What would a European cyberpunk setting look like?

What would a European cyberpunk setting look like?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom
youtube.com/watch?v=THt5u-i2d9k
youtube.com/watch?v=C8kZ3HfeqtA
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Just wait till Black Panther comes out.


Okay, memes aside, probably a bit more feudal, with corps acting more like their own provinces rather than their own states.

Read Houllebecq's "Submission"

Add megacorps, augments, and neon

>Read Houllebecq's "Submission"
Wait a second, are you trying to make me upset again?

>welfare state is both turned up to the 9 and completely fucked the economy in terms of efficiency and bureaucracy. Fiscal crises happening all the time, but governments can't slash the budget out of fear of mass riots. Runs on an infinitely expanding debt crisis of the lost decade type.
>Engineering in a class of it's own, practically everyone has a PHD, the EU has gone to mars multiple times and is the "japan of the west" in terms of mechanization. Does not go the full AI humanoid robotics route (threatens the unions) but instead combines skilled labor & assisted capital in giant combines.
>socialism is a serious political thread from automation layoffs, trade unionism is bigger as ever for the remaining jobs... practically every job is unionized (they run like megacorps and are almost as unscrupulous)
>the pol migrant nightmare came true. Europe's has an ethnic divide between white technicians and Islamic labour. Islamist terror is the #1 threat, on a scale that's outright insurgency
>with the EU unification, autonomy has both evolved to a unitary continental state at the upper level, and devolved into a mess of "provincial states" bickering at the lower level. Nationalists countries effectively operate as megacorps, which fight with the unions and the actual megacorps for political capture of the EU.


bleeding money, oozing productivity (despite it all) with no idea what to do with it, and a basket case of every kind of status clique fighting against each other simultaneously in a unsolvable, broken political system. That's what I'd imagine a cyberpunk Europe would look like

Exactly like modern Europe.

Just read up on the shadowrun stories taking place in germany, or play shadowrun:dragonfall.

It's absolutely already cyberpunk

...

Still can't believe this a legitimate thing.

...

...

...

This is a joke right?
RIGHT?!?!

NOPE.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom

Thank you for reminding me why I moved back to the states.

This is some funny shit.

We have TV-licensing in Sweden too, but the people who are meant to go out and check people who aren't paying for it and likely have a TV aren't allowed to enter you home even if you invite them in. Of course, they come up with other ways to try to make you pay the TV license, but they're more silly than anything else.

Joking aside, people need to realize that cyberpunk is now. That world came true.

Maybe there isn't neon everywhere, and maybe real-world economics means there are hundreds of mega-corps, not just a handful. But thats superficial

The distinction between state and private interests is ever-increasingly blurred. Giant corporations try and look friendly and subversive while pushing a spiritually bereft agenda. Politics is increasingly less left-right and more global-local/corporate-populist.

Consumerism is culture. People are obsessed with identity superficially. But their concern is with self-expression rather than character. Increasingly celebrities are disappearing, while micro-fame on youtube etc. can be monetized via sponsorships and ad revenue. Identity is literally a product...

I could go on. But London, Berlin, et al are cyberpunk dystopias today. Humanity lost, lets hope some AI ends us soon.

>.. practically every job is unionized (they run like megacorps and are almost as unscrupulous)

They'd be worse, they'd be massive, utterly corrupt self serving monsters only held back by the fact that they are constantly flip flopping between fighting with and gobbling bribes from every major corporation in their sector.

Imagine a micro oligarchic state choked by a tide of bureaucracy and armies of comfy officials squatting at every position for life. An entrenched elite spends most of its time keeping up appearances while they kill, bully or shame any up-and-coming idealists out of the union and thoroughly corrupt the rest into copies of themselves (already happens). A vast membership pool that that pays taxes to the union, these people are 99% of all the people employed or even licensed to work in the sector the union deals with. They have monopoly on the workforce, anyone who isnt a member isnt allowed to practice their profession as all regulating, educating and licensing is directly or indirectly controlled by the union, anyone who wishes to work has to join the union and pay or the union will blacklist them and force any prospective employer to reject or fire them. The ground level workers can all be drafted into a massive militia should any conflict escalate to 'strike' levels, funded by the vast wealth the organization seeps up during 'peace time' in the form of membership payment, corporate fines and fat bribes. The only thing keeping it in check is the fact that it's constantly fighting the various corporations to whom it provides a workforce, and they in turn play this lumbering corpulent beast against one another.

On the one hand, they maintain some semblance of worker rights but mostly to justify taking further advantage of the very people they are meant to represent.

>Enquiry officer visits
>TV detector vans
>Hand-held detectors
>SEARCH WARRANTS
JUST

>and maybe real-world economics means there are hundreds of mega-corps, not just a handful. But thats superficial

It really is because most of them all serve the same mother corporations. A lot of sectors already more or less have one or two mega corporations that own all of it.

Its all consumer facing walls of diverse brands hiding a core that controls most if not all of the 'alternatives'.

Islam everywhere

>implying any religion survives the narcissist identity consumerism dystopia as anything but a profile accessory.

youtube.com/watch?v=THt5u-i2d9k

That graffiti completes the cyberpunk vibe.

>States more powerful than companies
>Union of states more powerful than conglomerates
>Universal healthcare financed by heavy taxes on corporations
>Accessible welfare financed by heavy taxes on corporations
>paid vacations being the norm, often forced on corporations by the state
>cyberpunk at all
You could make an argument for the RL sousveillance being similar to many, many, many different dystopian genres, but not cyberpunk. One of the core tropes of cyberpunk is that businesses are more powerful than, or flat out replacing, governments.

If you're looking for a RL cyberpunk city, try Las Vegas: it has the sousveillance of europe, powerful organized crime, and big businesses that are can bully the local government and support said organized crime.

BTW, does anyone know of a cyberpunk game that's not dependent on magic existing (liks shadowrun) or fiddly over-crunchy garbage (like Cyberpunk 2020 or GURPS.) I was considering refluffing the FFG star-wars games, which seems like the closest fit, but not close enough.

Mew2King?

Haven't read it myself but there's a savage worlds conversion called Interface Zero.

Take cyberpunk, and add 30% more history and age. Relics of the past stubbornly still standing next to shiny new skyscrapers. Progress layered under centuries of history and looking back to reaffirm the way forward. It's a lot different from America's take on it, when Burgerland is only a couple centuries old.

Pretty much this. We're getting some 1984 level shit but it's the exact opposite from Cyberpunk, at least in its more traditional sense.

I wouldn't really call GURPS fiddly. It's awkward at first, but it's not really as bad as some other high crunch games.

If when a game is called crunchy, the fans' defense is "it's really crunchy when you first start learning it, but once you get used to it, it doesn't feel crunchy" then the game is crunchy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not what I'm looking for in my cyberpunk game.

You know what they say; to an Englishman 100 miles is a long way, to an American 100 years is a long time.

I'm just saying it's actually less crunchy than something like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, having played both of those things a good amount as well.

fair

Cyberpunk settings are about the unholy marriage between the state and large corporations. The line between corporations and the agencies that regulate them are blurred. The private bankers go to the same parties as the central bankers. Mass surveillance implemented by the state and tech companies in bed with each other. The police are used to crack down on whistleblowers and hackers.

youtube.com/watch?v=C8kZ3HfeqtA

>tfw we're already living in cyberpunk

No, that's just you cherry-picking and selectively remembering in such a way as to coincide with your fear of Globalism. I'm not going to agree or disagree with your fears because this isn't /pol/ but words still mean what they mean, and "Cyperpunk" is still a word. If you really want your own genre, you could coin the word "FrogNaziPunk" if you really wanted to.

>it's actually less crunchy than something like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 are on two very different levels of crunchiness. They're both crunchier than average, but 2020 is much higher on the "scale of crunch" so that's a pretty wide band to lump them together. Then again, I only played 4th and 5th, so the earlier editions may have been bigger crunchfests... I have no way of knowing.

>muh /pol/ boogieman
Christ my dude I didn't even mention globalization

>never once says I'm wrong about him
>implies /pol/ trolls in an obvious /pol/ bait thread are boogeymen
You guys think you're super sly, but you're really obvious.

>there's a savage worlds conversion called Interface Zero.
I really AM a fan of Savage Worlds, but I do find that the characters can get a bit samey after a while for want of options. I know I'm simultaneously asking for enough options for a game to not feel samey, and for it not to be too crunchy, which may be like asking for the moon, but a man can dream.

>if you don't like governments colluding with big corporations you're a nazi
wew

>implying
We haven't been living in a cyberpunk dystopia sines the industrial revolution.
Do you even union bust?

They're not allowed to enter your home in the UK either.

If anything the most cyberpunk time ever was Gilded Age America

Islam will.

Well, Shadowrun's crunch, especially 5e, comes mostly from the terribly edited and just badly done rules. The game could run faster than it does, but it's just particularly well put together.

>If you've deluded yourself into thinking that "cyberpunk isn't about too much corporate power, it's REALLY about crony-capitalism" then you're probably the same person who's going to turn around and claim that the capitalism in snow-crash "isn't real capitalism" and therefore have some extremely right-wing views on economics that would fit right in on /pol/ and you probably go there, so stay there.
FTFY
Also you unironically used the word "redpill," so just go home to your containment board.

There was a brief period between 1933 and 1979 when America wasn't a cyberpunk dystopia. Incedentally, this is also regarded as its economic heyday.

>Just read up on the shadowrun stories taking place in germany, or play shadowrun:dragonfall.
That could work, but what if one wanted to run one without a necessary connection to magic, the dragons, or elves?

Corporate power and crony-capitalism are basically the same thing. Just look at 2008. The massive companies that were partially responsible for the crash were given billions of dollars for free. One big golden parachute, while joe blow who lost his job got nothing.

>and therefore have some extremely right-wing views on economics
I thought I was a nazi.

>Also you unironically used the word "redpill," so just go home to your containment board.
Because I linked a video from Deus Ex the most prolific cyberpunk game of all time I'm a frog-worshipping hitler-heiling /pol/ack?

>There was a brief period between 1933 and 1979 when America wasn't a cyberpunk dystopia
1933-1940 America was still shit, what with the Great Depression which you might've heard of.

The Halcyon days for the United States were during the Post War boom which was a direct planet of the entire world being cinders and the US having the only surviving industrial economy. Through the 50's the US was creating over half of the word's industrial output by itself.

By the mid-70's the rest of the world's industrial base was back. In fact they had recovered so much that during this time much of the US' industry was moved overseas, and the American dream of Dad working at the factory and supporting his entire family was killed permanently.

>Industry
>Industry
>Industry
Yeah, that's why the quality of life is so high n the factory economies where they make my knock-off 40k minis.

Open a fucking book dude.

American Labor in the 1950's was in extremely high demand and there was low supply, so it had a high value.

Chinese Labor today has a fraction of the demand, since the entire planet isn't relying on China to supply them with the processed materials and manufactured goods to rebuild from the largest war in human history. And the supply of Chinese labor is way higher since there's a billion and a half of them.

So labor is incredibly cheap, which is why the industry moved over there in the first place.

Massive subsidies from the Chinese government, and basically non-existent environmental and safety regulations also industry super cheap.

This, but everyone's going to tell you to go back to /pol/ now. Because Veeky Forums doesn't like talking about the real future, only imaginary ones.
Assalum salaikum, pick up that can infidel.
Said narcissism and "identity consumerism", whatever that means, is only present in women. White women who spend too much time on the boob tube and normiebook, specifically. Meanwhile muslims stone women to death if they show their face, speak to strangers, or go anywhere outside of home without their husband. I'm pretty sure islam's bulletproof to the "muh stronk womyn, sex with another man every night is liberation" shit that's destroying the west.

>>>r/Incels

Didn't Loptyr rape the German Free State and turn it into a megacorp hellhole?

Fucking vampires.

TV licence? what's that?

Given Britain exists in it's own euro-separatist identity bubble with orwellian overtones, can we consider them their own "with Europe, but not of It" thing?

essentially a tax you pay for having a television receiver that's doing some receiving (doesn't have to be a tv, could be a tv tuner card in your PC or a sky box etc)
Funds from it go into paying for public broadcasting services (like the BBC), broadcasting infrastructure, grants for local and national radio services some digital services and a whole bunch of other stuff

The UK is not Europe.

>Houllebecq's submission

This user has it right. I was surprised that you could just add cyberware to it and it'd be pretty cyberpunk.

Wow, this is insane. The BBC and it's tv license police state should be dismantled and destroyed.

>advising this shitty /pol/bait idiot tax book
kys

It's like the worst written book ever. The kind of book that had a 15 minutes of glory because it was "oh so subversive" then fell into oblivion because it falls from your hands as you try read it.

Guerilla or 99F are way better.

>tfw no tv licence
>tfw it got replaced by tv-tax that everyone has to pay
>even if they've never even seen a tv

>butthurt multikultist detected
What're you gonna do when the Islamic vigilantes come to burn your books for being un-Islamic, you rebel you? Move to the States?

fuck off /pol/tard

I don't live in the UK hopefully. Here, if someone tries to do that he gets 20 years in jail.

>user advises Guerilla
>/pol/tard accuse him of being multikultist
It's like a very retarded form of poetry.

>

>What would a European cyberpunk setting look like?
Honestly, just read "Future Subjunkies" and "Space Bastards" by Gerhard Seyfried.
I dunno if there is an English translation, but there are about four lines of dialog in each book

>They'd be worse, they'd be massive, utterly corrupt self serving monsters only held back by the fact that they are constantly flip flopping between fighting with and gobbling bribes from every major corporation in their sector.
>Imagine a micro oligarchic state choked by a tide of bureaucracy and armies of comfy officials squatting at every position for life. An entrenched elite spends most of its time keeping up appearances while they kill, bully or shame any up-and-coming idealists out of the union and thoroughly corrupt the rest into copies of themselves (already happens). A vast membership pool that that pays taxes to the union, these people are 99% of all the people employed or even licensed to work in the sector the union deals with. They have monopoly on the workforce, anyone who isnt a member isnt allowed to practice their profession as all regulating, educating and licensing is directly or indirectly controlled by the union, anyone who wishes to work has to join the union and pay or the union will blacklist them and force any prospective employer to reject or fire them. The ground level workers can all be drafted into a massive militia should any conflict escalate to 'strike' levels, funded by the vast wealth the organization seeps up during 'peace time' in the form of membership payment, corporate fines and fat bribes. The only thing keeping it in check is the fact that it's constantly fighting the various corporations to whom it provides a workforce, and they in turn play this lumbering corpulent beast against one another.
>On the one hand, they maintain some semblance of worker rights but mostly to justify taking further advantage of the very people they are meant to represent.
I don't see how this is different from the current unions in France.

Let me correct that. It's by Seyfried and Ziska

"One day, we'll be able to completely adapt humans to their jobs!"

...

>Church of the Subgenius.

Weren't they the guys who offed themselves in 1998 because of that comet?

Enki Bilal did a pretty good job at picturing it in the December 32 trilogy.

No, I don't think so. They are the ones who turned laziness into an occult new age religion.
>"I don't give a heck about the nuclear power plant. What really grinds my gears are the fucking moles in the field!"

Nah, it's only surviving in Britain because of ongoing immigration. It dies out rapidly in successive generations.

On your first post I understood you even if I didn't agree, I thought you had a well argued point made from solid reasoning, but now I see it's just reactionary garbage predicated on the existence of your spooky boogeyman /pol/ and I am embarrassed that you tricked me into thinking you were a reasonable poster and not a fucking moron parrotting memes (in the Dawkins sense, not Veeky Forums memes).

>The police are used to crack down on whistleblowers and hackers.
But trump says whistle blowers are evil and need to be cracked down on.
Nice try hiding your agenda with the redpill reference but we can see through you shills!

>Funds from it go into paying for public broadcasting services (like the BBC

You forgot to remind us that the BBC also has a "diversity quota" that states 16% of actors for every show that wants government funding (most of them) needs to be African, Asian or Middle Eastern.

I hear they want to make it 20% next year.

The future of Europe is simultaneously better and worse than you can imagine. Islam will die whimpering in the West the moment immigration stops, our culture is simply too decadent and ADHD to support something that believes in tradition and successive generations. While this means the worst qualities of Islam will cease to exist within a few generations, it does not mean those generations will suddenly forget their origins.

The future of Europe is brown people drinking Starbucks and complaining about their favorite sports teams between calls to prayer, and finishing the day with a curry and something halal. The West as it exists now will flourish, but the West as you know it (or wish it to be) will die.

>The West as it exists now will flourish
Do you honestly believe infinite government and private debt is sustainable?

I don't get it, what's the message here?

FFG is going to be releasing a 'generic' book for the SW ruleset, Cyberpunk will likely be an example setting.

Max Headroom.

You don't live in Europe, do you?

>what is satirical guerrilla street art

>No mention of 2020s Eurosource books
0/10

It'd be pretty dark, am I right guys?

This is nonsense, the welfare state is being dismantled, companies are being privatised, the EU is disintegrating, and most of the violence you'll see from mass immigration will probably be related to organised crime, not religion. In other words, European cyberpunk won't look that much different from American cyberpunk.

Just for context, the dude's basically a luddite Anarchist.

I always wonder what anarchists think will happen when government fall. That people won't just go back to tribalism. What do they envision in thier society with out government?

>Islam will die whimpering in the West the moment immigration stops, our culture is simply too decadent and ADHD to support something that believes in tradition and successive generations.
Wow, you are completely fucking delusional. Islam is getting stronger in Europe with each new generation, and the decadence of *whites* is making them prey for culturally-strong Muslims. Social research shows that each new generation of Muslims is more religious, less committed to European values and more related to Islamic values than the previous one. Third generation Muslims are the most fanatical of all.

Europe will descend into civil war or completely capitulate to Islamists within 30 years.

>But trump says whistle blowers are evil and need to be cracked down on.
A whistleblower is someone who exposes a crime; no crimes have been committed by Trump so anyone leaking info is just a partisan leaker, potentially a traitor committing a felony if they're exposing national security secrets to curry favor with a Democrat estabishment. You really have no fucking clue what you're talking about.