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Cyberpunk is a tabletop RPG with a sci-fi setting. Its design is based entirely on a ultra-high-tech dystopian future, deeply influenced by 1980s culture.
It is set in a world – and particularly in a city called Night City – where megacorporations wield boundless power, advanced technology goes hand in hand with urban decay, and living on the edge is the norm. A world of extremes, featuring a ruling class of evil, unscrupulous multinationals and normal people who have already become impervious to the effects of the increasingly dominant technology.
One key aspect sets Cyberpunk apart from other fantasy RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons: its roots in the cyberpunk literature of authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
This RPG is based on printed rulebooks that make up the core of the game’s story and rules, and is aimed at players who enjoy grown-up, complex plots. The first edition, titled simply Cyberpunk, appeared in 1988, published by R. Talsorian Games and created by the visionary Mike Pondsmith. The initial game system, which later evolved into the Interlock System and then the Fuzion System, uses ten-sided dice (d10s) to decide the characters’ actions, which are defined through their attributes, skills and a significant amount of personal background.
Cyberpunk 2020, the second edition, became the best-known, standard version of the game, and indeed the name is often used to refer to the entire series. Over time, Cyberpunk’s impact has gone far beyond RPGs: the video game Cyberpunk 2077 was released in 2020, and a popular anime miniseries with the title Cyberpunk: Edgerunners came out on Netflix in 2022.
Where it all began: the history of Cyberpunk
Mike Pondsmith created Cyberpunk in the late 1980s, riding the wave of the success of cyberpunk literature, but it took a long creative journey to get to that point. Pondsmith had been creating games for his friends since he was a child, but it was at college that he was first introduced to the idea of role-playing games based on pen and paper, and in particular Dungeons & Dragons.
After a career as a graphic designer in the video game industry (where he worked on titles like Richard Garriott’s Ultima), Pondsmith created Mekton in 1984, a game with strong manga and anime influences. It was a success, and this encouraged his to found R. Talsorian Games in 1985, although the first version of Cyberpunk: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future did not come out until 1988.
Set in 2013, the game’s box came with three rulebooks written by Pondsmith himself along with other authors.
Unlike fantasy RPGs, which often celebrate heroism, Cyberpunk invites players to play marginal figures, the ‘edgerunners’, who are fighting for survival at the margins of society, often employed by the same corporations that are taking over the world. The game therefore offers a perspective that was highly innovative when it first came out: exploring the consequences that technology and unbridled capitalism could have on humanity.
Cyberpunk’s original setting is clearly also inspired by works like Blade Runner and the anime series Bubblegum Crisis. The people who inhabit these worlds are nothing more than cogs in a merciless society. Access to weapons is completely unrestricted, and people are increasingly replacing parts of their body with cybernetic implants, gradually losing their humanity in the process. Once they get to a certain limit, they risk becoming true ‘cyberpsychopaths’, incapable of feeling empathy and at the mercy of their destructive instincts.
Lower down the social hierarchy is the ‘sprawl’: degraded neighbourhoods inhabited by the most marginalised groups, where poverty, crime and violence are rampant. These people live a brutal existence, marked by desperation and a total lack of prospects.
Chaos reigns outside the cities too. The Nomads, armed gangs in armoured vehicles, launch assaults on convoys and tourists. Radiation, secret experiments and abandoned spaces make any journey a deadly challenge. And then there is cyberspace (a sort of internet), home to the Netrunners – hackers that surf through data at exceptional speeds, in search of glory, money or simply idle amusement.
Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2020 have nine different roles (the most recent, Cyberpunk RED, has ten), including Rocker, Solo and Netrunner. Each of these has different characteristics, decided by rolling the dice.
The concept of ‘style over substance’ is a major element of Cyberpunk, highlighting the importance of appearance: clothing, cybernetic implants and attitude communicate a character’s identity just as much as their skills. This emphasis on ‘rebellious’ aesthetics, on technology as decoration and on image as an instrument of power is central to the cyberpunk genre, and also plays a key role in the RPG of the same name.
The various editions of Cyberpunk
There have been four main editions of Cyberpunk released since 1988, although there have been countless related books.
- Cyberpunk (first edition) – 1988: the original boxed edition that introduced the world and the first rules. It contained three rulebooks: View from the Edge: The Cyberpunk Handbook, Friday Night Firefight and Welcome to Night City.
- Cyberpunk 2020 (second edition) – 1990: the most popular and influential edition, which honed the rules and expanded the setting, with the timeline shifted forwards to 2020.
- Cyberpunk V3.0 – 2005: an edition that moved the year to 2030 and introduced the Fuzion game system. The setting evolved considerably, moving towards themes of transhumanism.
- Cyberpunk RED – 2019: the most recent edition, set in 2045, which acts as a prequel to the video game Cyberpunk 2077. It returned to a simpler set of rules and updated the setting to after the Fourth Corporate War.
The rules of the game: how to get started with Cyberpunk
In this paragraph we’ll take a look at the rules of Cyberpunk 2020, which are different in some respects from the latest release, although most elements remain the same.
Cyberpunk’s rules system is designed to be flexible and to allow the story to evolve. The first step, as with any RPG, is to gather a group of players: each one will play a different role within the game.
- One person takes on the role of Master. The Master has the job of creating the scenarios, playing the non-player characters (NPCs) and managing the story’s progress.
- The other players create their own characters, choosing from various roles including Solo (a mercenary), netrunner (a cyberspace hacker), Rocker (a charismatic rebel), Techie (a tech expert) and Corporate (an unscrupulous businessman).
The character creation process involves defining their main attributes, such as Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool, Luck and Empathy.
The action resolution system is based on rolling a ten-sided die (1d10), before adding the character’s skill rank and the value of their associated stat. If the total exceeds a difficulty value set by the Master, the action succeeds. Combat, described in detail in the Friday Night Firefight subsystem, is quick and lethal, reflecting the danger level in the Cyberpunk world. A single blow can be fatal, which encourages a tactical and cautious approach.
Cyberware – cybernetic implants that characters can install to improve their skills – is another key feature of the game. However, installing cyberware involves a loss of humanity and the risk of Cyberpsychosis, a condition that can cause madness and lead players to lose control of their character.
In addition to the Master to tell the story and people to play the characters, the following are essential for a game of Cyberpunk:
- The Core Rulebook: a vital book that contains all the rules, information on the setting and guidelines for the Master and the players.
- If you have never played Cyberpunk before, the Jumpstart Kit for the latest version – Cyberpunk RED – is an excellent starting point.
- Then there are DLCs – downloadable additional content that expands the campaigns in the most recent version, Cyberpunk RED.
Cyberprint’s printed rulebooks: what’s inside?
Published in 2019, the latest edition of Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk RED, mostly comprises the Core Rulebook, a premium-quality publication designed to be dipped into frequently.
It has the following specifications:
- It’s a hardback
- It’s large format, measuring 21.3 x 28 cm
- It has 456 pages, all of which are printed in full colour on gloss paper and feature stunning illustrations
As for the page layout, there are:
- Pages with two columns
- Pages with three columns
Each column consists mainly of text, interrupted here and there by sidebars and tables about rules, items and characters.
There are countless illustrations in the rulebook, all in a cyberpunk, ultra-high-tech, pictorial style, sometimes taking up half of, or even almost the entire page.
Cyberpunk therefore offers an RPG experience that continues to enthral players with its dark, challenging vision of the future, and its rules that balance action and storytelling.
We’ve reached the end of our exploration of the world of Cyberpunk and its evolution into Cyberpunk RED. This dystopian universe, with its emphasis on style, technology and the struggle for survival, has left an indelible mark on the RPG world.
We hope this article has ignited a spark of creativity in you, encouraging you to dream up new stories, characters and settings in this world, or even to create a new RPG that shakes up the rules once again.