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So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:49 pm
by Chainsaw Aardvark
I've been a bit distracted of late (but then again, when haven't I been distracted...) however, I've been trying to come up with ideas for the contest. Most of these are either alternate history, or rather close to the classic definition of cyberpunk rather than a new transfiguration of the genre, however.

Dead and Back - the Prequel
Yes, its been entirely too long since I posted any stores or did major work on D&B. However, some of you may recall that the game involves Cybernetics, Nano-surgeons, mega-structures, augmented reality, and war via drones as part of the background. While there may not have been corporate states, it was generally a cybered up/approaching trans-human society before the whole alien invasion and walking dead reduced the world to city-states and scavengers. Anti-government communes like Ruby Ridge, and reactionary forces like the New Birmingham theocracy got their start somewhere after all, and this would be a chance to see their grievances up front.

Lagrange Grunge:
Everyone lives aboard a space station, which is a closed system with far less room for error than an entire planet would offer. Discipline and order are only slightly less harsh than on a ship at war. Of course, there is going to be a youthful rebellion aspect of people trying to find unmonitored service areas to have impromptu raves, or adjust the computers for extra water rations so that hydroponic garden of black market fresh vegetables (and other plants...) can grow.

Of course, you're looking at limited O-2 reserves and nothing but a thin hull to keep it in, so there are perhaps a half dozen guns amongst the entire population. Focus would be heavy on fist fights, and possibly improvised melee weapons. (There's no trees, jungles, or beef - so why would you have axes, machetes, or even steak knives?)

Courier Punk (Option A)
How about a setting with next to no telecommunications? 1960 is about the cut-off date for a "winnable" nuclear war (see ) in so far as the USSR would be severely lacking in delivery systems and warheads. (Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks.)
Of course, this is still the heyday of megaton warheads to compensate for poor accuracy...

So with the capitol cities and major population centers vaporized, tech development and production stagnates, perhaps even regresses for a while. 20 to 30 years on, there is no net, or much of a telecommunication system, vacuum tubes are still the main electronic component (transistors for some, microchips nowhere) and the provisional government still has not given way to free elections.

Of course the war only delayed the 60's movements of equality and sexual revolution (in fact, the new population demographics make these elements all the more pressing) though the more liberal places like Chicago and LA are still glowing craters. However, while to gov may be kinda right wing, there are even father out movements touting such grievances as "its government that started the war" or "we recovered through good-old community spirit, why should the federals stick their nose in now that the work is done?" DiY and counter-culture would be alive, though mix-tapes would be on reel-to-reel rather than cassette.

Option B for Courier Punk would postulate a lack of electronic information sharing based on a overwhelming lack of privacy (ie Eschalon/NSA/1984) making hand to hand transfer the only way to remain secretive. Kind of like the video game "Mirror's Edge" though probably with a little less emphasis on jumping puzzles.

TransHuman UnderGround
The first rule of writing SF: Most readers are human, and thus they emphasize with human characters. It doesn't matter how much more effective it is to use guided missiles over manned spacecraft - readers want ace pilots, not the life and times of warhead serial number31415emc2. This extends to the fact they have something against post-humans. Consider for a moment that StarTrek has functional Mass-Energy conversion devices, yet many elements of the H+ agenda are either frowned upon (gene engineering) or outright vilified (cybernetics). (Also of note: )

So any >H organisms would be an underclass or discriminated against. I'm inclined to draw parallels to the X-men, albeit with slightly less physics defying powers.

The Mirror Shades of Red Death
Imagine for a moment that one of those dreadful made for TV movies or history channel specials about a new pandemic striking the world came true. Yes, it would suck and our Mt. Dew supplies might run dangerously low, but it would certainly open up positions for urban mercenaries (ie Street Samurai) as so popular in the source materiel, albeit with fewer bio-mechanical prosthetics and shorter hair.

With most of the police dead, scared, or busy with government work, and crematoriums running 24/7 for disposal, its likely more than a few murders would go unnoticed - hence the need for private security or revenge. Similarly, slow aid shipments means either professional scavengers, or bonded couriers to get them there faster. Of course, there is always the simple rebel against authority and use the skate-park after dark.

Return of the Recursive Retinue
A lot of people fell in with a B.A.D.D. crowd, and and many more believed the hype about video games equating murder simulators. Table Top war games as subversive, since they can teach about small unit tactics or seemingly predict that the US military would be less than invincible in the face of the commie horde. Unpatriotic plays like "The Crucible" and "Lysistrata" need licenses and permission to preform.

The players are an underground group of indie game designers and writers, out to defy the law and pretend to be elves as is their Gygax given right.

No, I don't know if this last one really is a joke or not.

Re: So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 5:50 pm
by tadk
The Courier Punk fits into my Dieselpunk sensibilities a whole lot. Having seen Book of Eli last weekend my Post-Apoc graving is pretty darn high as well, and being a huge Morrow Project fan all conspires to have me want you to make Courier Punks.

Re: So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:42 am
by SheikhJahbooty
I want Dead and Back courier punk.

I remember there were some heavily urban parts of dead and back, megastructures or something, in the eastern US, iirc. It occurs to me that I don't think of something as cyberpunk without high population density.

You rerelease Dead and Back, focusing on this setting, you have aliens, which I kind of wanted to see because I remembered that at the end of Neuromancer there was talk of aliens, and the whole District 9 thingie I felt was ripe for cyberpunkiness.

And there was this one story (I'm really sorry here because I can remember neither the title nor the author, but I think it was a short story in a collection called Splatterpunk) in which the protagonist was a construction worker who hooked his brain up to a network that controlled a construction crew of reanimated corpses. Remembering that I thought, "I hope someone uses zombies in his or her entry." Machines in people: people as machines, classic.

Introduce a little environmentalism here, "the fortified cities were built to be self sufficient because of dwindling energy reserves, oil running out..." something like that. Good excuse to have whole sections of the towers devoted to hydroponics and fiber optics. And commerce between the cities has to be physical, even mail, because the shrimps (forgot what the aliens were called but remembered their nickname) took out the comm satellites. So the couriers brave the zombie infested wilds to get stuff from one city to the next. Excuse for Akira style biker battles.

I feel however the one of the defining aspects of cyberpunk is human villainy, so recast the zombies more as an environmental hazard. The truly evil bastards are some of the people in the city with you.

iirc the mechanics for Dead and Back were also kind of cyberpunk in that damage was inflicted directly to your speed, so getting hurt slowed you down, wore you out.

You could have at least one really good entry without doing a whole lot of work because you've already done so much of it.

Re: So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:47 pm
by Chainsaw Aardvark
Thank you Sheikh, its nice to know how memorable the aspects of my setting are.

However, you've also brought up a number of reasons why I was unsure about using D&B in the contest. Much of the game is already written, and the setting is (Post)cyberpunk meets survival horror without any additions. Its not really fair to use D&B compared to creating a game from scratch. (Admittedly, I'm not actually competing, but that still doesn't excuse me from playing nice.) Furthermore, the basic rules are already 20 pages long, which kind of eats into the 30 page limit.

I brought up the option, since I was thinking this would be a good time to get re-focused and do some more work. I'll certainly need to write a few new stories from the point of view a courier, and shift focus away from the reanimates for a bit. A possible vehicle combat system for those Mad Max/Akira sequences may be in order as well. Right now the biggest concern is that its very easy to get a one shot kill on humans (use any rifle, or an SMG+Lucidity point) so I'm thinking of some sort of enhanced trauma rather than instant kill for humans - though creatures still go down easily to avoid GM bookkeeping.

At the moment I'm kind of leaning towards the either the alternate WW-III option as an interesting world, or the Lagrange one since I have some fun ideas for subsystems. If the focus is on no weapon fighting, there needs to be a martial arts system, and possibly one for tracking your gang's resources and prestige.

Oh, and if you're like me and get annoyed when you can't remember facts - the aliens call themselves "Planetary Citizens" due to their Gaian Hypothesis style beliefs. The system of resource saving Arcros is the "North Eastern Seaboard Transformation" (NEST) project. There are actually a couple of others in various stages of completion across the US and the rest of the world.

Re: So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:32 pm
by maledictus

Re: So many projects, not enugh punk

PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 12:53 am
by BlaqueSaber
Wow
Out of all those it was Lagrange Grunge that got me the most excited and looking for instant gratification to play it. I think it's also the closest to the actual cyberpunk game that we're competing to revamp. Instead of pistols or machetes as weapons what about hacking the a.i. that runs the station? Having that many people on board has got to require lots of percison and either a fleet of programmers (tucked away somewhere) are monitoring around the clock or an A.I. is doing most of it (maybe both to keep each side equal).

What if the youthful rebellion could write a web app that would allow them 3-6 minutes of control over gravity around them? If you were going out to steal, or fight that might come in handy.....