Man and Machine: Roleplaying in a Cyberpunk Setting

Cyberpunk is one of the most popular genres in tabletop gaming. It is a genre of antiheroes, powerful corporations, and transhumanism, famously summarized as "High tech and low life." A cyberpunk game should emphasize the genre's unique themes.

High Tech

Cyberpunk is a particularly pessimistic breed of science fiction. Technology should be everywhere, and it should be integrated into daily life. Virtual and augmented reality should be common, and they offer the best opportunity to expose players to technology and remind them that they are playing a game set in the future.

Technology shouldn't always be benevolent. In cyberpunk, machines are both a tool of oppression and the best weapon for fighting it. Security cameras should be everywhere, and players should have a hard time finding places that aren't being watched. However, hackers should also be able to subvert the surveillance and turn it into a weapon against their enemies.

Human augmentation is a fundamental theme of the cyberpunk genre. Explore what it means to be human. Are people who replace their bodies with machines giving up their humanity, or is self-improvement the most human of all impulses?

Low Life

Cyberpunk is a genre of antiheroes. Players are rarely bold adventurers that win the praise of the masses. They are hackers and criminals that resist totalitarian governments and corporate power. They have vices, and sometimes they have to do things that disgust them. Sometimes they do good deeds, sometimes they do evil deeds, and most of the time they cannot tell the two apart.