Cyberpunk (role-playing game)

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Cyberpunk is a Cyberpunk (duh) tabletop game written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian Games that was first released in 1988.


There are currently four editions:

  • Cyberpunk (1988)
  • Cyberpunk 2020 (1990)
  • Cyberpunk V3.0 (2005)
  • Cyberpunk Red (2020)

A variety of spinoff media also exist. Among these are:

Tropes used in Cyberpunk (role-playing game) include:
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Rache Bartmoss's attempt to take down the corps with the R.A.B.I.D.S. virus had the side effect of causing many AIs to be unshackled and go rogue.
  • Canon Discontinuity: V3.0 was decanonised in response to extensive fan backlash over many changes, including the use of action figure photography instead of drawn artwork.
  • Combat Medic: Trauma Team will fly to the rescue of subscribers in armed aircraft and carry armed security specialists to protect the EMTs.
  • Divided States of America: Several Free States seceded from the old USA and are still resisting unification with the New United States.
  • Evil Old Folks: Saburo Arasaka was born in 1919 and served in World War II. Even at near to or more than 100 years old, he is still very much the quintessential Corrupt Corporate Executive.
  • Lost Technology: Thanks to the DataKrash, a lot of pre-2020 tech has been locked behind the Blackwall created to contain the rogue AIs, out of reach to most.
  • NGO Superpower: Most of the Mega Corps have private armies at their disposal. The most noteworthy are Arasaka and Militech, who even have air forces, navies with carriers, intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, and basically supply corporate security and soldiers to everybody else. There have even been a few all-out Corporate Wars in the canonical setting.
  • Powered Armor: They're called "Linear Frames" and grafted onto the user's body.
  • Psycho for Hire: Adam Smasher. It's hard to get more psycho than someone who demands his contracts not only allow for civilian casualties, but mandate that kind of collateral damage.
  • Razor Floss: Arm-installed monowire is one of the available implants.
  • Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: One of the ways a GM can punish a group that's getting too big for its britches is deploy Adam Smasher, who will proceed to kill them all quickly and horribly. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners provides an excellent demonstration.
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The first edition was released in 1988 and set in a then-distant 2013, one which already had viable mass-produced cybernetic augmentation.
  • Uncanny Valley: Inverted with the Maelstrom. This Gang's Hat is taking cybernetic augmentation to levels that are extreme even by the setting's standards, with a common one being replacing the upper face with a mount for more than two optics. Yet because they don't go all the way to full-body replacements that are Brain In a Jar within a fully robotic-looking chassis, but instead retain enough of the original flesh that observers can tell there Was Once a Man, they end up looking more disturbing than either the less augmented or the fully-replaced.
  • Vice City: Night City is a Hellhole even by the standards of the setting.

In 2077, they voted my city the worst place to live in America. Main issues? Sky-high rate of violence and more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else.

  • Weak but Skilled: While the fact that he's augmented disqualifies him from being a Badass Normal, Morgan Blackhand is otherwise lightly chromed, and still so good at what he does that he runs in the highest circles nevertheless.
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