Beyond the MLC

[madunkieg]

In I explored life inside a cyberpunk coffin hotel, but what lies beyond the doors? I'm looking for possible ideas to explore more of that setting in the hopes that developing other aspects of the world will feed back and make MLC a better game.

For example, I'm thinking of exploring the life of a ninja clan (a community of hidden people, not black-clad assassins). This could explore how techno-religions (like techno-shinto) help people understand and adapt to the technologically-animistic world around them. Other social groups and other belief systems (e.g. virus-based voodoo, sattelite-based astrology) could provide counterpoints.

So, that's one idea. What would you like to know about from beyond the doors of the MLC?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Nothing.

What really stood out for me was the minimalist nature of the game. Its 1980s do-it-yourself, inward focused social clique, expect no charity punk, and a dash of high tech.

I'm not sure how cyberpunk came to assimilate so much other stuff. Case never handled a gun in Neuromancer, Dekker only had his police sidearm in Bladerunner. Yet the two major games (CP-2020 & Shadowrun) have entire source-books of weapons. The genre is no longer Mike Hammer noir with androids, but generic dystopian near future. full of middle class mercenaries.

Tech-Shinto sounds like a very interesting idea, as is the idea of sentient programs riding machines and people like a Loa. But the risk is that the more you talk about the world, the more generic the setting will become. Keeping it as a one shot game might be better than overextending.

Of course, I'll be quite happy if you go ahead with this and prove me wrong.


...and if you really want to screw with the players, its literally nothing outside the hotel. Waiting for Godot with Punk!

[madunkieg]

There was always more to the world than what made it into the game, tidal gridlock, the plank and corridor market and botnet loa. Some of these bits might be better executed through different standalone games, or share only parts of the MLC ruleset. That's okay, but I recognize that it all comes alive once enough chaos is pumping into (to paraphrase the founder of Survival Research Labs).

Of course I focused on the social aspects of cyberpunk, rather than the gun-nut approach. My research consisted, not only of reading the fiction, but of reading the manifestos, rants and essays written by cyberpunk authors. The social game was always their point, so I made it mine. I'm a little sad that I didn't do more with it, but that's what this effort is a part of. There's another idea, a special project that I don't want to talk about too much yet, because it will mark the close of my expanding the MLC world. For now I'm just playing around, trying to see what possibilities there might be.