but I think RED plays faster than prior editions.

Ironically, one thing I thought was sort of shallow in 2013/20 were the humanity/empathy mechanics.  It didn't seem to me the game did much to encourage characters to hold onto their humanity.  Rather the empathy stat just created a bright line for how far down the cyber rabbit hole someone could Borg out.  Demands an explanation why someone with 10 EMP would go full Borg conversion, electively?  Red I think does it a bit better, but coincidentally I just backed Free League's Bladerunner Kickstarter, where "humanity" is a key mechanic and at least through pressers seems to be more of what I would have wanted to see in Cyberpunk.  In a month I guess I can port it into the game.    '

I have never played Shadowrun, and I'll admit that makes me an outlier among cyberpunk TTRPG players.

I'm curious about Cy-Borg, a cyberpunk game that is from the creator of Mork Borg and may be based on similar mechanics.  Traveller 2300 went into a cyberpunk mode with its' earth book.  That was sorta interesting.  I remember messing around with a homebrew game using Twilight 2000 2e's Marc 2000, mixed with some Cthulhupunk and homebrew cybernetics rules ... I don't know if it was good but I remember having fun finding out we could do it.

True story: 1990 my cyberpunk buddies and I had planned a night at the movies to see the "arguable" cyberpunk movie Hardware, but it had done so poorly its opening weekend, the theater kicked it out.  We wound up seeing this movie "Goodfellas" that had just come out instead ... which was probably my first "real film" type movie.  Ironically, it had a huge impact on my gaming style, and Goodfellas probably better informed my ability to establish the right tone of edgerunners pulling petty heists than Hardware's soft **** infrared sex scene would have.  Don't see Hardware unless you're looking for a really bad movie or a cyberpunk movie with Iggy Pop in it.  

Yeah, I went down a nostalgia habit hole this thread caused me to fall into.  I remember I mail ordered the black box (2013), I have no idea where I saw the ad, maybe Dragon, but it had this illustration that was completely riffing off Nagel of some edge runner with neck interface studs and angular Flock of Seaguls hair, GIANT hand canon that artwork in the ad just drew me in.  

I remember the early art for Cyberpunk was very 80s in a sorta commentary way.  The Nagel cover, the layouts of Solo of Fortune and Rockerboy evocative of IRL periodicals.  The later books took a hard turn into anime aesthetics.  I guess Appleseed is arguably Cyberpunk and a lot of the full Borg mods were clearly evocative of the big dude in that franchise.  I think a lot of the over the top body mod fashion was probably inspired by Harraway's Cyborg manifesto and the posthuman writing that were intersecting academia and fiction at the time.  Strangely, I never felt there being a lot of overlap in feel between RTG's Cyberpunk and their Mekton game.  I didn't play Mekton much but I remember thinking the system was fun and very adaptable to the mecha anime genre.

Regarding giant mod creep with books.  There was one book, I think it was called Maximum Metal, which was about IIRC actual military hardware in the cyberpunk setting.  Tactical fighters, actual tanks, and man or Borg portable weapons that would give one a fighting chance against the former two.  I remember a player showed up at my table with it, and flipping through I was very much, "No, just no."  Then the Third Corporate War books came out so yeah jet fighter chases using Night City like a network of canyons happened.  And to think that party got started just wanting to create a racketeering/extortion empire in a neighborhoods black market surgery trade.  You know, people say Vin Diesel played a lot of D&D, I'm thinking given the trajectory of the Fast and Furious he may have actually been a Cyberpunk player.

If you like Red's "street feel" I'd keep any eye on Free League's Bladerunner.