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Yora
2021-02-18, 04:53 PM
I am currently looking into running a cyberpunk campaign (running the PtbA system The Sprawl) and found that there's actually not a huge amount of information around on that topic. But threads about running certain non-mainstream types of campaigns often get a good amount of really good contributions here, so let's see how this will be going.

Cyberpunk is a branch of fiction that has relatively little ambiguity. Underdog cyborgs and corrupt governments that are controlled by global megacorporations. Compared to spae opera and fantasy, there is remarkable little variance between different cyberpunk settings. They may have different jargons, but it's generally for the same concepts. Which is cool. Elfgames set in Fantasyland are still as popular as they always were. If you want to be really pedantic, then stories in which the protagonists are cops or not everything is completely bad can be called post-cyberpunk, but in practice it does not really change things significantly. I mean Ghost in the Shell and Robocop are about cops, and even Blade Runner is about a police contractor. And if those aren't cyberpunk, then what is?

I've had plans to to one day run a cyberpunk campaign since forever, but I never actually did so far. And I never really looked that deeply into how the genre would work as a setting for RPGs.
A popular theme seems to be the gang of mercenaries/thieves/assassins for hire. For one-shots that certainly seems like a perfect setup. But I feel that for an ongoing campaign, doing effectively a series of continuous one-shots would get pretty stale after a while. One of the general assumptions of the genre is that the little guy on the street can't really make a difference in the bigger picture. The giant world-spanning complex of megacorporations is so deeply entrenched in all levels of society that nothing can really upset it. If a company president is killed, there's already a dozen other people who can take over the job seamlessly. And even if a megacorporation would somehow get destroyed, the vacuum would immediately be filled by other corps taking over the market niche. The ultimate enemy is not some villain or evil corporation that actively opresses people. It's the whole economic and political system that is the real source of all the problems. And that's just not something a group of plucky rebels can change with one dramatic stunt.

The main challenge I see with cyberpunk campaigns is to get players invested and to give the PCs goals that go beyond survival. That alone can be a good start for a game, but I don't think it can carry a full campaign ofer weeks and months by itself.
One interesting idea I've seen in The Sprawl, is to give players personal connections to many individuals within the setting through the Declare Contact actions. Once per game, every player in the party can announce "I know just the guy who could help us out. Let me give him a call." The player then has to tell the GM who that NPC is, what the NPC might be able to do, how the PC knows him, and why he would help the PC out with something urgent at short notice. And then the GM makes up someone based on that information on the spot and decides what help the players might get and what conditions the NPC has for it. That NPC can then be called on again at any time later in the campaign. What the players actually get out of it is up to the GM, but they are all NPCs that have a connection to the PCs in a way that is relevant to the players who created them. As a GM, you never know what kind of NPC the players would respond well to. When they create an NPC, it will more likely be tailored to the players' tastes.
Many players are reluctant to create connections to other people in their backstory because of the often justified worry that the GM will use it as leverage against them in the future. But when you can create such an NPC to get you out of a tight spot right while you're in danger, that concern is easily forgotten. No clue how that works out in practice, but I'm really curious to try it.

Though I still think having NPCs the players get attached to still only gives you a lever to get the PCs on a case. To make the bigger thing they get involved with interesting in itself probably needs more than that.

Alcore
2021-02-19, 02:26 PM
Does it have to be a big megacorp? The Big Bad i mean...


Sure, have one in the background. When i hear cyberpunk i often think of teens, ya know; a punk. Could be a school system. You could also have them be activists for more natural environments (Captain Planet; Cyberpunk Style!). The evil corp might be smaller; reducing overall scope.

You could go Code Lyoko and have them fight a rouge A.I. that only they know about (that they know of). It does seem narrow. It is, afterall, a subset of sci fi. Perhaps, for a change of pace, they might smuggle onto a ship and be released into the solar system.

Eldan
2021-02-19, 03:12 PM
They could be a more organized resistance movement?

BRC
2021-02-19, 03:45 PM
Setting the Scale of the problem the PC's are trying to solve can help a lot. The trick is to make sure the players don't expect to Save the World per-say, but to define a clear goal that they can achieve. There are a couple ways to do this


1) A despicable Villain. Even if killing a single corporate executive will just have some other scumbag fill his place, if you can get the PCs invested in the idea that this guy in particular needs to go down, that can be a goal. Maybe he's extra depraved and evil, maybe he just ticked them off personally. Even if it's not big, sweeping institutional change, if you can get them emotionally invested in this villain, that can be a Triumph.


2) Carving out a bit of Paradise. Maybe the PC's can't quite bring down The System, but if you get them invested in a particular place, neighborhood, or group, they can try to secure a future for it, at least for the time being. Make enough noise and get enough resources (or blackmail) to secure some arrangement that keeps the Corps from ruthlessly exploiting this particular patch of ground or group of people.

3) Thwart a Scheme. You can do a Save the World plotline without necessarily Saving the World. If the PC's work to stop a particular, more immediate threat (Rogue AI, Nuclear War, Moon exploding), that can be a win, even if the world they save is deeply imperfect.

4) Make a Change: The PC's have the option, not to fix the WHOLE world, but to make a major change in it. For example, A doctor discovers a cheap cure for some widespread illness, the Megacorps earn a lot of money from treating said illness, and are invested in suppressing the cure. The PC's can set out to get the Cure distributed widely enough that the Megacorps can't suppress it anymore, and the world becomes a little bit of a better place. Replace the Cure with some other piece of technology that would upset the status quo, with the campaign being about "Lets make sure this gets to the people who need it without the Megacorps interfering".

False God
2021-02-19, 03:51 PM
Cyberpunk is about a world that is constantly crushing you, but the MC perseveres anyway. They are not stories about the CN rogue survivalist, unless its a story about them learning that there's more to life than living day to day. They're stories about people who can see beyond what is immediately in front of them to a better future, but are forced to deal with what's in front of them anyway. The little compromises they make, the compromises they refuse to make and how that moves them closer or further from their goals.

You need a system with strong role-play elements, and people willing to buy into it.

KineticDiplomat
2021-02-19, 04:39 PM
Cyberpunk can host a whole slew of narratives, but the key is that they are often personal in scale even when the backdrop has wide spanning implications. And that means the stories are often more based in one set of characters at odds with another more than throwing-the-ring-in-mount-doom. Using shadowrun as a baseline - it works on the “small team of very good skulduggers” concept - consider this as a campaign structure:

1) A intro mission/conflict that really serves to introduce the characters and their local setting rather than set up the big P Plot. If you’re a corporate special circumstances team, who runs you, who are the rivals in the company, what sort of situations use you...playing a street gang: Your turf, the locals, some rivals...ubiquitous mercs: how do you get jobs, who are you cool with, who have pissed off, how/why do you live with the heat of jobs? And so so forth. Plus everyone gets to look cool for a Marvel Intro.

2) The Meet. Unlike classic fantasy where you getting the quest is the start point, in cyberpunk the act of getting a job is a big deal. It’s often a world based on relationships, reputation, and interests, one where there’s no overarching framework protecting the PCs, and where the people doing the hiring have plenty of other options for violence. The Meet let’s you introduce a lot of the key players to a bigger story, or at least lay out who the organizations in play might be. It lets the characters RP a lot, and helps set the Why of the job.

3) The Legwork. If all you or your employer wanted was a drive by in the ghetto, they wouldn’t need you. Big things require information, access, special resources, favors called in. This is a great time to do some hacking, get in a few bar fights, pass some bribes, call on your old friends, maybe do a quick favor for someone in the side. It’s also a great time for the GM to work in more and more of the Plot from disparate information sources.
By the time they’re done with Legwork players should feel like they did some cool stuff and have some connection to some of the groups and other NPCs.

As a caveat here, in cyberpunk NPCs do die. You don’t want to abuse this, but rather than “haha gotcha levers”, occasionally wasting an NPC is a reminder that it’s a dangerous living, why you be afraid or angry, and the like. It isn’t a world of NPC “hostages”, it’s a world where NPCs go down at dramatic times because that’s the biz.

4) Time to Go Big. Alright, you’re ready to rock. Big grand finale time for the short arc. Besides providing all the cool action you might want, this is a great time to throw in Plot exposure, twists, reveals, and force ethical dilemmas. Optimally this Big Mission helps set up the connected plot for the next Big Thing.

As an aside here, keep the betrayals to a quiet minimum. Besides it just being good world building, betrayal is way more dramatic if it happens for good cause, with a distinct reason in advancing the story, and is unexpected.

Yora
2021-02-19, 05:04 PM
"Survival is overrated. You need to live a little too." is my favorite foreshadowing from a work that would be dead on cyberpunk if it had any gadgets. :smallamused:


Setting the Scale of the problem the PC's are trying to solve can help a lot. The trick is to make sure the players don't expect to Save the World per-say, but to define a clear goal that they can achieve. There are a couple ways to do this

1) A despicable Villain. Even if killing a single corporate executive will just have some other scumbag fill his place, if you can get the PCs invested in the idea that this guy in particular needs to go down, that can be a goal. Maybe he's extra depraved and evil, maybe he just ticked them off personally. Even if it's not big, sweeping institutional change, if you can get them emotionally invested in this villain, that can be a Triumph.

2) Carving out a bit of Paradise. Maybe the PC's can't quite bring down The System, but if you get them invested in a particular place, neighborhood, or group, they can try to secure a future for it, at least for the time being. Make enough noise and get enough resources (or blackmail) to secure some arrangement that keeps the Corps from ruthlessly exploiting this particular patch of ground or group of people.

3) Thwart a Scheme. You can do a Save the World plotline without necessarily Saving the World. If the PC's work to stop a particular, more immediate threat (Rogue AI, Nuclear War, Moon exploding), that can be a win, even if the world they save is deeply imperfect.

Yes, I think taking a different approach to scale when it comes to story is probably really central to making cyberpunk work. I think at it's core, cyberpunk is futuristic noir. Noir crimes stories are probably a good first place to start with.
Protagoists can get very close to national or global power, but such power is always completely out of reach for them. While they might be more mobile in the social hierarchy because of their position in law enforcement or organized crime, these characters will always remain little people. Even if you had protagonists who are high ranking company officials, they would generally still be house-slaves. Allowed to get inside the spaces of the powerful and having access to many of their comforts that are out of reach of the masses, but their lives still being at the whims and mercy of their higher ups.
Looking at other genres that are popular in RPGs might actually be less helpful. These are generally speaking more of the action and adventure types. While cyberpunk often has a lot of very spectacular action, its still in small personal fights and not large scale battles. Cyberpunk protagonists fight by themselves, not leading armies. The maximum area that they can possibly have real control over is as far as the reach of their guns. The antagonists and issues they face need to reach inside this sphere of the protagonists' lives. (Figuratively speaking. An old grandma on the other side of the city is still within a PCs sphere.)

PCs might not be able to save the whole world, but its absolutely within their scope to save their own personal world. And I agree that this requires a system (either as part of the game rules or just the GM's campaign style) that is not only conflict resolution mechanics, but also ties the PCs into a community of people.
One justified criticism of The Sprawl is that it presents its rules as being only "Mr. Johnson of the week" and nothing else. My reading of the rules is that it does not have to be that way, though the way it is presented does imply it. The mechanic for "Getting the Job" does not have to be about someone hiring the PCs. It works perfectly well for the PCs deciding on their own initiative to investigate something or trying to find or rescue someone. And the mechanic for "Getting paid" is not actually about making a cash transfer, but determining how their recent exploits impact their reputation. "Our friend Jimmy disappeared after his garage got trashed, and we found him and rescued him from some gang hideout" is just as good a story that runners can spread among their peers as "we got hired to find and rescue some guy after he disappeared when his garage got trashed." If you simply rephrase things a little bit to let players give themselves missions, the game structure and mechanics should work just as well for a sandboxy, player-driven campaign.

One idea I had regarding antagonists and the big evil is that the true evil of these settings is the overall system of society that at some point has gone horribly wrong. And the system does not simply take from the 95% and gives to the 5%. It's a system in which all wealth and power always only moves up (if left to its own devices), and even when you think you're close to the top, there's still always several more higher levels above you. And those higher ups have as much power over you as you have over the people below you.
As some scrappy gonks down at the 10th level, you have no hopes to ever really do something significant to a nasty antagonist who is a powerful official up at the 4th level of society. The system makes them untouchable to regular folks, but their careers and possibly lives are still at the full mercy of their bosses up at the 2nd level. In a truly corrupt system, nobody is a winner (except maybe the people at the very top, but are they really happy?), and it will screw everyone who slips up. Even when a villain is completely out of the PCs reach and seemingly unstoppable, seriously disrupting their plans and exposing their shady side activities can bring down the wrath of the directors who are above any laws and limitations.
I have a vague idea how a big campaign arc could possibly conclude with one of the PCs clicking the Send button and then just watching their victory on the news.

BRC
2021-02-19, 05:15 PM
One idea I had regarding antagonists and the big evil is that the true evil of these settings is the overall system of society that at some point has gone horribly wrong. And the system does not simply take from the 95% and gives to the 5%. It's a system in which all wealth and power always only moves up (if left to its own devices), and even when you think you're close to the top, there's still always several more higher levels above you. And those higher ups have as much power over you as you have over the people below you.
As some scrappy gonks down at the 10th level, you have no hopes to ever really do something significant to a nasty antagonist who is a powerful official up at the 4th level of society. The system makes them untouchable to regular folks, but their careers and possibly lives are still at the full mercy of their bosses up at the 2nd level. In a truly corrupt system, nobody is a winner (except maybe the people at the very top, but are they really happy?), and it will screw everyone who slips up. Even when a villain is completely out of the PCs reach and seemingly unstoppable, seriously disrupting their plans and exposing their shady side activities can bring down the wrath of the directors who are above any laws and limitations.
I have a vague idea how a big campaign arc could possibly conclude with one of the PCs clicking the Send button and then just watching their victory on the news.

That's always a good approach to take.

The System is the power above any particular individual. Any individual, no matter how powerful, can be brought down if you can convince the system to reject them. A Megacorp employee can get tossed aside by their bosses, the head of a Megacorp answers to the Board of Directors, which is made up of individuals at the mercy of powers greater than themselves.

Even if they are at the top of the heap internally, nobody is immune from enemies. A small group of PC's could weaken a hated megacorp in crucial ways, making it vulnerable to it's enemies, or even just get the investors to decide to jump ship and carve the corporation up, selling it's assets for spare parts.

You can't change the world this way. The System is above all of that, and can't really be stopped within the standard milieu of Cyberpunk. Short of, like, a benevolent super-AI starts subtly dismantling corporations and redistributing wealth, or disruption on an apocalyptic scale.

Bugbear
2021-02-19, 11:24 PM
I'd say the most common goal, even more so for more anti hero types:

1.Greed. A lot of Cyberpuck has lots of income inequality. Huge mega rich corporations and mega rich individuals on one side....and the rest of humanity living off the scraps in the streets. The PC, like generally everyone else needs money...always.

2.Survival tech. Again, in a lot of Cybertech settings lots of people have plenty of basic tech. It's one thing to have a bionic arm, but it's another thing to keep it charged so you can use it. Even more most street tech is very basic and is not made to last long term.....but with money you can by that.

3Advancing tech. Like above....getting fancy or advanced tech is hard to come by for most. You might be able to buy some....but the other option is getting items by adventure. Or theft.

4.No choice. This is also quite typical....either by blackmail or just outright slavery.

5.The Heroes. Save the world...or at least part of it.

Yora
2021-02-20, 11:56 AM
Oh, cool. Now the replies are coming in. Preem.

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2fa117.jpg

Interesting that you bring up greed. It's not simply greed, but also need. People looking for money for food and medicine aren't greedy. But they still really urgently are trying to get the money. I think it could be interesting to put the fuzzy border between the two into a prominent position within a story. A millionaire needing to make another 250 million to pay off the loan on his luxury yacht feels he needs to grab a quick bonus, or he'll loose considerable money in interests that will take years to make back or he will have to sell his vacation home in Bermuda. At the same time he feels poor teachers are being greedy parasites for asking to collectively bargain their work contracts. And you can also have the players looking for thieves who stole hardware from a megacorporation who have far more important things planned with the money than cars and drugs.

I've been flipping through an old cyberpunk RPG Ex Machina again to look for interesting ideas, and it mentions that cyberpunk stories often deal with questions of humanity. But I am wondering if such a thing is actually even possible within the medium of RPGs? I feel in their very nature and the way interaction between players, GM, and the setting works, the events in RPG are inherently focused on doing things and actively working on solving concrete problems. Players discussing the meaning of things in the story and setting between them during the game isn't something I can really imagine in a game, and nobody wants to listen to a GM philosophizing by himself. It's the same reason why adventures with party scenes or festival sections always seem unplayable to me.

KineticDiplomat
2021-02-20, 02:45 PM
Personal take on “philosophizing” cyberpunk is that wherever possible you should do rather than say, have an NPC say it rather than the GM if it must be said, and play by what I think of as the 70/30 rule.

The doing is obvious. Don’t talk about ‘ware eating your soul, or have a sermon on why it wouldn’t, have on the players have a system hang for a few seconds in the morning because his interface doesn’t realize he’s awake, so the safeties that prevent all that high speed stuff from killing a bedmate by mistake aren’t off yet. Roll for tech or keeping your cool or whatever. How the player takes that is up to him, but it’s a clear demonstration that at some point this is no longer entirely your body and it isn’t responding entirely to your consciousness. Player may just go “huh”, may have a great chance for RP, may wonder if it’s going to glitch out when the heat is on and go to a doc. No further GM philosophy required, but the type of player who wants to think about that sort of thing will.

If you want to emphasize pervasive violence, make sure that violence has a chance to be deadly and chaotic. If every gang banger is the equivalent of a “Giant Rat” and you have noble HP based cool dude fighting, that won’t do. If Virgil Earp can be shot dead over a card table, then all of a sudden the prospect of violence has a real impact, and it makes the world look that much more broken.

2. If it has to be said, have an NPC say it. NPCs have viewpoints, biases, imperfect information, and most importantly aren’t the GM. Players can dislike them, disagree with them, vehemently oppose them, as their views are not the Word of God, just another dude with an opinion.

3. The 70/30 rule. Whatever philosophical, ethical, etc position the players take should become 70% right. You want them to think they picked the best of the available solutions, not a perfect one. Since virtually any position in a CP world has at least two sides and is NEVER free, it just becomes a matter of putting a little weight in the opposite side of whatever the players pick.

Yora
2021-02-20, 03:33 PM
I really like the last one as a general rule of gamemastering. Sounds like something that should be in the all time top 10 tips for all GMs. :smallbiggrin:
So when players figure out a procedure or tactic that is very smart and should be really effective within the parameters of the game, let them use is effectively most of the time, but also set up a good number of situations where it's specifically impossible to use it?
That's a great approach. I had players figure out early in my last D&D campaign that the rules let them deal nonlethal damage to all enemies without any downsides, so they always tried taking everyone prisoner for interrogation. I didn't like that, but I felt I couldn't just change the rules to let them no longer use the very effective method they had adopted. Letting them have their reward for their thinking most of the time, but putting them also into situations where it can't work is a great idea.

KineticDiplomat
2021-02-21, 09:58 AM
It could be used for the tactical sure. Makes plenty of sense.

I was thinking of it more in the ethical/moral/humanist sense. To use your words, in most “fantasy games in elfland” when you do something you are already doing it as part of a known ethical code. You are doing Good unto Evil or vice versa.

In a CP world the act itself is a moral decision. It’s a world of scarcity, violence, and interest. There are no winners without losers in the business you’re in, and your players are going to have a large part in picking who those are in the little slices of the world you give them. They should feel like their decision was 70% right, 30% wrong.

Example: Your PCs manage to steal a bunch of generic medical supplies and deliver them to the grateful locals of wherever-borough. You should give them that Robinhood vibe - thankful mother, free drink at the watering hole, the feel goods. But those supplies were going somewhere. Even if that was an expensive plastic surgery/biisculpting clinic, the company in question isn’t going to just let that clinic fail, they’ll re-route resources away from less profitable poor people clinics in Nextdoorburg, or maybe they lay off some staff in the clinic that serves the same local you just helped. Somebody lost to let you win, and your players should always have the hint of that over their shoulders...they may even make the world a net better place, but it’s a world where making omelets requires broken eggs, not where obliging green skins march forward to be heroically slaughtered for your glory.

aglondier
2021-03-08, 12:26 AM
Never played cyberpunk, but played shadowrun for years. Same ideas and themes, just without magic, I guess.

A newly formed team has two real concerns, survival and reputation. Lacking a rep, the best jobs they will get are low pay. With only low pay they will struggle to maintain their gear. Higher paying jobs come with higher risk, or tasks that are of dubious morality. So...eat this month, restock gear for the next run, or give up any pretense of morality? Choose one. A hard choice for any team. Made more difficult when your reputation is on the line as well.

If they are able to make it out of the D-rankings, they might get the chance to build a rep that gives them more control over the kind of runs they get hired for. But just as likely the rep they built in the D-ranks will follow them into the C and B rankings, effectively railroading their moral choices.

Eldan
2021-03-09, 09:05 AM
My Players do occasionally philosophize and it works. You just have to approach it as Action, instead of Talking.

My semi-joking summary is that everything in RPGs comes down to either violence or money. So make your philosophy about those. At its base, it can be like your typical choice in a Computer RPG. "Do you kill this NPC? Do you kill them for money?"

Most basic/cliché Example: Blade Runner. If you give the Players a choice about whether they want to kill an escaped Replicant, that automatically also implies them judging whether they think the Replicant deserves human Rights, and how much they think a human life is worth. 10'000 credits to kill that escaped bot with the experimental AI. Would they do that? Would they do it if it was a cloned human? What about a kidnapped human lab subject?

Philosophy doesn't have to be spoken.

Frankbit
2021-04-12, 01:04 AM
While I strongly disagree that PCs belonging to a corporate entity is really 'punk, it doesn't matter logistically, and certainly not for the more "pragmatic" constraints of most RPG adventures.

I can recommend the "Necrology" trilogy (all short adventures) written for CP 2020. It does take some rewriting but can easily be adapted for corp sec work, more politically active scheming, can include supernatural elements and transhumanism.

Exotic locations are often a bit missing from Cyberpunk stuff, which is a bit weird.

stack
2021-04-14, 07:04 AM
For a larger plot idea, could look to Gibson's Neuromancer, since it is the original cyberpunk novel from the original cyberpunk author. The story, roughly is a break-in/heist style mission, with assembling a team, getting required things, making the final run. The backer is an AI, or rather half an AI, which orchestrates things. AIs in the setting are kept constrained and divided, with "electromagentic shotguns pointed at their heads". The run is to circumvent these safeguards are unite the AI, creating a super-intelligence. The ultimate impact this has on the setting is not addressed in the novel, though I think there are others than may touch on it.

Anyhow, it adds up to a series of runs, culminating in what could be a major setting change.

fof3
2021-04-16, 05:47 AM
Or maybe the plot of the film "Strange Days"

Without too many spoilers, set things up to look like there are world changing big conspiracies, but then make it small and local.

Slipjig
2021-04-18, 07:56 AM
One thing I would suggest cutting down on is the constant betrayals("It's not a shadowrun unless Johnson has screwed you twice."). It has no narrative punch if it's expected. There's also the simple practicality that competent agents are valuable assets to their handler. He's not going to stiff them, let alone try to have them murdered to avoid paying their normal fee. Now, if they've stumbled onto something they shouldn't know and are now a huge security risk, that's a different story...

While it runs counter to the usual "corps and the people who work for them are Evil" theme, I think it might be interesting to explore how everybody involved is simply responding to the incentives they have. The problem isn't only bad people, it's also the system and the extreme concentration of power. A manager who refuses to tear down a tenement risks being replaced by someone who will. A corporation that pays it's workers a living wage or pays to dispose of waste responsibly will have to raise it's prices to the point where a competitor will undercut it and take it's market share.

It might be fun to tell a Breaking Bad type of story for some corporate employees who start out keep doing progressively worse things because they feel like it's their best (or, for big moves down the alignment scale, only) option.

Cluedrew
2021-04-18, 10:35 AM
One thing I think I like about Cyperpunk is that it is really addressing concerns about the current wave of incoming technology (and some crazy future ones too). Like what happens when robots/artificial limbs are better than flesh? Digital information storage has made mass data breaches possible in a way that was never before. And of course let's take a look at the worse capitalism has to offer while we are at it.

I mean imagine a system where there is a soft cap on your power until you start augmenting your body and chipping away at your flesh (and mind?). Do you want to play a cyborg? Then that's fine. You want to play someone who made it by skill and equipment? That age is gone.

I can't come up with as good examples for digital privacy and I'm not going to try for the political game. The one thing I would suggest is people do have to be interested for that to work so just put out the hooks and see if they bight.

Mutazoia
2021-04-18, 12:51 PM
Well, first I think you need to define exactly what it is about the Cyberpunk genre that makes you want to play. William Gibson's cyberpunk novels are all over the place when it comes to plot. In one book you have the burnt-out hacker getting a chance at one big run, in another, you have the corporate security type who eventually severs the leash and acts on his conscience rather than his orders.

Cyberpunk takes the world we have now and maxes out the contrast sliders. Every problem we have now is even worse. The rich are richer, the poor are poorer. The corporations that lobby to influence our government have more or less become the government in all but name only.

There is an infinite number of stories you could tell with your Cyberpunk game. You just have to decide which ones you want to tell. I say which ones because no one ever said you had to have one main plot. (And I'm not talking about subplots.)

At any rate, as usual, you should have a Session Zero to find out what kind of game your players would be most interested in. Do they want to be the corporate wage slaves sent to do the Zibatzus dirty work and who eventually turn on the hand that feeds them? Do they want to be the misfit band of street punks motivated by quick creds and the dream of "making it big"? You can save yourself a lot of headaches if you find out what's going to appeal to the players the most.

But when you really think about Cyberpunk, you think of the little guy trying desperately to survive under the heel of the power blocks. Whether that power block is a corporation, or a criminal cartel, or both (most likely both) it's the struggle to, if not get completely out from under the shoe, at least find a more comfortable position to be squished in.

Slipjig
2021-04-19, 09:43 AM
Another thing to consider is that it will make your life MUCH simpler is your PCs have backgrounds that fit the story you are trying to tell. You can probably railroad a mixed group of street punks, cops, and corporate types through a one-shot, but it'll make your life extremely difficult if you need to come up with adventure hooks for such a disparate group over the course of a campaign.

If several members of your group have their hearts set on mutually non-meshing backstories, maybe create two sets of PCs, one street punks and one corporate and alternate sessions. Give them goals that aren't 100% opposed to each other, but let the decisions of each group negatively impact the other's plans.

Corsair14
2021-04-19, 10:19 AM
An idea I was thinking of going with is the DocWagon(Whoever the cyberpunk analogue is) where the PCs start as an entry level med team and then move up in the ranks into one of their elite teams. Seems kind of samey until DocWagon starts to use them to ferret out espionage inside their branch. While it would take some work since it is meant for shadowrun, you can pull a lead up to Bug City in whatever city you are playing in, I was thinking of doing it in Orlando since I live here. Start throwing in trends leading to the actual Bug City blowout(insect spirits taking over and the government walling off the city until they can figure out what to do about it. Think Mad Max meets Aliens.

The campaign itself can be as straight forward as you want it to be. You can throw in some twists. It also gets rid of some of the issues I have had in the past where PCs spend half the night planning how to infiltrate an objective and had time to walk to the store and grab more beer and they were still talking when I got back. Patient is flatlining inside the building, are you landing on the roof or landing in the street? You could also put in chase scenes pretty easy as the bad guys try and escape with the victim, throw in moral dilemmas and so forth. Very easy to have a straight forward intro-game to recover a victim and have it be a real job that doesn't just feel like an intro game.

All said though, eventually the campaign would have to end or it would be the same thing over and over which is a the problem I run into with any modern game system.

Edit: Another idea I have been bouncing around is based off of several movies. Have multi-character story arcs going on concurrently which while it should be going on in any RPG, you rarely see it in a game. However in a modern/future environment with instant communication and so forth it is much easier for each character to have a different circle of in-game friends and family to call on or be called upon vs your standard D&D fantasy environment where typically the characters just roam from town to town picking up adventures as a group. There is only so many times an out of breath courier can catch up to them with a message.

One story arc is based off the Crow with less supernatural aspects. You have Top Dollar and the 4 lesser mini-BBEGs and one of the characters basically falls into the role of Eric Draven getting revenge and working his way up after waking up in a cyberdoc's care after being in a coma for a year having thought to have been dead. An easy way to including contacts or even other characters like a lawman and of course the cyberdoc.

Another story I am thinking about tossing in would be good for a rockerboy or media personality which is kind of a mix between Johnny Numonic and Strange Days has a fellow rap star/activist/rabblerouser Jeriko One is about to give out the cure for some major disease that is ravaging the world and invites the character(s) to a show and he gets assassinated midshow and the PCs have to figure out who and where this cure is meanwhile avoiding Biotechnica hit teams trying to stop them. Oh yes I will be having the lead hitman badguy with a monowire! Still working on a few others and trying to remember one I thought of last night while driving.

During these arcs which can run concurrently with each other, sprinkle in little one shots and so forth so they can make money to make ends meet.