#RPGaDay: Day Six - Favorite RPG Never Get to Play

One of the games that defined me.

I have so many favorite RPGs that I never get to play. It's sort of disturbing, really. In some cases, I'm in love with the concept of a certain game, system, or setting, but for whatever reason it never comes up in my rotation. It's tough to narrow down. I suppose if I have to pick just one of them, the one game I'd love to break out and play (assuming my players would submit to it), it'd probably be Cyberpunk 2020.

The original "black box" Cyberpunk RPG was one of my first true loves when it came to tabletop RPGs. When Cyberpunk 2020 came out, I played it, too. It was my go-to game. Being a designer at heart, even in those days, I fiddled with the game and house-ruled it all to hell and back. All those little house rules are still documented on the web, too. Cyberpunk was one of those games that made me want to get into the industry in some kind of creative role.

The last time I ran a Cyberpunk game was over four years ago, shortly after I started working at 38 Studios in Maynard, Massachusetts. I even started a blog about the game, which was called "The New Untouchables," but I never got very far in updating it. I think we had three or four sessions in total, but for some reason it fell apart. I'm thinking it had something to do with work getting busy, which is always a concern when I'm running games in the office. I'd start that game up again in a heartbeat if I could.

Wow. Four years gone by. The way time flies by never ceases to amaze me, and not in a good way.

I still have a shrink-wrapped copy of this.

Anyway, my Cyberpunk gaming library is pretty big. I have everything R. Talsorian ever released, more than one copy in some cases. As bloated as the game got over the years, it was still lots of fun. I used the system for a lot more than Cyberpunk, too. I adapted the movie "Aliens" to the system, eventually updating it with material gleaned from Leading Edge's Aliens Adventure Game and the Aliens Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood.

When R. Talsorian started developing their Fuzion! system, I didn't switch over. I have a copy of Cyberpunk V.3 (as well as the Bubblegum Crisis and Armored Trooper VOTOMS books), but it wasn't what I was looking for. Call me a grognard or whatever you like, but nothing beats the simplicity and flat probabilities of the original 2020, even if it does require a number of house rules to make some of its flaws less inconvenient.

About the only game that inspired me the way that Cyberpunk 2020 did was AD&D's Dark Sun campaign setting. Seeing as I ran Dark Sun in a similar manner to Cyberpunk, I guess it's not terribly surprising. Maybe I can talk about Dark Sun more in another #RPGaDay entry.