Build a Cyberpunk Setting

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Death Race! Escape the sprawl... Drone hunting... Old school fighting...

To add on to this, Running Man (which is an Escape the Sprawl variant with Hunters) and The Long Mile might be things to give thought to.

[Celti]

Did you ever read Robert Heinlein's Friday? The Shipstone monopoly has always seemed like such a prototypical cyberpunk theme to me — for cyberpunk to work well, you absolutely must have high-density portable power, and the entire story of “genius inventor shows two fingers to the establishment and sets up his own shadowy megacorp” fits into so many of the genre's niches.

[Fred Brackin]

A thing that has occurred to me in the past is that "netrunning" is almost always treated as if it were a form of astral projection. In psiberpunk this can be accurate.

You might go even further by making most forms of "neural interfacing" a lesser form of that. Without psi nomrla humans get few if any bonuses friom being wired into their tech. Repalcemnt levels of artificial limb use at most. With psi they become fantstically competent gun users and automobile drivers.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by ericthered

We've got either a food crisis or the shadow of a past food crisis but an energy surplus. I recently saw someone detail how to turn electricity into food. It involved splitting hydrogen from water, methanizing that hydrogen to make methane, and then feeding it to chemosynthetic bacteria.



Such a food source is likely to have a weird texture and miss lots of trace nutrients. The factories are also likely to be a touch flammable, and raise the flammability of the area around them as they pump out excess oxygen.

ewww. I love it.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Death Race! No elaboration needed.

That has possibility.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Escape the sprawl - contestants are dropped into a hostile zone with as much prep as the producers feel is entertaining. First one to reach a "safe spot" wins. Event is broadcast via drone cameras and VR hookups. A population way for daring, ruthless dregs to catapult themselves into the celebrity class.

That has some serious Hunger Games vibes going on and I really like it. I'll definitely be using this. Maybe each contestant has to carry a credstick or whatever on them to get to the safe spot. They win, they get paid. But the people in the rough area know this and they can get paid too by getting the credstick. No rules and holds barred brutal fighting. I REALLY like this. Now for a name.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Drone hunting - a mix of VR and blood sport. Participants control drones in warzones or free fire zones and engage in remote controlled violence - sometimes against legit targets, each other, or any random passerby. A variety of scoring systems exist. Illegal versions go drone hunting in corporate arcologies, wildlife refuges, and other spaces, blurring the line between entertainment and terrorism. VR recordings of hunts are hot on YouTube.

Interesting. I could see that being doing by telepresenced robots. Very cool.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Old school fighting: in a world where tech is omnipresent, watching two people beat the tar out of each other with no gimmicks, according to ancient rules of fair play, has a certain draw. It might be seen as something for the more sophisticated aesthete.

This was what I was originally going for.

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Love it.

Thanks

Originally Posted by CeeDub

If psis are so prevalent in Seattle/Washington and hated/oppressed everywhere else, I would assume that at least some movements and/or cults arise in that area. The Psi Civil Liberties Union (PCLU) is a political organisation opposed to the systematic oppression of psis. Psion (get it?) is a much more grass-roots movement that encourages acceptance and development of psi abilities ("it's okay to be psi", "psi pride", "There is no spoon / Use the Force"), with a supremacist faction ("we are humanity's next step in evolution").

Possibly in the NAU, yeah.

Originally Posted by CeeDub

It might be popular among psis to tattoo themselves voluntarily here, but as a matter of pride instead of a mark of shame. Psi-only night clubs, where you have to levitate something or read the bouncer's mind to gain entry, á la Papa Midnite's (Constantine).

I like this.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Why not make this the cause of psi-hatred? Maybe local government in Washington got pretty heavy-handed in "managing the emerging psi problem", and a particularly well-organized group of psis responded via the gestalt. Federal government was caught flat-footed and deeply embarrassed. Now psis inside the NAU are seen as potential fifth columnists for the Seattle Gestalt. In short, you've got a Red Scare going on. That also lets you play with just how psis get treated outside the NAU. Megacorps and states closely associated with the NAU follow its lead, but some polities and corps find it useful to oppose or moderate their stances - either as PR or prestige moves, or for other reasons. Could have a corp group touting a "Third Way" trying to moderate between the NAU and Seattle Gestalt hardliners and draw off secondary powers...

I have this one done up in the timeline, basically, the US got scared and wanted to have all psis register and be placed on reservations. Not all the citizens of the US agreed. Civil war happened. When Mexico and Canada did the same thing, it brought war to all of North America, though the NAU did come out of it and the psi-actives got their own homeland eventually.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

The gestalt could even be involuntary - perhaps addictive in its own right - people who spend too much time melding with one another actually lose themselves in one another, becoming ...changed if not strictly de-humanised...

I think this would make for a great rumor.

Originally Posted by Celti

Did you ever read Robert Heinlein's Friday? The Shipstone monopoly has always seemed like such a prototypical cyberpunk theme to me — for cyberpunk to work well, you absolutely must have high-density portable power, and the entire story of “genius inventor shows two fingers to the establishment and sets up his own shadowy megacorp” fits into so many of the genre's niches.

I haven't. I'll check it out.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

A thing that has occurred to me in the past is that "netrunning" is almost always treated as if it were a form of astral projection. In psiberpunk this can be accurate.

You might go even further by making most forms of "neural interfacing" a lesser form of that. Without psi nomrla humans get few if any bonuses friom being wired into their tech. Repalcemnt levels of artificial limb use at most. With psi they become fantstically competent gun users and automobile drivers.

Cyberpsi hasn't manifested yet in any big numbers, but this is part of a metaplot for the setting at some point. Haven't decided when. Currently, psi is telepathy, psychokinesis, ESP (including Astral Projection which is now a sub-power), and teleportation (which is quite rare).

[CeeDub]

Are psis stuck with the powers they are born with or can a psi learn new powers?

If the former, there may be differences in how much they are hated; whereas in Seattle, there may be some sort of rivalry between some psis about which ability is better. Most would obviously ignore that sort of sillyness, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were PK-only and TP/ESPer-only gangs.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Are psis stuck with the powers they are born with or can a psi learn new powers?

If the former, there may be differences in how much they are hated; whereas in Seattle, there may be some sort of rivalry between some psis about which ability is better. Most would obviously ignore that sort of sillyness, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were PK-only and TP/ESPer-only gangs.

This may be why psis are often found involuntarily assisting in the sort of experiment where people pop the top off your head and poke wires into your brain to try to establish new psi powers. Somewhat predictably this does not end well for anyone, as Joss Whedon fans might have been able to predict.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

Are psis stuck with the powers they are born with or can a psi learn new powers?

If the former, there may be differences in how much they are hated; whereas in Seattle, there may be some sort of rivalry between some psis about which ability is better. Most would obviously ignore that sort of sillyness, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were PK-only and TP/ESPer-only gangs.

They can learn new powers, but only in one of the disciplines they are born with. A telepath and latent TK could learn any telepathy or psychokinesis power with time and practice, but not pick up teleportation.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

This may be why psis are often found involuntarily assisting in the sort of experiment where people pop the top off your head and poke wires into your brain to try to establish new psi powers. Somewhat predictably this does not end well for anyone, as Joss Whedon fans might have been able to predict.

Experimentation in psionics and biotech are rampant in shadowy megacorps so this isn't too far off the mark.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Experimentation in psionics and biotech are rampant in shadowy megacorps so this isn't too far off the mark.

Probably yet another reason psis and mundanes don't get on.

That and the telepathy thing - mundanes are afraid of having their minds read and, quite possibly, the psis are driven crazy by all of the incontinent psychic broadcasting by mundanes.

Actually, I quite liked the Conspiracy X take - most humans are natural low level psis with no conscious control over their power. We naturally engage in near continuous psychic handshake with those around us - leading to things like the gestalt behaviour of crowds and empathy in general. Some humans have conscious control over their psychic activity but these are very rare. A few more are psychically dead - they get on badly with other humans as they don't do the natural handshake and so give others a weird vibe. There are also humans who are natural psychic jammers - they are not much worse than the inactives for normal humans but are really unpleasant for higher end psis.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Probably yet another reason psis and mundanes don't get on.

That and the telepathy thing - mundanes are afraid of having their minds read and, quite possibly, the psis are driven crazy by all of the incontinent psychic broadcasting by mundanes.

Oh, absolutely. One of the campaign setting features is that EVERYONE has Easy to Read (Psychic) as a 0-point feature. Non-psis can buy it off for a 10 point UB which represents training or a will of iron. Psi-Actives can buy it off for 5 points and telepaths can buy it off for a perk. Telepaths are thus super scary in Caerulean Dawn (as it should be).

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Actually, I quite liked the Conspiracy X take - most humans are natural low level psis with no conscious control over their power. We naturally engage in near continuous psychic handshake with those around us - leading to things like the gestalt behaviour of crowds and empathy in general. Some humans have conscious control over their psychic activity but these are very rare. A few more are psychically dead - they get on badly with other humans as they don't do the natural handshake and so give others a weird vibe. There are also humans who are natural psychic jammers - they are not much worse than the inactives for normal humans but are really unpleasant for higher end psis.

I've done this before, but I don't feel it's something that would work for the setting. Psi-Actives either have powers, are latent, or possess a Weak Latency perk. The powers were sparked by something in a solar storm (I don't know what and I don't know if I want to know what - it may be part of the setting mystique that they don't know where powers come from) and then by having kids. One psi-active parent produces a psi 50% of the time, while two of them produces it like 99% of the time.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

(I don't know what and I don't know if I want to know what - it may be part of the setting mystique that they don't know where powers come from)

Oh-ho! Stealing my "I'm not going to bother figuring this detail out because it will never matter schtick!"!

Well, I'll have you know... I'm okay with that. I heartily endorse not figuring things out until you need to, if ever.