Need some ideas for an off-beat "weird cyberpunk" adventure that doesn't involve the usual...

Would cyborgs have an advantage in the dating pool?

Dancing is outlawed

Corporation has sent YOU to Middle of Fuck, New Chad, Africa.

ISIS in America then? Maybe in Dearborn, Michigan.

To do what, exactly?

After years of environmental degradation, the Atlantic Salmon population has gone extinct in the ocean, A lone male, however, resides in an aquarium owned by a rather wealthy corporation. Your team was hired to "acquire" the salmon for the head of a different corporation, who lavishes at the idea of cooking and eating the last salmon.

>Someone's hacking construction and urban planning to make giant sigils.
>Sewer systems form runes of binding, ringroads are modified to the shape of magic circles.

>dat pic
>hacker stalking a sexy lady
>she's in the bathroom
>she's holding a knife
>???

She's also taking a glove off, so maybe she just killed someone?

Hell, tiles, no sink or loo in sight, maybe she's in a kitchen or something.

But murder seems more likely

>an alien AI infiltrates the Earth's cyberspace and starts systematically disabling all research into space travel

>a cult centered around numerology and forgotten gods of antiquity has been springing up on the net
>They're using memes to predicted the outcomes of worldly events
>Their plan is to get a wildly unpopular politician elected to office in order to troll the real world and wreak havoc

NPCs in an old MMORPG that was dying off discovered that they were AIs and escaped into the internet, where they're running on unknown servers and learning about hacking and the real world so they can create a safe haven and rescue their loved ones before the system is shut down.

The game company considers this a revered old title but legacy and wants to shut it down. They think that someone is using their gameworld as a cutout for hacking and hire the players to stop it. They don't know about the escaped AIs and would consider it a marketing and legal disaster if it went public. They're trying to be bought out and can't afford a scandal.

Hard core fans want to keep it running. It's unpredictable how they'll react if they discover the escaped AIs. Some might want to help, some might want to capture them for nostalgia/lols. Some might help recapture them and return them and assist in the cover-up so they can keep playing their favorite game.

Of course, who knows about the owners of the hijacked server being used as a refuge. And how do the AIs manage a mass exodus, that'll surely be easy to track?

Then there's pro- and anti-AI activists. Is this a software glitch or a human rights issue?

Also, remember that these are beings who have lived in and work according to the tropes of a RPG. Fantasy, maybe? Or space opera? Urban fantasy/horror? Your call, but their morality and assumptions about how life works and right and wrong are basically Veeky Forums tier.

Literally hacking the planet and bugs, glitches and corruptions are happening in IRL

A new 3 story nightclub just opened up that features state of the art interactive holographics, they advertise that special drinks called "Bot-Shots" (which are shots of every day liquor with self depreciating nanobots that degrade and leave the bloodstream after 12 hours) can enhance your night and augment the pleasure centers of your brain to stimulate any pleasurable sensation at the imbiber's whim.

The owner was forced to kick out a small group of skilled hackers on the first night and they decided to enact a bit of revenge by hacking into the systems of the nightclub and causing all kinds of havoc.

The nightclub owner was forced to lockdown the entire building and doesn't want the police or the media involved. He's contracted your group to infiltrate the building from the top floor and fight down to the basement where the server room is in order to shut down the entire operation before things take a nasty turn. Holograms have turned hostile and will actively prevent your group from progressing unless dealt with. Patrons who have taken Bot-shots are now slaves to the program and actively thwart your efforts, and the club's own security system is working against you locking doors, closing fire doors, releasing fire suppressant, and just generally being a dick to you.

Can you survive a night out at the club?

Or the PC's get hired by the AIs themselves. They're in a virtual bar when a mysterious stranger appears. He's like every stereotype of a quest-giving wizard because that's exactly what he is. He won't tell the PC's anything about himself and may even pose as a rep from a rival game company looking to sabotage the buyout. He's very smart and has a good plan, but he can't help what he is and keeps falling prey to standard quest-giving tropes: withholding information, being manipulative, being needlessly mysterious and dramatic, and acting like he's all knowing.

The bard slut, the sassy bar wench, the over the top do gooder paladin. Pick your genre and you can put them in as fish out of water trying to blend in with a cyberpunk virtual universe.

Anyway, the AIs need to find a server farm that they can run and maintain (rent or buy), someone to do maintenance/administration, either a programmer to write them a vr world or a copy of their old one, and to be off the radar of authorities and their old company. Plus money to pay for all this plus whatever else. Plus a way to smuggle/steal the entire AI population of their world (probably too much to download and will have to be stolen in the real world from the company's server farms). The exodus might be interfered with by villain AIs from the gameworld for no better reason than that they're villains and that's what they're programmed to do.

They think in terms of RPG campaigns, so acting like an RPG group questing is their natural inclination. So to your PC's they'll be both weird and frustrating, but also kind of bro tier.

dezeen.com/2014/07/27/bees-3d-printing-concrete-geoff-manaugh-john-becker/
>Hacking the bee 3d printers producing concrete. The whole city is being "repaired" with phalluses.

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/smart-dust.html
>Seeding the streets with youtubegoo and charging people to watch the visual, audio and tactile footage in your off-shore website within your micronation.

>Someone made a crypto-fluidic-computer out of the sewer grid... 60 years ago. It's been running a program this whole time.

>Technology reached a point where people can become cyberelvenkin and aciddentally create vegetable AIs:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioleaching
>Bioleaching is the extraction of metals from their ores through the use of living organisms.
Besides iron, they extract gold as well. Do you really think the golden elven trees are just crude magic?
bldgblog.com/2010/11/gold-is-the-metal/
>It was reported earlier this month that “gold nanoparticles can induce luminescence in leaves.” That’s right: glowing trees. The scientists who discovered it call it bio-LED.
pruned.blogspot.com.br/2011/07/pruning-arboreal-notre-dame-in-amazon.html
>bonsaibots
bldgblog.com/2015/11/electronic-plantlife/
>process by which they were able to “manufacture” what they call “analog and digital organic electronic circuits and devices” inside living plants.
bldgblog.com/2012/12/tree-receivers/
>each leaf is a component of a optical phased array network of unknown power capacity.
pruned.blogspot.com.br/2009/06/more-spatial-high-jinks-4-arbor.html
>the whole thing is self-sufficient.

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2012/12/very-large-structure.html

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2009/02/dune-city.html
nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants/
>People started to colonize and terraform the Sahara, putting the Amazon Forest indo danger of extinction.

PC's get hired by a Johnson representing an unknown third party. They're sent on dangerous jobs seemingly at random. Most of the missions involve flashy firefights, sexy social engineering, and big explosions. They're also under surveillance from a very mysterious hacker who seems to anticipate their every move. Sometimes he helps them, sometimes he fucks with them at exactly the wrong time in a mission.

Their employer IS that stalker. He's a little kid who made some money via cybercrime and hired them to do cool shit he could watch like it's a TV show. He doesn't want his pets to get caught or killed, but he also gets bored with smooth easy runs. If there's a sexy PC, he develops a crush on him/her, and tries to set up situations that get porn-y so he can get off. He also tries to break them up from any LTR that they might be in.

He's a classic summer child. Trying to pretend that he's of age, gets off on stupid flashy cliched shit, and is sociopathic as only kids that age can be when given godlike power and seemingly no consequences.

>limited nuclear war in Asia messed up the environment
>the environment is so polluted everyone lives underground
>cybernetics are required to adapt to underground living
>but they are cosmetically concealed
>everyone's a cyborg but they look normal
>underground biohabitats look like the surface
>each arcology is ruled by a corporatocracy
>they compete against each other
>the machinery of the undercities is starting to break down
>players have to break the illusion and reach the surface

youtube.com/watch?v=zGedvM2olm4

bldgblog.com/2009/04/sandstone/
pruned.blogspot.com.br/2007/12/what-if-africa-was-europes-power-plant.html
pruned.blogspot.com.br/2011/04/great-reservoirs-of-libya.html
>People started to colonize and terraform the Sahara, putting the Amazon Forest indo danger of extinction 2/2

thomasthwaites.com/policing-genes/
>Countering amateur gengineering with bees

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2006/07/trailing-suction-hopper-dredgers.html
>A fleet of highspeed suction hopper dredgers has tripled the number of nations in the world for the last five years. The "Atlantis Syndrome" is desestabilizing the concept of nation itself, leading to worldwide national fragmentation. New national networks are developing without any geographical or cultural relation, and the sun never sets even in countries with 2.000 citizens nowadays.

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2007/02/hydrology-vs-apocalypse.html
>The world's dams have shifted so much weight that geophysicists believe they have slightly altered the speed of the earth's rotation, the tilt of its axis, and the shape of its gravitational field.
>But even if the alteration amounts to a mere fraction of a second per day, that dams could shorten or lengthen a year obviously offers a possible solution to a perennial nuisance: earth-bound extinction level asteroids.

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2012/05/graffiti-as-tactical-urban-wireless.html

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2012/01/hacking-super-robo-farm.html

subtopia.blogspot.com.br/2006/02/my-mushrooms-eat-bombs-for-breakfast.html

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/instant-wi-fi-cloud-of-cyborg-fauna.html

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2009/07/reclaiming-saemangeum.html
>the future Dubai of Northeast Asia

pruned.blogspot.com.br/2010/06/floating-mobile-gardens.html

>fresh scar over his side

He's reviewing surveillance footage to find the bitch napped his kidneys

The PC's stumble on what looks like a human trafficking operation. Kids being transported, unconscious, to a VERY tightly guarded warehouse. They are placed into pods and kept in VR 24/7.

It's a boarding school for the children of celebs and trust fund babies. Babies are cute and playing house is fun for a while. And the PR consultants all agree that they're great for your image. But then five years go by and they're still around. You can't go to parties or travel like you used to. And you and the other celeb parent broke up, like, AGES ago. Governesses only do so much, and now that PR flack is warning you that you can't be seen as a bad parent. So wat do?

This is the ultimate boarding school. The world is running out of remote areas where you can ship your kids to make sure they're raised right and kept out of trouble with a minimum of fuss on your end. But this place stacks their pods 10 high, keeps their bodies health, safe, exercised, and drug/disease free. An army of experts handles education, nurturing, entertainment, and discipline. 24 hour surveillance of each child by an AI monitor to ensure that they stay out of trouble and aren't abused. No scandals, no trouble. You can finally get on with your life.

The kids are totally isolated from the internet, except when their pods are individually plugged into a firewalled meeting area to meet with their parents or other approved people. It's surprising how many don't get visits from their parents at all.

The kids stay off the grid in "boarding school" until they reappear at 18 as young adults ready to debut into the social elite, having already grown up with the next generation of the beautiful and connected.

>a corporation is taking homeless people right off the street
>the homeless are being plugged into a VR system in order to to test the system for bugs
>the VR is actually made to be pleasant and safe so the hobbos don't want to leave

>uplifted dolphins are waging a gorilla war against the tuna fishing boats that have been killing their brethren

>the players stumble across a town in eastern europe where 'everyone' is a non-sapient drone mimicking being human
>the town was once full of people but was wiped out by some kind of disease or pollution
>the drones were made by an insane genius who used to live here before a megacorp swept him up
>they're his homage to the people who grew up around him all his life

A movie geek gets his hands on a high tech super suit and begins a vigilante rampage, trying to recreate scenes from his favorite films

I'm stealing this idea, user. That's brilliant.

The PC's must play a high-stakes children card game with deranged teenagers, the loser will have their minds scattered across cyberspace they call it getting banished to the shadow realm if you want to be really on the nose.

>a hacker discovers time travel
>only works for data
>sends spyware back in time to steal money IN THE PAST

>Not giving people in the past the premium dank memes of the future.
What an evil bastard. That power could be used for good.

Sends an AI to as soon as a computer cluster good enough to run it is invented. It's programmed to be a fairy godfather who guards the hacker, with periodic upgrades emailed as better computers are invented to run better AIs. When time catches up to the hacker, he immediately inherits a vast financial empire the AI had been preparing for him.

any cyber Veeky Forums, /a/, /tv/ to hack themes and imagery from shamelessly?
I love David Cronenburg.

Neat concept, but what is the adventure for the PCs here?

Cool beans right here. Thanks.

>Your group is tasked with finding the last man on Earth who hasn't been touched in any way by any social networks
>Because scientists have discovered that social media irreversibly altered the wiring of human mind across the planet
>They need an intact, original "human mind" sample to understand the changes

I remember I had an idea for a Shadowrun arc, but I think it can apply in any Cyberpunk game that has something like a Mr. Johnson character or at least committing domestic terrorism for fun and profit.

Basically, after a few normal runs to get the group into a comfortable groove, you get abducted by Space Aliens. Who want you to do some contract work for you.

Maybe it's sabotaging a launch, or stealing evidence of Extraterrestrial life. Maybe it's rescuing their comrades from being dissected or avenging them. Maybe it's to steal some fuel so they don't run out of gas half way home.

Ghosts are showing up in weird places.
Investigators have to figure out if the "ghosts" are real, or just weird bits of personality left in computer networks when people died/logged out suddenly.

I don't know what would be cooler, if it was a hoax used to disguise the identity of your true employers, or they really were aliens. I suppose it's best to keep everyone guessing. Real aliens might want to get you wondering afterward if it was a hoax, and hoaxers of course want you to think it's aliens.

Ghosts in the form of social media profiles from years past

>The ghost of Obama 2015 is haunting downtown Chicago

no actual reason it's just a paperwork mix up. Can you survive in Africa against the uplifted lions someone made for fun?

>3 slutty teenage girls have run away from their rich corporate parents
>You've been hired to get them back, but without hurting them
>You can't lay a finger on them but everything else is fair game
>They joined a go-gang and are going on a sex, drugs and rock & rule tour of the Corporate States of America, one sleazy dive after the next

>New drug that that makes people insane

>Actually tends to cause a moment of perfect clarity, wherein you can see the whole of society laid bare in all its horrific splendor
>The mind rebels and shatters when confronted by the sheer inhumanity of what we purposefully do to each other on the daily

what is the peripheral.

Everything Alex Jones says is true.

Completely underrated are cyberpunk cop campaigns. By being cops, the characters have a different reason to be together rather than being operators operating operationally.

Instead of using the usual megacorporations, why not using a new religion as bogeyman? Some new sect becomes extremely popular and builds a religious empire. Its leaders use their ascendancy on "leaders" (stars, politicians, high-ranking corporates, scientists, athletes...) to fulfill their mysterious goals. Each large city has a sect HQ (large prominent building, like a pyramid or an inverted pyramid...). Virtual prayer/meditation/purification rooms exist online. There are many shops selling "religious" goods like prayer books made from real paper, chips with spiritual music, mind-enhancing SimStim, addictive incense sticks, special tea, meditation mats, etc. The sect also operates farms where organic food is grown to be sold in their restaurants and shops.

Inspiration: 1Q84, The Beast Trilogy, Babylon A.D., Unification Church, Scientology, Raelism, Aum Shinrikyo.

...

I'd be tempted to steal shit from Transmet

>People turning themselves into a floating cloude of nanites
> Human popsicles only being unfrozen out of a sense of obligation. No one gives a fuck about them motherwise
> Drug-laced chewing gum gives you legal immunity for the durarion of it's effect
> People attempting to fuck in the shadows of celebrities in an attempt to increase the chances of conception
> Houses of pro-lifers getting bombed/vandalized
> card-sized AI offering an enhanced high if they can take a hit of your stash. Slowly cyberizes you the more you get fucked up together
> Massive super-fighting robots standing there inactive, a monument to a forgotten war. They used to have massive cock-cannons until one of them fell off and crushed a popular brothel
> Journalists have legal immunity provided they are employed
> Celebrity Journalists have extreme freedome of speech to the point of a Trump/Nixon hybrid getting into office resulted in an article consisting of the word "fuck" repeated eight-thousand times.
> Hover shoes exist and are called "Air Jesus"
> Nobody knows what year it is, marking time by how many years it has been since happened.
> A Chain of fast food joints called "Long Pig" exists, due to the existence of bastard farms
> Dogs are sentient, yet hold no rights whatsoever.
> Alien life exists. We used up their culture and memes. No-one but a few transients cares any more
> Matter replicators exist. The most popular brand is one implied to be owned by the Mafia.
> Everyone smokes. One can take pills to ensure that cancer never happens
> Hitler clones exist, yet no-one remembers who Hitler was.
> The latest drug puts you in a state likened to waiting in the space between spaces. Shitty music that can only be truly appreciated while under the influence exists.
> It doesn't matter if you are in New York, Pyongyang or Neo Tokyo, the culture is all the same.
>Something has happened to Australia that has caused refugees to LEAVE Australia.

Sounds like someone wants to play as a member of one of the Public Security Sections.

Since you are going into the "unauthorized biotech and experiments" area of crime with your antagonist cults, Public Security Section 2 would be the division, as they handle that kind of stuff. They might have to deal with jurisdiction friction with Section 3, as S3 deals with drug enforcement. There's also the fact that all your intel comes from S6, which is headed up by a guy who looks like he's probably one bad day away from unleashing meme-based virus that picks on anyone who was a virgin before being cyberized, just for the lulz.

When I said cop, I didn't mean secret agent, but really the street level cop. Patrol the streets of your precinct in your beat up patrol car, equipped with outdated gear and armor, or work as an undercover detective. The opposition wouldn't be enemy governments, international terrorists, or rogue secret agents, but rather brutal street gangs, powerful crime syndicates, corrupt cops, psychopaths, etc. Then, there's the corporate police, the corps personal watchdogs - mercenaries and hired killers. You try to avoid them as much as you can, because they are just as dangerous as they are well equipped. You drive a tuned car made from scrounged parts and are very lucky if there's chopper support. They have aerodyne assault vehicles, APCs, UAVs, and combat 'borgs.

> Hitler clones exist, yet no-one remembers who Hitler was.

Oh god the event possibilities
>New 'Heil' memetic disease spreading through clones of Adolf strain; Clones should go to nearest psychohistorian for treatment
>Adolf Clone literally cannot stop saying no in archaic German
>First-ever known female Adolf strain discovered
>Lost clone tribe discovered in the underwarrens, metroanthropologists made contact with their 'fuhrer' and note four-armed spiral carvings
>Adolf Clone inadvertently saved lives of Stalin Clone and Churchill Clone; the three became best friends and launch new Vidtube channel documenting their FPS VR game sessions

>All the PCs are slightly modified Hitler strains.
>Their memories and identities are all false and chpped into them.
>All of this is a scheme be a megacorp duping them into finding the original clone through the memetic link.

>PCs fw the plot twist is revealed.

Make sure to throw in a gundam for good measure

Grimdark Digimon DO IT!