I’ve been idly mulling over the concept of an AW hack for classic Gibson cyberpunk. The Roles from CP2020 would be a good start, and some of them are pretty close already – Gunlugger -> Solo, Angel -> Medtech, even Brainer -> Netrunner. Reskin the Psychic Maelstrom as The Net.
I think I’d like to include “Edge” points, maybe similar to Lore in tremulus, to let characters do cool stuff somehow – either allowing a custom Move when you spend them, or allowing you to shift the results of any Move.
I think the AW engine would be much better suited to stories like those we see in the books than the CP2020 RPG is. With disparate PC groups, a Rocker or Techie in a party of Solos is more likely to be able to contribute meaningfully rather than either cowering up the back or being moulded into a de-facto Solo.
Thoughts? Has it been done? 🙂
Paging Hamish Cameron, who is working on a hack along similar lines.
Someone else working on a similar concept, not sure how far he is:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/100683625066686223664/posts/ia4EUYjEW8J
I agree. I think… maybe, Shadowrun would really be suited to an AW hack too.
I’ve been thinking about it since I’ve read AW. Also, the Battlebabe makes a good Cop as is.
I’ve just finished reading the Sprawl Trilogy and Bridge Trilogy back to back, so I can just about see “the Shape” of a Gibsonesque cyberpunk hack. AW’s a lot like the cyberpunk world because life on the street is hard, and the world has fallen apart in a lot of ways. The Very Rich are in their glassteel castles or in orbit, enjoying every comfort while the masses rot. In a lot of ways, “cyberpunk” is post-apocalypse – the environment has totally collapsed, but society is using technology as a band-aid solution to hold itself together.
Not sure if I’ll ever go as far as writing it up, especially as other people are doing similar things already, and I have other stuff I should be working on… ^^;
Are you interested in non-AW cyberpunk games? (Gregor Hutton’s Remember Tomorrow is all Gibson all the time)
For an AW hack, I would love to see gear, and the various costs of gear to the player (monetary, social, physical, spiritual, etc) incorporated in a really useful way. That would be sweet.
I love the idea, and yeah, there’s a strong element of living in an ongoing collapse in a lot of vintage cyberpunk.