This article originally appeared in d20 Weekly
Digital Burn -- A Resource for a Cybernetic Future
Published by Living Room Games
Written by Joe Chan, Ryan Kelley, Sean Kelley, Toby Leonard, Gary McBride, Jason Middleton, Austin Mills, Patrick Quarles, Aaron Robb, Brian Spencer, Tico, Mike Williams, and T.R. Williams
Photography by Stephanie Folse with Terry D. Johnson, Shirley Soto, Eric Liga, and Rachel Mohr
160-page hardcover; $35.00
Best typified by R. Talsorian Inc.'s Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, the cyberpunk genre has for past few years been relegated to a somewhat moribund existence in gaming. This is not to say that it is truly dead, as FanPro's Shadowrun RPG continues to prove, but rather that it is no longer the central focus. Until now, it has yet to appear under the d20 System banner. But with the advent of d20 Modern, a whole new vista of settings, backgrounds, and genres become open to publishers, and that includes cyberpunk. Thus, Digital Burn, the very first sourcebook compatible with d20 Modern falls exactly within this genre.
Published by Living Room Games -- best known for its continued support of the Earthdawn RPG after its original publisher, FASA, shut its doors -- Digital Burn is its first RPG. At first sight, it is an impressive book . . . but so is the price tag. Once the pages are cracked, it all becomes less so. The inside is done in black and white, instead of interior illustrations, black-and-white photographs are used; all too often, however, these look overly posed and too clean for the genre they are trying . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: December 25, 2002
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