I grew up on flat black CRTs and dog-eared paperbacks promising that by 2020 we’d all be plugging our brains into ice-slick grids while wearing sunglasses at night. I then did a master’s degree in AI and, plot twist, ended up working in the bit mines where the cyberpunk future arrived without mirrorshades: inequality at scale, surveillance as a service, and a content firehose that never asks if you’re thirsty. So when I say I want a game that plays like 90s cyberpunk, I mean: neon-soaked jobs with real stakes, politics with teeth, hacking that doesn’t exile one player to a solo mini-game, and rules that privilege mood over gun catalogue. I want the crew to actually collaborate when one of them ghosts the network and the rest are jimmying the fire door. And, yes, I want it to feel like Snow Crash and Neuromancer… minus the LARP katana.
Below, I take a tour of a half-dozen contenders and ask four questions: Do they wear their politics on purpose? Do they feel relevant to now rather than a museum of CRT punk? Do the mechanics avoid tech-fetish bookkeeping? And can the hacker and the hitter actually share a scene?
The Sprawl
If you want the table to feel like a cyberpunk job rather than just stat-checking across a gun catalogue, The Sprawl is practically a workflow tool with attitude. The core campaign cadence is “Get the Job, do the Legwork, get into the Action, Get Paid,” with mission clocks and corporate response clocks quietly (okay, loudly) ticking in the background. It pushes you toward consequence-rich play where the crew is forever one phone call away from a double-cross or a debt coming due.
Mechanically it’s classic PbtA: playbook moves, 2d6 rolls, partial successes that bite, and advancement tied to your directives. Where it stands out is the Matrix: it’s a first-class fictional location, not a parallel minigame. The book frames cyberspace as an “abstract representation” of system relationships with tiered ICE and lethal Black ICE. Your hacker’s actions are prompts for table-facing moves rather than a solo tour of spreadsheetland. That keeps the decker in the scene, not away on a ten-minute break while everyone else does crimes.
Politically it wears its colours openly: corps dominate, and your survival is a series of bargains with devils in executive suits. Gear is present but never fetishized; “what it means” beats “what it weighs.” If you like clocks, directives, and mission play that snowballs into new entanglements, The Sprawl is your crunchy-light campaign machine. If you want keyed equipment tables and simulationist ballistics? You’ll sulk.
Hacker/team integration: strong. Matrix moves are MC-mediated fiction, so everyone can cut into the same scene rhythm; no initiative-divorcing subgame. Mood vs. tech-fetish: mood wins. Relevant-to-now: very. Corporate logic, surveillance and debt all sit close to the bone.
Hard Wired Island
This one is “cyberpunk that grew up and read a union leaflet.” The setting, Grand Cross, a vast O’Neill cylinder, leans into labour politics, cartelized megacorps, and the banal evils of management that still loves 1980s office culture (down to fax machines, because of course). It’s incisively satirical: automation as a profit engine, security theater as policy, and an entire economy designed to keep you grinding for rent in space.
System-wise, HWI aims for accessible, tactical-lite play. It uses advantage/disadvantage style modifiers and keeps action procedures readable for non-gearheads. Hacking, social pressure, and legwork share the same action vocabulary, so the hacker is never exiled to a rules annex while the crew chases drones down a maglev. The upshot: the game foregrounds people and material conditions, not just chrome.
It’s also pointedly current. The bad guys aren’t just faceless megacorps; they’re lobbying for looser gun laws, union-busting, and “automation for thee, dividends for me.” If your table wants Gibson/Snow Crash atmosphere and Post-Crash politics with teeth, this lands. If your vibe is guns-n-gear as lifestyle brand, you’ll bounce.
Hacker/team integration: unified procedures, good. Mood vs. tech-fetish: mood, with policy notes. Relevance: painfully now.
Cities Without Number
Kevin Crawford gives you a toolbox disguised as a game. The chassis is OSR-adjacent and fast; the secret sauce is the generator suite: missions, factions, city districts, and “what’s really going on” tables that can fuel months of play with five minutes of prep. If you want to build a living sprawl where every job ties into a web of interests, it’s hard to beat.
The hacker question? CWN’s take keeps intrusion brisk and tactical so it can sit inside the crew’s scene rather than alongside it. Deeper networks and alarms are still meaningful, but your net specialist doesn’t vanish for a solo puzzle box; they’re another vector in a shared op. As with most Crawford designs, gear exists to scaffold play, not drag it into accounting class.
Politically, it defaults to “corpos gonna corpo,” with you wedged between capital and cops. The book’s mission tags and faction tools help you express that politics in situations, not essays. Hacker/team integration: deliberately integrated. Mood vs. tech-fetish: tools serve tone. Relevance: high; the prep kit lets you mine today for tomorrow’s jobs.
Cyberpunk RED
RED is the comfort food of this list: a robust, teachable action game with a clear loop and an art direction that screams “we are the brand, choomba.” Most importantly, the Time of the Red fixes the decker problem. Netrunners act in the same round structure as everyone else: on your turn you take either a Meat Action or a number of NET Actions based on Interface rank, and you physically need to be within 6 meters of an access point unless you’ve paid for tricks. Translation: the hacker is in the building, under fire, trading moves with the team.
The net itself is now layered “architectures” (think elevator floors full of ICE, files, and control nodes) with clear verbs (Activate Program, Use Interface Ability, Zap, Jack In/Out). It’s crunchy enough to feel like a game, not a cutscene, but tightly bounded to keep the table together. If you enjoy loadouts, cyberware trees, and Black ICE with statlines, RED will tuck you in and read you Rache Bartmoss quotes at bedtime. If that list made your eyes glaze, look elsewhere.
Politically, RED carries the franchise’s “corps won the war, the streets keep living” posture. It gestures toward inequity and catastrophe without turning into a civics seminar. Hacker/team integration: best-in-class for trad tables. Mood vs. tech-fetish: giddy gear joy, but in service of pulp-noir action. Relevance: retro-present. Still reads now, not museum.
Neon City Overdrive
NCO is cyberpunk in three buttons: trademarks (broad tags), edges, and flaws; you roll action dice vs. danger dice, count the highest, and spend boons for bigger effects. It leans hard into fiction first: tags shape the dice, consequences shape the fiction, and the GM’s job is to escalate with timers and interesting threats. The result is pacey, character-led play that can do a whole op in an evening without ever opening a calibre chart.
Hacking? It’s just another scene, not a different game. The Grid is navigated with the same checks and consequences as meatspace, and “Grid threats” sit on the same threat ladder as corp security and street goons, which means everyone understands how to help and how to get in trouble. It’s elegant: fewer rules and fewer ways to leave the hacker alone with the GM.
Prep support is underrated here: the “Rule of COOL” job builder (Concept, Objective, Obstacles, Link) plus stocked corp/street/grid threat lists and two example jobs make it very easy to improvise a night’s play with just a hook and a coffee. If you want mood over mechanics and collaboration over kitbashing, this punches above its page count. Hacker/team integration: seamless. Mood vs. tech-fetish: mood wins by knockout. Relevance: timeless neon with enough scaffolding to say something modern.
Dancing with Bullets Under a Neon Sun
This one is rules-light, tone-heavy. Think zine-core noir with cyberlimbs. It gives you snappy procedures for jobs, heat, and trouble, plus oracular prompts to keep your city alive without a 40-page setting chapter. It’s less about “correctly simulating a breach” and more about keeping the camera on your characters as the consequences of their choices multiply. If you’re allergic to prep and want to spin a caper out of vibes and a few tables, it’s a treat.
Hacking is kept deliberately simple and folds into teamwork rather than exiling the hacker to a separate whiteboard. You’ll need to luxuriate a little in narration to sell the cyber bits, but the game wants you to. There’s enough scaffolding to keep scenes sharp without choking them. Hacker/team integration: story-first, smoothly abstracted. Mood vs. tech-fetish: all mood, no catalogue hangover. Relevance: perfect for “we have two hours and a playlist.”
CY_BORG
Built on the MÖRK BORG chassis, CY_BORG is rules-light, lethal, and gloriously loud. Resolution is “roll under fire”: tests at DR12, armor subtracts damage but penalises agility, and when you hit 0 HP you roll on a vicious Battered table that can knock you out, trigger Cy-Rage, or just kill you dead.
Cy-Rage is the game’s signature spiral: gain HP, attack twice at random, and keep swinging until sedated or you drop again. Elegant? Not exactly. Effective at producing “I guess we’re fighting the bouncer and the vending machine now”?
Setting & politics:The City is a collage of corporate horror, nano-infestations, and propaganda… less a canon than a feed. The book pelts you with Miserable Headlines that read like doomscrolling from a future you don’t want, d100 City Events, cult and corp generators, and a scene-by-scene Mission Generator to spin instant gigs. It’s not subtle about its stance: “nano-infested doomsday RPG about cybernetic misfits and punks raging against a relentless corporate hell.” If your cyberpunk needs to scream rather than politely discuss neoliberal rot, you’ll feel seen.
Hacking without the annex:There isn’t a discrete “netrun mini-game.” You’ve got a Burned Hacker class, Apps, Backlashes, Net Events, and a GM ethos that keeps digital weirdness in the scene, not in a separate whiteboard session. The upside: no one goes to rules jail while the hacker plays solo. The trade-off: decker-as-environment-control is loose, chaotic, and vibe-driven. It’s brilliant for “cut the lights mid-gunfight” energy; less great for multi-layered, surgical heists.
Fetish vs. mood; relevance: Gear exists: cybertech, single-use mods, drugs. But it never bloats into catalogue worship. The game points your attention to noise, spectacle, and consequence. The politics land by texture: eviction squads, ad-swarms, killmatch clips looping in your periphery. It reads like living in 2025 with the saturation slider broken.
CY_BORG is for nights when you want Snow Crash’s kinetic chaos and Neuromancer’s nausea, not its meticulous intrusion ops. It’s less “Matrix team ballet,” more “we kicked the amp stack and now the city’s feedbacking.” Punk as praxis; teamwork optional.
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is Year Zero Engine under the hood; d6 pools where 6s are successes, with set procedures for Crime Scenes, Interviews, Chases, and Zones/Range. The structure is the star: play is driven by Case Files with tables for assignments, political entanglements, and Replicant complications. Time is tracked in Shifts (work, downtime, etc.), and your choices push two meters: Promotion Points (do the job, obey the machine) and Humanity Points (do the right thing, at a cost). It’s a mechanical thesis: justice vs. careerism, empathy vs. expedience.
Setting & politics: Los Angeles 2037 is mapped sector by sector, with megacorps, media, agencies, and the Replicant question threaded into every table. The text foregrounds the franchise’s themes of identity, exploitation, corporate sovereignty, and gives you tools to force those choices in play, not just moodboard them. It’s cop fiction, yes, but with a deliberate moral vice built in. If you enjoy playing vampires that suck the life out of human beings, then you might enjoy playing cops that suck the humanity out of living beings.
Hacker + hitter problem:This isn’t a decker show. Blade Runner is about legwork and pressure: Connections, favours, leverage, and the slow grind of systems that don’t care. When tech intrudes, it’s as forensics, drones, spinners, or synthetic support, all within the same scene economy. No one leaves the table for cyberspace jaunts. If your cyberpunk ideal is “multi-layered heist across meat and net,” this aims elsewhere; if it’s “interrogation that actually matters,” you’re home.
Fetish vs. mood; relevance:There’s kit (PK-D blasters, spinners), but the real gear is institutional: access, procedure, and the risk of disciplinary action when you colour outside the lines. In 2025, that rings depressingly true: systems over people, metrics over meaning.
Blade Runner fails to capture the punk aesthetic of subverting corporate power, but as neon-noir procedure it’s superb. If philosophy prepares us to die well, Blade Runner prepares us to file the right form and hate ourselves for it.
Conclusion: Cyberpunk in 2025
What a table wants in 2025 depends on which ghosts they bring. If you grew up on 90s paperbacks, you want consequence-forward jobs, hacking that feels like trespass not homework, and politics that aren’t just neon wallpaper.
If you arrived via chrome-and-guns riffs, you probably want slick action, cool competence, and a chassis you can tune like a guitar. Either way, the fun now lives where meat and mesh braid together and the city pushes back.
On that axis, The Sprawl gives you the paperback vibe (clocks, fallout, Matrix-in-scene) while Hard Wired Island drags it firmly into the present with labour, precarity, and hacks that change the room you’re in. Cities Without Number is the pragmatic workhorse: a living sprawl that fights back and a hacker game that shares spotlight. Cyberpunk RED earns the logo with crunchy, communal action and a netrunner finally in the room. For nights where pace and tone trump catalogues, Neon City Overdrive and Dancing with Bullets get you from hook to heist by midnight. Out on the edges, CY_BORG is catastrophe with a backbeat, and Blade Runner swaps heists for procedures that press on empathy until something gives.
What this says about now is that cyberpunk stopped being prophecy and became method acting. The best of these aren’t escape hatches; they’re rehearsal rooms for collaboration inside hostile systems. If your table craves consequences and politics between every line, run The Sprawl; if you want a campaign that outgrows your notes with the hacker breathing the same air as the hitter, build with Cities Without Number; if joy is tactical fireworks that keep everyone present, cue Cyberpunk RED. And when all you need is speed, mood, and a shared sneer at the billboard, take Neon City Overdrive.
The neon’s still pretty; the meaning is who’s standing under it with you.
Leave a Reply