Been a while so I guss that means two posts this week.
So Cyberpunk 2020 is a grand old game, easier and faster to play than Shadowrun and cleaves more to the spirit of the genere. If leaning more on the hardware side than the Gibson techno-mysticism and altered perception style.
But something Shadowrun does have over Cyberpunk is a neat little criminality rating for gear. This determines if the authorities stop you for possessing the gear and what penalities you get if they catch you with it.
Cyberpunk 2020 doesn't have that, in fact that is a big problem. Since Cyberpunk rates body armour and gun calibur as the most important objects to keep a player alive, it encourages players to go everywhere dressed to fight and adventure.
Cyberpunk does try and tell the Referee to restrain them from doing so, but that is the sort of thing that can get lost in the shuffle, someone neglects to mention their Armourjacket is is on all the way into the boardroom meeting. The legality of gear is handled with vague mentions inside Protect & Serve, the Cop sourcebook. That's good, that creates tension whenever the Law shows up as the players aren't sure what the crooked cops can try and catch them out on.
But the Street is a dangerous place and many things are ignored. But my system is designed to inform the players and Referee when not to ignore them. It's build from the quick NPC Threat Codes used in the Night City sourcebook. Page 40 onwards of Night City lists Threat Codes for quickly building goons and what common security looks like for a building. These range from E to AA for skills, E to A for weapons and armour and for buildings it's 0 to 4. This we turn into the Response Threshold.
If we take the Weapon and the Armor Codes and say that's the Response Threshold. Anything beyond is when the people with enforcement powers rock up to ask questions about your business.
For example, the Combat Zone has a RT of 1A, anything goes.
Get into the guarded burbs and it becomes 4C or 4D depending on the wealth of the neighborhood. Small pistols and melee weapons are permitted for self-defenses reasons but some areas will or won't baulk at Armour Jackets.
Corporate District is 4E but inside the buildings it's 5E for visitors. You are not getting a weapon inside a corp office, through the front door.
You could even tie it to the Security Level of a Building. Take the 0 to 4 Security Level number and count upwards from the bottom to get the RT/what different places won't let you walk in with, or count from the generally security of the area if it's not supposed to be a secure site.
