Cyberpsychosis: Humanity Cost, Rules and MaxTac

What the term means#

Cyberpsychosis is a dissociative disorder brought on by an overload of cybernetic augmentation. The person loses their sense of identity, starts to see living people as weak, and eventually becomes violent.

The effects pile up. One cyberhand is unlikely to do it; replacing all four limbs and both eyes might start the slide. Symptoms are gradual: disregard for friends and family, impulsive acts, and a growing identification with machines. The scary part is nobody notices until the people around them do.

Tabletop: Humanity and Empathy#

In the tabletop games every implant carries a Humanity Cost. Each ten points of Humanity Cost removes a point of Empathy, and an Empathy of zero is cyberpsychosis: a player character becomes a non-player character run by the gamemaster. Your character stops being yours. That is the rule.

Costs vary by edition. A Sandevistan costs 1D6/2 Humanity in Cyberpunk 2020. In Cyberpunk RED the same implant costs 7 Humanity at character creation or 2d6 if installed later. That edition gap is real: always check which rulebook your table is using.

Cyberpunk 2077#

The game keeps the idea and drops the stat. The 2077 database entry calls cyberpsychosis a collective term for psychotic and anxiety-related disorders caused by implanted hardware and behavioral mods, and notes that some people call it a disease of inequality.

Cases had fallen by 2077 thanks to medical and implant advances, but anyone caught by police rarely survives. An expensive drug called baloperidol is given to people near the edge, with doubtful results, and corporations quietly send a medical team that is actually a hit squad.

Edgerunners#

The first episode of Edgerunners opens with a cyberpsychotic NUSA Lt. Col. named James Norris, the previous owner of the Sandevistan David ends up with. The anime shows cyberpsychosis as a "⁠glitching⁠" effect focused on the eyes. Watch the eyes. The show tells you early.

MaxTac and the police response#

MaxTac is the answer. Its job is to monitor heavily augmented people and respond fast to a cyberpsychotic episode. Death is the usual outcome, and the 2077 entry says survivors go to Los Padres, a prison built for them. The Max-Tac page has its history.

In the tabletop material, registered near-cyberpsychos are on something like parole: periodic therapy and monitoring implants.

Fixer's notes#

Our read: the game's version is more honest about class. The database entry's own example is a neighbor who skipped paying for a good ripperdoc and started hearing voices, which makes cyberpsychosis a problem of money as much as chrome.

At the table, tell new players the cost before they buy: a single early Sandevistan in RED eats most of a point of Empathy on its own. See also Maelstrom for a gang that treats the risk as a lifestyle, and netrunners.