Cthulhupunk

[kabukiman]

Hi!
I’m thinking of creating a cthulhupunk campaign. Minimum one player, maximum four. Year: 2030. Name: Pandora Box. Place: Night city (a imaginary metropolis between Los Angeles and San Diego).
Major influences: bladerunner, neuromancer, snow crash, serial experiment lain, Deus ex, system shock, cyberpunk 2020.
All the technology will be used from the RPG cyberpunk 2020 from Talsorian (the main book, cromebooks and the campaigns stormfront), but the rules are still those of CoC.
Each player will start with a basic processor, and a budget to buy equipment from a list (but no cyberarms with missiles, cyberlegs with spikes extendable, eyes with lasers, or full borgs -at least in the beginning of the game).
Classes available: solo, netrunner, fixer, techie, but I'm open to other options.
Two persons are already interested, Mr Handy and Tangerine
Anyone else?


Music background (original idea of Laraqua).

[Mi-Go Agent]

I'd join in a jiffy, but I don't know too much about cyberpunk. I pretty much end at "I've read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

[Mr. Handy]

I haven't actually read the book yet, though I've read and own some of Phillip K. Dick's other works (Through a Scanner Darkly and The Man in the High Castle). I've heard Blade Runner is very different from the book it's based on. I do know more about cyberpunk, but even if you know little about it you can probably pick it up easily enough. I actually played Cyberpunk 2020 once at a convention. I believe a solo is a combat character, a netrunner is someone who jacks into cyberspace to crack security and steal data, a fixer is a wheeler-dealer who buys and sells equipment and information, and a techie would be an engineer who maintains, repairs, and builds technological things (a computer programmer might possibly fit into this category).

I'll probably play a netrunner. Another possibility is if there's something like a rigger (from Shadowrun) - someone who jacks directly into vehicles instead of computers and interfaces with them, controlling them completely at the speed of thought - or possibly a character that can do both, if I get enough skill points.

[Tangerine]

I might try a techie seeing as Mr Handy jumped on the netrunner quick! I don't have the books though... is there any nice and easy web-based version or do I have to go out and sell another kidney?

[kabukiman]

Mr Handy is absolutly right about the classes. I don't know shadowrun, but I think that a netrunner can be used as a rigger. Playing with a netrunner in a table is a problem: the keeper and the player must spend some time together discussing what happens and that may cost one hour of real time leaving the rest of the players deadly bored), but in a forum the problem is solved.
The movie bladerunner is a bit different (nt better or worst, only different). If you want to get the feeling of the genre (and don't have much time to read books) see the movies bladerunner, existenZ, the anime Ghost in the shell. In the worst case, robocop and matrix will serve (just for the visuals).
It's a world dominated by corporations, with only very rich and very poor persons.
To have more information about the genre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

I forgot to tell: The game will be mature content. Sex, violence, drugs.
Selling kidneys: that remember me playing neuromancer to buy new programmes...

[Tangerine]

I had a crack a long time ago with some friends at Shadowrun, but at the time we were (more) immature so our employer (I forgot the lingo for 'em) was a fanatic for Hairy Mclairy - the kids' book - and we had to steal limited editions of the books. :S

I might have time for reading some background books - depending on when you want to start the campaign (I read fast). What are your favourites?

[Tangerine]

Actually, the wikipedia link has some good suggestions (now that I read it ), though any suggestions for favourite books would save me time wading through potential bad ones!

[kabukiman]

Neuromancer is the first one (Monalisa Overdrive and Count zero are ok too). Snow crash is my favorite (the critics call it pos-cyberpunk, but read it). Short stories: burning crome, Johnny Mnemonic. You will have already a nice bibliography to read.
Some animes are also good: ghost in the shell, A.D. Police, the first 20 minutes of Akira (the rest seems Dragonball Z), ergo proxy.
I just played once cyberpunk as player, but my keeper was very bad (the adventures were just shooting), so for years i never touch it again. After reading a couple of books, I decide to give it a try (this time as a keeper), with some selected players. They never played solos or any action characters, only journalists and jobs like that, so it was interesting because it couldn't be a game of violence, it needed to be subtle (but still dangerous). Now I'm a fan.

[Tangerine]

Definitely sounds awesome! I just finished playing the ScummVM Beneath a Steel Sky, which was pretty good for an oldie. Now I shall have to try and see if the public library can be of use (never can find the books I want there...)

[Mr. Handy]

I love Beneath a Steel Sky! I bought it not too long after it came out for $20. It's been freeware for years, but I'm glad I've had it and enjoyed it all this time. I've played it through several times.

[Tangerine]

I loved the character Joey - you just don't have any decent adventure game without an awesome sidekick with a biting humour!

[Mr. Handy]

Yeah, Joey's hysterical! It was also cool putting him in different robot bodies, and the role he played in the ending was fantastic.

BloodNet is another old computer game that's cyberpunk, though it's more RPG than adventure game. It also involves vampires. I only played that one once, but I'd play it again if I had time. There are multiple ways to play it, and I never exhausted all the possibilities.

[kabukiman]

My computer for some reason don't run Beneath a Steel Sky; when I had a computer to play it, I couldn't find it. I suppose life is like that. Try the old neuromancer. It's also freeware, i may not as good as beneath, but it gives you a good feeling of the atmosfere. Or play if you never try it (just a couple of levels, it turns quite repetitive) the strategic game syndicate.

[Mi-Go Agent]

I guess it would be the logical choice for me to take a solo and round out the triad. I also wouldn't mind playing as a crazy Luddite - the kind who produces an axe every time someone mentions hacking.

It might be fun to try a combination of them. Say, the Luddite has been modded, but as a result of his values, he is more of a steampunk/dieselpunk than a cyberpunk character. So he powers his main hand to hand weapon with gasoline he extracts from fungus he grows on the walls of his small apartment, he tries to look very clockwork, he has a massive crossbow (and one of those made with modern materials and engineering can shoot as far as anything but a sniper rifle, with more accuracy and no sound, plus no jammed bullets - add a little explosive to some of the arrow heads and it could do more damage than a mere gunpowder weapon), and his connection to the nets is ver archaic and nonconventional, which is why it is fortunate that he he is working with a really skilled hacker.

[kabukiman]

It could be, but it would have costs. No basic processor (it means it's less acurate to shoot), lesser number of shots, and major possibilty of malfunction (in 90%-100% unstead of the usual valor). On the other hand, nobody will be able to hack your system or destroy it with a EMP. How does he see the others who use normal cyberware? He cannot be too much hostile (unless you want to play your own paralel campaign).

[Mi-Go Agent]

He wouldn't be violently hostile (at first, at least - insanity effects would be obvious), but probably more like a nutty ex-professor rambling about how the problems of the world are rooted in overuse of technology. In other words, just crazy enough to have spent plenty of time training and equipping himself for combat, but not crazy enough to actually do anything - and he could appreciate individuals, he would just think that they were being corroded by their society even if they were genius hackers.

He probably would have a processor, but not a brainjacked one, so he would still have to rely on a holographic, or a viewscreen, display. And while the crossbow would have a much slower rate of fire (not a problem, because he does H2H with something else), I imagine it would actually be extremely reliable - or, at the very least, not a problem if it does jam (since he could probably just untangle something in a single combat round, not having to worry about bent metal or anything). Accuracy would suffer compared to computer-controlled weapons, although modern crossbows are highly accurate compared to non-computer-controlled weapons. And, yes, the high resistance to EMP and hacking assaults would be a nice extra bonus, which would go well with the character - while the hackers and techies were paralyzed wrangling with the computers, he could go in swinging.

By the way - yes, Sheep is very different from everything I've heard about Runner. For one thing, you can tell that Sheep is written before modern computing (it never really talks about things being controlled by programs, but rather by circuits). Also, I understand that the movie leaves out Mercerism, which is a key part of the book.

[kabukiman]

The book is from the 60's. It should be actually considered biopunk (if it wasn't stupid to applied labels of literature who only appeared decades latter).
So we have a runner, a techie and a solo. nice team to start. Tomorow I will tell what are the specific skills for each class.

[Mr. Handy]

I've got Syndicate, though I haven't played it in a long time. I've never played Neuromancer, but I'd like to give it a try if I ever have the time. If Beneath a Steel Sky won't work on your computer, you may need to run it in compatibility mode or use something like DosBox. A lot of old programs will run on newer operating systems with that. I actually save my old computers, so I can still play my old games if I ever have time to even if they won't run on my new PC. I only get a new one every 5-6 years, so I don't have all that many.

A biopunk game I've heard is good is Bioshock, which is inspired in part by System Shock. I just bought it for $20 last week, but again, no time to play it yet. I'm currently working my way through the Space Quest collection, but it's slow going when I only have a few hours per week to play. I'm mostly done SQ4 right now. I actually had 4-6 already, but I only had floppy versions of 4 and 5. The CD version is enhanced and has full speech.

[kabukiman]

I also buy computers after 5 or 6 years, but I copy everything from the old to the new computer. In this moment I'm full of work (end of the year), and in the few spare time, I play Lord of the rings online. It's ideal for non regular gamers.
I have the demo of bioshock (the game is stupidely expensive), but I still need to finnish Silent hill 1before.

[Tangerine]

If you're looking for Beneath a Steel Sky - it's shareware now and you can get it and a program that allows it to be played fine on later OS at http://www.scummvm.org/

I raided the public libraries for some background books but only came up with Burning Chrome and two moderately related ones (one by Phillip Dick and a random Shadowrun novel). All the other books I wanted to get were either lost in the Void of Libraryness or not even on the system. :S