[ooc]While I would love to see this develop into a complete, contained setting, I have very little intentions of creating this entirely by myself. Instead, my hopes are that somebody might see this, like it, and build it as their own setting.[/ooc]
This thread is for me to post a few ideas I have for a new cyberpunk setting. Thoughts and comments are appreciated, but as mentioned earlier, I don't plan on completing this. Not by myself, anyways. If anybody
else likes this enough, feel free to ask for it. I'm sure I can work out a bit of a discount if you ask nicely ;)
Quote from: ClonesClones, heh. Don't buy into the corp shill of these being the greatest tech ever. These are the true degradation of society. Mass produced laborers, requiring only food- no wages, no paperwork for cybermods... It doesn't take a genius to figure out why poverty is staggering. Sure, ILE may have put the 15% Law to prevent this, but no law works without proper enforcement; Everybody knows AAA megacorps rarely use that much real people.
The thing that's most frightening, though, are those damned TuringClones. The only way you can truly handle those perversions is to try to ignore the consequences of a bad guess. I hope the sick mind that thought those up was shot.
Gorgeous girls, best DreamTabs this side of AA corps... There's a reason these these places got such a name. They're generally only B businesses, at best, but some of 'em make you think there might be a AAA corp behind them. Of course, that's just nonsense, though. I mean, it's not like those sort of businesses would have anything to gain from people with altered judgments and views of reality, right? Right... [/quote]These are small chips, about twice the size of a thumbnail. These contain all personal information, from the name of the owner, birthdate, all aliases, physical descriptions, and more. The right person could probably find out the exact size of you left nipple with one of these, if they wanted.Supposedly most important, ID cards contain a complete record of all monetary transactions. ID cards are the only legally accepted form of currency, due to their traceability. Really, though, who cares about that? Pretty much all street purchases are made either with bartered goods or stolen ID cards, anyway.[/quote]Sure there's some high-tech weaponry, but almost all of it belongs to official military organizations, and the rest is secretly tucked away by high-profile members of AAA Megacorps. Is that really any surprise? On the streets, all you're going to find is those basic projectile firearms: Shotguns, semi-automatic pistols and rifles, and the occassional full-auto pistol. Not that you can complain, of course. They work. They're trusty. What more do you need?[/quote]
(Please note that most of this is well-known and/or easily accessable music)
Assorted:
AkiraSmashing Pumkins
Nirvana
Infected Mushroom
Nickleback
Do The Evolution, by Pearl Jam
Tom Sawyer, by Rush
Portishead
assorted electronic music (techno, trance, etc.)
Bloodsport, by Lisa Smedman (
Shadowrun novel)
Wikipedia
assorted modern technology
A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Nine Inch Nails
Alley Rogue flavor:
Murder By Death
Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd
Turn The Page cover, by Metallica (song originally done by Bob Seger)
Neil Young
Kiddies:
The Ramones
Ballroom Blitz, by Sweet
Clones:
Coma, by Pendulum
[/spoiler]
"and what you say about his company, is what you say about society"
-Rush,
Tom Sawyer
Keep working on it. I love cyberpunk.
I suggest checking up on Cybergenerations. It's a fascinating setting, basically 'post cyberpunk' in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe (actually more like an alt, from what I hear - I lost track a long time ago.) The premise is that the dark future of Cyberpunk was interrupted by a weaponized nanotech spill. This caused the Carbon Plague, that killed any adults who caught it.
This is because the nanotech was designed to interact with certain threshold levels of human growth hormone. Children who get the carbon plague develop various kinds of embedded cybernetics. This makes them hellishly dangerous to the various powers that be, and they don't even know it.
So the cyber-warriors that were have to take up arms against the high and mighty to protect the growing number of carbon plague survivors, and the young survivors themselves have the clout to actually make an impression.
Didn't care much for the system, but I *loved* the fluff. Especially the ubiquitous virtuality that basically made everything and everywhere into a TV show, complete with commercials...
In terms of the kids, I'm getting a picture of a whole lot of Edwards (cowboy bebop) running around, crossed with the new body the Major got at the end of GITS.
Quote from: beejazzIn terms of the kids, I'm getting a picture of a whole lot of Edwards (cowboy bebop) running around, crossed with the new body the Major got at the end of GITS.
Think more of a cross between the capsule gang (Akira; especially the very beginning), and the general tone of The Ramones.
It seems like my take on clones is going to sound even more directly inspired then I intended, what with this CyberGenerations thing...
lolcapsles.
Some info on clones has been posted. There's probably more that could be said, but oh well.
Now there is information on the 15% Law. Comments, questions, and offers of adoption all widely accepted.
That's right, this is the project I'm updating! Some more inspirations are up, along with a wonderfully flavorful bit on DreamTabs, a new section for Funrooms, and even the mentioning of a major corporation. Try to guess how that corporation came to be ;)
Don't forget, though, this isn't something I plan on finishing. If you like it, don't worry about asking for it.
The Ramones...
That was funny. What is the difference between the 'Kiddies' and the Street Samurai? You mention them, show that they need medicinal help to get through a night, then leave them...
Personally, I see Street Samurai as much more jaded, and almost with a bit of a cowboy feel to them. Almost as if Han Solo was a character from Platoon, and played by Clint Eastwood. Oh, and maybe throw in a more-then-healthy dose of PTSD, while you're at it, too.
I guess another way to put it is, the Kiddies are the recreational anti-authoritarians, whereas it's more of a survival thing for the Samurai.
That said, I'm not sure I want to go into more detail then that, for the sake of any potential adopters, and I'm not sure how to post that little info in the same style as the rest of the stuff...
Added a bit of flavor to the weapons entry, and I added a couple more sources of inspiration for Street Samsurai.
What, nobody likes this enough to want it? :p
Have you ever read Snowcrash? It sounds similar.
Quote from: Stargate525Have you ever read Snowcrash? It sounds similar.
Nope, I haven't. Has this been done before?
It's a Neal Stephenson novel which I highly recommend.
It's, in general, a rather pessimistic view of the future, in which corporations are THE nations, surviving in enclaves of influence as if every Burger King decided to become its own country. No clones, but the rest of it sounds in the same vein.
Isn't that just about any cyberpunk setting, though? I mean, if it's not corporations, it's the military complex. I'm not entirely sure what cyberpunk is, if not pessimistic.
Maybe if I work on the flavor a little bit (I did!), people might like this better. Maybe? Hopefully?
Nah, probably not.
Anyway, here's the project again.
Sometimes Snow Crash gets classed as "postcyberpunk" because it isn't as pessimistic as a lot of cyberpunk.
This reminds me quite a bit of limetom's H+.
I read Snow-Crash as one of those almost-humor-too things. Like American Desert. Good times all around.
Added a bit on clones. I knew this project was pretty much DOA, but oh well.
Slight flavor change: Street Samurai are now called Alley Rogues.
Are the DreamTabs anything like Soma from "Brave New World"? I get a big BNW vibe, especially the Funrooms. I think it would be cool if there's a big social elite.
What kinds of stories do you think should be run in this setting?
Would you like there to be a possibility of players actually making a difference in the world, or is it meant to be that sort of 'just surviving' style setting?
Quote from: Kapn XeviatAre the DreamTabs anything like Soma from "Brave New World"? I get a big BNW vibe, especially the Funrooms. I think it would be cool if there's a big social elite.
BNW is definitely an influence on this, although I wasn't really try for anything to be BNW-esque, other than the clones. Even then, it was more to echo the whole test tube baby thing, although it did end up creating a bit of a social caste, didn't it? The more I look at this, the more I see BNW peeking out behind places I didn't expect it to be.
DreamTabs are supposed to be a vaguely defined drug. I think they're most likely a narcotic, but they're probably enough of a euphoriant to warrant popular recreational use. For all I know, they might even be a bit hallucinogenic.
Funrooms are various vice dens, usually along the lines of strip clubs. I picture them ranging from a dark, seedy bar with a faint smell of vomit coming from the far end, to a relatively high class cathouse. Officially, they're all independently run and financed,
QuoteWhat kinds of stories do you think should be run in this setting?
and[/i] pulpy, of course.
QuoteWould you like there to be a possibility of players actually making a difference in the world, or is it meant to be that sort of 'just surviving' style setting?
possible[/i] that the players actually make some sort of change in the world, but I'm not sure how probable it is. The more long-term the change, the less probable it is. With any impact they have on the world, though, they'd have to have an exceptionally high degree of insanity, stupidity, and/or moral fiber to want to take credit for it.
Preliminary thoughts...
[ic=Graduation Day]You got your street now keep to it. Keep it clean an keep it safe and keep uh blood off uh pave. An you got some guns too well ats good. When prefab fuzz is on your step you can pump em one an show Triple you got iss locked. No clones only bones *hyahh hyahh*. Ey still say at? An may ay always. (I'll drink to that)[/ic]
No-Clone Zones
Some places, a prefab is dead meat if a junior so much as whiffs him. SynthPol's little army isn't feared down here '" the kids are so tabbed up they're rocking borderline permabuzz. They don't fear shit. I saw this fab once '" shit, this is the one that started it. It was running a page down to some stubborn corner office on the edge of Cookstreet that hadn't been knocked by the Almighty Dub. Damned juves near took it to pieces on the street. I've got no love for the synths, I mean fuck fabs right? But fuck. There's got to be something in there right? They're made of the same parts as us? It's like... sometimes I wonder if maybe the fabs are a distraction. But that isn't even what I'm getting to.
Street Law
Anyways, Pock and a few other rogues come down to suss the fuss and he gets amongst it, splitting jaws and cracking bones as always. Huh, wasn't that always Pock. This whole crowd of kids is on the ground bleeding and crying for their mums and you'd expect, you know, this is our man Pock the Thrillkiller, you'd expect he's laughing and soaking up the rumble. Hmh. He's just pissed. So he picks up one of the number and starts giving her the straight on how now SP's gonna be on their asses and the alleyboys've got to sort the juves' own mess out. Which, truth be told, is usually the case, but then you know old Pock. Loved a rumble. Not this though. Think he smelled it.
Dodging the Dub
Yes. That's how it happened. That started Lockup. I mean it didn't start Lockup. Fucking SynthPol had it coming a hundred different ways before that and people were serving it up all over. But Cookstreet was t-point. Girl, it's bullshit how we make symbols out of fucking atrocities, because that's all that was. All these omegas start treating an act of murder like a goddamn defiant stand. Alright so it was a fab but their blood sure looks fucking real. I mean my dad, my mum, brother, half the street gone. Practicqally the whole west Savill gone. And heaven knows where. Except the damned kids of course. The same shits who'd start it all over again, and no we've got their goddamn kids pulling the same shit. Well yeah they never got Pock but it didn't matter then, did it. Lone Rogues are our problem. Trip couldn't shake them while they were soldiers but a solo Rogue's a merc. That's just a businessman with a gun.
Very nice! It's a bit hard to follow, but I'm absolutely loving the tone you've got, here. If you want, I can probably come up with a couple questions for you.
That'd be great.
Feels a little weird to ask questions about something I started, but this really hasn't been my beast for awhile, now, so here goes:
prefabs/fabs: I'm guessing this is slang for clones, right? Are these terms used interchangeably, or do they refer to different kinds of clones? I do like how you've pushed the anti-clone sentiment.
SynthPol: Corrupt enforcement agency, I take it? That's kind of where I was going with ILE, but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. I'd be interested in hearing more about this.
Pock (and Trip?): Ah! Actual characters! How well-known of an alley rogue is Pock?
Again, I am impressed with this. Good work.
Hmm, Trip was actually intended as a slang for Triple A Megacorps. The name also means Triple-A grade drugs in places where things are so down that dreamtabs and other heavy narc are a necessary fixture. The best drugs are corporate, and the best corps are the Triple A's. Dub, the Double-A, also means great-but-not-awesome drugs. Aces are A-Corps and A-grade narc and Sub is any drug or corp less than that. (I'm thinking the Almighty Dub is slang for a particular corporation)
Pock is notorious across a broad swathe of territory; he used to be a hero and a villain, now he's a scoundrel beyond scoundrels.
"Synth" is a term concocted by propagandists to dehumanise clones, so SynthPol is an enforcement agency made up of clones. The 15% law doesn't apply to SynthPol at all. I imagine they are a section within ILE.
Prefab is an old-fashioned term from the early days of clones when they were first legalised as workers. Fab is just a shortening. These days it is exclusively an epithet and can even be used against disingenuous or superficial people.
I really like the image I'm getting of the world from even this small amount of collaborative material. It's small, but it's dense in flavor.
Yeah, I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about what's been done. I'll post some more once I've settled back into my hometown. That might be a while though, so maybe some other folks wanna pick up the ball?
ALSO: I've referred to a cultural movement identifying themselves as Omegas, called thus because they are farthest from the Trip (or "Alpha") and because they conspire to bring about the end of MegaCorp dominance.
Reading Hell's Angels by that journalist guy. Giving some nice new potential perspectives on the Alley Rogues.
That actually does sound interesting. If I ever get the chance to pick up a copy, I'll definitely read it!
WE'RE Ω (and that ain't fine)
One day mum totally flips a switch. She quits her job, junks her car, burns her stash of tabs and cuts out her synch-link. Then she paints a big bright red Ω on the front of the apartment and wanders out into the no-circuit burbs. Two weeks later she's chucking molotovs in my window.At one end you've got the restless counter-culture fetishists and the chronic trip-angsters who fly the long frown off their shoulders and their fright-bikes as a weak self-affirmation. Nobody really takes them seriously except the doe-eyed grammar punks. The Trip doesn't even bother stomping them: after all, fantasies of rebellion are just another kind of narcotic. (In some places you can even buy Ω paraphernalia. No real Ω would ever let that fly)
At the other end you've got your genuine hardcases: corporate defectors, burnt out brain-fried transbuzzers, furious old-worlders and dispossessed veterans... hell, even the occasional fifteen percenter gone one-eighty; that rare spontaneous convert. These people are not to be fucked with. At least not once they've found the real Downers. They can see right through your bullshit to the hollow place Trip's been drilling out of your core since before you were born. They get what Ω actually means and even if they're afraid, they're ready.
The problem (at least as far as we Downers peg it) is that there's no big bright line separating the fakes from the freaks. It's a long uncertain continuum and in the middle there's thousands of doubters, delinquents and hungry dreamers who
want to believe in Ω but aren't sure what that means. So here's a few pro tips from a true Downer, for anyone who's even thought about thinking about Ω.
1 '" Ω means THE ENDΩs are going to destroy the Trip. That's our purpose. It's why we're still here. Some Ωs believe that's why they were
born at all.
2 '" Ω identifies the lowest of the lowWe welcome censure and contempt and disgust. It means Trip can't stand us. If we were being greeted with smiles and fanfares we'd be doing something very very wrong. WE ARE NOT HEROES.
3 '" Ω means getting your hands dirtyAnd living dirty. And fighting dirty. Hell, even thinking dirty. We aren't frighteners or alley rogues or stoop-troopers, but sometimes we cross their paths and worse. We don't even have the rogues' numbers, so that means creative thinking. Which is a euphemism for nasty.
4 '" Ω means standing on your own two feetWe don't go psi or cyber, we don't do stims and overovers '" don't even think about the ubertab. That shit comes from Trip, and however delightful the poetry of defeating your enemy with his own weapon, if you down the dub you aren't a Downer. The Low Ronins put it best:
'Ω means dying clear-eyed and clean-blooded with thirty bullets in your gut.'
Though I wouldn't phrase it
quite like that myself.
quick and nasty dictionary
no-circuit burb - places without CCTV; the most dangerous places in the world, they say
transbuzzer - someone who has perfected the art of tab-consumption and thus achieved a state beyond permabuzz
old-worlder - someone who remembers what things used to be like, when people had "values"
trip-angster - someone who bitches about the trip but keeps hitting the funrooms and dreamtabs
long frown - Ω
frightener - what happens to any kiddie that doesn't straighten out into a civvie, luck out as a fifteen-percenter, or fall out as a hard buzzer, rogue or other fiend of the gutters
civvie - unemployed idiot with no hope
grammar punk - secondary school ne'er-do-well
Ω - omega
alley rogues - the hardest of hardcore civilians (besides Ω, of course)
low ronins - the largest gang of alley rogues, with close ties to Ω
stoop-troopers - slang for the domestic police, so called because of their tendency to lurk on your front porch and look menacing
synch-link - an implanted ID card
stims - heighten senses but can cause permanent reduction as an aftereffect
overovers - increases spatial and numerical reasoning, followed by a serious crash
ubertab - like dreamtabs, but waaay deep; used to provide strange insights
psi - slang for electronic interfaces, especially implanted ones like the synch-link
cyber - cybernetics
Downer - a hardcore Ω
INFLUENCES THUS FAR:
Akira, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, Farenheit 451, A Scanner Darkly, V for Vendetta, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
HOW TO BUILD A PRISON WITHOUT WALLS pt 1
15%
We got so good at war that nobody would fight us, except the really crazy ones. Everything was ours if we wanted it so a lot of us just stopped working. When the clones went legal there was no big fuss. We pretend there was, like we made some kind of angry stand, but it was mostly the moralisers and right-wing crazies who had real objections and that didn't amount to much. There were more and more clones as we got more and more distracted by opportunity. Then when we had gone way down that road and the Triple A's looked at how hard things had been, they decided we would never go back. The 15% law makes everybody happy. A full seventh of us work if we want. Maybe we'll make high corporate, even A-grade. The rest of us can simply enjoy the world. It's ours, after all.
Synth
There's Corp synths and there's civilian synths. There's public and private sector. There's short and long-synapse brain classes; steady shape, A-license and farmables; and let's not forget the Turings. They're designed different, under numerous patents and with varying reliability. So there's that burning question: if they're always getting more sophisticated and the line between them and us gets smaller, but no-one's even thinking about awarding them personhood... maybe it's us we should be worried about?
Oh, hey, look what I found here. I may or may not add to this, but either way, I figured I'd give newer members a chance to peek.
great noir flavor, but still has nice strangeness to it. where was this? reminded me of gonzo journalism (Hunter S. Thompson) and then I read that you were reading Hells Angels. this could be fun. Ω is amazing.
science fiction in general seems to be hard to get going at the CBG.
We've had a few adventures in the Triple A setting (that's what our group calls this project). Here are a few points about Tone and Themes:
Dissolved Identity
You can change your face practically for pocket change, and filter out the meanness and madness of the world with a hundred different brand-name hallucinogens. Lacking profound human connection, people turn to synths for solace, company and sexual intimacy. Body Dolls are the modern prostitutes, soulless but vivacious and materially satisfying. Auto-moms and -dads will raise your children for you, when the little scamps aren't off in some digital wonderspace spoiling their formative years with psychedelic fiction.
Unpopular Revolution
Most people in the "civilised world" at least think they're happy. Videogames are vivid, cinemas are immersive, marijuana is legal (and now available in Extra Strength!) and the sex is generally pretty amazing. Rebellion has been commercialised. Now that Trip is virtually the government, the Government itself is a convenient scapegoat for all the public's ills. Laws are being passed and altered all the time, without compromising the monopolies. Status Quo is God.
Compilicity
There is endless and pointless warfare, genocide and profiteering... all on some anonymous continent far from our imagining. You can get rich on the spoils of that miserable game as a mercenary of Private Contractor, if you fail the 15% and despair of civilian mundanity. Even if you don't, remember that this whole vast edifice was built upon the bones of that war, and all your present joys are the fruit of so much suffering.
Suspended Time
We never pinned down the time period, and I don't think we will in the future. It's more effective to keep it nebulous, as though the drugged psychology of modern man and woman cannot properly process the decline of their society, can neither remember nor imagine a cleaner, better age.
Personally, I have this mental image of absolutely massive, dizzyingly tall, quasi-fortified cities surrounded by souless, dark, rain drenched expansises of automated factory wastes, sad looking farms - for both food and clones - and the occasional "truck stop", complete with floating signs flashing "FUEL", "LAST BODY DOLLS BEFORE STATION 113!!!", and "DISCOUNT DREAMTAB OUTLET" all in dreary, half-lit neon.
I think clones would be great if they looked like these androgynous, perpetually happy - always with a disturbing smile -, genetalia-less creatures with limited intelligence according to what they were grown to do.
Vehicles would be neat if they had somekind of organic appearance. Stoop-troopers would patrol the streets from hovering, urchin-shaped pods while a dozen searchlight beams swoop around it. Dark, bloated hover-blimps would project messages and advertisements from side-mounted screens, flashing messages like " :) BE HAPPY :)", "NEMO,,¢ DREAMTABS", and "APPLESOFT,,¢ A-POD XIIV, COMING SOON!", and red-eyed, serpentine AAA watch-drones, just making sure that you're safe.
You've actually had adventures in this? That's awesome! I'd love to hear about how they went.
I like the suspended time idea. Too much sci-fi has become rather uncomfortable by giving an explicit timeframe, such as the far-flung future of 2002. This also reminds me of an episode of Doctor Who, in which humans had been waging a war for [spoiler=countless generations]Or, more exactly, seven days. A progenesis machine was creating, by the Doctor's guess, about twenty generations a day.[/spoiler].
The dissolved identity thing also works as a wonderful highlight to the posthumanist clones. The sophistication of clones are bringing them to be more "human", while humans are culturally devolving to mindless consumers. I can see a lot that can be done with this.
Leetz, everything you just said is awesome.
I should however clarify that the modern cities (at least in the closed circuit burbs) are actually very beautiful. The streets are clean and filled with the music that spills from high-up terraces and streetside restaurants.
The stoop troopers are similarly non-threatening. They have the sort of large, dark physical presence that seems a paternal comfort when you are confident of your own good standing and a foreboding menace when you've got something to hide.
SDragon, dissolved identity quickly became established as one of the driving conflicts of the setting. So much of what's wrong with society stems from the insensitivity of a populace with no investment in their environment, no connection to the whole. Clones are getting smarter and smarter, adopting ever more the old trappings of human life, as the spiritually isolated citizenry increasingly long for traditional interaction... but the people still want their dreams and fantasies and hallucinatory paradises; so the ever-smiling clones, in their pantomime of our own better nature, become just another fiction in our tab-addled psyches.
That's why Ω exists. In opposition to the madness and psychological self-mutilation. Downers are so clear-headed that, to a society filled to the brim with users, they seem absolutely terrifying and implacable.
EDIT: I should also mention that in the no-circuit burbs there is often the stink of raw sewerage and always somewhere the sound of gunfire and crying children and the stoccato thrum of Alley Rogue 'cycles tearing through cold streets in their furious herds. The buildings are designed with terrible acoustics, so the noise seldom reaches the ears of upstanding civvies, and never the fifteen percenters.
ALSO: At the moment my chief visual inspirations are Minority Report, Blade Runner and Judge Dredd (the comic)
Streetside
it goes
SPAK SPAK SPAK
sounds more like a crack of a disciplinarian's untethered belt than a blast of gunfire
in the seconds before the screaming begins as the engine kicks up and the killer speeds away I even have a flash of schoolyard memory and flinch more at the image of teary eyed grammar kids with bloodied palms than at the sound itself
a few of the boys have their guns out by the time the '˜cycle swoops the corner and I'm scrambling for my own as Maddys pistol sounds its sharp rejoinder but the kid is gone and Styles is going quickly too in a bloodless heap at the bottom of the steps and Pukko is snarling at us to stop
there are children about
just some goddam junior Pukko says before I can ask the obvious question
we cram Maddy's mouth full of tabs that he coughs back up in a muddle of red froth
helluva shot he says and maybe he says it at the sky because he isn't looking at us and never once does before he bites it
Club Ambrosia
the entryway is an arch topped with crenulations and feathercapped patrolmen propping old rifles on their shoulders and it is the mouth of a snaggletoothed demon crowned with thorns and I think for a second it is even the exposed genitals of some anonymous exhibitionist and in watching its grotesque changes the sting of these dreamtabs becomes painfully acute
the doorman doesn't pause for us or spare us a glance and to us he is likewise irrelevant
he and we are peoples of altogether different elements
air and stone
we pass into cold corridors dripping sunlight and honey and the children playing in them are drenched gold and stupefied with its sweetness and through opened doors are half and fully naked men entangled with automata and drinking liquor fresh from vines that spurt from and split up the floor and there are women dressed like dogs and in congress with the images of dogs and yet others are suspended in silent machines wherein are played their fantasies and their own exultations at nameless personal pleasures ring loud above this place's pleasured chorus and we marvel at all of this as we pass and split a second tab and it is joyous
The Sympathy Room
it is the ugliest and the best of all rooms and it costs us more than we care to admit to secure it for a quarter of an hour
we bind ourselves in cables and fill our veins with sedatives while Caleb tinkers with the settings on our headsets and Artie gives us all sceptical looks and says so we're going to share your wasteland of a body ?
by choice ?
he's such a buzzkil
Caleb pushes Artie into his seat and says I know the peculiarities of physical intimacy are anathema to you but rest assured this will be worth your pathetic little four figure allowance and he sticks out his tongue and sidesteps a not very friendly punch before pressing a few more buttons and flicking a big yellow switch
now shut up
already I feel the beginnings of Caleb's own self unfurling within me or else I am unfolding instead within Caleb and I'm dropping the visor of my helmet into place and checking my gun one last time for the fiftieth time and my gut is afire with expectation and my heart isn't so much beating as shrinking with each small vibration before an unhuman resolution toward arbitrary harm and the tensing of my hand around the handlebar is VIVID so much more terribly vivid than it ever was when these were my own thoughts and my own flesh and a minute later I am stood before that rundown house and those unknowing men and the righteous kick of that long barrelled pistol and the
fuck no that's enough goddammit !
Stacey has wrenched away her headset and with it the wires that bind all our minds and the sudden shedding of that second self is so violent Artie even retches
I scream the hell was that for Stacey ! but she's crying and beating her head with a tiny fist and I can't make out what she's saying but she won't stop saying it over and over and Caleb only looks on knowingly and distant as if this is to be expected and when it occurs to him he switches off the machine while we help the poor thing out of her chair and make quickly for the exit
Streetside
in this city the children dream that they are men and all the artifice of their lives is configured after that very same myth so that they play at war in streets that are the shadow of our own bloody walks and even the girls who in another age would drag their loves from these horrid contests and counterfeit trials of masculinity are now likewise enamoured of brutality
when they spill each other's blood we laugh and wager on the tragedies to come but we know well the line that divides their shallow mimicry from our own perfected barbarism and we assume that they too know the line of division
these children do not
they are a crowd of youths so gaudy it profanes the senses and they discourse with the diction of mannered men upon subjects better suited to myself or to my fellow gunmen who are crouched like toads in these trash-cluttered shadows clutching pistols that scratch at our palms with their eager promise and share looks of hate and hunger and vindication
the boy is in front wearing the very same suit that betrayed his class and his allegiance and I glance at my brothers disbelieving and marvel that a child could be so stupid
clearly so
he is speaking even now of his success as though by a single act of murder he had somehow mastered death and there is triumph in his walk as he passes with a fools resolution beneath the arch that marks the truest boundary against our kind and our cruelty
we step out in unison and raise our weapons with the practice and efficiency of executioners
it is several insulting moments before he apprehends our purpose but his comrades are more gracious and retreat toward their familiar ward and the comfort of the everpresent EYE
oh shit he says
sharply put says Pukko
who is smiling brighter than the moon
Quote from: Sir Digby Chicken CaesarI should however clarify that the modern cities (at least in the closed circuit burbs) are actually very beautiful. The streets are clean and filled with the music that spills from high-up terraces and streetside restaurants.
...
ALSO: At the moment my chief visual inspirations are Minority Report, Blade Runner and Judge Dredd (the comic)
agree wholeheartedly with the insprirations. but the fact that the cities are clean and modern quickly reminded me of The Longest Journey, and to an extent Dreamfall.
No inspiration from: Demolition Man? (If you have clean cities)... or Fifth Element, or Total Recall?
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For a dystopic one... Super Mario Bros move, perhaps? :D
Leetz: Those are games I've always wanted to play.
LD: The cities are clean but also, in a sense, stunning. Demolition Man's Los Angeles is an unimpressive sort of clean.
EDIT: arrogant as I am, I'd been playing around with this setting for about a year without giving serious attention to SDragon's chief inspirations. Now that I have, various elements have been cast into a new light. Ideas coming forthwith!
Amazing games. While fantasy, half the game takes place in the future and it reminds me alot of the vibe developing here.
Well it may not surprise you, given my tendencies as a setting-crafter, that our games with Triple A often veer dangerously close to fantasy.
My players are so used to associating "altered perception" with magic or psychic ability that they keep expecting to pop into some alternate reality whenever they OD on dreamtabs or overovers (which has happened often enough).
I don't object to that on principle, but we're trying to make Cyberpunk, here.
agreed. when it comes to settings, I am a purest.
what about religion in the setting?
You can't kill faith, but you sure can fuck it up.
Religion still exists, but predominantly among the very disenfranchised no-circuit civvies on the one hand, and the fifteen-percenters on the other. For the no-circuits its a spiritual necessity. For the 15% it's a conceited classist affectation. Most circuit-civvies don't think about it at all. Solipsism is God.
One of the player characters is a member of the Church of Inspiration (she made it up herself). It's probably your conventional monolithic, disturbingly-litigious Happyology rip-off, seeing as she's always lamenting having to make good on her "payments to the church".
ALSO, "Lottery": My players don't believe for a second that the lottery is genuinely random. I always figured it was, but what if it isnt? If employment status is judged on merit you'd figure the government wouldn't want to keep that a secret, so there must be a more sinister motive!
The lesson is: don't decide everything up front. Player speculation is the most powerful creative tool in the GM's arsenal.
Quote from: Sir Digby Chicken CaesarEDIT: arrogant as I am, I'd been playing around with this setting for about a year without giving serious attention to SDragon's chief inspirations. Now that I have, various elements have been cast into a new light. Ideas coming forthwith!
Definitely interested. If you watch Akira, pay attention to the character development of Kaneda; All of the Capsules started out like Kiddies, and Kaneda wasn't really an exception. Due to his involvements with the resistance, and the scene with Yamagata's bike, he turned more toward being an Alley Rogue. It's a good highlight on some of the differences between the two.
You've taken the 15% Law in an interesting direction. When I originally came up with it, I was thinking that the working would be resistant to mass job loss, and the law would prevent universal job loss. I didn't think that they would like not having to work. Either way, though, remember that this does severely stratify economic classes. The rich that don't have to work for a living no longer have to pay the poor that do have to work for a living; The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
Absolutely. I usually emphasise the decadent and deranged behaviour of the 15%, whose access to all the degenerate pleasures of the age far outstrips that of civvies.
Everybody, civvie or fifteener, is paid a "wage" by the government. 15% are paid by their companies on top of that, according to their profession. No human being is paid for manual labour (called BodyWork because labour clones or "Bodies" do it instead). Purportedly, only jobs requiring actual brains are allocated to the fifteeners, but for the most part this means simple office drudgery. Even so, a corporate drone has, at the very minimum, twice the wage of a civvie.
Of course, not every business needs or wants clones at all. Any civvie can work in such an establishment, and be paid according to their employer's judgement. Maybe 30% of all civvies are paid a legitimate business wage. A great many more profit in some form from "criminal enterprise".
Other than that, the only above-board way to earn extra dosh is to go abroad as a "Private Contractor". Some folks come back rich beyond imagining and start their own corp or retire to an easy life of chem-addled narcosis. Most come back scarred, maddened, and cold as razorblades. They become stoop-troopers, alley rogues, downers or ghouls. Wherever they end up, don't fuck with them.
ALSO: having just purchased The Longest Journey (only $10!) I can say with confidence that yes, the cities are very much like that. (But, again, much cleaner)