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GURPS Third Edition
GURPS Cyperpunk: High-Tech Low-Life Roleplaying
-- The book that was confiscated by the Secret Service because they thought it contained hacking secrets (It doesn't)
-- Nominated for the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement.
-- Nominated for the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 3, 2022
Original review: 2/24/2013: I had utterly forgotten, until I went to prepare this review, that I owned a first edition of this book, signed by Steve Jackson. I suppose that it might be worth something, or maybe it will be after he dies. I don't really collect books as investments, but it would be interesting to know.
One reason this book has a better-than-average chance of eventually being worth something is its notorious history and connection with early (and clumsy) Cybersecurity investigations by the US Secret Service. The cover of my edition says boldly that it is “The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service! (See p. 4).” One humorous consequence of the difficulties in getting this published under those conditions is that the information referenced is actually on page 5. On that page, Jackson states, “A repeated comment by the agents was, ‘this stuff is real.’ Now, I’ll freely admit that this book is the most realistic cyberpunk game yet released. It has a lot of background information. But it won’t make you into a console cowboy in one easy lesson, any more than GURPS Fantasy will teach you swordplay.”
Now, I abhor the violation of Steve Jackson Games, Inc’s civil rights as much as anyone, and I’m glad the courts ruled in their favor. But, looking at this book again, I find myself feeling that Jackson was somewhat disingenuous here, and that the Secret Service agents had a point. For example, page 69 gives a great deal of cybersecurity information that IS common knowledge today, but definitely was NOT in 1990. While it may not make you a “console cowboy” (whatever that is), learning that the word “password” is a commonly-used password could get you started as a potential hacker at a time when lots of companies and government agencies had no sense of the potential threat of putting sensitive data online, and were largely protecting it by hoping no one would figure out the basics of hacking. I don’t think Steve Jackson games broke any laws by publishing that information, but I do think that the (largely ignorant) Secret Service had some good reasons to be concerned, and that they probably learned something by reading the chapter of “Netrunning.” Really, they SHOULD have learned it by paying a cybersecurity expert like Loyd Blankenship, not by persecuting him and the company he was working for, but they were right in wanting to learn more and see what “stuff was real.”
So, now that we’ve talked about why it’s famous in some circles, what is GURPS Cyberpunk? It is a roleplaying supplement for GURPS, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System, which Steve Jackson Games designed to be a general set of rules for roleplaying in any conceivable environment. As the title suggests, it is meant to be used for science fiction roleplaying within the genre of “cyberpunk,” which generally means a dark future Earth in which people have cybernetic implants (magic weapons) and computer networks (dungeons) are the main source of wealth and power. It is generally assumed (although a creative GM could modify things) that this science fiction future Earth is a) not post-apocalyptic, b) Not in contact with alien species, c) pretty much not spacefaring (although space stations and moon colonies are allowed for) and d) not unified in governance, giving a somewhat limited range of possible words to create. Although no specific world is outlined, there is a sense that the kind of world suggested by Neuromancer or Islands in the Net would be the fit most comfortably with these rules, although the film “Ghosts in the Shell” would also be readily playable. Of course, some of the details of Netrunning would seem outdated to today's cyber-savvy generation, but if you enjoy the genre generally, you should be able to adapt readily to modern technological shifts.
One criticism I have of the rules as laid out here is their bottom-up approach, which I believe was common to all GURPS Sourcebooks. It begins with character creation (OK, fine), but then gets into the nitty-gritty of equipment, cybernetic modifications, and netrunning before going into world creation and campaign design. That probably keeps players happy, who are more concerned with making their character as effective as possible, but from the GM’s perspective, it seems rather backwards to start with the details before getting to the big picture. I only ever tried running one campaign of GURPS Cuberpunk, which I am now deeply embarrassed when I think about it, and I think the problem was precisely that I didn’t get around to figuring out the larger picture before I got started – that’s ultimately my own fault, of course, but the design of the book may have some culpability as well.
2/3/2022: Updated. On re-reading the whole book, as well as my old review (above), I only find a few details to add here. One is that Blankenship’s expertise has held up better in some areas than in others – trying to predict what the Internet would be in 1990 was beyond anyone’s range, and I get that, but some of the guesses made here would be very hard sells today (for example, the sizes and weights of “cyberdecks” and the necessity of carrying information around on hard media). It also seems to me that playability wasn’t emphasized as much as it could have been. Too much of the rules are written based on ideas of “lone wolf operators” as commonly featured in Cyberpunk novels, and not enough thought went into group play. A closer look at the literature would demonstrate that putting diverse people together into situations where they had to work together was an important theme also. Typical of SJG, no reproduceable character sheet has been provided, making it all the harder to customize characters for these scenarios.
Blankenship shows some odd biases in recommended reading as well, looking more for “dark” or cynical sci fi than important, influential works. For example, it’s off that he lists Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream,” which could not possibly be the source material for a playable GURPS Cyberpunk scenario (you’d need a whole new set of rules for atomic mutation, for one thing), but leaves out Niven & Barnes’ “Dreampark,” which would be playable and even includes the kind of corporate-dominated setting typical of Cyberpunk, even if the overall vision is a bit more optimistic than, say “Neuromancer.” Where he really falls flat, though is in his music recommendations. Clearly, he was out of his depth here, listing Skrewdriver as a Heavy Metal band (and making no comment on their politics), and including the Big Boys and Skinny Puppy in a punk section that misses most of the more important bands and missing out on the concept of gothic industrial altogether.
One reason this book has a better-than-average chance of eventually being worth something is its notorious history and connection with early (and clumsy) Cybersecurity investigations by the US Secret Service. The cover of my edition says boldly that it is “The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service! (See p. 4).” One humorous consequence of the difficulties in getting this published under those conditions is that the information referenced is actually on page 5. On that page, Jackson states, “A repeated comment by the agents was, ‘this stuff is real.’ Now, I’ll freely admit that this book is the most realistic cyberpunk game yet released. It has a lot of background information. But it won’t make you into a console cowboy in one easy lesson, any more than GURPS Fantasy will teach you swordplay.”
Now, I abhor the violation of Steve Jackson Games, Inc’s civil rights as much as anyone, and I’m glad the courts ruled in their favor. But, looking at this book again, I find myself feeling that Jackson was somewhat disingenuous here, and that the Secret Service agents had a point. For example, page 69 gives a great deal of cybersecurity information that IS common knowledge today, but definitely was NOT in 1990. While it may not make you a “console cowboy” (whatever that is), learning that the word “password” is a commonly-used password could get you started as a potential hacker at a time when lots of companies and government agencies had no sense of the potential threat of putting sensitive data online, and were largely protecting it by hoping no one would figure out the basics of hacking. I don’t think Steve Jackson games broke any laws by publishing that information, but I do think that the (largely ignorant) Secret Service had some good reasons to be concerned, and that they probably learned something by reading the chapter of “Netrunning.” Really, they SHOULD have learned it by paying a cybersecurity expert like Loyd Blankenship, not by persecuting him and the company he was working for, but they were right in wanting to learn more and see what “stuff was real.”
So, now that we’ve talked about why it’s famous in some circles, what is GURPS Cyberpunk? It is a roleplaying supplement for GURPS, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System, which Steve Jackson Games designed to be a general set of rules for roleplaying in any conceivable environment. As the title suggests, it is meant to be used for science fiction roleplaying within the genre of “cyberpunk,” which generally means a dark future Earth in which people have cybernetic implants (magic weapons) and computer networks (dungeons) are the main source of wealth and power. It is generally assumed (although a creative GM could modify things) that this science fiction future Earth is a) not post-apocalyptic, b) Not in contact with alien species, c) pretty much not spacefaring (although space stations and moon colonies are allowed for) and d) not unified in governance, giving a somewhat limited range of possible words to create. Although no specific world is outlined, there is a sense that the kind of world suggested by Neuromancer or Islands in the Net would be the fit most comfortably with these rules, although the film “Ghosts in the Shell” would also be readily playable. Of course, some of the details of Netrunning would seem outdated to today's cyber-savvy generation, but if you enjoy the genre generally, you should be able to adapt readily to modern technological shifts.
One criticism I have of the rules as laid out here is their bottom-up approach, which I believe was common to all GURPS Sourcebooks. It begins with character creation (OK, fine), but then gets into the nitty-gritty of equipment, cybernetic modifications, and netrunning before going into world creation and campaign design. That probably keeps players happy, who are more concerned with making their character as effective as possible, but from the GM’s perspective, it seems rather backwards to start with the details before getting to the big picture. I only ever tried running one campaign of GURPS Cuberpunk, which I am now deeply embarrassed when I think about it, and I think the problem was precisely that I didn’t get around to figuring out the larger picture before I got started – that’s ultimately my own fault, of course, but the design of the book may have some culpability as well.
2/3/2022: Updated. On re-reading the whole book, as well as my old review (above), I only find a few details to add here. One is that Blankenship’s expertise has held up better in some areas than in others – trying to predict what the Internet would be in 1990 was beyond anyone’s range, and I get that, but some of the guesses made here would be very hard sells today (for example, the sizes and weights of “cyberdecks” and the necessity of carrying information around on hard media). It also seems to me that playability wasn’t emphasized as much as it could have been. Too much of the rules are written based on ideas of “lone wolf operators” as commonly featured in Cyberpunk novels, and not enough thought went into group play. A closer look at the literature would demonstrate that putting diverse people together into situations where they had to work together was an important theme also. Typical of SJG, no reproduceable character sheet has been provided, making it all the harder to customize characters for these scenarios.
Blankenship shows some odd biases in recommended reading as well, looking more for “dark” or cynical sci fi than important, influential works. For example, it’s off that he lists Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream,” which could not possibly be the source material for a playable GURPS Cyberpunk scenario (you’d need a whole new set of rules for atomic mutation, for one thing), but leaves out Niven & Barnes’ “Dreampark,” which would be playable and even includes the kind of corporate-dominated setting typical of Cyberpunk, even if the overall vision is a bit more optimistic than, say “Neuromancer.” Where he really falls flat, though is in his music recommendations. Clearly, he was out of his depth here, listing Skrewdriver as a Heavy Metal band (and making no comment on their politics), and including the Big Boys and Skinny Puppy in a punk section that misses most of the more important bands and missing out on the concept of gothic industrial altogether.
Want to Read
March 17, 2013it is a very interesting book
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews