Post
by Martin Blank » Sat Jan 12, 2013 6:44 pm
The video itself, I don't know. I guess the Witcher series, though, doesn't shy away from sex, and the in the original Cyberpunk world, sex was everywhere. It wasn't a porno thing, but flipping through the books, there was sex appeal all over, including one ad featuring a beautiful woman who had undergone a ton of biosculpting--at age 80. Still, sex was, for many, the one natural thing that happened in their lives. In an increasingly artificial world where bodies were engineered and even skills could often be chipped, it was one of the few ways two people could share a natural part of life.
Most of the people that played it were munchkins, though, maxing out their cyberware and walking around armed and armored like tanks. I didn't really care for that kind of play. I liked to fill in backgrounds, let the players feel like part of the environment. I had one plan for my regular players to start working on their individual foibles: the tank would become allergic to his implants, the misogynist would find himself followed by a talented, sneaky young girl who wanted to follow in his footsteps, the diplomat would trigger a grudge against a guy who would never back down until one was dead. Never got to it, unfortunately.
The only part of the world that I never really got into was the music, but Rockers (which encompass just about anybody where crowd charisma is the central role; beat poets of the '60s and most politicians are variations of Rockers) are hard roles to play. With the likes of Johnny Silverhand and Kerry Eurodyne setting the pace, it can be hard for players to feel they match up.
I'm really interested in how they handle the 'Net. It's a place where you can get burned figuratively and literally: it's not uncommon for a Netrunners's duel to end with one of them dead. There's also the Soulkiller program that was used to rip a person's mind from the body and upload it into the 'Net. The creator of Soulkiller was also its first unwilling subject in 2013; since then, she's become the ghost in the machine, effectively immortal but generally maintaining a low profile.
The US government is broke to a degree that our real world can only imagine after the economic collapse of the 1990s and tens of millions dead from strife, starvation, and disease led to martial law. The informal standard currency is the eurobuck, though dollars are still around for those who can keep up with the high inflation. This allows corporations to run amok, sometimes escalating into full-blown war. By the end of the Cyberpunk 2020 era, there had been four corporate wars over 18 years (EBM vs. Transworld Air/Orbital Air; PetroChem vs. SovOil; the first netwar, with a lot of corps attacking a lot of other corps' data fortresses; and Arasaka vs. Militech). These cost thousands of lives in total and did significant economic damage.
The US government isn't completely powerless, though. It's reverted to its core roles of defending the country and trying to enforce order and has turned ruthless, especially after the Lawyer Purge of 1996 where mobs of citizens lynched hundreds of defense attorneys. To do this, the courts have been supplemented with AI (sometimes the only judge is the AI judge), and in cases where the evidence is overwhelmingly against the defendant, the right to counsel has been removed completely. For example, mass murder cases where the murders are recorded often result in trials lasting only a few minutes before sentence is pronounced (usually death).
On top of that, the corps know their place. One that didn't was the Mantoga Corporation, which was linked to the assassination of recently-appointed President Jacobi in 2005. After Mantoga ignored a four-hour ultimatum for the entire company to leave the country, every facility was subjected to airstrikes and every last employee hunted down. Since then, the corps have been less interested in pushing the government too far.
As for the rest of the world, the UK is a virtual prison island run under martial law. Europe is generally in a better state and the governments there are far less tolerant toward corporations, using force to prevent corporate disputes from getting out of hand. The former Soviet Union is a cess pile of corruption and outdated equipment. Asia has some gems, but has also suffered from overindustrialization and is severely polluted (aside from a few key places like Japan, Korea, and a few parts of South Asia). Africa is...well, Africa. More outdated than Asia, it's also less polluted overall. The Middle East is a radioactive wasteland after a war between Israel and Arab states turned nuclear with dozens of warheads lobbed from each side. No one really lives there, and it's part of the reason that the world's economy no longer runs on oil, but instead a new synthetic fuel called CHOOH2 (not its real chemical formula). It ain't cheap, but it's got a better power ratio than any petroleum product ever did, which is what keeps the AVs in the air.
Can you tell I was really into the game?
If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.
