Contact Information:

jay@vanishingtowerpress.com

Tuesday, June 4

Cross-Over for your Genre Tree

Those who read comics should be familiar with the cross-over.


Espionage; Cyberpunk is a perfect choice for a cross-over opportunity within this stylized branch of the genre tree. By porting over the adventure setting 2.1.3 Highway Holocaust from my Space Opera; Post Apocalypse branch I am able to cut down on the Game Master workload. Highway Holocaust works well for a group who wants to take on the roles of nomads or cops, for example. The whole Mad Max series of highway violence is your touchstone here.


Cyberpunk 2020 is a cyberpunk role-playing game written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian Games.

Cyberpunk 2020 claims to lend itself to play in the street level, dark film noir genre with a high body-count, 1980s action movie style.
Each player must choose a character class or "role" from the ten given in the basic rules. There is enough variation in the skill system so that no two members of the same class are alike. Because Cyberpunk 2020 is skill-based, the choice of skills around the class-specific special ability allows a wide range of character development choices including non-combatants.
It does not take much retooling to place these career packages into the Specialism mechanics of the USR rules set I plan to use for the game mechanics.
Cyberpunk 2020 is a natural fit for re hanging the material onto USR’s rules set. The rules lite approach of USR allows you to plug in the game mechanics you wish to keep, and jettison the elements of the game you do not like. As can be reviewed in the following post; http://www.rpg.net/sites/sprite/cybrpunk.html, there are parts of the game which some see as problematic. These game issues should easily be addressed with smart use of the USR game mechanics.

Once there you will need to place your protagonists (PC's) on the hostile highways of the future west striving for survival. Transportation will be a sought after tactical edge desired by most surviving cultures. The conservation, and production of potable water would be prized, medicine to offset radiation poisoning would be highly sought after. No one could fault you for busting out Steve Jackson's Car Wars Deluxe!

Come to think of it, there is no reason why the Night City campaign setting found in the original Cyberpunk2020 rule book couldn't set down right in Judge Dredd's Mega City One. The whole of Night City could be converted into a single block of this future sprawling megalopolis!




3.1 Espionage; Cyberpunk

3.1.1 Highway Holocaust
3.1.2 Night City Block in Mega City One