What would make cyberpunk interesting again?

I feel like continuing a little with a more philosophical angle, going entirely off my own mindset. YMMV. Rambling ahead.

At its core, fictional conflict (and real conflict!) is the Self versus the Other. Whether the Self is the protagonist, a certain societal group, or something else, the Other tends to be the status quo in a setting. Cyberpunk writers frequently get the Self right, but misinterpret the Other. Corporations aren't the Other in cyberpunk, governments are, you shouldn't be looking at society at all.

Cyberpunk is the Human Self versus the Technological Other.

This is where I can point to Eclipse Phase getting its writing right. EP's TITANs are a perfect example of the T/O, while metahumanity (transhumanity? it's been a while) is an imperfect H/S. The Human Self can't win, because it's embraced the Technological Other too well. Every cyberpunk story is a losing battle. Technology marches on, and it doesn't leave room for take-backsies. When EP's TITANs developed self-awareness and full-on intelligence? You can't put that back in a can. When their morality is completely opposed to transhuman morality, but they've been let loose on the solar system, there's nothing transhumanity can do but try- and fail- to fight back. It's really cyberpunk encapsulated in a single conflict. Technology encroaches on human nature, the two reconcile- violently.

Another good material source for a less obvious conflict is, surprisingly enough, Shadowrun. Yes, it had good writing once! Third edition, Cybertechnology. Hatchetman goes into extensive detail about just how much the human body and cybernetics are alien to each other. It's like watching through a camera, never really feeling the gun in your hand, as you whip it around at supernaturally fast speeds and gun down a guard. It's inhuman, and it feels inhuman, but Hatchetman was willing to give up his humanity for an edge. The pattern repeats across SR fiction, even with mages. (1/?)

>Basically, cyberpunk itself has become real, you have to go to the next step. I don't even really treat cyberpunk *as* cyberpunk any more
You're just talking about sci-fi, dumbass. You've offered almost nothing to the question except "try Interface Zero."

The two are not separate concepts. Cyberpunk has always been a subset of sci-fi. Near-future and heavily grounded in reality, but science fiction regardless. I appreciate your input- not even sarcastically- and tried to offer a bit more by continuing on with what I see as the core of the genre.

That said, no, I'd actually recommend Eclipse Phase for the direction modern cyberpunk will go in or should go in, not Interface Zero. I'm very disappointed in IZ's setting. It's just better from a rules perspective, hence adaptable to more usable settings.

Corporations, governments, NGOs, everything enforces its hegemony by having the better weapons, the faster computers, the surveillance network, et cetera. Again- the technological edge wins out.

My stream of consciousness here is coming up short, so I may as well stop rambling about how cyberpunk should work. Basically, the problem is that people come at the topic from the wrong angle entirely, and it's how we come up with these conversations. "Do we change the corporations to governments?" "Do we have more punks? Less punks? Aliens?" If you want cyberpunk- in the original style, not as it is today- it doesn't matter if you have ten different alien species and not a corporation in sight. It's the struggle of the soul, so to speak, against the crushing boots of progress, and the people who slip between the cracks.

Honestly? All of the above.

My in-progress setting takes modern fears and concerns and take hem to the logical cyberpunk progression.

Government entities are subsidized by corporate interests. The most prevailing augmentations are aesthetic, just after the near universal data jacks (installed in all school children).

Identity is important, and those who work in shadows do well to have a public face, a mask, hiding their less scrupulous activities. Dual personas and divided Personal Area Networks (and vPANs) are popular methods, and Tier 1 NMFW (Neck-Mounted-FireWalls) are a must have, as most Cranial mounted ones don't provide the necessary protection when shifting between personal and burner Chatters.

Proxy wars, rampant consumerism, political unrest, and censoring of he media are major themes. Character motivations are at their root to be personal, and usually in opposition to some local (or national or world) corporate interest.

Same thing that made "19th century imperialism in space" style space opera popular again: A generation's worth of distance,

First reply best reply.

An interesting idea would be to take some aspects of other genres and blend them into the cyberpunk aethetics.

What I have in mind is say a Noir style cyberpunk game where the PCs specialize in going into simulated environments recreated from the dead or dying minds of people.

The chief inspiration for this comes from the Xenosaga spinoff game Pied Piper which details the life of one of the Main characters 100 years before the events of the game where they are investigating a seires of murders and one of things they wind up doing is mind diving into the mind of a guy who was recently killed and you can see as his world and conciousness is coming apart and part of him is still aware of what is going on.

A creepy but fascinating idea I think.

>What would make cyberpunk interesting again?
I've been running a cyberpunk wuxia setting. Essentially, taking all the elements of Eastern Philosophy (qi, chakras, five elements, yin and yang) and integrating them with technology in a cyberpunk world.

Basically, human bodies in the setting are only capable of what normal humans can do. Cyberware allows people to do superhuman stuff straight out of wuxia. A guy with cyberlegs installed with weight negators can run across leaves on a lake. Getting the meridian interface implant in your fingertips allows you to disrupt the human body with but a touch. Magnetic resonators allow you to become a metalbender.

Been stalled for a couple months now. Shame, I was having fun.

But rambleyanon, you can't separate technology from the institutions that produce it and profit from it.

Hence the fight against invasive and dehumanizing technology is necessarily also a fight against the power structures that use them to perpetuate their power.

shaddup

When I was rereading the Cthulhutech setting material, I did find a society sensing its impending doom cool.
The Last Policeman, Sunshine, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, These Final Hours.
Even Bladerunner has a sense that the Earth is dying, with the rarity of real animals and the obsession with artificial replacements.
A cyberpunk setting that embraces the impending collapse of the Earth's ability to support life could be cool. The way individuals and groups cope or fail to deal with inevitable doom would be interesting.

This is real life right now user. Random link about it: globalresearch.ca/mourning-our-planet-climate-scientists-share-their-grieving-process/5428996

A solid point, and not one I disagree with. My traim of thought kind of petered out there.

>the concept at a core is too real now
Yup. Case in point:

>crazy ass tinfoil hat website

Just felt I had to point out so as not to spread out misinformation. But yeah, we're deep into cyberpunk territory by now.

Y'know, the thing you said about identity in your setting reminds me not only of how cool popularity mechanics in Eclipse Phase are but also of some ideas I'd like to develop into a cyberpunk setting of sorts

There's thorny stuff here (i.e.: stuff that will generate discussion and people screaming about bigots and people screamin about SJWs), but I feel such a tremendous rise in the importance of individual identity nowadays, almost like we're in denial of the inhumanity of globalized capitalism. This strikes me as a perfect theme for cyberpunk that's resonant with the world today, really - characters who care so much about their social appearance and what their "brand" is and how independent and unique and truth-filled they are, that they can't see how that helps the status quo. 9-11 Truther, Shameless Consummerist, SJW, Red-Piller, Revolutionaires and Ultra-conservatives, it's all cosmetics and it's all brought to you by corporate interest. Basically just an update of the inherent cynicism of 80's cyberpunk, really. But maybe too thorny not to immediately derail into a heated yell-fest, given the polarized times we're living. Eh.

Basically this

Real life is so cyberpunk nowadays that our Haircut du Jour is the undercut/sidecut

which had been staples of cyberpunk all along, so hey

Oh whoops, sorry. This any better? esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/

My takeaway from this thread
CYBERPUNK WAS RIGHT

Fpbp

Wait until CD Project Red makes there Cyberpunk 2077 game

I don't know, that feels kinda edgy

I mean is the issue we're really losing our identities to the groups we belong to? Or is it that when we see other people, we only see the groups THEY belong to? And that just because we only get a glimpse of someone we take that little view and assume its all they are? That we're so fucking desperate to believe we're so unique and special that everyone else isn't? Those kinds of "individualism is dying!" projections of modern culture always feel desperate and forced. The only way to keep individualism from dying is to be just that, a literal individual, with no contact with any other human being we might possibly have something in common with.

It's a matter of scale. The less you see people as unique, the more unique you feel. The larger the population you're exposed to, the more the brain has to 'simplify' your perception of each of those individuals. The less you see each person as an actual person. Without any intervention (like from a totalitarian government) individualism explodes with increasing populations, because there's an increasing probability of finding other people with the same 'unique' traits or interests, where in a smaller population that 'uniqueness' usually gets destroyed by limited ability to express it. I mean jesus christ we live in a world where you can choose to study just about ANYTHING you can think of, you can follow your passions of photographing North American lichens or being a furry unbirthing artist ffs. You think if a dude wanted to try to make a living drawing moss in the 1700s his father wouldn't send him to the nuthouse? I mean look at how many of the world's most 'unique individuals' were branded as insane in history, and only how recently they wouldn't be literally locked up? Today I could walk into a gallery, blow my own shit onto a canvas through a bendy straw and there are people who wouldn't try and 'eradicate' that 'uniqueness'.

If there's a totalitarian government involved or drugs or some newfound hedonism machine that kills brains, sure. But otherwise, most of us are allowed to fulfill our potential 'uniqueness'. And it turns out between billions of humans, that potential is pretty nonexistent. so either you doom yourself to the existential suicide that is believing everyone is a sheep, including yourself OR you learn to appreciate that each individual you meet, no matter how gullible or stupid, is a unique permutation of an infinite number of traits and experiences common to humanity as a whole.

I know it sounds pretentious and I don't mean it that way. I just really don't understand how it could be written in a genuine tone. Like most campaigns are written to make players feel special and unique, but adding on a layer of that with the theme of your campaign and try to portray it seriously feels like... I don't know what the right word is. I mean I'd be genuinely interested to know how you would handle it while still portraying realistic humans, you know?

Well, english is not my first language so maybe I did write confusingly. I was >not< implying that "individualism is dying!", on the other hand, I would build that setting having in mind the contrary, that then-current technology allows for individualism to become ever more prevalent. The problem is, one's expressing individual uniqueness is done using resources from, and performed for, the status quo. Corporate capitalism "funds" each person's quest for individual identity, and profits on it. The problem being, all these identities are fundamentally cosmetic and inconsequential, even the ones that rebel against the establishment are part of the establishment (like the ending of Black Mirror S02E02 demonstrates, that'd be a good influence to draw from). Which is why I mentioned the marxism-fueled cynicism from old cyberpunk, which came to be as a reaction to the rise of a new world order.

The main question in that setting wouldn't be a matter of one's identity being lost amid social groups or that we see other people's identities as merely part of the group they belong, but instead about how this focus on identity as a core part (the most important part - follow your dreams!) of human experience is reinforced by the establishment to keep consumerism growing. Insert Zizek imitation here.

Then again, I'm a commie, so hey.

Oh, hadn't seen your second post. Absolutely agree with what you said here, and I think the fun of cyberpunk settings is exactly in the liveliness of characters in the streets VS. the bleak existential backdrop caused by corporations and neon and acid rain and whatnot.

What I'm proposing is, at the end of the day, a try at a modern take on the Brave New World schtick. SOMA and whatnot.

You basically listed all the reasons it's not cool anymore, because almost all of those things have become decidedly uncool over time. Retro or nostalgia are the opposite of cool, cool is the cutting edge that walks a new walk inspiring others to follow.

>What I have in mind is say a Noir style cyberpunk game

The funny thing here is that cyberpunk has always been more a subgenre of noir than a subgenre of science fiction.

Also, I highly recommend Technoir, which is...a very cyberpunk RPG, with interesting narrative mechanics. Cyberpunk is never interesting in the abstract, the same way fantasy is never interesting in the abstract; it's the characters and their individual struggles that make them work.

Cyberpunk is interesting by itself.

You just need a GM that's in the processing of writing a bestseller novel.

I can see that. Although I don't see how a game about using technology to try and reconstruct the events leading up to a person's death wouldn't work in that sort of thing. Many using technology to cross borders he ought to leave well enough alone and the unique strain of realizing what a person's dying moments look and feel like?

In a lot of ways the self-branding and identity politics you are touching on is a big part of the setting I have been building.

As classic cyberpunk is a reflection of when it came to be, so is thr notion of my setting. Albeit, in many ways it comes down more to actions through anonymity rather than a public face (because all public faces are actions of corporate interest, or a good way to get your life burned out of the record books).

Vampires

Sound track by Kenny Loggins.

All at once.

>Cyberpunk 2077
When it comes out in 2077 it will just be a RL simulator.

>Cyberpunk is now memes

Interesting Graph, got any idea why the death rate projection bottoms out at around 2020? While both Birth rate and Population hit their bottom and peak at about the same time in around 2030?

It's probably because people in developed countries don't produce enough kids. You need a rate of 2,1 births per couple to replace and make the population grow without counting immigration. That's it 2 children per women (to replace both parents) + occasionally a third child.

Having children in the developed world is economically unfeasible, a luxury, so people don't produce enough babies.

Got you covered mang

>Eclipse Phase
>Cyberpunk

Wat?

Extrapolate today's future, not the 80s'

>The world gets more populous
>The middle class becomes larger
>Most 21st century third world countries are now considered developed
>Society's structure is safe and sound with no collapse in sight
>Crime rates stay steady
>Global warming and other environmental issues become non existent as nations of the late 20th and 21st century actually gave a shit about these things

Our real future is like the anti-cyberpunk.

>The middle class becomes larger

Actually, the middle class is in decline. Soon there won't be a job that can't be done by someone in the third world or a robot.

I can't find the exact chart I'm thinking of, but there are less and less people living in poverty now than there has ever been, more or less. The world generally gets better, that's how things work.

I probably extrapolated a larger middle class from that fact.

The world is going towards the great equation. Countries that are poor now, are becoming more rich. Their middle-class starts to build. On the other hand, rich countries are becoming more poor. Sooner or later, all countries will have roughly the same development level. It's kind of what was written in Snow Crash: "Microwaves are now also built in Kazakhstan. The only thing that make the USA better is pizza delivery".

Nope. Democracy and social rights will go down the toilet once the Capitalists realise that they no longer need to keep workers or soldiers happy when robots can do both things better.

No, because then there will just be social and economic reforms across the board and we'll hit some kind of weird psuedo-communism. The welfare state will be cranked up the ass, and going in to business will be for those who want to be rich, not those who want to make a living.

Change never comes as steady. There will be chaos, revolution, and new ideologies rising up and waging war against each other, as always. The social contracts will be shredded and conflict will rise until a new equilibrium is formed. It is inevitable.

>Global warming and other environmental issues become non existent as nations of the late 20th and 21st century actually gave a shit about these things.

It is already too late.

Yes, because there are levies being built around all major coastal cities, and Venice is underwater currently.

Maymays 2 the max

If all the pledges are implemented, we will still surpass the 2C limit at which point the changes become a global threat. 2.7C is the most optimistic prospect with the current policies.