Didn't see a cyberpunk thread in the catalog, so here we go.
How detailed do you like to be when it comes to artificial limbs in your games? Full charts of options for the players, or bare bones enhancements?
How would someone with artificial limbs decorate them similarly to those of us with tattoos?
How long before cyberpunk is now?
youtube.com
It's already here.
I've watched that documentary before actually. Absolutely mind blowing that he had 2 legs on the whole time.
Bump.
Also, assuming vampires exist in my setting, how would they fare with the advent of artificial blood? Would it weaken them due to not being "real", or perhaps enhance them due to being engineered?
Requesting badass cybernetic arm images! Ones with ablative plating, sexy contours or inbuilt weapons and shields!
I've been working on a cyberpunk (or extremely postmodern post-cyberpunk, as hipster as that sounds) lately, but I've generally been hesitant to barf it up on one of these threads because I know a lot of Veeky Forums doesn't like verbosity and most of these threads get very, very nitpicky about cyberpunk and exactly how it's supposed to be done.
If you want 120 pages of reading material, I can barf it up here, but it's very densely written, starts in medias res and the main character narrates to herself too much. It's basically written on the thought experiment "what would have to happen for the pop-cultural idea of cyberpunk to become real in our world", and uses a bit of rubber science but no magic or superscience.
There'll probably be so many holes in the science that it's not even funny, considering I'm a Humanities student and suck at physics and biology.
Are vampires magical? If so, their hunger is likely a curse or a result of some ritual to create them, and as such artificial blood doesn't work. It might work for just long enough to drive them around the bend, but it likely won't be like the real thing.
Are vampires caused by a nanovirus or rubber science? If so, artificial blood will probably work perfectly well.
Never ever.
Why not synthetic skin? You could even tattoo it
On an unrelated note, has anyone here played Cyberspace?
I haven't had a chance to read the core book yet, but I'm curious how well it plays and how "retrofuture" it is
What's postmodernism about again?
In the way it's used in literature, it involves unreliable narrators, awareness of modern society and exploring unorthodox subjects from new angles.
It sounds a lot more hipsteroid and self-aggrandizing than it actually is, because you're likely very used to reading it already.
I thought post-modern was the awkward label that just meants "everything that's come after modernism that's different from modernism for the sake of not making yet more modernism".
It doesn't really have a consistent quality, often it really is just weird (new, different, not a revival of an early movement) for the sake of weird (not churning out more of the same).
Since I can't seem to grasp enough for attention, here's that project I forced in. I really need to learn when something is just too shit to share with others, but hopefully this will embarrass me enough to teach me.
It's barfed straight from my HDD, and as such it's likely riddled with errors and plot holes.
mediafire.com
I'll delete the link if it's off-topic or unwanted.
Post-modern is a present-tense temporary descriptor. Eventually, we'll get far enough past modernism's peak era that the era after it gets a name of its own. A new, more specific name. The goal of each post-modern artist is to be one of the great representatives of that yet-undefined style. Each wants post-modernism to be their own personal post-modernism.
>The goal of each post-modern artist is to be one of the great representatives of that yet-undefined style.
OK, but since there's Sonic fan art that came after modernism and the loons that make that are UTTER SERIAL about being called artists, I consider post-modernism proof of a more general and widespread problem that using genres to describe anything (film, vidya, music, chinese cartoons) is just the normalisation of speaking from ignorance.
That's not meant as an insult, it's just, well, genres are rubbish tool that exist to disregard important nuances. It helped when books needed to be on the same shelf as other similar books, but we've hyperlinks for decades and ubiquitous digital data access now. The sooner we all jump to weighted metadata matching the better.
I've got a whole folder of cyberlimbs (mostly arms, few eyes and legs) at home, if this thread is still up in 9 hours I'll dump 'em all.
Genres are a terrible way to call modernism/postmodernism, as they are more like art movements. Art movements are usually not genres, but instead are groups of people getting together to promote similar ideas, or to go against another group.
To take film as an example: nobody gets together to start a "psychological horror" movement to help each other push more and more psychological horror movies. However, people DO get together to start something like Italian Neorealism, or French New Wave.
I think genres are stupid, they're useless throwaway labels, but movements are very important to study.
So, I was thinking of running a game based on the works of Phillip K Dick (total recall, minority report, blade runner/do androids dream of electric sheep, etc.), and was wondering what system might be best for such a thing - or even if there is an appropriate system for that style of game.
On re-reading I did treat art movements as interchangeable as genres in general, and yeah, that's wrong.
But that said, I think art movements are rooted in the idea of people coming together and knowing each other to collaborate, and that's not a safe assumption with how the internet let's people connect.
Not that mostly people are talking through anonymous chan boards or chat roulette, but since there's this huge amount of unscheduled meetings with no agenda and projects that happen to come from them.
As for genres? I dunno, as long as they're understood to be imprecise and imperfect tools, they're some niche applications; if I can get to the right section of a bricks and mortar bookstore to finish xmas shopping faster because I know where to find the sci fi they've some value. Maybe not the optimum way to do things, but competitive for the moment.
That said, when a sequel to a precursory adopts enough new elements from outside the precursor's conventional genre, it's like hearing a fandom bitch about bait and switch for the thousandth time. I'm stuck wondering if there's not some kind of advanced version of the algorythm Last.fm/Amazon and other online stores use to predict "if you like x you'll probably also like y" that could be applied to things like determining if someone would not be satisfied with changes made in editions of D&D or Shadowrun, or from CRPGs like from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3; or 3/NV to Fallout 4, or if someone liked
I think it might just be there's too much trust placed in genres, to use 'em things need to be pigeon holed with over confidence and the results presented like it's some kind of fact.
>How detailed do you like to be when it comes to artificial limbs in your games?
Not very. While it might be fun to build a crazy character, it bogs down actually playing the RPG.
That said, I REALLY want details about what the typical model can do: how much it can crush, how much force the socket will bear. How it gets powered.
And some basic instructions about what you can and can't do with it. Yes, you can hide a gun in there, this is the cost for doing those sort of things to it and not being sneaky/obvious, here's one where it is. No it doesn't act like a hand if 90% of it is dedicated to shooting projectiles. That sort of thing.
>How long before cyberpunk is now?
Well, either the 90's when the Internet became prevelent.
2004 when world of warcraft was the cyberspace everyone dreamed about. (Fuck second life)
2006-ish when smartphones were everywhere.
2010 when Citizens vs. United unleashed all the corporate money into the political arena.
2017 when VR takes off
2019 when self-driving cars FINALLY get here.
Or at whatever arbitrary date you want from the 90's 00's and 10's when cyberlimbs and artificial eyes experienced marginal improvements. Which is how the bulk of advancement happens. Rarely is there an actual "breakthrough".
>very nitpicky about cyberpunk and exactly how it's supposed to be done
Just call it sci-fi and there won't be any flames.
>There'll probably be so many holes in the science that it's not even funny, considering I'm a Humanities student and suck at physics and biology.
We can help you with that. Most people have wildly inaccurate presumptions about AI which I could certainly clear up.
Now if you consider the weight ratio of a average human leg to the total weight of a body, a 150 lb person has a leg weighing about 25 lbs, and you look at these artificial legs they don't look 25 lbs to me and if they are they can certainly be scaled down with materials and techniques. Now just think what else you could fit into that leg until you hit a persons average leg weight.
This. Cyberpunk is the world we live in today. You can read about all the subject approached by cyberpunk author 20 years ago in your morning newspaper.
I posted the link to the document up here , so if you want to work your way through 120 pages of overly dense cyberpunk (because calling it sci-fi is even more wildly inaccurate), I'd be grateful. Hell, even a few pages would be more than I'd ever expect.
requesting the dues ex edit of this. it's hilarious.
Huh, an appropriate cyberpunk finger gun. Neat.
You think we made it without the predicted downsides?
Or am I just too spoon-fed on carefully controlled media to see all the free-thinking types being killed/imprisoned/lobotomized by The Man™?
Do we have an accepted method to express sarcasm or cheekiness in this sort of plain text format? Getting kinda sick of people taking me for a conspiracy nut or something when I'm just poking fun at Fiction to Real Life comparisons. :-)
Huh, there truly is a Simpsons quote/clip for every occasion
So I hear you're looking for shiny new cyberlimbs
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So I'm thinking up a Post-Apocalypse Cyber Punk Setting
>Most humans people have been wiped out in a nuclear biological war
>PC's play either A.I. or uploaded humans living in hardened and well preserved Server Farms
>Can upload themselves to Robotic Bodies and other computer systems
>Takes place in two worlds, The Hardlands (IRL) and The Intras, a digital world, different in every Server Farm or Home System for Uploaded minds
>Main plot is to find a way to find ways to gather the resources needed to keep the Farms and Intras running, find a way to clean the world enough for biolife to live easily, and finally find a way to bring back the human race.
Would you play it?
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So what's the physical world like, besides just destroyed? Nuclear Armageddon sounds like a prime 80s radical setting.
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Aaaand I'm spent. Hope literally anyone enjoyed my dump.
>I'm wearing 2 right now
Almost completely unlivable, radiation storms are common, most crops were destroyed by biological warfare. Most threats above ground come from Cyber Raiders, AIs and Uploads who have turned to violence and raiding to expand their territory and acquire resources.
As well 'something' was released into the Net before the Great War and it managed to take over most military systems. It doesn't use humanoid systems, and hates utterly all Uploads. Think a weaker version of AM from I Have No Mouth.
post-modernism is an artistic movement that calls for deconstructionalism of previous modernistic ideals and anatomy and format whilst being a sarcastic criticism of modernism, in literature look at books such as Naked Lunch by William s Burroughs, or Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut.
in a cyberpunk context you could say the writings of Phillip K Dick, and William Gibson are post-modern by adhering to the ideals I've set above.
thanks user!
I gotta admit, as much as I enjoy Gibson's later stuff, I'll always have a soft spot for that sky over the bay the colour of television tuned to a dead channel.
It's pretty awesome that our sci-fi genre is based on such top-tier literature like Neuromancer and Do Androids, might not be the best place to ask but let's say it'll be used for Veeky Forumsrelated world building, you guys have any newer cyberpunk books that are worth reading? or something like post-cyberpunk?
>We define "bionic" as the electromechanics to at least emulate biological functions. Perhaps one day to go beyond biological functions.
RULES OF NATURE
What would post-cyberpunk even be, really? Corp-controlled space travel, or the corporations finally being taken down and everyone trying to live in a nature commune?
dunno but I'd sure want to find out
maybe its about a combination of sunny and lively 80's aesthetics with cyberpunk, think about gta vice city with transhumanism and other cyberpunk related technology, corporation oligarchies and crime lords and shit all fused into one.
Yo I need some dystopian futures!
Ignore that, my image previewer doesn't seem to want to work today
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Just wanted to bump, I'm really curious about the world/system but want to know how others who have played it feel
It's generally seen as cyberpunk-style works that aren't as dark, and the protag often has corp/government support - the corp or government aren't the guaranteed bad guys, and the whole look is generally a little less gritty and dark - GitS and Deus Ex HR are generally considered post-cyberpunk, for example
You don't even need the lighter mood, though a lot of post-cyberpunk seems lighter because it lacks some of the more heavy-handed themes of traditional cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk tends to have a lot of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist viewpoints, while post-cyberpunk replaces those with a more corporate/government-centric perspective, more moral ambiguity and more focus on how normal people live their lives in a changed society.
Psycho-Pass is a perfect example of post-cyberpunk, as well as a cyberpunk cop show. GitS has post-cyberpunk elements, but also a fair chunk of action-thriller elements that usually end up taking center stage later in the story, especially in the newer iterations.
Yeah, the emphasis on the message and themes is a big part of what makes a fair few cyberpunk works work, but it can get a bit heavy at times
>I'm curious how well it plays
Do you like Rolemaster 2E? Because that's what Cyberspace is.
CS is ICE's attempt to compete with CP2020 and SR, from the late 90s. Take a look at these gangs for a bit of flavour.
I never really got that far into the core book, but I do remember that the entirety of Death Valley is now a prison/Mad Max wasteland.
Probably Unknown Armies, considering all of Dick's weirdness and psychological damage. Just replace monsters with pink alien lasers...and other weird humans.
I have always wanted to play in a PKD style game. If your game happens to be online I'd love to join in.
I really love Netrunner's design and fluff. I wish FFG would go all the way and give me an RPG system to use with all this aesthetic.
>Cyberpunk tends to have a lot of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist viewpoints
How would you make a pro-capitalist equivalent?
I really am plugging my own writing too hard, but the story that I posted a link to above is written from the perspective of a megacorp executive, and doesn't have a lot of positive things to say about anti-capitalists and their ilk.
In theory, too, it's just as simple as portraying megacorps as slightly flawed but ultimately helpful, helping people lead easier, longer, happier lives in exchange for a few fuck-ups and snags happening like in any normal business. I'm sure that there are plenty of works that end up on a moral like that, but probably mostly because they mainly concern themselves with other aspects of cyberpunk.
>In theory, too, it's just as simple as portraying megacorps as slightly flawed but ultimately helpful
What if we portray the states as the enemy and the megacorps as the underdogs fighting for freedom?
Show that even if the world is a bit fucked, it's not particularly corps faults - they'll probably be working to help stop the problems.
Companies don't dominate, and they can fall - the theme of corporations being basically untouchable (and thus in need of being rebelled against and fought) is a big part of cyberpunk, so a pro-capitalist view shows that they're not.
They and the government fight against chaos and use their power to try and maintain stability, which is shown to be a good thing - they use their powers for good
Small, efficient and clever corps/people can undercut the competition - being able to rise on your merits is a big part of the capitalist ideal.
And the corps can provide the players/protags with cool toys from corporate R&D, that helps a lot
Cyberpunk USSR. Just imagine it.
I'm surprised no one has really done that before, at least not on a scale large enough that I know of it.
I guess it would require a lot of knowledge of the Soviet Union, though, as a lot of the charm of fiction set in there is exactly how specific and distinct the way of life was there, as well as the predominant worldviews and daily habits.
If a post-Soviet author of a certain age felt like doing it, it might go well, but it probably wouldn't work if the author didn't grow up in the USSR.
You really can't do USSR cyberpunk (or cyberpunk in any communist country) due to the how the economy works. Cyberpunk is dependent upon capitalism gone wild, which implies a measure of social, cultural and economic freedom which you can't find by definition in a totalitarian communist state. Basically, you would just get a typical sci-fi dystopia with shittier pop music.
>a pro-capitalist view shows they're not
Tell me, does it ever get cold in that ivory tower you live in?
There ya go. Saw this before I saw the actual doco. Cracked me up and got goosebumps at the same time.
>Replace Megacorps with Intra Military conflict and Criminal Gangs who are rapidlyy infiltrating the government
There. We did it.
A sarcasm tag is the trendy way to do it: /s
People I know use a smiley to indicate they aren't being serious. :^)
Get your head out your ass, I'm talking about how you would write fiction to produce a pro-capitalist story, not that it had to be realistic
Post-cyberpunk is about existentialism.