Cyberpunk PCs, Part II

Now I am going to look at character types for some Cyberpunk RPGS that I have. I pulled Cyberpunk 2020, Ex Machina, and Shadowrun (4e) off my shelf. Here’s what I found.

Cyberpunk 2020
This had the closest thing to character classes out of the bunch. There are more than I remember, though:

• Rockerboy
• Solo
• Netrunner
• Techie
• MedTech
• Media
• Cop
• Corporate
• Fixer
• Nomad

Some of these are interesting. MedTech is in there largely, I think, because of the cleric-syndrome. (Although you could run a campaign in which the PCs are ab emergency response team – and that could actually be pretty cool.) Nomad seems to fit more of the post-apocalyptic world than the cyberpunk one, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Ex Machina
Based on Tri-Stat, Ex Machina doesn’t have character classes, but it does have adaptable occupational templates:

• Hacker
• Idol (celebrity-type)
• Investigator
• Medic
• Street Punk
• Street Samurai
• Suit
• Tech
• Teleoperator

Shadowrun
Shadowrun doesn’t have anything like classes, really… so I am just going to list their template/sample characters. Some of these are magical-types. I’ll mark those with a (m).

• Bounty Hunter
• Combat Mage (m)
• Cover Ops Specialist
• Drone Rigger
• Enforcer
• Face
• Gunslinger Adept (m)
• Hacker
• Occult Investigator (m)
• Radical Eco Shaman (m)
• Smuggler
• Sprawl Ganger
• Street Samurai
• Technomancer (m, sort of)
• Weapons Specialist

I’m not sure what results to draw from this stuff yet. One thing that sticks out in many of these is the emphasis on where a PC comes from (usually the streets or the world of privilege) as a defining characteristic.