(IW) Cyberpunk Worlds

[arcanus]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The supernatural fear applies to any world. I really doubt ISWAT is the first in on any world... thought they might be if they go on a wild cross-time chase passing through it. I suspect they quickly dictate a wild story to staff back at the base, who write it down, redact it properly, and then hand it to a team of scouts who get to scratch their heads about the origin of the intel. As long as there isn't magic on the world, of course.

I tend to treat Iswat as having differing squad power levels, they pick up all sorts of useful 'specialists' in game terms anything from 200pts to thousands, some of these would be infiltration specialists - Ninjas, Superspies, masters of disguise who would be ideal for these insertion/intel ops.

There's also Special Ops when they're being deployed to finish a fight via an orbital dropship conveyer their infiltration agents could insert, blend in, recon

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by ericthered

A lot of homeless people are there because they struggle to live functional lives. Its kind of the crack those people end up in. Many of them have idiosyncrasies, mental issues, and self-destructive behavior. Its really sad, and not a trivial problem. Sure, some are folks who are just down on their luck or just trying out the lifestyle. But that's not all of them, and a time traveler agent in cyberpunk can blend in with the least functional.

Untrue, at least in the USA. While many homeless do suffer from disabilities and/or mental illness, they usually receive assistance when they enter jail for the first time, at least in the larger municipalities, so they usually transition to a more stable circumstance. In the USA, the majority of the homeless do not suffer from crippling disabilities and/or mental illness. They are either individuals who are the working homeless, families who are homeless, veterans, or unaccompanied youths.

In fact, the chronic homeless only make up a sixth of the homeless population, with the vast majority of the homeless just being people who temporarily ran out of luck. In a dystopian cyberpunk setting, I would imagine that the temporary homeless would be even more common compared to the chronic homeless, as automation would drive people out of work and society would not care.

[arcanus]

I've been reading the Pyramid Article around MH Techno Mystics an interesting idea is a Techno Mystic in Iswat, the article details that they can mystically/meentally access Cyberspace.

If Iswat had such a person they could be perfect to infiltrate a Cyberworld's cyberspace without need of a deck or system and system ICE might struggle to stop their infiltrating data systems or they might be much harder to track.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Untrue, at least in the USA. While many homeless do suffer from disabilities and/or mental illness, they usually receive assistance when they enter jail for the first time, at least in the larger municipalities, so they usually transition to a more stable circumstance. In the USA, the majority of the homeless do not suffer from crippling disabilities and/or mental illness. They are either individuals who are the working homeless, families who are homeless, veterans, or unaccompanied youths.

In fact, the chronic homeless only make up a sixth of the homeless population, with the vast majority of the homeless just being people who temporarily ran out of luck. In a dystopian cyberpunk setting, I would imagine that the temporary homeless would be even more common compared to the chronic homeless, as automation would drive people out of work and society would not care.

My experience with the homeless does include several strong experiences in a developing country where I lived for a year, so that may be coloring things.



So doing some digging, it looks like your statement about chronic vs. non-chronic homelessness is correct. But its also a bit misleading, because the chronically homeless consume a lot more resources and are a lot more difficult to help. In canada at least, the chronically homeless consume over half of the resources for helping the homeless despite being less than 10% of the homeless population. They are also more visible. A quarter to a third of them suffer from mental illness, and many others are addicted to substances, or have never had a stable home.



Your statement that the majority of homeless people don't have mental illness is absolutely correct. I should have referred explicitly to the chronically homeless, it appears, and I emphasize that "many" does not mean "most". My (adjusted) statement is many (but not most) of chronically homeless have mental illness, and form a visible population that could be blended into with minimum cultural knowledge.

[fchase8]

I don't think anyone's mentioned Bonaparte-4, which is described as:

The decadent Bonapartists rule a cyberpunk empire threatened by a militaristic United States and Japan, and by the slow disintegration of their own society.

Bonaparte-4 could be used for a more 'normal' cyberpunk IW campaign. It doesn't have the weirdness of Cyberme, or is as divergent as Shikaku-Mon (and not 'at the same time as Homeline'). There's even a militarized United States, anarchic Russia, and aggressive Japan, classic cyberpunk staples.

GURPS Lost Worlds also references Combine, a timeline with robotic armored vehicles. I think that world is supposed to be the GURPS Autoduel world.

Originally Posted by arcanus

I agree with this, as per Worlds of Horror, cannon is now 2035

I never noticed this until now - in GURPS Worlds of Horror, Taft-4 (the one with the polar shift) is listed as being at 2035. This would push the date on Homeline (and Centrum & Shikaku-Mon) up from 2027 in GURPS Infinite Worlds.

Or that was a typo, and it's supposed to be 2025...

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by fchase8

GURPS Lost Worlds also references Combine, a timeline with robotic armored vehicles. I think that world is supposed to be the GURPS Autoduel world.

That's supposed to be Ogre.

[AlexanderHowl]

Any world with an Ogre should really be slapped with a Z rating as soon as its nature is discovered.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I never noticed this until now - in GURPS Worlds of Horror, Taft-4 (the one with the polar shift) is listed as being at 2035. This would push the date on Homeline (and Centrum & Shikaku-Mon) up from 2027 in GURPS Infinite Worlds.

Or that was a typo, and it's supposed to be 2025...

The same book references a scandal that emerged from the collapse of the Austrian government in 2032. So if it's a typo, it's a repeated one.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Any world with an Ogre should really be slapped with a Z rating as soon as its nature is discovered.

I remember an old carton from Dragon magazine (I think Phineous Finn).

Two D&D characters were standing next to a *really* wide and deep tread print in the dirt. One was saying, "This will be easy! It's only guarded by one ogre."

[arcanus]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Bonaparte-4 could be used for a more 'normal' cyberpunk IW campaign. It doesn't have the weirdness of Cyberme, or is as divergent as Shikaku-Mon (and not 'at the same time as Homeline'). There's even a militarized United States, anarchic Russia, and aggressive Japan, classic cyberpunk staples.

Thats a good shout I'd forgotten this one, White Star also has a very large presence on the Worldline trading in advanced computer and other tech (TL9).

So White Star has ways of infiltrating high risk worlds. (Bonaparte-4, Yrth)

Originally Posted by fchase8

I never noticed this until now - in GURPS Worlds of Horror, Taft-4 (the one with the polar shift) is listed as being at 2035. This would push the date on Homeline (and Centrum & Shikaku-Mon) up from 2027 in GURPS Infinite Worlds.

Or that was a typo, and it's supposed to be 2025...

No it mentions the crash in 2032, a further 2 years have passed so canon looks like to have progressed to mid 2030's.