Thoughtful Thursday #19

CP2020 was the first game to expose me to in-game factions. There were all these story-related entities that all wanted the same thing. Mega-Corps, Booster gangs, Nomads, Governments, rebels, etc. It excited me the way no other game had. I had tried to do interesting faction play in D&D and Top Secret, but the foundation was not there. In D&D the rules and write-ups of possible factions (such as Duergr) forced them into a set pattern that the players could not really affect. In Top Secret, I tried making my own factions and it worked, but not well enough. I was the only one who truly understood the factions in play. But CP2020 had the solution, the factions were well known, had easily understood and competing motivations that could be manipulated by the PCs if they got their stuff together. Even today, more than 25 years later, this is the yard stick I measure game settings by (even my own).