When I look at how a Gmod server might run Cyberpunk RP, it has always alluded me as to
why they just don't fall back to its most contextual roots. You already
have an entire book that describes how a Cyberpunk roleplay might work, because an
entire Cyberpunk RPG was already made.
It details what characters could be. What the world is like. Events that can happen. Ways to structure your system such as skills and stats. Everything! It's just a matter of adapting this to a 3D gamemode with multiple players.
Note that I think this would be better in S&Box, which most likely has a lot more potential than Gmod 1 for server sizes, map sizes, and more.
Factions
Major Factions in Gmod Cyberpunk would have to be limitted to corporations. There's simply too many possibilities for gangs and nomads to have an official major faction baked in. These corporations would have to be major corporations that are either made, or if we want to link it to Cyberpunk 2020, the largest (in relatino to the city) corporations for their respective fields. This would include Trauma Team, World News Service, Militech, Arasaka, etc.
"But that's too many factions! How will that work?!" Simple. You don't make factions into static forces that you seperate the player base on. When someone gets employed by a faction/corporation, it's not like they are suddenly not a citizen of the city. Instead, have a character simply have affiliations with that faction. A character could still walk around the streets, but if you look into them, you realize they are hired by Militech. In that regards, the staff would have to play a role here if they want a corporation to have a significant impact at any one time. You'd need one player for each faction to act as the OOC lead, essentially determining how those affiliated with them are doing, and issuing orders if needed.
Minor factions and gangs however, could easily exist by virtue of the players themselves. Players could form their own gangs, their own nomad packs, etc.
What makes these factions mesh so well is simply the world itself. In Cyberpunk, it's not unheard of for a gang to work with a corporation. They could buy a corpo's services or product, or maybe even have elaborate deals to carry out certain things.
Roles/Classes
Why have a roleplay game without, well, roles? Cyberpunk 2020 actually has a list of really cool roles that could be implemented:
- Corpos. Ruthless business agents and execs. Has resources that can be used in negotations and more.
- Cops. Enforcers of the law, corrupt or not. An authority presence.
- Medias. Reporters of the truth- most of the time... Always looking into exposing the truth.
- Netrunners. Masters of the cyber world. Hackers, programmers, and net surfers.
- Fixers. Shady, powerful figures who make deals, and influence the world around them. Need something done? They know the guy to get it done.
- Nomads. Rough and tough outsiders who belong to massive families who have each others backs. Think Mad Max.
- Techies. Technically two roles here: Med Techs and normal techies. Techies are good at making Cybernetics, fixing things, and operating machines. Med Techies are good at being doctors and medics, and installing cybernetics.
- Rockerboys. Often wild and extroverted, rockerboys can influence the masses into action through their music, driving thousands into a music-filled frenzy- as long as they're good enough...
- Solos. Heavily armed, and often heavily cybered up mercenaries. Solos are combat masters, and are sought after when someone wants someone dead.
Despite this expansive roster of potential,
I don't think it'd be best to have players start as one of these. The reason being that it's simply too restrictive, and so many roles may cause division. Instead, have these roles be
developed into. With a levelling system to boot, you can have a player eventually "evolve" their character into a Solo- or perhaps they join a corporation and become a corpo. Not only that, but if they want, they can essentially just start developing towards something else. Have these roles instead made into
common titles for certain things that those players eventually develop to become.
With this in mind, what could each of these roles do in a Cyberpunk gamemode? What does an average day look like?
- Corpos. Looking to push a corporation agenda. Making shady dealings, spinning false promises, and seeking luxury with their good pay.
- Cops. As part of the police force, you are likely an agent. You enforce the law, even when the law is bought by a corpo.
- Medias. You are seeking to expose. You likely get access to any form of broadcasting in the map. You keep the world connected, and can report on what happens in the world as a whole.
- Netrunners. While it may be difficult to implement an
entire cyber world in S&Box, Netrunners could have access to local networks, and if powerful enough,
the cybernetics that someone is hooked up to.
- Fixers. You are the contacts, the ones in the know. You know who to find, and are essentially a quest giver, or someone who can officiate a mission by someone else.
- Nomads. You are the outsider. You may be truly independent and free of the corporations, but you could easily tie yourself up into any group within the city.
- Techies/Med Techie. Mechanics, cybernetic dealers, vendors, etc. You could be a merchant, a doctor, etc. With your knowledge, you could easily make your own personal business shine, or become a capable medic/doctor.
- Rockerboys. Unfortunately, rockerboys just kinda don't have a spot in a gamemode like this, simply because music is your core, which is exceptionally hard to implement into a game on the level you need it.
Rockerboys could be replaced by Gangers, or simply cut altogether.
- Solos. Simple. You get yourself a weapon, a ton of cybernetics, and you deal death. You could be hired to guard someone, or kill someone- who knows!
But how do we actually officiate these classes in game? Simple. After you reach a total number of skill points
total, (skill points are described later), you are able to choose an official role. Choosing a role is for the purpose of officiating the path your character takes, while also determining how much money your character makes. More on this later.
Stats, stats, stats!
Cyberpunk is an incredible medium for roleplay features. This is where statistics and skills are big. Cyberpunk 2020 provides a good base for this. You have:
- Intelligence. Your brains and problem solving skills.
- Reflexes. Your dexterity and how well you apply your body to skills.
- Technical Ability. Your hardware knowledge and how good you are with tinkering. Technical stuff.
- Luck. Your luck. How lucky you are.
- Cool. How well your character reacts to stress. Do they crack under the pressure? Or do they cower away?
- Movement Allowance. Your character's speed. How fast they are. How far they can leap.
- Attractiveness. How good your character's face and body looks.
- Empathy. How
human your character is. How well they can relate to others.
- Body. The general strength, endurance, and constitution of your body. How "strong" you are.
Each of these statistics has a set of skills that are determined by them. Each one can be leveled up to 10, and each player starts with 60 points to allocate in any stat.
Skills
Your skills are what make you perform. How well you can do. While your statistics are your tools, your skills are your actual ability to perform. Some skills in Cyberpunk 2020 can translate over, some can't due to the multiplayer setup or simply the lack of proper specifications in day to day RP to warrant an entire skill.
Skills can be levelled up to 10. How to level will be described after.
All characters receive 20 points during character creation to start. They also receive additional points in character creation by the system adding their Reflex and Intelligence stats together. For example, if Joe has 6 Reflex and 4 Intelligence, he will have 30 points total.
Skills are as follows:
Body
- Endurance. How well your body reacts to long periods of pain and hardship.
- Strength Feat. How well you show off all that physicality. Bending bars, crushing objects, denting materials, etc.
Attractiveness
- Personal Grooming. How well you can present yourself. Some people look ugly. Others can look good even in cheap clothing.
Cool
- Interrogation. How well you can extract info from others.
- Intimidation. How well you are at coercing people using physical or personal means.
- Resist Torture/Drugs. How well you can hold out against interrogations, and other forms of mind altering techniques. A counter to the Interrogation skill.
Intelligence
- Awareness. How well you can notice and spot things.
- Hide/Evade. How well you can hide from prying eyes.
A counter to Awareness.
- Programming. How good you are at creating new programs and whatnot. Vital for hacking and Netrunners.
Reflex
- Athletics. Your ability to throw objects, climb obstacles, and balancing your body.
- Dodge/Escape. How good you are at dodging
expected attacks, and escaping grasps/holds.
- Fencing. How well you can use a long blade such as monoblades, sword, and rapiers.
- Handguns. Your proficiency in using guns such as pistols.
- Heavy Weapons. How well you can use heavier weapons such as autocannons, grenade launchers, HMGs, missile launchers, etc.
- Martial Arts. Your ability in unarmed combat. Has many sub-skills that cover specific fighting styles such as Karate, Wrestling, Judo, etc.
- Melee. Your ability in using more conventional melee weapons such as clubs, knives, cybernetic melee, and axes. Does
not include long blades.
- Rifles. Your proficiency in using long guns such as rifles and shotguns.
- Submachine Guns. Your proficiency in using submachine guns.
Technical Ability
- Basic Tech. Your knowledge in basic technology for building and repairing simple mechanical and electrical devices.
- Demolitions. Your explosives knowledge.
- Invasion. Your ability to get past electronic and mechnical mechanisms to enter a container or room. Covers picking locks, and getting past electronic mechanisms such as scanners.
- First Aid. Your ability to provide field medical, such as binding wounds and prevent bleeding as well as reviving stunned characters.
- Pharmaceuticals. Your ability to design and manufacture drugs and medicine.
- Pick Pocket. Your ability to steal items off of others or perform shoplifting without being noticed.
- Weaponsmith. Your ability to modify, repair, and potentially craft new weapons.
- Cybertech. How well you are at developing and repairing cybernetics.
- Electronics. How well you work with electronics such as computers.
- Surgery. How well you are at healing characters through surgery, or adding cybernetics to them.
Empathy skills are simply unable to translate to multiplayer RP due to relying on sophisticated charisma, unlike Cool skills which rely on more basic maneuvers and more direct competition of skills. However, Empathy is not a useless stat, as described later. Characters are able to see another character's Attractiveness, Body, and Cool just by pulling up an extended description via button press, but are unable to see anything else.
How to raise Skills
Skills are improved through "Improvement Points" (IP). These are obtained in two ways: Time (Seen as practicing skills when not on your character) and Experience.
Time wise, you get one IP for every 30 minutes you are on your character and not flagged as AFK by the system.
Experience wise, a GM/Staff member could give you IP in a specific skill when you carry out a task in that skill, with the number equal to what they determine is appropriate for what you did.
To actually raise the skill, you accumulate IP in an IP pool. You can then, at any time, distribute those points into a skill. This does not raise the skill yet. In order to actually gain a point in the skill itself, you need to invest 10 multiplied by your current skill level to level up. These IP points are spent, meaning they are reset to 0 once you improve the skill.
For example, Joe wants to raise Handguns from 4 to 5. His current skill is 4. Multiplied by 10 equals 40. He must invest 40 IP to level to 5 points in Handguns. Leveling from 0 to 1 in a skill requires 10 IP. (And the formula still applies from Level 1 to 2, needing another 10 IP to get to level 2.)
These would all be handled by the gamemode itself.
Cybernetics and Weapons
In Cyberpunk, Cybernetics and Weapons are big. In such a dystopia, almost everyone has cybernetics, and life is dangerous.
Cybernetics and Weapons should be cheap. Even allow some basic level Cybernetics during character creation. Weapons, at least lower quality ones, should be common and cheap. Only top of the line or heavily impactful cybernetics (an entire new arm, or a crazy powerful brain implant) should be ludicrously expensive. Same applies to weapons. Cheap, common cybernetics and weapons- which scale based on quality.
Cybernetics should have a visible impact on your body. Get an augmented eye? You should see it. New arm? It's metallic and noticeable. Only cybernetics that are internal should not be noticeable. Furthermore, Cybernetics alter your stats and potentially your skills as well.
But cybernetics aren't all fun and games once you have them. Remember Empathy? Your ability to relate to humans? Well, that becomes kinda hard when your body and mind are part machine. Humanity, a secondary stat equal to Empathy multiplied by 10 at the start, will lower by a certain value that is determined by the cybernetics you add. Some metal claws may only be 2 or 3 humanity lost, but an entire arm? A super analytical chip put in your brain? Could possibly lower your humanity by 10 points! At 0 humanity? Your character enters a psychotic state of mania induced by cybernetics, causing extremely violent behavior and other very negative traits.
Combat
Combat should be turn based. It worked for Cyberpunk 2020, it would work for here, though developed out to capture most of the system, at least as much as possible.
Clothing and Customization
Customization should be big. Really big. Cyberpunk is big on aesthetic and personal appearance. There should be plenty of clothing options, preferably through a system that allows you to mix and match. Hopefully with the new model system of S&Box, there will be potential for lots and lots of different faces and clothes, maybe even body types.
Currency
Currency is acquired via timed payments and in-game dealings. Remember your character's role that you pick after a certain time earlier? Each role has a "Proficiency" stat, which is generally how well you perform each of those roles. It also has skills relating to the skills mentioned earlier.
Your "proficiency" stat is what determines your timed payments. This stat is determined via adding all the skills relating to that role. Some roles have less skills relating to them, but
can also draw on a direct stat to help. For instance, a Corpo doesn't have nearly as many relating skills as a Solo (since most Empathy related skills are in the game). What they can do have however is the ability to use Empathy AND Cool, which are
multiplied with the skills they do use, to determine their proficiency, while a solo doesn't use any direct stat since they have enough skills to balance out.
For example, a Solo has Awareness, Handgun, Martial Art, Melee, Weapon Tech, Rifle, Athletics, AND Submachine Gun as relating skills. A Media only has Awareness in this system. To balance, Media may also multiply their
Empathy stat into the equation to come up with a Proficiency stat that is balanced with the Solo. All these calculations aren't needed to be thought up during a
theory post, but you get the idea. It will all balance out.
Finally, this Proficiency stat is what determines your pay, and each role has different pays for different proficiencies. A Corpo with 10 Profiency could make 500 credits per hour of playtime, while a Solo with 10 Profiency could only make 300 per hour of playtime. This is because a Corpo will be in the position to make more money over time than a Solo. Where a Solo may be able to do more on the ground and whatnot, the Corpo actually has the
money to make things happen, and that leads to the next way of earning currency-
Which is actually
earning your money. Whether through another player or a staff ran event, you may be paid for services rendered or items sold.
General Roleplay
Roleplay is centered around general passive RP, with conflict created from either player to player RP, or events created by the staff.
Skills can be used to determine in-game mechanics as well as general RP. In combat, certain skills and stats are used to determine how well you perform, being grabbed by the system and used in automated rolls when you perform actions. Out of combat, characters could use a "/roll [Skill/Stat]" to have the system make a roll with that stat added to it.
The Luck stat can also have a chance of adding a random number that is equal to or less than your luck attribute to that roll, or any roll in game, both in or out of combat.
This
would rely on staff a lot, if there is to be big dealings, but factions can also establish certain plot hooks that can involve players either though putting them in a position that other players might want to take advantage of (A corporation gives a corpo an incredibly powerful cybernetic that he can't use. What if word gets out about it?) or by urging them to take action (The corporation hires characters directly to carry out a task.)
Furthermore, event servers could also be used that involve high action and more. This would be another large part of the general game, and can take place on any map.
Conclusion
With enough development effort and resources, on a more advanced game such as S&Box, this could easily be an incredibly popular and rewarding gamemode to play. Of course, I highly doubt this all would be truly possible in Gmod, but let me know what you think.
