Tropes
With the advent of the personal computer and the Space Age, a creeping disaffection spread through speculative literature. As early as 1974, with Gravity's Rainbow and the works of Alfred Bester, what Bruce Bethke termed “Cyberpunk” in his same-titled 1980 short story became popularized by Gardner Dozois to describe the “High Tech, Low Life” focused works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and their peers.
Focus on the collapse of Roosevelt's Great Society into the quagmire of Reaganomics and Thatcher's Britain contrasted with the increasingly sharp division between the haves and have nots in terms not of money and power, but in upgrades and connectivity. At the same time, governments began to cede control of large sectors of their populations to private firms. These trends were filtered through a lens of “Ten Minutes Into The Future” to project the image of our grandchildren's dismal world.
A group that wants to play a Cyberpunk campaign needs to understand the following tropes common to all subgenres.
Humanity Is Dehumanizing
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” – William Gibson, Count Zero (1987, Victor Gollancz Ltd)
Throughout history, there have been haves and have nots. In a Cyberpunk Setting, the rich have the best enhancements, the most upscale implants, and the hottest software running their nearly-human cybernetics, while the less rich have clunky and obvious add-ons with aftermarket drivers. But the most scorned, the poorest of the poor, are those who are “womb state” and all natural. The more human you are, the less you count.
Uses:
Part of the draw of Cyberpunk gaming is the gear. Robot looking arms, Geordi LaForge Eyes, and really, really big and violent guns and swords with blinky bits that communicate with the wireless chip in your spleen. Those with no cyber augments will find themselves with a ton of skills and abilities left over to spend. However, they will almost always take social penalties because of it. The Unaugmented are the Underclass.
Pitfalls:
If someone wants to play a baseline human with all the extra perks that mechanically come with it, making the prejudice against them the focus of the game can lead to resentment and take focus from the plot, unless they specifically invite it.
The Dehumanizing Is Human
On the other hand, we have Gibson's The Gernsback Continuum (1981, “Burning Chrome” Anthology, Universe 11), in which the future of the halycon days of Asimov and Doc Smith are staved off by the vices of being quintessentially human. As the human race becomes more artificial and alien, they ground themselves with the baser things connecting us to the primate animal within.
Uses:
The Cyberpunk future is full of distractions from the base to the mindless. Pornography, Live sex shows, newly legal mind-numbing substances, and insipid mass entertainment. No matter where the PCs go, there should be hookers, strippers, dealers, bars, and free, easy to get pablum TV, movies, and music. Even more so than there is today in our world.
Pitfalls:
If you let the distractions work on the characters, the game quickly becomes Sim Lowlife. Remember the Megacorps (See The Revolution Will Be Corpratized, below), the assassins, and the general action-adventure intrigue-driven plotlines.
I Watched C-Beams Glitter In The Dark Near The Tannhauser Gate.
There's a serious Future out there for the wealthy and powerful. Starships, offworld colonies, incredible medical life-extension, true Virtual Reality, and more.
Your PCs will never know anything more about it than headlines. Unless they were employees; then to them, Starships have toilets that need cleaning and colonies are claimed by corporate warfare. Rich Guy's vacation paradise is where you lost your eye fighting the other guy on your team now.
Uses:
Allowing glimpses of the marvelous Transhuman Utopia that is forever denied the hardened warriors of your Neo-Arcology will remind them why they fight... to get rich enough to live there too. Or in some cases, to take those elite suckers down a peg. (But see Soy Un Perdedor, below.)
Pitfalls:
The campaign belongs in the streets, in the rain, in the mud. Even if some of the characters have been in Transhumanland, they are Cyberpunk now, and fallen from Heaven.
Download It Again, Sam.
The world is bigger on the inside these days. Infinite space exists in the one super-science-fiction development that is there for the masses. The Internet. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992, Bantam Books) brought us direct neural interfaces and lethal antivirus software that attacks the user. Instead of typing a command line or clicking a pointer, a Cyberpunk Hacker visually flies through landscapes that feel real.
However, the point of it remains the same as the genre Cyberpunk defaulted to emulating. Just as in 1940s Detective stories, there's a murder and a coverup to solve, money to recover or steal, and a hard-boiled hack(er) to do the dirty work.
Uses:
Cyberpunk shares a lot more in common with Sam Spade and Mike Hammer than just trenchcoats. The random violence, cruel dystopian grey cityscapes, and every victory coming with a melancholy cost that ends in a bottle are present in both. Replace the Cyberware with an expensive watch, or the Maltese Falcon with an encrypted data node, and the stories are often functionally identical.
Pitfalls:
It becomes easy to instead focus on the mysteries, the snappy patter, and the gunfights and forget the crushing ennui of life in the Alleys and Cyberspace. To avoid becoming just pulp with blinky metal props, try to remember to balance the culture and the plot equally.
The Revolution Will Be Corporatized
We watched Reagan and Thatcher hand concessions to big business left and right. We witnessed what a private army can be like with Blackwater. There have been rumors for decades of fully funded and equipped private militaries settling corporate disputes in third world jungles with bullets and bodies for hire. In the Cybperpunk world, the Government is the Tea Party's dream, doing little more than regulating commerce and taking in taxes to pay out the companies who run the roads, utilities, hospitals schools, and prisons.
Uses:
In a Cyberpunk world, Companies are everything that means Power, and the Government is effectively a watered down UN in power and authority. The PCs will almost always be working for or against colossal multinational conglomerates.
Pitfalls:
Although the Megacorps control everything and are the primary employers, opponents, and plot drivers, every now and then they should fade into the scenery to avoid villain fatigue. Family drama, strange occurrences, and personal plot threads can all occupy a session from time to time.
Soy Un Perdedor
There are no Capital-H Heroes in Cyberpunk. The hero seldom gets the girl, or if he does, it ends badly later. The Corps know the score, own the deal, and if you ain't born rich or in good with the suits, the rent will always be a little short, the next awesome upgrade out of your price range til next month (when it will be obsolete), and you never end up more than a little bit better than you started.. If you don't end up losing ground for doing the right thing.
It doesn't help that whatever you used to have as a culture was co-opted by someone else's a while ago. Most of the brand names, colloquialisms, and fashion trends belong to someplace far away. It was Japan in the 80s, but anything from Arabic, Brazilian, or Russian to unlikely but viable players like Iceland or West African culture can be the New World Leader that adds exotic influence to the setting. The source of the influence is less important than the attendant sense of a loss of identity.
Uses:
One of the core truths of Cyberpunk is that you are a loser. Even when you win. You'll never make it big, you'll never make it out, and you will be forgotten among the other chem-addicted, brain dead meatbags who died broke and alone. But unlike most of them, at least you died fighting.
Pitfalls:
Despite the fact that they will never come out on top, it is important to allow the PCs small victories. There should be a sense of something being accomplished, even if it is only reuniting a lost child with their family or blowing up a corporate data node and mostly getting away with it.
Sources:
That wraps up this installment of Tropes. Next time, we'll look at the Alphas, Misfits of Science, and No Ordinary Families that showcase Low Power Supers. Meanwhile, here's a list of some past and present published games that deal with Cyberpunk gaming. Look them up in RPGNet's Game Index.
Cybergeneration (R. Talsorian Games), Cyberpunk (R. Talsorian Games), Cyberspace (Iron Crown Enterprises), Disgenesia (Dios Cornudo), Ex Machina (Guardians of Order), GURPS Cyberpunk (Steve Jackson Games), Halcyon (Neuwerld Studios), Mirrors: Bleeding Edge (White Wolf), OGL Cybernet (Mongoose), Remember Tomorrow (BoxNinja), Technogrammaton (Corone Design), Terminal Identity (Adamant Entertainment), Tokyo NOVA (Enterbrain, Game Field)
