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.
REO Meatwagon does have AV4’s that regularly evac wounded from hot zones, and a common solo trick is to break their coverage card to get an armed medevac AV4 to their location as cover.
So House/St. Elsewhere/The Kingdom + Ghost in the Shell?
I usually diagnosed the Nomad as upgunned homeless. Take Neal Stephenson’s “tribal” bits from Snow Crash/Diamond Age and cast everyone with the same affinity as a motorcycle gang instead of putting them in suburban enclaves. Mobile Turf.