Cyberpunk 2020 was a vast improvement. It steamlined combat and made it a little more cinematic. It introduced a lot of new equipment and weapons. It made Netrunning a little easier to run. It was good all around.

However, it wasn't perfect. The Role-based system is still a little clunky and the Special Abilities get in the way of realism more than they help identify a character or his ilk. It seems that a Special Ability is only used to determine starting pay and general level in a profession, and rather poorly at that. With the 40 point starting skill distribution, a Combat Sense +10 Solo (who should be a world reknown-battle hardened combat vet) has 9 less skill points that an equivalent starting character with a +1 Combat Sense. What's the deal?

The Combat difficulty numbers are also printed a little low. In my games, standard range-based difficulty numbers tend to get people shot a lot. Granted, if all of the modifiers are taken into account and everyone is running or dodging or hiding and shooting wildly, the difficulties are gonna rise, but with all of the boosting they still get a +25 before the die roll, and a 30 is supposed to be impossible?

I raise the difficulty in my own campaign to match the plausibility of the scenario, often way beyond 30. I also sometimes roll "uncertainty dice" which are added to a set difficulty.

Netrunning also needs work. Computers and the Internet are completely unrealistic, even for an imagined future system. It just needs a little more internal consistency and logic, and it'll be fine.

Finally, there is armor. Armor is fine. I'm all for armor. But the SP values CAN get a little farcical. There are several rules variations and GM judgements on the WWW to deal with this situation, so the problem is not severe.

In all, Cyberpunk 2020 is an excellent system with a HUGE fan following but I just can't wait until the 3rd edition. And I guess that's just about all I have to say on the subject.

Sorry about the rant.