Cyberpunk to Steampunk a mod story

So I need to start this posting with a little bit of a flashback. The very first review that I posted was for the original Cyberpunk RPG by R Talsorian. A game which I said could be modded to hell and you could come up with a lot of cool things. Well this is where I talk about one of those cool things. Modding it into Steampunk. And by the way Mike, if you see this please note that you should really consider putting this out officially to expand the line while all of us long time fans wait for Cyberpunk 2077 to come out.

I am going to make a big assumption here in writing this, actually three of them.

1. You know what Cyberpunk is as a genre
2. You know what Steampunk is as a genre
3. You have a passing familiarity with the Interlock system created for the Cyberpunk roleplaying game.

So the reason I am tossing this together is that I have a few friends, and my awesome wife who love the Steampunk settings. Hells the wife and I have a Steampunk themed library in our house that we took about four months to build so yeah its a kinda big deal. I have looked into a lot of different RPG’s and several board games but I had not been able to find something that had a clear and easy steampunk setting that I felt was just completely top of the line. So I decided to kitbash one using a game engine that I felt really kicked ass on doing the cyberpunk theme.

What I came up with was basically a double mod. Using the Cyberpunk game as a base I realized that I could use every role in the game with just a few changes to description except one. For example the Rockerboy could become a Presence, the charismatic leader type that runs guilds and unions or even goes into politics. Solo’s become Dragoons while keeping everything that makes them feel like warriors. Nomads can be migrant working families or gypsies or both. Corporate’s stay as they are really, and  Techies, well they were always going to be techies, just now driven by steam, clockworks, and primordial electricity instead of hydraulics and nano-machine interfaces. The hard one is the Netrunner. That is also where the split happens that gives you so many options.

I thought to turn the Netrunner into an Arcanist. Now then depending on if you want to have a Steampunk setting with actual magic or not you would need to either make the Arcanist a fortune teller who knows legends and can be sort of a mystical con man, or if you want magic to be functional then you should pull in the stat Psi from Mekton Zeta Plus and change the psi powers to magic spells. In either case the role skill of Arcana can be used. In one version it is used to try and add mysticism to the world and in the other it allows the Arcanist not only knowledge but it is essential in the casting of spells or channeling the mana that powers magic. If you go with the real magic version you can also do up a Techie who is an Arcane Engineer who’s tech skills revolve around using mana as a power source.

A quick check of monies made it seem like all the gear and tools could be used if we just divided all the starting money by ten and do the same to the costs. Most of the blatant cybernetics could stay, but would have to fall into things that are steam powered and therefore bulkier and have the right look. For things like the neuro enhancements and skill chips we need to have the setting include magic to make it make sense without having everything go sideways.

Next step is to add to the idea of corporate powers. In addition to them you will also have guilds. Groups of men and women who control certain skills and knowledge. Corporations will have to deal with them to get the resources they need to get the advancements they want. This will give players even more factions to work with and fight.

With all these possibilities on the doorstep you can see where the options can roll to. One of the big limits that I tossed in when I made my version of this was to have the Magic stat be opposed by the Empathy stat. By that I mean that between the two of them you can only ever have a score of ten. So an all powerful Arcanist who has a Magic stat of 10, also has no empathy and therefore no humanity. And they then become the magic equivalent of a cyber psycho.

All in all this is a really easy conversion to make.

You will also please note that I did not go into all the details that I could have. I did not put down any lists of Unions or Guilds that I put together for my world. There is a reason for that. This article is about giving others the idea and letting them run with it. If folks want me to flesh it out I could do that, but I honestly think that with what I put here you have enough to drive your own version.

Now gimme the dice, I need to see if a mana powered steamcat can be used to sneak past some lack luster Dragoons to pick up a few things for me…

Have fun and keep playing folks. 🙂