CyberPunk

What are some great inspiration books for cyberpunk Campaigns?

I think every book by Don Winslow is a treasure trove of ideas

Especially Savages, which is a pretty bitching campaign idea to rip off

>Two 90's slacker dudes (one of whom is an ex Navy SEAL and one is a hippy) that deal weed in Los Angeles have a nice life with their mutual girlfriend

>Cartel led by a qt Narca Jefe starts moving in on their turf and kidnaps their mutual gf to make them capitulate

>They get some friends of theirs and start to go up against the cartel

Thanks for the recs, user

yw lad. Start with power of the dog then read Savages and The Cartel. After that read what you will

Disgusting.

Malthusians will never, ever, ever get their way. You idiots keep preaching this bullshit time and time and time again, and technology proves you wrong every. single. time.

Doesn't mean we still couldn't have such beautiful cities anyways.

That's honestly the thing that always bugs me about cyberpunk, especially when it's supposed to be "optimistic" cyberpunk. Where's all the green? At most, one guy might have some flowers or something, but there are never any parks, window boxes, hydroponics, nothing.

Imperial Boy's cities are amazing, but I never really thought of them as being particularly cyberpunk.

Also, we need more cityscapes in this thread.

Nature requires space. Space you could be filling with productivity and/or citizens.

I like this because it combines both the love of nature and technology. You don't have to be a luddite to enjoy nature and I agree with There should be more stuff like this present in the cyberpunk genre.

I would like to make a noir-inspired cyberpunk campaign, but I have trouble putting it into a cyberpunk city. It seems pretty difficult as there are too many power groups (corporations, cartel, Russian mob, yakuza, triads, street gangs...).

Green isn't beautiful
metal is beautiful

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The Pearl River Delta megacity will probably be one of the most cyberpunk places around. A gigantic sprawl encompassing Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Donguang, Guangzhou, Foshan and Macao (and some other cities more), all administrated by a corrupt government. Population would be somewhere between 60 to 120 millions.

Each district is actually a large city. Description is very vague and should be more considered as general guideline (each city has a business center, commercial and residential districts, industrial areas, etc.):

Dongguan: Residential and commercial district
Foshan: Mixed-use district
Guangzhou: Political district
Hong Kong: Financial, and classy commercial and residential district
Macao: Entertainment district ruled by crime syndicates
Huizhou: Industrial area (petrochemical industry)
Jiangmen: River port, industrial area
Shenzhen: Business and industrial district, harbor
Zhaoqing: Touristic area
Zhongshan: Largely a residential district
Zuhai: Harbor (used for smuggling)

>look at fracking
>method of gathering fuel for energy, that ends up wasting more energy than the net result

hmmm

The thing is that oil isn't only used for energy, but is also used to make lubricants and plastic materials.

If you want to go full eco-punk, then electric production should come mostly from wave/water current energy converters, solar and wind energy parks, all that kind of stuff.

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> all administrated by a corrupt government.
I think one of the big things about the Pearl River megacity is that they don't want to integrate it into one city (some newspaper did a report on the big road or rail thing that's slowly linking all the bits, saying "it might become one big city" and a categorical "no" response was sent out), so if it becomes "one" there's a good chance it'd be separate "cities" that just happen to be next to each other, maybe with a couple of higher-level organisations for the whole place but otherwise doing their own thing.

On the other hand, while the centres are huge it's not likely to join up for a while - Guangzhou-Macau is like 60 miles, and to HK is 90 odd miles away, and there are still big stretches with fuckall in them (and china doesn't really do suburbs in the same way), but yeah, assuming it eventually becomes a big conglomeration it'd be probably be one of the most cyberpunk things you'd ever see.

Being connected but separate would also be important for HK and Macau, as a fair bit of their prosperity comes from their special statuses.

For setting development/games it means you could have big rivalries between both gangs and police, escaping to other districts, and possibly PMCs/super-cops (or some part of the PLA) for the city-wide authority, who get called when shit's really going down.

This looks like some hippie/hipster bullshit scenario, wanting high tech and this organic marijuana life makes no sense, unless this is a Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou kind of setting, where some kind of unspecified calamity killed most humans and caused nature to claim back major cities, leaving the few human survivors and the androids, the inheritors of the planet as the human population fades away, to live a simple life closer to nature on top of the ruins of the old world.

The rich people live in these places while enjoying the rare luxury of contact with nature while all their tech is build in gulags and hive cities elsewhere.
Yup, this can fit right in a cyberpunk universe.

If the cities stay somewhat independent, that's even better. The land in between will probably house landfills, shanty towns, ghost towns, industrial ruins, all those kind of places that can be used by criminals to dispose of their enemies.

The green is on offplanet colonies, farm asteroids, farm moons or even farm worlds.

Parks and pretty looking places are only for the rich, on the upper levels of the cities, where the sun still shines sometimes, or if the climate is fucked, these parks could exist inside of stadium size domes with artificial weather and sunlight.

If you want an optmistic cyberpunk scenario with nature everywhere you need to throw away the overpopulated megacity thing, either a huge chunk of the population died leaving the megacities to become overgrown ruins or the population never blew out of control to begin with.
But would it even be Cyberpunk without overpopulation and dystopian grimmy megacities?

Implying the vegetation in corporate areas isn't bio-engineered in order to resist pollution and acid rains.

This thread is in violation of CDP Red trademark.

Prepare to have your shitty board taken down, nerds. :^)

The point of oil isn't simply generate energy, but generate a easy-to-use form of energy you can carry around. As much as I would want to, not everything can run on electric engines everywhere.

Also on a political and economical point of view we are a handful of mergers away from cyberpunk-tier bullshit. Technologically-wise there's only cyberimplants lacking and that's pretty much a given it will hit the shelves in the next years (automatic drug implants and IoT controls being already there/soon out).

Limit yourself to a region dominted by one power group (mayb challnged by one or to others). Othr than that, Noir depends a lot on the charate archtypes present in th story, you can fit those in basically any setting.

Is shale oil used to make plastics as well ?

Caring about trademark isn't very cyberpunk.

I could do, but somehow I feel noir to be always very attached to a particular area or town, while cyberpunk is very international (PCs are hired in NYC to do something in Tokyo. They have to meet a contact in Marrakesh, and get some gear in Vladivostok).

After WWII shale oil was used as a raw material for chemical intermediates, pure chemicals and industrial resins, and as a railroad wood preservative. Shale oil's concentration of high-boiling point compounds is suited for the production of middle distillates such as kerosene, jet fuel and diesel fuel. Additional cracking can create the lighter hydrocarbons used in gasoline.

>cyberpunk is very international
Not necessarily. Maybe Warren who runs the local store knows that Fast Hands Andy's boys (who operate out of the old industrial district in West Bell Hill) are looking to hire a few guys to make things a little more difficult for the East 89th Slivers. Little does Andy know that the Slivers are receiving equipment from Arcturus Megatechnology's research divisions so that AMT can see how it does in the field. And of course AMT would very much like their involvement in this to stay hush-hush, as supplying violent gangs is not good PR, and since Bell Hill isn't exactly in the best part of town it'd be pretty easy for AMT to make people who know too much just... disappear.

I'm not saying you can't stay local, but you can't stay local for long. This is what kind of bothered me with Cyberpunk 2020. The PCs are more or less supposed to stay in Night City, build their contacts and operate there - which is highly dangerous. No sane street operative would do that. As characters build street rep, hiding in the same place becomes more difficult, as more people will recognize him. If the characters have legit jobs that's of course not a problem.

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Yeah, there's a weird kind of dichotomy, where cyberpunk works really well in both really dense, close neighbourhoods with a good level of contacts and characters, and really well with continent-hopping, bouncing around to meet global contacts and things (some of this is based on the time when a lot of original shit was written, but it still works okay)

Lots of criminals leave their country to lay low for a while. Thailand (especially Pattaya) and Cyprus have always been places for criminals to retreat for a while when things get too hot at home. Switzerland and Spain are also pretty popular places, though Switzerland is the most boring place.

user, a lot of those corporation are multinational. When they start recognising you, there's are very few places to go to be safe. Any sane street operative wouldn't get involved with them to begin with.

How did you think your character's story was going to end?

>Any sane street operative wouldn't get involved with them to begin with.
Then, for who would street ops work for? Crime syndicates? They are just as connected and international as corporations are.

I think that the most important thing is to fall back to places where you're not known. If everyone in Night City knows you, then, someone will inevitably rat you out. If people in Caracas don't know you, then you're pretty safe as long as you stay away from corporate areas and ID checks.

And when the guys hunting realise you've run, and start looking for levers? What are you going to do when you get a video-call at five in the morning that's just five minutes of the old Tin Soldier bar on fire, finishing up with a slow zoom in on the body of Vick D, the barkeep who knew exactly how you liked your whiskey?

There's more to cyberpunk than Shadowrun user, more motivations than greed. I think a lot of people have forgotten that.

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

That's why paranoia is your friend. You don't have family or friends, you have contacts and temporary allies - anyone you know too well could be a trap someone set for you.

If they know there's no leverage to be used against you, there's not much they can do apart of looking for you. For this, they should know in what direction you left.

Every man has something he'll walk into hell for. Something for which he'll make any mistake.

was meant for .

"There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle... perhaps..."

Yes, in revenge movies. In real life gangsters lack empathy and compensate it with selfishness and survival instinct.

user, I'm not sure you understand this genre.

To be fair, that's usually what gets a guy killed - though sometimes your dark noir guys can just be ruined a bit.

Definitely part of the genre though.

Not that mixing it up with your hard-core more realistic types isn't cool too, but usually what makes the protagonists in these stories protagonists is that they have 's "something"

>Prioritizing quality of life is for libtard faggots REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Why are you drawing my fursona Coldsteel as a dirty softskin human when you know he's a hedgeheg you mega ass faggot?

I agree that it can fit the genre and gives a certain drama, in the spirit of:

"Worth dying for." Blam!
"Worth killing for." Blam!
Worth going to hell for." Blam!
"Amen."

Though the ruthless operative fits the genre perfectly, too. It's just less cinematic.

The ruthless operative works best when you've got some people with more principles to contrast them with.

Absolutely - contrast is the best in these things, gives things a bit more complexity than if everyone is the same flavour of amoral asshole or badass with a principle, but there's definitely room for both

He's not THAT edgy, this is cyberpunk - the bar for actually being edgy goes way up

Violence is the imbecile's last resort. What would they gain from killing Moe the Barman and burning down a shabby bar in Little Kabukicho? It will surely unsettle the characters a little bit, but they'll find a new favorite bar to hang out. Better would have been to kidnap a character's love interest and use her as leverage, or even better, they could recruit the character's love interest and use her to trap the character.

>implying Edgetron the Professional Assassin left any family alive in his backstory

That's why Cyberpunk 2020 provides lifepath charts.

Give this random generator a try, it's a little goofy when you attempt to adjust point values but it still can churn out some charmingly bizzare friends or foes.

ericdorsey.info/cp2020/noJS.html

Some of the meta in our own current CP2020 game is that the place is populated by PCs.

Somehow the insane ganger behavior suddenly makes much more sense through the high tech lowlife murderhobo lens.

Everything's a commodity in the mutated office park gone cancerous that is Night City.

Also imagining the countdown to Cybergeneration's Saturday morning freedom fighters roughly seven years after the campaign's end.

Pretty cool generator.

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Whenever I use this generator, I only have disaster striking or I'm making a new enemy.

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Read that in Deniros voice.

Heat is such a damn good movie.

It is. Ronin is another good movie with him.

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What a cuck

>Waaah, I don't wanna live in liveable cities

Did you watched the GitS movie ? It definitely misses the point(s) of GitS as it's way more Cyberpunk than Post-Cyberpunk (and the philosophy and sociology parts are all but forgotten), but there's some good visuals and ambiance music that I'll probably reuse in future games.

Anyone else hyped for Blade Runner 2049?

yes and no.

with such a large gap between productions, it'll be interesting to see if they can recapture the feel and themes that the first dealt with, and what level of practical effects with be merged with cgi.

on the otherhand, did the movie really -need- a sequel?

No, but Hollywood is bankrupt of new ideas so we're getting this. I don't think there was even demand for a sequel in the first place.

Interesting how the movies that don't really need a sequel get one, and how a movie like Dredd, where people actually want a sequel will absolutely never get one.

God I hate Hollywood.

it's not that they're bankrupt of new ideas- they're *afraid* of new ideas.

its an industry, not a platform for being innovative.

It's a matter of marketability. Movie goers have emotional stock in things they know about. Whether they hate or love the idea of franchise sequel or remake doesn't matter, what matters is they talk about.
Unless it's being produced by a well known director or has a major actor in it, it needs to be a recognisable property.

Dredd is cult IP, the movie starred a lesser known actor and no other familiar faces to layman. It's not a wise investment.
There is so much media being produced right now most studios don't feel they can risk going in on something unless it has a solid guarantee that people will watch it. Good stuff has been made in the past few years but a lot of it was indie. I mean hell, Dredd was indie.

But this is what I feel is important: it's not worth it to complain about useless remakes or sequels, you will not impact the quality of movies IN FACT you will be unconscionably shilling the shit you hate by keeping it active in public awareness. Instead actively seek out movies that have passed under the radar, find the ones that are good and let people know.

>Supporting the shit you like is more useful than fighting the stuff you don't

>it's not that they're bankrupt of new ideas- they're *afraid* of new ideas.
This. Reboots and sequels of successful movies will always be seen as a safer bet than an untested IP. AAA Vidya is the same way too now.

We're seeing studio's drift away and try new things just like how we're seeing... what's inbetween indie game devs and AAA? AA? Sure, whatever. AA Dev's taking some risks.

None of them are super risky risks, but there are some risks.

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Yes actually.
The director has done pretty consistently excellent work in the past.
Even if it isn't a particularly good sequel to Blade Runner I think it will probably be a good film in its own right.

Wasn't a huge fan of Blade Runner. Don't expect much from 2049.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how Blade Runner 2049 will disappoint us, because Cyberpunk 2077 will surely be the bigger disappointment.

The closest we've ever gotten has to be the Kowloon Walled City.

youtube.com/watch?v=OSnvqBhWUOc

>the grim and gritty future of the 2080s
>not the 2010s

is this choomba cyber-serious?

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Don't see why.

Why would it?
CD Projekt hasn't disappointed me yet.
Hollywood is always disappointing me, even when I have zero expectations of quality.

This. You saw it all the time in cop shows from the 70s and so. Villains leaving for Spain, Malta, Cyprus, etc or Mexico, the Carribean in the US for a while after a big job or when the heat is on them.

Having just seen Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest back to back is there a way to make a cyberpunk comedy movie that manages to lovingly lampoon the genre but still be a coherent and entertaining story on its own?

To quote Shadowrun's tonal spectrum of Black Trenchcoat full operator to batshit Saint's Row shenanigans Pink Mohawk where do you think a flick like that might comfortably dwell?

Since it takes place in the dark cyberfuture self reference and awareness are already built in and a lot of the characterizations already seem comedic.

Too bad the South Park dudes aren't into the genre since they managed a fun action movie with Team America World Police and a rocking super hero flick with Orgazmo.

I guess the closest thing we have is Demolition Man.

>is there a way to make a cyberpunk comedy movie that manages to lovingly lampoon the genre but still be a coherent and entertaining story on its own?
Snow Crash: The Movie?

>Drove through guangzhou a couple years ago
>It's all empty buildings built with government money to employ construction workers and create "valuable" property
>No one actually wants to move into them
China is either the lamest cyberpunk country in the world or TOO cyberpunk by half. I can't decide which.

That's why I said it has the potential. Nowadays the most cyberpunk cities are Caracas and Manilla.

>Caracas and Manilla.
Why those two?

Caracas has the murder rate and south american skyscrapers I guess

Manilla is dense as fuck, and the pics certainly look pretty cyberpunk, but not on built up china levels

Jesus christ how horrifying.

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