Dense cities

Aside from poo in the loo and designated shitting streets, India has some real good cyberpunk potential (pollution, filth, overcrowded cities, disgusting slums, technology hubs, corrupt and ineffective administration, high crime rate, exotic and weird culture...), but it's hampered by one thing: naming. I have no problem improvising Western, Japanese, and Chinese names, but Indian names, I absolutely cannot come up with Indian names. Also, there's the naive silliness of Bollywood that makes cyberpunk unlikely: youtube.com/watch?v=HViHSZL8s8I

>t. never been to India
Only the southern parts are shitholes. The north, especially the Punjab region bordering on Pakistan, is really nice. I went to Amritsar a few years back and I loved it.

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India makes for pretty good cyberpunk, yeah - I'm about half way through Ian McDonald's River of Gods, which has cyberpunk India, and he's done some short stories in that setting as well.

FFG's Android setting has Mumbad (Mumbai-Ahmedabad) as one of the world's largest megacities, so they've got quite a few people and pics that do cyberpunk there

>Also, there's the naive silliness of Bollywood that makes cyberpunk unlikely
Nah, bollywood can be cyberpunk, that's just a straight-up pisstaking inversion of white switched with low-class indians, with the beggars and doing service jobs - in a country with over a billion people and a very ingrained class system there's a "wallah" for everything (kinda translates as "boy", but always with a noun, so like rickshaw-wallah or tea-wallah), and servants haven't really gone out of fashion.

There's a bollywood and mob boss in , he's just like the mob in hollywood, except when he beats someone up he uses a cricket bat, rather than a baseball bat

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I disagree. Banglore and places like that are quite lovely.

The odd political assassination, not exactly unheard of.
Even got the flag, so it's definitely indian

India's also good for very striking contrast between rich and poor, modern and ancient - pic related, Dharavi, is the third-largest slum in the world, home to up to a million people; it's in the same city as Antilia, a billion-dollar skyscraper that's the most expensive private residence in the world, which is used by a single family and manned by a staff of 600 (again, servants aren't unfashionable, and you have a guy for everything)

This is a good idea. Perhaps you could also portray the villages which lack most modern tech due to dogmatic attitudes and plain poverty and illiteracy as places which willingly shun tech, like in that comic Tokyo Ghost. An industrialist has set up a village that focuses on renewable, green tech and organic living here. Perhaps something like that could be used too.
T.indian
>Inb4 DESIGNATED MAYMAY XDXD

It will be a superpower setting by 2030.

youtube.com/watch?v=Xl0b2LGf9jM

Does look pretty rad

There's no connection between Bollywood movie and River of Gods. Of course that River of Gods is probably to our taste since it was written by a Westerner. It doesn't change the fact that for Western tastes Bollywood movies are all fucking stupid.

Ah, sorry, that was meant at the second bit, FFG's Android universe, not River of Gods

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I think India would have a machine god in a cyberpunk setting

Only 2 years until utopian Star-Treklike society tho

Wouldn't it be a cyberpoo setting?

>but Indian names, I absolutely cannot come up with Indian names
so just give everyone English names

Isn't authentic enough for me. Same problem ruined Bangkok for me. It would be the perfect cyberpunk city - a huge overpopulated and chaotic sprawl. But again, Thai names are impossible.

generate a random list of like 30, and pull one of the good sounding ones when you need one.

I've known at least a couple of Indians, or people of Indian descent, who prefer to sound more English - possibly because it just makes it easier, especially when they were younger.

One guy from school especially preferred to be called Roger... so of course we all called him by his actual name, Raghav, because kids are harsh.

Wise choice to use best girl for your pic, OP.

Well how did you get to doing it with Chinese and Japanese names and get them sounding "right"?
Just apply the same techniques, correct for anything specific, like Singh and Kaur (Sikh middle/surname, male/female respectively, pretty common, but almost only with Sikhs) and you should be fine.

>Japanese aesthetic fetishism
>abandoning the Japanese aesthetic
what are you, gay?

>Hindu aesthetics
What would that be?
Multiple robo-limbs and heads?

bin dun

Doesn't she even work for a shady megacorp in the lore?

India and China are some of the worst places to do any of the cyberpunk stuff. Both of them have problems with anyone describing their countries and important people like shit.

CyberPOOnk*

Dancing elephants, obviously.

Keep gays away from this, that guy is just a faggot.

Indeed.

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Hell, they even have transhuman (transcanine?) blue dogs right now.

news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/blue-dye-dogs-india-mumbai-video-spd/

India is the perfect setting for a nuclear conflict that balkanizes the country.

>FFG's Android setting
Not cyberpunk

How does the street-shitting factor into it?
Would you make it part of the game mechanics?
Like, characters getting a debuff if they poo-in-loo because they are now haunted by the toilet witch?

U wot m8?

The Android setting is decidedly not cyberpunk.

Why is that?
I'm genuinely curious.

Everything about it seems right on the money for cyberpunk to my eye, but clearly you have some rant or checklist prepared. I'd like to hear it.

The easiest way to put it is that Android is very clearly written after the cold war ended, and after the 1992-1995 post cold war buffer that sort of allowed the Cyberpunk genre to continue.

>Punks, criminals, and hacktivists fight against megacorporations in the not-so-distant dystopian future.
>Not cyberpunk

Oh okay

>He thinks cyberpunk is about fighting the man
Confirmed for never having read any cyberpunk literature written pre-1995.

Also Android is hardly dystopian when taken in the context of the cyberpunk genre.

>India would be a natural fit for a cyberpunk setting.

Sure, but it's pretty moot. Everywhere with civilization has dense cities. Denver is dense as fuck even though it's surrounded by a ton of nearly-empty space. Both the mountains and the scrubland in the east.

It's not the endless sprawl, and you can get out if you travel enough, but it's there.

EVERYWHERE has bad neighborhoods and poor people.

Pollution can happen in a day or a single regulation change.
I mean, cyberpunk is near-future, and we're not going to get billions of people living in Ethiopia in 5 years. But for all the things to fudge a little, population numbers are the least of the things to suspend disbelief over. I mean... people move.

Anywhere with people and tech is a natural cyberpunk setting.

Bullshit is it not.
The corps are bad, the criminals are bad, you hack Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics with programs that look like swords, surveillance is everywhere, cybernetics are commonplace, the oceans are risen and polluted, punks fight the man, AI exist - free-thinking but shackled, corps are everywhere and take over governments, life itself is a commodity, bought and sold by executives who can command assassins and entire economies.

What more do you need, is the Soviet Union, WWIII and Japanese economic dominance 100% necessary for cyberpunk for you?

>corps are everywhere and take over governments
No
>punks fight the man
No
>surveillance is everywhere
No

You're eating out of the Neo-Cyberpunk trashcan.

So a half dozen bad cyberpunk movies and Ghost in the Shell come out in 1995 and it becomes impossible to write or conceive of any stories within the genre/artform from that point forwards? Sounds like something an old rose-colored glasses wearing nerd who remains staunchly convinced no video game will ever be better than Ocarina of Time would say.

In stories exploring the place of the human soul in an increasingly universalized, globalized, and dehumanized industrial world, yeah, 'Fighting the man' does manifest itself as the end-consequence of the central themes of a great deal of cyberpunk stories. No it's not what they're 'about' but it's often what they're 'around'.

You, again!

It's like the faggot who insisted Blade Runner wasn't cyberpunk because Deckard had a large apartment instead of a tiny cubicle.

No, it's because 1995 was the turning point where Cyberpunk as a genre no longer was relevant. It is a product of its time, expressing the fears and themes of the late cold war. Neocyberpunk attempts to "reboot" the genre but doesn't remain faithful to it at all, thus why it's an entirely new genre expressing the fears and themes of the 2010s.

Blade Runner isn't cyberpunk in itself. It has visuals that inspired the cyberpunk genre, but the story isn't cyberpunk at all. It's the story of an ex-cop who gets hired back for a last job by his former PD. The dystopian part is limited to a polluted world without real animals (who cares about animals when a police detective can afford an Art Deco apartment with a grand piano). We see no evil corporation, no ruthless gangs, no hackers and no cyberware. Heck, even the violence is kept to a minimum. In the end it's more speculative science-fiction with a cyberpunk touch than true cyberpunk à la Neuromancer.

Would there be a designated shutting street?

>We see no evil corporation, no ruthless gangs, no hackers and no cyberware.
None of those things are strictly needed for cyberpunk. They're common, sure, but to say that they are necessary reduces the genre to its aesthetics. And once you do that, things will rapidly turn to shit. (see: steampunk)

Does Tyrell the creepy slave-makers not count?

No, all streets will be open for use as bathrooms just like in Japanese-inspired cyberpunk.

What?

>castes system
>hindu/buddhist/islam themed regions
>will be the highest populated country in the world soon if it already isnt idk
>the rest of stuff OP listed

Why hasnt an indian company made this yet what the hell it would be perfect. If i knew more about india i would make something myself.

They're too busy trying to figure out how to use a toilet

PASS INTO THE IRIS

That's why Pic related is the best cyberpunk novel and probably one of the greatest sf novels ever

What is Sombra doing on Kaladesh

>Bollywood movies are all fucking stupid.

Dum Maaro Dum is unironically my favorite crime thriller ever made and is shot in a way that is leagues above most western crime thrillers that came out around the same time.

I aint Indian, the closest I ever came to India was my Indian ex gf I almost married and miss a great deal why oh why did I cheat on her with that arab bitch what the fuck

Under the utopian aesthetic of OW, it's actually pretty cyberpunk.
>social violence and upheaval
>robots being denied human rights
>corrupt and greedy corporations
>the prevalence of cybernetics
>Sombra in general

>2030
>British Airways still exists
>Britain still exists

This sci-fantasy is too implausible for me.

>it's actually pretty cyberpunk.
No

>Implying Great Britain won't just be renamed Al-Britain.
>Implying British Airways won't outlast the English.

No, not more than Cuisinart, Kenwood or Moulinex.

He's an user whos been pitching his Cyberpunk hack of TL2k in every cyberounk thread he's found, starting in one I made about cyberpunk in the backcountry.
The setting hes building is pretty good, just incomplete.
I'll prolly end up running my standard Snow Crash ripoff campaign in it at some point.

Damn, thanks user. I'm the one who's writing it, and yeah I know there's still a lot of stuff to write up, but I'm planning on getting a lot of worldbuilding done through actually running the game itself.

And I've only been posting it because I like getting some feedback on stuff, and hopefully at least one user will think it's kind of neat.

>standard Snow Crash ripoff campaign
Kinda want to know how that works.

Call me when your coffee maker can give an impassioned speech on a rooftop

I have the party I GM for have to deal with a neuro-linguistic virus, the details of which vary from setting to setting. Usually its a reverse-babel like in the book, but i like to sprinkle in some zesty Watts-esque themes of whether or not consciousness is necessary.

Oh, I didnt mean to offend, Its fucking great, and is damn sure better than what i was cooking up.
And i meant hack in that its based off of TL2k's setting and ruleset. Guess thats what i get for using PbtA terminology.

I'm not offended, I'm genuinely thanking you for thinking it's cool.

Anyways, I tried to write up a synopsis for what the player character's generation is like. Just to give a general idea of what the VERY VERY basic semi-worldwide attitude is like.

I'm so disappointed. A thread about India and cyberpunk and no mention of goa trance or psytrance. It's like you guys were all too young to party for days in a esoteric music and drug induced frenzy.

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Huh, I'd have thought that would be one of the harder parts to translate.

Certainly for goa trance, but a quick read shows some cool shit (even though most of it's not in India, but w/e)

Fuck you, John! You ruined my childhood!

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>and so many white servants!
kek

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>business Sikh
>doesn't have Kirpan

Given who he works for, he almost certainly does somewhere - Mr Business Sikh is going to be all business.

The problem of running cyberpunk in India is that India is full of Indian people

And?
Just means your tech guru can be an actual guru