Cyberspace is a Cyberpunk genre Tabletop RPG that was published by Iron Crown Enterprises. Like other cyberpunk RPGs of the late 80s / early 90s, it borrows many tropes from the works of William Gibson and his followers, positing a dystopian MegaCorp-dominated Earth in the year 2090 CE. What separated Cyberspace from the pack is that its system is a stripped-down version of Rolemaster (a la Middle-Earth Role Playing) — with all the many attack, maneuver, and critical hit charts that this entails.
This game contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Averted (for once) for a cyberpunk-genre game, as by the real 2090 CE, anyone who was ever part of this game's design crew or fanbase will probably be long deceased.
- Alternate History: The pre-202X timeline described in the core rulebook, of course.
- Armour Is Useless: Averted. Even the lightest class of protection (Light Body Armor) will noticeably soften hits from most weapons, and the heaviest armor (Armored Exoskeletons) helps a lot. Then again, wearing armor incurs maneuvering penalties that get worse as you go up in heaviness, and while you can overcome this penalty by investing in the relevant maneuvering skills, non-Killers who want to wear that Armored Exoskeleton comfortably are going to find it a slow road.
- Artificial Limbs: One category of augmentation.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Yuthix, the drug that can halt aging in humans! But you need to take a dose every day... and each dose costs half a million credits.
- Axe-Crazy: Cyborgs who succumb to CIRS either commit suicide or (far more often) go on an immediate psychopathic rampage which will end only when someone takes them down.
- Ban on A.I.: Only human-level AIs (with mental stats at or below the human limit of 100) are tolerated by TRAIL. Superhuman AIs do exist (and already wield horrific influence over world affairs through the MegaCorps that now depend on them), but they must remain hidden from TRAIL's agents.
- Character Class: Like its parent game, Cyberspace uses dedicated character classes.
- Colonized Solar System: Humanity is in the early stages of this, as the MegaCorps have set up bases in Earth's orbit, as well as on the Moon and Mars.
- Corporate Warfare: Like most cyberpunk settings, this is a constant element, both on and off Earth.
- Crapsack World: Per the cyberpunk genre, the corrupt MegaCorps have almost all the power. For everyone else, the only escape from the world's violence, poverty, and general shittiness is through hard drugs or cyberspace.
- Critical Existence Failure: As brutally averted as it is in Rolemaster. You can die from losing enough concussion hits, but long before that, a critical hit can (and probably will) gimp you or even kill you outright.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Played 100% straight. All cybernetic implants raise your CIRS (Cybernetic Implant Rejection Syndrome) rating upon installation, and all CIRS gains are subtracted from your Empathy stat. If your Empathy falls to 0, it's cyber-psychosis time and you are no longer a playable character.
- Cyberpunk: This is your Rolemaster-flavored cyberpunk RPG.
- Cyberspace: Per the genre, and right there in the title.
- Cyborg: Nearly all PCs in this game are going to be cyborgs of some sort, even if they only have one or two implants.
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: As per Rolemaster, skill ranks go down in value every ten levels.
- Drugs Are Bad: There are a variety of illegal Fantastic Drugs available in 2090, and the rules make it clear that going down this road is a generally bad idea. Besides the addiction issues, the GM can impose a roll on the Illicit Drug Quality Chart (reflecting that you're probably buying this stuff from scumbags on the street). This roll carries a risk of your next hit being a mere placebo, the wrong drug altogether, contaminated enough to make you sick, or even lethally toxic.
- Electronic Eyes: Another form of augmentation.
- Extreme Speculative Stratification: The social class rolls for characters go into more detail than most cyberpunk games, and you might end up being anything from Urban Homeless, Lower Sprawl, Upper Sprawl, Gypsy/Nomad, Arcology, or up to three strata of corporate worker.
- Fantastic Terrorists: The public perception of the World Allied Revolutionary Army (WARA), who have cells in most city and Sprawl zones, and oppose all forms of governmental or MegaCorp control.
- Gaia's Lament: Like most cyberpunk settings, Earth's environment is in bad shape, with the only nice places being the business parks of the MegaCorps and the scattered Wilderness Preserves (that haven't yet been paved over by a MegaCorp). Most everywhere else is a wasteland, an intensely industrialized zone, or a slum.
- Gang of Hats: Cyberspace street gangs always have a "theme" of some sort, be it military cyborgs, WASPs, Asian kung-fu gangsters, Neo-Nazis, vigilante cyberpunks who cause more crimes than they solve, or even psychopathic homosexual male models.
- Hit Points: Referred to as "concussion hits", as per its parent game.
- Japan Takes Over the World: Downplayed compared to most cyberpunk settings. While Japan is a world power (and even fights a low-intensity war with the US at one point), what hints we get about the country itself suggest it's no less dystopian than everywhere else.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Man-portable laser guns exist in 2090, but they are inefficient, expensive, and rare. For all that, their stopping power isn't overwhelmingly superior to kinetic guns, so most combatants still use the latter.
- Loads and Loads of Rules: Unlike its parent game, Cyberspace never had a whole separate book of attack charts for literally every single weapon available. But you're still not doing anything in this game without consulting or rolling on a chart.
- Magnetic Weapons: MLA or "gauss" guns.
- Meaningful Name: The New Edison MegaCorp, infamous even among MegaCorps for their ruthlessness towards competitors... just like their namesake, Thomas Edison.
- MegaCorp: Like most cyberpunk settings, these exist and are more powerful than most governments.
- Neural Implanting: Neurological Activity Computers, which are implanted directly into the brain and can be loaded with neurosofts that boost the cyborg's skills.
- N.G.O. Superpower: TRAIL, the Transnet AI Regulatory League. They have worldwide jurisdiction, and their mandate is to ensure no AI becomes smarter than a human.
- Non-Combat EXP: You can get XP for things other than winning fights.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Losing all your Empathy to CIRS sends you on a permanent Axe-Crazy rampage. At this point, the only roll you get to make is a difficult Reason roll to commit suicide before you hurt anyone — or suffer a far more protracted death at the hands of the police or corporate security.
- Powered Armor: Armored Exoskeleton class armor is basically this.
- Space Station: The MegaCorps have created a number of these in Earth's orbit.
