HalC

From somewhere on the web I found an Excel based Cyberpunk2020 character generator. It's an Interesting little file and it works for double checking the math on characters but it's bugged. Like the Skills for a techie don't work right or you cannot add more roles to it. Some of the errors have the name Simpson attached.

 

Dropbox link

 

Hopefully Someone can ID this and the bugs can get worked out.

Hi Rockwolf66,

I attempted to go to the link you provided, but got an error.

For what it is worth, I've some small capability with Macros - which is essentially a subset of VB.NET programming. What are you looking to achieve with this spreadsheet?

Are you looking for a comprehensive character generation tool/application that is rules as written based? Are you looking to be able to customize things? Are you looking to generate a life path? How do you want to store the character information? Do you want to be able to save the character as an Excel file? A Text File? A comma Deliminated File? Do you want a random attribute generator? Do you want a "build wizard" such that a user can select a career path and then - keep track of the starting points for building the character and generate the character? Do you want the ability to customize career paths? Perhaps create a "options" page for the macro that caps points spent on skills or attributes?

Making a Macro for a game system I don't use is no big deal in the sense that I can ask for other people's input to get what people might want to use. The other issue that may creep up on us is whether or not Mike Pondsmith would give his blessings for something like this to be available.

Hell, in theory, I could create such an application using VB.NET using Visual Suite Professional 2010. Something for me to think about at least.

Anyone know how to reach Mike Pondsmith on this?

No plumbers? No electricians? Maybe a "repair service"?

Good point. Added.

If you could, would you send me the file you're creating? What I'd like to do is try and create an Inspiration Pro 3 file set that would be able to combine all of the information you're compiling for this.

http://www.mithrilandmages.com/citygen/index.php

This is a web site that I found earlier and spoke with its owner about how he created the file for this, and was kind enough to help me with my own questions. The thing to keep in mind is that in theory, Inspiration Pad Pro 3 should be able to generate an entire NPC on the fly (ie with the keypress of one button (Go) and a set up of one button that reads for the character type being generated (Cop, Suit, Netrunner, Solo, etc) The entire lifepath can be generated for a given character including an "Age" for the character - all using CP2020 rules.

Might be nice no?

Me, I use GURPS and CP2020 as a reference book - so it wouldn't much help me, but in theory, I could also use a form of this for use with GURPS - random stat generation, random skills, etc.

Ah well, the bed calls my name. Too bad I'm hard of hearing at times

Hmm...

No plumbers? No electricians? Maybe a "repair service"?

Well, it is one of the strong points of GURPS - it is kinda LEGO bricks of RPG, you can make it any way you want.

 

..on the other hand, you have to assemble most of it yourself

The self-assemble has a hidden bonus: the world you GM you know intimately. When I worked in a factory for a time, during the boring times I'd go over NPC motivations and mini-role play stud in my head as to what is happening in their lives. The more alive they were to me, the more life I could breathe into them for my players. Sometimes, technology inspires you to create a scenario. For example, brain transplants would be considered unethical, let alone legal. What would happen if you paired a very rich individual with an unethical doctor willing to experiment on apes, and from there, on humans? What happens when the dying rich person steals some else's body? Ran one scenario with that.

Using memetics from TRANSHUMAN SPACE, I postulated what might happen if people invested in a lottery for off-world colonization? A sort of crowd funding method before kickstarter ever came into being.

Yup, assembling you own game world has its own rewards. Then again, some people don't have that kind of time or inclination!

I'm using GURPS and Night City myself. The last more or less developed cyberpunk campaign I ran involved a father looking for his missing daughter in Mexico on a short Cancoon vacation. What the father didn't know was a rich "suit" was paying for black market immortality is brain and notochord transplant. The daughter was a perfect match for the transplant. The "hero" didn't survive the investigation.

The next campaign will center on cleaning out a section of the combat zone and taming it. There will be two net runners involved and they'll have the help of a local "home defence" gang who are more intent on bringing order in the area than anything else. They're essentially a vigilante group operating in the vacuum left by a Night City Police department stretched too thin to care about the combat zone. The two Netrunners want to be pillars of the community as it were. They will be up against Maria Lee, a Mexican/Chinese half breed who has been working her way up as a major "fixer" in the area. She runs a gambling joint downstairs that few of the locals even knows exists. She supplies specially items including meals prepared with endangered species. She runs Deathhunt, and illegal entertainment/gambling enterprise that records the sensations of the hunted victim (think Strange Days). She runs a club called THE NINTH INFERNO, and because it is the combat zone with little police enforcement, the raves have unfettered access to drug supplies. That Maria Lee is the area's leading supplier, means she has access to a lot of support, firepower, and even political support (is corrupt politicians who insure the combat zone remains unpoliced in exchange for votes and campaign contributions ). The players can either go head to head against her organization, or they can work it carefully that the stay in the shadows. They might even take advantage of her services. That doesn't even scratch the surface of what the corps are up to or even the politicians.

I always felt GURPS Cyberpunk suffered a little from being too ...informed? It's a great resource for running a hacking game set in 1995!

 

That said, it is a great brainstorming tool. I like how focused on the net it is.

For what it is worth, I run GURPS Cyberpunk games for one of my friends. One on one game wise, it works well enough. We generally use CP 2020 sources like Night City with things scaled down (including population numbers) without the ecological damage postulated in CP 2020. I tend to use an economic crash along with plague to describe the "hard times" involved - that and a growing corruption and big brother style society. One can either use GURPS SPACESHIPS or TRANSHUMAN SPACE for interplanetary space craft, GURPS ROBOTS for police battle suits in lieu of cars, etc.

Cyberpunk is a thing of the past really. The last book put out for the game was how many years ago? Yeah we have a promise of a new system with the release of the console game, but when will that happen? Wisdom should get some props for keeping the game alive and our joneses fed for a stretch, but interest is based on influx. If nothing is going on or being put on the market, there's nothing to talk about.

It isn't dead entirely...

I picked up FANTASY GROUNDS 2 for use with GURPS online. I've run a few cyberpunk campaigns over the net, and eventually, I'm going to have to start considering recruiting for a game amongst you guys.

I've a fair bit of work to do in advance, which is the one thing I really hate about VTT games, but, given time, who knows.

Long story short - don't give up on the game/genre.

I recently went online to view Google Maps because I wanted to see what was around "Night City" thinking that they HAD to have had a region on the coast line that matches Night City. Alas, that's not the case. The "Bay" doesn't exist either. But, that having been said, I still enjoy using NIGHT CITY as a resource (somewhat cleaned up of the other the stop stuff, but still Night City as it were).

Just a nod to the fact that while we're getting older, and Fantasy Role Players themselves are a vanishing breed (thanks to Magic The Gathering stealing an entire generation of potential players/hobbiests!), we're not dead yet. Mostly dead, but not dead yet. Now - who's running around ringing a bell yelling "Bring out your dead!"???

Huh, came back to grab some info about Run.Net and ended up here.

 

I basically stopped with CP2020, as we drew closer and closer to the date the old girl is starting to show her age. I switched over to GURPS almost exclusively a bit over a year ago and oddly the 4th edition had nothing cyberpunk.

 

So I'm writing that book now.

 

Just got to the part for netrunning and hacking thus me here looking at old Run.Net posts for inspiration. (also rehosted the document link cause it died.)

 

Wait so you are another GURPS 4th ed player? Cool, I've thought about making a 4th ed Cyberpunk campaign but I already am running a different genre game.

 

I do find the Character Assistant to be most helpful in making stats for my various Literary characters.

We should compare notes on cahracters - I've been building up a library of Night City NPC's and trying to build up a library of cybernetic parts etc. I'm also using FANTASY GROUNDS 2 for my online games - and the mods for FG2 include the ability to import GURPS CHARACTER ASSISTANT for use in the VTT software.

I'm learning a little bit at a time on how to modify the files in GURPS CHARACTER ASSISTANT for equipment, and eventually I'll start working on creating a GURPS CYBERPUNK add on for GCA. I'm not happy with the set up in GURPS ULTRATECH for 4e, and am working on making my own. The ones in ULTRATECH suck in my opinion.

On that note, catch you all later...

THREAD NECROMANCY!

 

Dang, and here I thought that the post would be perfumed enough to cover the necromantic residue

I'm Hal, and I'm a RPG junkie (and proud of it!)

I've been gaming since 1978 (for which my GPA dropped a fair bit thanks to skipping classes to meet up with other likeminded gamers) back when I first joined the UB wargames club. Rich Ess ran a fine Traveller campaign for which even today, I still remember one incident from his campaign...

What happens when you rig a dead-man switch in an effort to keep the bad guys from stealing your ship, and then you get wounded into unconsciousness? There's a reason its called a DEAD-MAN SWITCH dummy! (oh how I recall the rue I felt at that game session 20 years later <g>)

In any event, I've played most of the role playing games throughout the years up until about the late 1980's early 90's. I had been searching for a fun game system and hit GURPS back in '86. From there, I became a GURPS player from that moment on. The funny thing is, I've always enjoyed Cyberpunk 2020 as being closer to the "genre" of Cyberpunk than was SHADOWRUN or GURPS CYBERPUNK. I liked Cyberpunk 2020's net running concepts and utilized a portion of it for my GURPS cyberpunk campaigns. I also utilized Night City for my campaigns so much so that one of my players is kicking at me to start up a play over the net campaign of GURPS NIGHT CITY. I still remember the last game campaign where the one player asked me "for all heists we're involved in, and I'm controlling the shots, can you tell me that the heist value is only 1/2 of what it really is, so I can give the other player only 1/4 of the share and make it seem like I'm dividing the share 50/50?" I thought about it and realized that under those circumstances, it was PERFECTLY within the genre to go that route, and gave him my blessing (and compliance). The other player twigged onto this gimmick only after the campaign was done and over. To this day, I remember the look on his face when he was nabbed by the Night City Police Department. Seems that the character got into a "pissing" contest with a hacker, who in turn, set him up for all sorts of "Pedophile at large" and "Criminal wanted for questioning in the murder of a police officer" etc. The player was told by his compatriot "Leave your car on the streets and ignore it. They're likely watching it in the hopes of nabbing you." That it was an expensive sports car just made it all the harder for him to ignore, and despite the warning against it, he tried to recover the vehicle. NABBED on the spot <g>.

Ah well, I've enjoyed a lot of the material from Cyberpunk 2020 and even translated some of the material over for use with GURPS (such as the vehicles and the like). When the GERMAN edition of Cyberpunk 2020 came out, I was hoping that the 2020 line would be revived and that an English version would soon be forthcoming. Cyberpunk 3.0 (which I own a copy) just left me feeling cold for some reason.

Well, enough on that. I'm here, and hopefully I'll be able to enjoy this forum a bit. And yes, I'll be running more adventures in Night City before too long

Sorry for not responding.

 

Eraser directed me to Joe Q. Public's "Fish and Chips" game. I hadn't seen any response here for a few days after I posted, and hadn't realized anyone even looked at the Forlorn Hope forums

 

I did get hooked up with a game. Let me get my player fix, then in a little bit maybe I can GM something via voice - I love voice, almost like a real gaming session with everyone sitting down at the table together

 

Eric

I'm just the opposite - I'd rather play via an IRC like interface such as SCREEN MONKEY or something similiar. The reason being:

I'm hard of hearing

There's nothing quite like having to ask people to repeat over and over again something they said that I can't quite make out via the computer speakers

I finally got my copy of Screen Monkey up and running and sorta like I like it. If I had ANY experience playing Cyberpunk 2020, I'd open up a campaign online to meet every week once (maybe twice) a week at a given time. Too bad Cyberpunk 2020 never created a character program like that of MetaCreator (or had a package for it, as MetaCreator can handle such games as GURPS and Unisys (Armageddon and Witchcraft and ALL FLESH MUST BE EATEN) to name but a few.

In any event, the thing that would have been neat about all of this is that one could play a game of Cyberpunk over the net without needing to have much more than your imagination, and people who can type in English - all without needing too much more than a simple web browser at their end of the connection. Screen Monkey as I have it currently set up, could handle initative rolls, along with 1d10 skill rolls along with "secret" messages from players to players, or players to GM. Since the entire session is continually backed up, a written record of the entire game run would be recorded and transcribed so that people could read the adventure later on and enjoy what went down (or went on, or what ever the jargon might be).

So, live talking is one thing, but it lacks the ability to view the die rolls made by players. It also lacks the ability set up maps and the like (which isn't a bad thing overall when you get right down to it) - but with the written word, you can reread it and get on with the play whereas with voip - you have to rely strictly upon your memory or use map displays as the game progresses.

Just my two euros.