EMP / Electromagnetic Pulse Effects
Can’t find any reference to this stuff in the pdf. Cyberpunk 2020 was all over the idea that you’d have a magic electro zap that would hurt people’s cyberware. You’d have to pay extra to ground everything. Not much basis in science but a lot of cyberpunk fiction plays with it and I’m bound to get that one nerd that asks for an EMP grenade.
Does The Sprawl brush this off as a bit too fantastical or have I missed a bit in the book?
It definite doesn’t have to. The back of the book has a list of extra tag suggestions and I think it includes one about hardening vs EMP. If not it’s effortless to add such an option to appropriate cyberware tag lists.
It’s not addressed in the book. Most of my cyberpunk gaming background was with Shadowrun rather than CP2020, so I didn’t internalize the CP2020 concerns as deeply.
If you want this to be a major part of the game, I’d simply add a +hardening or +shielding tag as a cyberware option. You could make a custom move for when the players use EMP against targets if you wanted some specific outcomes too.
Put that chipped beef on toast with the soon-to-be-patented Veg-O-Matic EMP grenade!
EMP weapons sound groovy but they’re basically bombs on sticks if you want to treat them realistically. Add they fry everything and your crew with soon have very large boots getting broken off in their asses.
Cool. Well if it’s definitely not in the manual I’m going with the rule, “if it’s not in the book, it’s expensive”. I can wriggle out the mechanics for EMP but it’s mostly the accessibility I’m worried about.