Cyberpunk and post‑cyberpunk RPGs

Cyberpunk has a curious status as a genre in the history of roleplaying games. While the first cyberpunk RPGs were very much influenced by the 1980s literary trend (with the significant omission or depreciation of the works of William Gibson!), the visuals of Blade Runner, or anime like Bubblegum Crisis, the games weren’t really emulating these sources, but rather establishing a new subgenre with its own set of tropes, including the slogan “style over substance”, mission/heist-based adventure structure, and endless “gear porn” catalogs. This idiosyncratic version of “RPG cyberpunk”, in turn, influenced many subsequent games (both tabletop and digital), but also popular culture at large; I would go so far as to say that the contemporary conception of ideologically-neutral “cyberpunk aesthetics” owes more to the assumptions of classic roleplaying games than to the original touchstones of the genre. (A parallel can be drawn with the dungeon-crawling brand of fantasy which was only introduced and codified by D&D.)

The years 2013 and 2020, in which the subsequent editions of Mike Pondsmith’s pioneering Cyberpunk game were set, already belong to our past, as does 2011 of Shadowrun’s “Awakening”; it’s now a cliché to say that we’re already living in a cyberpunk setting. The once-edgy sourcebooks of the late 80s and early 90s are now historical documents, equally fascinating and amusing, of a now-antiquated vision of the near future. There are therefore two main approaches to cyberpunk gaming today. On the one hand, one can embrace the retrofuturist nostalgia for a future-that-never-came, and either use the gaming materials of yore or choose from a variety of new releases that cater to a yearning for a “net” without wireless connection.

On the other hand, one can look for “contemporary cyberpunk” games with settings that preserve some of the genre’s mainstays (dystopian, urban, anti-authoritarian), but try to be more firmly rooted in current projections of technological and social change. The “post-cyberpunk” games on the list are a somewhat nebulous category. They include settings with elements of transhumanism, biopunk, nanopunk, or weird mashups with supernatural horror and urban fantasy. In some cases, they’re simply games about a relatively dark near future, without much emphasis on either “cyber” or “punk”. They also might take place in outer space while making prominent use of cybernetic or biological augmentations.

Because many GMs are looking for indie and lesser-known cyberpunk games specifically as alternatives to the juggernauts of R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, both of which (but particularly the latter) are known for their high rules complexity (or “crunch”), I tried to indicate the perceived crunch level for each game on the list; of course, such a measure is necessarily subjective and approximate. Whenever applicable, I also noted the subgenre or thematic slant of the game’s setting when it diverges from “default” cyberpunk assumptions; the “Retro” tag denotes newer games that are intentional homages to 80s sci-fi aesthetics (though not 80s game design sensibilities).

And if you’re looking for inspiration for your cyberpunk games beyond the usual literary and audiovisual canon, I recommend my list of cyberpunk comics and manga!