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Shadowrun: Crossfire
Green Lantern wrote: What does the term cyberpunk mean? I have no idea so can't comment on whether or not Shadowrun fails at being a cyberpunk game. Shadowrun was always about the ebb and flow of magic, heists, and not knowing who to trust. That fact that elves, dwarves, trolls, and orks were in the setting was always window dressing. The in game explanation for the existence was clever too so their presence never felt forced.
Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science-fiction that focuses on near-future settings where computers and cybernetics are everywhere. The style of a given setting is usually multi-cultural, noir, cynical, high-tech, and somewhat dystopian. Common concepts dealt with in cyberpunk fiction are surveillance, alienation, loss of humanity, rebellion against authority, corporations becoming more powerful than governments, artificial intelligence, and above all else, hacking. In real cyberpunk stories, the multi-culturalism is that of various human cultures, but in Shadowrun, it is all about the tired Tolkienesqe stereotypes of elves, dwarves, etc.
Blade Runner is a great example of what a cyberpunk setting should look like. So is modern Japan, except for the multi-cultural part. Other movies influenced by cyberpunk include Brazil, Robocop, Hardware, the Lawnmower Man, the Matrix, Total Recall, and Dredd. Max Headroom and Dark Angel are two tv shows that were definitely based on cyberpunk.
I suspect one reason that Shadowrun was a more popular rpg than Cyberpunk was the miniatures. A lazy or cheap gamemaster could just recycle his D&D minis for a Shadowrun game, but running a Cyberpunk game would have meant buying lots of new minis and painting them.
The original Cyberpunk rpg was published in the '80s and set in the year 2013. That is part of the problem with cyberpunk... most of the writers were only peering a short distance into the future, and now their works are dated.
The best cyberpunk material was always the books. I highly recommend trying these:
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling
When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling
Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan
Vacuum Flowers, by Michael Swanwick
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams
Burning Chrome, by William Gibson
Steel Beach, by John Varley
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
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Shellhead wrote: Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science-fiction that focuses on near-future settings where computers and cybernetics are everywhere. The style of a given setting is usually multi-cultural, noir, cynical, high-tech, and somewhat dystopian. Common concepts dealt with in cyberpunk fiction are surveillance, alienation, loss of humanity, rebellion against authority, corporations becoming more powerful than governments, artificial intelligence, and above all else, hacking. In real cyberpunk stories, the multi-culturalism is that of various human cultures, but in Shadowrun, it is all about the tired Tolkienesqe stereotypes of elves, dwarves, etc.
Well then, with that definition I can certify that the Shadowrun game and materials incorporated every one of those elements. To those that think having Tolkien races intermixed somehow negates the cyberpunk themes I got nothing. Haters gonna hate. I've played several editions, read numerous novels and source books and never got the impression the game solely focused on the races. In fact, the idea of various races trying to cope with survival in a dystopian future while trying to establish new cultures was simply an opportunity to flesh out and explore those themes if a group wanted to go that route. The races were just one more tool in the kit for the GM and players, nothing more.
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However, if somebody is really stuck on the Shadowrun take on cyberpunk, I can recommend a couple of good books by Michael Swanwick: the Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel. I can't recommend any of the dozens of official Shadowrun novels, because I had already read too many bad books written primarily to cash in on the popularity of other games and assumed that these books would be more of the same.
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