CD Projekt Red to make Cyberpunk 2020 PC RPG

[Hotfoot]

Well, first the Shadowrun Kickstarter, now this.

Not much in the way of actual news yet, but RPS has the initial details.

Um, damn, I didn't see this one coming. A little bit of history, I've worked with Cyberpunk as a demo team guy at conventions. I've played in a game run by Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the game. I really like the setting and I even liked the v3 that came out a while back (even if the initial art and layout of the book were less than stellar).

I really hope this goes well. I really do. I also really hope it goes back to the 2020 roots, rather than the v3 setting, because that would be awesome. There's a little voice in the back of my head saying bad things, but fuck that voice, he's a dick.

Shadowrun AND Cyberpunk games coming out in the next few years? Perhaps more Deus Ex?

It's a good time to be a runner, choomba.

[Josh]

I only ever tabletopped one game of Cyberpunk and that was the original version. It wasn't for lack of interest, but all the love around here was for Shadowrun and I definitely enjoyed Shadowrun enough that I wasn't going to argue.

So it'll be interesting to get more from the setting if this works.

[Josh]

The funny thing about cyberpunk games is that we pretty much have to treat them all as 'alternate future histories' these days, since they were rooted in the near enough future that they quickly became obsolete as storylines.

[Batman]

As opposed to SciFi from the 1950s or Star Trek, what with the Eugenics Wars of the 90s being curiously absent from real-world history?

Any story parked in the near enough future (or mentioning events from it) will eventually become an 'alternate future history' or have to be discarded.
Or you could do the sensible thing and accept it's just a story.

[Josh]

As opposed to SciFi from the 1950s or Star Trek, what with the Eugenics Wars of the 90s being curiously absent from real-world history?

Any story parked in the near enough future (or mentioning events from it) will eventually become an 'alternate future history' or have to be discarded.
Or you could do the sensible thing and accept it's just a story.

Firstly, I refuse to be lectured on sensibility by a man dressed like a bat.

As for other science fiction stories that got obsoleted, science fiction as a genre is not tied down to the near future. Star Trek itself takes place like three hundred years down the road, and only obsoletes itself in the Eugenics Wars reference so far. Most cyberpunk sets itself within a century or so of the present day, so the games usually have timelines that run damn close to the actual year of publication, so pretty quickly they have to move to that alternate future model. Which amuses me.

Funny bit on the Eugenics Wars- there was a gawdawful series of novels for that that I had the misfortune to read due to my old insistence on finishing trilogies once I start them. The retcon they did in the novels (yes yes, non-canon) was that the Eugenics Wars were all hush-hush top secret and totally took place without the general public noticing, so they only became part of the historical record in later generations.

Edit: Added for emphasis on tongue-in-cheekness.

[Stofsk]

CD Projekt Red is doing a cyberpunk RPG? SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY