How do you like your cyberpunk, Veeky Forums? Gritty and noir-like or borderline action movie?

As controversial as League is, I really do like their take on Cyberpunk with their PROJECT skin line.

Funny and not dark or very serious.

>We will never get a game set in the PROJECT universe.
I thought Riot liked money. Maybe we can turn it into a PnP if we try hard enough.

Actually, this upcoming patch is supposedly introducing an entire game mode set in the PROJECT universe, similar to the Star Guardian thing.

I like my mohawks big and pink

Sleek, corporate and both morally and technically compromised.

Well I picked the wrong time to stop playing.

My friend's weird-ass fantasy setting is basically cyberpunk in the cities, but it's The Witcher + guns in the frontier and the wilderness. I actually like it a lot.

I like my cyberpunk confusing and full of katanas.

I like that too. Tell me more.

Messy and inconsistent. Deeply varying levels of tech and clashing aesthetics. Politics are so labyrinthine, the potentials of current technology is so unknown that superstition is back in a big way. A lot of this At the best of times it's JoJo weird mystery solving and puzzle fights but with supertech and dirty tricks in place of Stands.

Fun Characters, very human level storytelling, bleak but with an overall hopeful message that doesn't do the Peter Watts wallowing in self pity tango(Cory Doctorow's Walkaway and Gerald Brandt's San Angeles Trilogy come to mind as two recent examples of such work) and if it's multicultural and cool prefer it when the author obviously did lot of research and maybe lived in the country he's writing about.

Cyberpunk had a fucking great year this year BTW. Walkaway was great, Change Agent was the great biopunk novel I think we've been waiting for sine CRISPR got invented, Blade Runner 2049 was better than it's predecessor, RUINER and Observer were both good. Shit's pretty cash

How are your legs?

Depressing

wow molly looks like THAT?

Given that there isn't a shoot out anywhere in Straylight as far as my memory serves, I think we'll chalk up everything in that image as "creative license".

Gritty and noir-like with the possibility of turning into a straight action shitfest at literally any point.

I like it weird, with a far-future, pseudo-fantasy kinda feel. Kill Six Billion Demons, especially Throne, was a huge inspirational factor behind the campaign im working on right now.

>My Ice-Cold Bodyguard Can't be this Cute

Unsettlingly happy

33% 80s anime, 33% Miami Vice, 33% The Matrix, and just a splash of Aeon Flux.

you ever read Issac Asimov's The Caves of Steel? I like it like that.

If it can't reasonably be set to minimalistic electro and it doesn't deal with existential, cognitive, or social themes in nuanced ways it's just Sci-fi with a chrome heavy aesthetic to me.

The Matrix is on the far, pop end of what I consider Cyberpunk.

All flavors.
The gritty, the action-heavy, the sad, the campy.

I dunno what it is about the genre, but its near futureness and themes always appeal to me, even when the content produced is humorous or off the usual tone.

Pic related.

yes

As asian as it can get.

Great taste.

surreal and nightmarish

Yeah, you should have stopped playing about 5 years ago.

I like to mix both: cinematic action and a noir, merciless and corrupt world. No matter how much action there is, the consequences remain. The PCs might be badasses, but they're far from the top of the food chain. If they fuck with the wrong person, their lives and the one of their loved ones, will take a nasty and unpleasant turn very fast.

- Get your conapt arsoned or vandalized (also works on vehicles)
- Have some loved ones getting kidnapped and used to bait you (torture videos are sent for motivation)
- Have your contacts ratting you out because there's a high bounty on your head or they try to save their lives (maybe they'll to warn you)
- Receiving videos of lovers/good friends getting brutally raped and then hacked into pieces by tattooed goons (watch Mexican cartel and Brazilian prison videos for inspiration)
- Receiving a parcel with the eyes of that kid that used to serve you as lookout
- Have your favorite hangout getting bombed (lots of casualties)
...

I think it can be that dark but it needs to have an "A better world is possible" Charles Strossesque undercurrent of positivity to it

Foggy and mysterious

Optimistic.

I'm really not a fan of the air of hopelessness that pervades classic cyberpunk, I much prefer settings that have at least an optimistic possibility of becoming better, or at least not being complete shit.

Classic cyberpunk is often portrayed, to me at least, as a horrible and hopeless world full of assholes, so I just can't give a damn or get invested.

post world war three where they introduce new weapons, military laws and cybernetic augments
in the middle east
how arab nations deal with a new form of terrorism

Physically: Clunky retro-tech. CRT Monitors, Floppy Disks and tons of Cables. Petrol and smoke. With a sleek facade and bright neon contrast which pervades like white-pickett fence deception, blatant propoganda of the corporate overlords but very real to the chemical-fed citizens.

Socially: I like gang wars and petty violence on the lowest levels but builds up as we journey up the foodchain. Next you have police with smuggling and trafficking scandals, rapes and exploitation and other abuse of power. Then corporate conspiracies and massacres to coverup.
And at the top of it all grand authorities espousing holy orders and promises of purification, yet sickly loving the brutality of the world and thriving off the corruption.

Theme Wise: I like Nobledark beginnings with punky recognition of injustice that crashes into Grimdark as the protagonists fail in their struggles or become what they hate. Ending with bleak and nihilistic tones, fatalism prevailing as the truth when pitted against human nature exposed.

Noblebright. Cyberpunk aesthetics but the driving conflict in the setting is between Lawful Good - represented by corporations - and Chaotic Good - represented by hackers - with the great masses of humanity being Neutral Good. Everyone has moral backbones made of reinforced adamantium, and the poor wonder where their next augmentation rather than meal comes from (their next meal comes from the soup kitchens sponsored by the corporations as a public service).

Because combat is not really an option in such a setting - violence quickly leads to you talking about your daddy issues with the a nice and sympathetic doctor - the game revolves around politics, diplomacy and stealth. Characters have skills like philosophy, debate, charm, rally, memetics, etc.

That's not even cyberpunk any more. Why would things have a cyberpunk aesthetic if everything is going peachy? Where's the oppressive architecture, the ubiquitous consumerist ads, the rough slums and the cobbled-together tech?

All of these are right.

Pretty much like how Batman Beyond did it.

Top taste in tv-shows but "as vague as possible" won't let players feel at home.

A supreme sense of nihilism. That no mater what the players or the MC does that its pointless in the end. There is no vertical mobility. Even if you "win" in the short term you will lose in the long term because as soon as you become known to someone with real power your gone. It is inevitable.

>That's not even cyberpunk any more. Why would things have a cyberpunk aesthetic if everything is going peachy?
As you might deduce from the use of D&D alignments there, it's a joke - an over-the-top utopia based on re-interpreting a dystopia and played perfectly straight. But then again, cyberpunk was never a realistic setting anyway.

>Where's the oppressive architecture,
Just because you're Lawful Good doesn't mean you don't like to show off.

>the ubiquitous consumerist ads,
Right there, of course. Lawful Good or not, these are still corporations trying to sell you stuff.

>the rough slums
Nice and safe lower income residential neighborhoods with a large amount of local autonomy. That doesn't mean they can't be outwardly freaky by today's societal norms, just that the locals like living there.

>the cobbled-together tech?
Technology is modular and adheres to open standards to allow for maximum reusability and piecewise upgrades. Lock-in is bad for the society and economy, after all.

Whichever one allows me to be a cyberpsycho

...

In any case, cyberpunk has to show the strong contrast between the upperclass and the street.

...

...

Bump.

Big fan of GITS and DeusEX. So Action oriented with a fair bit of girt.

...

There must always be a divide between the haves and have nots. The rich and the poor are divided not just by class, but by height as well, the truly powerful never needing to set foot on the soiled, run down ground ever again.

But as they do so, they tend to forget that all of what they have does not hang in the air, their power is always based in the lower levels. Clashes are inevitable, both the dark, sunless world below feeling the strength of the alabaster and gold fist from above, as well as the pristine towers of platinum and glass must feel the grasp of the shadowy claws grasping from below.

I tend towards the gritty noir side of things. But what I can really do without is the zeerusty 80s retrofuturism.

And from that darkness, the gravest fears of the upper classes come to life. For when you rush to ascend upwards by any means necessary, the blood you spill and the corpses you leave behind all fall downwards. And in that darkness there are born fiends that take in all the pushed-out traits of the soul, all the darkness hidden underneath the beautiful marble and gemstone, and they crave nothing more than to rip that facade apart.

It matters not whether the above have ascended by means of favour, advanced technology or spell - the more powerful they are, the more dangerous the dwellers below that will lash out at them to remind them that they can never escape the depths of human suffering. The things they seek to escape will always return, and they too might be dragged down into the darkness, devoured whole, never to return.

I am Jack's smirking revenge.

You really like the sound of your own hot air, don't you.

you can take your pseudo intellectualism and fuck off, turbo autist

what suprises me more is how there so many faggots like the user you replies to on Veeky Forums. like, where do these fuckers come from?

Pink Mohawk is one hell of a drug.

The visuals of cyberpunk with the light hearted adventurism of steampunk

Very Indian and Chinese.

I really want to live in the middle of nowhere just so I could blast EBM ridiculously loud when I GM cyberpunk games.

I like my cyberpunk ugly. morally spiritually mentally and physically. the heroes are losers. the villains are sociopaths. so I guess noir. but an explosion and some ultraviolence should not be out of the question.

There are already cities like this. In Bangkok they are building elevated walkways, guarded by security, that connect shopping malls to elevated train lines. You don’t need to walk on ground level, cross busy streets, get harassed by beggars and doused by rain. Those walkways are feature stores and vending machines. Shopping malls and hotels are connected together and their access is also guarded by security.

80s and Japanese.

So a bit like Treasure Planet but less pirate-y?

Look at this edgy pleb.

...

The last time I did a cyberpunk game I ran it as being an exploration of current fears. Porn, casual sex, and Sex robots rendering male-female relationships increasingly rare, genetic and bio mechanical augmentation resulting in the rich growing physically superior to the poor, the gap between rich and poor growing ever greater, government using technology to spy on its citizens, and so on. This was in between the standard gang battles, mutants in the sewers, etc.
I feel that’s the best way to run cyberpunk, to explore what might be the result if society’s current fears come true.

Women should always wear tight clothes and men should carry powerful handguns.

Women should also carry powerful handguns.

And all men must either be wearing leather jackets, 80s military gear or suits.

Don't listen to them, I think your setting is a pretty refreshing take on the genre, user. Hell, I might even run something for my friends based on your ideas, if you don't mind. That's how cool it all is.

telling lies isn't good, user

I like lo-gunz cyberjaps

I'm in the loose dunno-when-I'll-actually-run-it planning phase Feng Shui 2, which I've yet to actually bring to the table. The idea was that the home junction would be peak pre-C Bomb society, cyberpunk as hell, and today I've been stressing a little about how to make sure those options are available and integrated.
"Should I just bite the bullet and spend a lot of time to make a handful of archetypes and shticks for this?"

It only just hit me that those elements should just be part of the whole fast-and-loose formula and you don't really even *need* to pay such close attention to those finer points. If they're a character that is known to be able to hack, or has a deck, or has a skull-jack, or whatever, then they can use Intrusion or Police, or an untrained roll, or just do whatever makes 'cheap action movie' sense, and it'll be fine alongside all the rest of the game's assumptions.

I just hope my friends don't puss out on learning new rules, because I'm pretty excited to actually play this already.

What? I legit like it. Most of my group's settings are usually generic and vanilla, user, so it's nice to see someone doing something new with the genre, even if it's really just postcyberpunk.
It even reminds me of Lawrence Person's Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto. “Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure.”

I like that!

you can stop samefagging now. that user's post wasn't doing something "new" with cyberpunk, hell, it wasn't even good post-cyberpunk. it was just a fundamental misunderstanding and retarded interpretation of what cyberpunk is about. besides being a blazing faggot while making his point as well

...you say I'm lying, then you accuse me of samefagging when I respond. What. In any case, there's no arguing with you, man. You seem to be under the impression that everybody needs to appreciate the same things you do, and that taste isn't subjective ("it wasn't even good post-cyberpunk", even though it perfectly fits the essay I quoted, which is one of the best definitions of the subgenre), so this is pretty much pointless. In any case, have a good one!

>its another reddit crossboarder

>crying reddit

Oh boy. Here's your hard-earned (you), mate. Lord knows you need it.

Where I have some problems with cyberpunk is to create a working economy. Basic cyberpunk economy models don't make much sense. Usually, 90% of the population is unemployed and lives under poverty level. Only 10% of the population is flush (corporate elite). Why produce if no one can purchase it? This would mean no more electronic gadgets for the masses and no more consumerist society, thus killing the cyber in the cyberpunk.

Would a universal basic income make sense in such a context? People who wants can register and get chipped. In exchange of their data (ID, CV, GPS info, bank and medical data), they receive a basic income (basically a room in a housing project with free media connection, and some electronic currency to purchase basic food, clothing and an annual visit in a automated health center). In exchange, they put themselves at the corporations disposal should there be any job opening - jobs are always on a temporary basis and are often dangerous and in unpleasant conditions (being a mercenary in a bush war somewhere, working in a subaquatic or orbital mining colony, building orbital or subaquatic colonies...). Doing those jobs, gives a better income, refusing those jobs means no more universal income for you (the chip still gives your data to The Man of course).

>crying reddit
the only one here crying is you, newfag

SLA Industries did something like that. It's biopunk, but that doesn't matter for this.

That reminds me of Ruiner's Citizen Chip, which works pretty well. Basically, people are usually awarded Karma (the setting's currency) for obeying Heaven's (the corporate government) directives for how you live your life (eat x, work for y, buy z, and so on). As those directives directly benefit the government and the corporations, they're pretty much paying you for obedience.

Shitting yourself publicly to spite someone else who is also covered in shit makes you look worse than the other guy. He's unfortunate, you're just the asshole making their own life worse when they can just not engage in the 'smear yourself with shit' competition.

One thing you forgot, is the lack of perspective. People go from one badly paid internship to another, and then, from one temporary work contract to the other - and that's if they find some job. Planing a longterm future becomes impossible under such conditions - a bank wouldn't give you a mortgage on a house, or a loan for a car, etc. Logically, building a family becomes more difficult, too.

The only interesting things are everything that gives an instant reward (alcohol, party, drugs, sex, shopping, gambling...).

...hey, I'll have you know I'm pretty clean! In all seriousness, though, he's well-fed enough as it is. Just leave it be and let the thread move on.

>taking the high ground and pretending like you are free of guilt
fuck off, you are the issue with nu-Veeky Forums

Both.

He's an art fag, people with pink Mohawk in something he likes make him feel self conscious.

It's never the wrong time to stop playing DOTA/LOL

There's nothing cyberpunk about KSBD, why did you feel the need to mention it? I swear you guys are the new homestuck fags