Why are all the sci-fi and cyberpunk games so bleak and depressing? Are there really no RPGs that focus on the more colorful, whimsical, over-the-top, rule-of-cool-driven sci-fi stories and settings that still feature modern elements?
Is there really no game where you can cyber-punch someone into a building or hoverboard your way through a subway while you're being chased by police bikes? No games where the hacker goes "I'm on it" and easily manipulates an enemy robot with an exaggerated holographic interface to make it shoot the enemy forces? No hookshot-and-laser-sword wielding mercenary that wallruns up 3 stories to get a better shot at a moving helicopter and move the pilot away with a flying kick?
Some of these you could theoretically just roleplay, but most require a mechanical support for them to work, and you're usually just some poor bozo in the lowest echelon of the shit barrel who gets killed in one hit and every time they get a cool augmentation it comes with bullshit psychological or physical consequences.
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
 Ape Out Shirt $21.68 |
Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
GURPS
To be specific,
>cyber-punch someone into a building
Knockback rules are on B378 and Bionic arms are in Ultra-Tech, p. 209. If you want more oompf, buy Striking ST, B88. The kind of punch that could send you flying would also probably take you out of the fight or kill you, so unless OP just wants to roleplay as cyberpunk Saitama, you would also want really good armor and/or cinematic superhero advantages like Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) from Powers p. 118-119.
>hoverboard your way through a subway while you're being chased by police bikes
Chase rules from Action 2, p. 31 - 35
Hoverbikes are in Ultra Tech p. 230. For a hoverboard, use the Hover Platform as a base and adjust as needed. In fact, I'll give you stats right here:
ST/HP: 10 | Hnd/SR: +3/1 | HT: 12 | Move: 10/30 | Lwt.: 0.21 | Load: 0.1 | SM: -3 | Occ: 1 | DR: 2 | Cost: $15,000 | Loc: E | Stall: 0
Used Sport (Hoverboard) to pilot it, which defaults to Sport (Surfing), Sport (Skateboard), and Sport (Snowboard) at -2.
>No games where the hacker goes "I'm on it" and easily manipulates an enemy robot with an exaggerated holographic interface to make it shoot the enemy forces?
Literally just the Computer Hacking skill from B184.
>No hookshot-and-laser-sword wielding mercenary that wallruns up 3 stories to get a better shot at a moving helicopter and move the pilot away with a flying kick?
Laser sword is called Force Sword in GURPS, and is on B272. The skill to use it is on B208.
Sadly we don't have a modern video-game hookshot out of the box. However, you could build it by buying Clinging (B43) and a couple levels of Stretching (B88) then throw some gadget limitations on it.
Wall running in the cyber-ninja way is Clinging + Super Climbing (B89).
Flying kicks, in the way you describe them, sound more like the Wuxia versions than the realistic versions. In that case you'll want Super Jump (maybe) B89, Trained By A Master (probably) B93, Acrobatics B174, Karate B203, and Flying Leap B196.
Cyberpunk is depressing. You may as well ask for a bright gothic setting or a rainbow Lovecraftian one.
>rainbow Lovecraftian
Don't give them any ideas.
*colors out of your space*
Most lovecraft fans are already huge homosexuals.
Because sci-fi is about criticising the world through distortions of it you fricking consoomer dipshit.
>stating the form of sci-fi that currently sells well as if it’s all that sci-fi is, while calling others consoomers
Because cyberpunk is our world in 50 years. Is our world very positive for you?
>50 years
mate it's now, bionics just turned out to be unprofitable (for now at least)
You haven’t read a game, never mind all the sci-fi/cyberpunk ones.
It sounds like what you want is just basically just Star Wars, which has several different RPGs out there
what is the point of adventuring in a world without conflict?
Exploration? Meeting people?
Mentally ill narcissism. Gotcha.
Are YOU mentally ill?
Because anon just described the entire mission statement of Star Trek!
“… to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before…”
There is nothing “mentally ill” or “narcissistic” about wanting to explore and expand our scientific and cultural knowledge of the universe and its inhabitants.
Not that anon but you have to have conflict to have a meaningful game, movie, TV show, or a book. There's nothing without some sort of conflict. Obviously it doesn't have to be physical coniflict (such as war, combat, etc.). Conflict is a broad term.
Conflict """""theory""""" is a crock of shit that is laughed out of every decent Non-American school across the world. But then, I repeat myself. Stories without conflict are common, which is why that garbage slop has to contort itself to create categories of conflict that don't exist.
>Stories without conflict are common
Ok then. Name and/or describe a story with no conflict at all.
Don Quixote
Was in conflict with how he perceived the world should be
Do you even understand what you just said?
Alright. Quixote did get into conflict with windmills. There, happy?
Fighting with windmills is literally a proverb used to describe a situation when someone imagines a conflict where there is none.
The environment simply laughed at the main character. Again no conflict.
Living in an illusion is a conflict with reality.
He is not delusional, but just a cringe larper.
he "imagines a conflict where there is none."
He is in conflict with the realtiy he is in.
He needs to larp do get what he wants.
Fighting with windmills is literally a proverb used to describe the futilely of fighting a losing battle.
>Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means "attacking imaginary enemies", originating from Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote.
Muriacan education detected.
feeling like loosing to windmills?
Are you smart enough to find this quote, but can't find the conflict in the story?
Sry german education.
"In dem tragisch-komischen Buch kämpft der Held Don Quijote gegen Windmühlen, weil er sie für feindliche Riesen hält. Daraus ist die Redewendung "gegen Windmühlen kämpfen" entstanden, mit der man etwas beschreibt, was nie zum Erfolg führen wird."
Literally fought against windmills
He was in conflict with an evolving world where there was no longer room for his ideals.
There's constant conflicts throughout the book.
>causes problems for people at the first inn he stays at
>argues with a man over beating his servants
>gets into a fight with traders
All of that is just the first of the four parts, but there's plenty of conflict, even if is just the antics of a crazy guy getting into random fights and brawls with the locals, with the real focus being on his delusions of knighthood.
Even if one does try to only confine conflicts to purely physical violent conflict between two people, the book has plenty of that outside of his attempt to attack windmills.
>Non-American school across the world
I'm sorry for how much you struggle day to day with being illiterate.
Really? Then name 5 stories without conflict.
So I can overcome my illiteracy.
Conflict in writing, can be replaced with obstacle.
How to open a locked door, or opposing viewpoints can be the conflict in a story. If a story dose not have that, it is almost by definition boring.
German writing class
Mine.
Although, yeah, it doesn't exactly have this 'Jet Set Radio' vibe you mention.
>what is the point of adventuring in a world without conflict?
Which part of "being chased by cops/ enemy robots/ mercenaries" sounds like "no conflict", to you?
>Cyberpunk 2020
Not completely wrong, Pondsmith is a huge weeaboo (in all the best ways) and it shows. CP2020, among else, is clearly paying an homage to lots of 80s scifi anime.
Still a good bit darker and more grounded than what OP is looking for, but could easily be spun this way.
It's way the F too lethal to be played this way, too. Expect roughly one PC death every other scenario if you play RAW.
So this Anon
with the digits is right, there is a clear lack of games in this niche.
I would suggest Myriad Song, but mostly because I haven't tried it yet and would be curious to hear people's opinion on it.
Velo City would be my suggestion if you're specifically after a Jet Set Radio vibe, although that's obviously very focused on skating around. It also pretty easily covers modern and near-future, so perhaps it's not as robust as what you're after.
Make your own shitty substance-less funko pop sci fi game, then. You can call it “funkopop” - all of the bright colors and marketable gimmicks of cyberpunk, none of the substantive social commentary, meaningful dynamics or reason for anything to exist beyond woahhh cool robot hand woahhh explosion.
A perfect slop setting for escapist slopbrains such as yourself.
funkopunk*
>implying cyberpunk is even remotely a criticism of modern society anymore
All cyberpunk is a criticism of everything the 80's and 90's thought the future would be, now 30+ years out of date. When it does touch upon still relevant ideas, it fricks up by making them look cool by comparison to the banality of real dystopia. Cyberpunk was relevant and shocking when it was current because the zeitgeist of the time wasn't such a ground down, insignificant anti-individualist one. No good cyberpunk has been written since Neuromancer for good reason.
>it fricks up by making them look cool by comparison to the banality of real dystopia.
Jesus christ, isn't this the godawful truth. What a world man.
M8, cyberpunk stopped being relevant because we started living it. We're not in an anti-individualistsociety but a hyper-individualist one.
This is absolutely true as well. What people don't get is that individualist societies are easy to conquer as you don't even need the divide part.
>since Neuromancer
Good one. Neuromancer didn't set any sort of bar outside of carving out the genre.
almost every book william gibson has written since neuromancer is better than it actually.
There's no substantive commentary in "cyberpunk". Its just moronic croid shit, like VtM.
When did you start fetishizing your own misery?
In all likelihood, the correct counterplay to a cultural movement towards self-impressed emotional vacuousness is simply to have quiet, warm depictions of a future defined not by immaculate perfection, but by human decency in the face of incentive to the contrary.
I really, really like this post. Thank you, anon.
I don’t. I just like in the real world and don’t suffer from Peter Pan syndrome like you. People work for their own advantage, grow up and learn to deal with it instead of b***hing for wholesome chungus 100 settings and living in denial.
Sounds like you want something based off synthwave
You want to pick Anima:Beyond Fantasy, substitute all the monsters by robots and give it a modern setting. Your hacker is a summoner, and the mercenary half of the fighting classes.
Well cyberpunk is, by definition, cynical. However, if you want a sci-fi setting that isn’t an absolute downer all the time, there are options available (provided you are not too big of a snob about your sci-fi):
Modiphius makes a pretty good (if crunchy) Star Trek TTRPG, and Star Trek is supposed to be the rosy, optimistic future with no strings attached. And between transporters, replicators, and the holodeck, a PC can get into all manner of shenanigans before ever leaving the ship.
Star Wars is another setting that has “hopeful optimism” and “good triumphs over evil” baked right into the setting along with an expanded universe filled with everything you could ever want for endless gonzo and off-the-wall adventures, and the three TTRPGS FFG/Edge put out are perfect for recreating that pulpy, cinematic feel the original trilogy and prequel trilogy would deliver on. Just make sure to, under no circumstances, ever, EVER interact with the fandom. The SW fandom is more toxic than Chornobyl.
>Star Trek TTRPG
Star Trek is absolutely NOT the kind of high action soft scifi anon is asking for. In Star Trek when people fight they shoot each other with a laser (which instantly stuns or kills them) or bash each other with rocks like cavemen.
Star Trek has its fair share of sword fights. Did you forget Amok Time? Or the Bat’leth?
this is the worst post I've ever read on this board
>I made my own cyberpunk 2020 setting because the official one wasn't grimdark enough.
> this is the worst post I've ever read on this board
What? OP’s post? Did you actually read what OP wrote? Because it’s the opposite of “I made a custom cyberpunk 2020 that’s even more grimdark” line you posted.
Well, in the case of 'cyberpunk', it does make sense. Asking for a lighthearted cyberpunk game is like asking for lighthearted gothic horror or some shit. You're kind of going against the whole thematic point if you're having a good time in a Cyberpunk setting.
But I'd be onboard for lighthearted sci-fi, sure.
Sadly scifi is effectively a dead genre, especially hopeful scifi. People just don't write it anymore, so there are no tabletops based around optimistic soft scifi.
>whimsical
stealth pony thread, die
Way too many sci-fi settings hinge on their existence as social commentary, as permutations of another sci-fi setting (which almost assuredly is also only praised for its existence as social commentary), or are exceptionally masturbatory hard sci-fi creations rather than being made simply to capture the potential fun of a sci-fi setting. Your best bet would be to honestly take a rulebook from another game that's technologically adjacent to whatever you want, apply the rules and crunch to a an alternative setting(either a complete homebrow project, a not!setting with all of the branding filed off, or just literally adapt it directly to another setting you prefer), and run a campaign with this structure. You're not going to find too many Tenra Bansho Zero or Tokyo Nova campaign groups online.
>Tokyo Nova
>not a permutation of another sci-fi setting
TN is just Shadowrun, Wicked City, and Silent Mobius in a blender, same as Metalhead is just all of Cyberpunk's influences in a Japanese blender instead of an American one.
Typing more doesn't cover up your pleb mindset and lack of taste.
And brevity makes you entertaining, not relevant.
>Why is the future so bleak and depressing?
Because, as Harlan Ellison once put it, it doesn't matter what the future is like. The reason we are drawn to it is because humans are there. 5,000 years later, after the bombs, after magic returns, post alien invasion/colonization, the main draw is that humans and humanity of some kind is still around.
Survival is a theme in all scifi future stuff anon.
Cyberpunk 2020. Your problem is reading games from this millennium. Anything pre 2000 is good to go.
Cyberpunk 2020 is bleak and depressing though? It's goofier than modern shit, including 2077, but it's still not a happy fun adventure future like anon wants.
>Cyberpunk 2020 is bleak and depressing though?
You can't get this vibe from the book if you read it. Sure, the underlying setting implications are bleak, but the way the game is written is very tongue-in-cheek.
>snap-away razor blade scaled up as a weapon
This is the first time I've seen one where it had the blade in the housing which is almost as hilariously non-functional, but I've seen this often enough in Japanese punk-fantasy art and I just can't get over it.
Ok, on paper a neat idea that communicates your setting as having a anachronistically modern tone for fantasy. But making the deliberate choice to design the blade with those lines has to come with thinking "Wait why are those lines there again?" and coming to the realization that maybe a giant blade that's designed to break apart at specific segments when enough force is applied at those points is a really bad idea for a weapon and not a tool.
because that's the genetics of cyberpunk, it's an everything has gone to shit future.
You frickers are still not answering the question in the OP. No games fit the narrative and mechanics of an over-the-top soft sci-fi world and everything points to "use a generic system" or "homebrew your own shit", which means that the answer is NO, THERE ARE NO GAMES THAT DO THIS.
GURPS is not an answer because GURPS is always an answer, but also never the answer.
>Generic Universal Role Playing System
>not the answer
I'm gonna hard disagree there with ya, bud. GURPS is geared for it.
GURPS is the JavaScript of tabletop.
The motto is that it can do anything. But the truth is, you'd much rather use a system designed for the specific thing you're doing, than have to figure out how much of GURPS to use.
I tried to use GURPS Lite for a JoJo game and ended up making my own system because GURPS is moronicly granular for what I was doing.
In short,
is right on the money, but he and OP also should stop sucking each other's dicks and just do the legwork.
And you think OP could not come to that conclusion?
>Is there really no game where you can cyber-punch someone into a building or hoverboard your way through a subway while you're being chased by police bikes? No games where the hacker goes "I'm on it" and easily manipulates an enemy robot with an exaggerated holographic interface to make it shoot the enemy forces? No hookshot-and-laser-sword wielding mercenary that wallruns up 3 stories to get a better shot at a moving helicopter and move the pilot away with a flying kick?
Tokyo NOVA has all that and more you homosexualy hag.
Make your own with Fate Core. The system supports exactly everything you want. More than that, it will force everyone to stay in the groove of the chosen style.
Also, it is not cyberpunk you described but more like cyber-positivism I think. You don't want to focus on drawbacks of technological progress but the opposite, you seek to double down on technological wonders. That is totally okay.
If you want to add lightheartedness, then move the setting from big cities to some small town or rural area where high-tech do really shine as magic.
Play Starfinder 2e.
>people point out obvious instances of conflict, both physical and spiritual
>nah that's not a conflict
You're a massive idiot. Just admit you're clueless and wrong.
Just play Feng Shui or Fate
>rule-of-cool
Please fricking have a nice day
First of all you say Cyberpunk
"Punk"
...
Just say Cybercore instead.
As for the answers FATE/GURPS could be but these are always right nonanswer answers. Cloudbreaker Alliance and Voyager are based on Anime but they are Fantasy and second is dark enough. There was an unofficial RWBY TTRPG that would certainly work but it's a bit RWBY specific so no hacking. Over the Edge maybe? Didn't read it but Big Eyes Small Mouth is the general anime thingy. Or just frick it, play the Maid RPG 😛