On 7/26/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
What is it that people look for in a cyberpunk game?
I try to avoid great big defining conflicts like "capitalism vs. communism" and "east vs. west." Bruce Sterling once defined "boredom with the apocalypse" as one of the defining characteristics of cyberpunk. Rather, old-school cyberpunks were interested in ways new technologies would fragment the old, dinosaur-like power blocks and give rise to entirely new ones. So I get rid of all of that kind of thing in favor of a world which is losing or has lost most of its old centers of loyalty in favor of current expediency. Traditional cultures have fragmented and religions have lost most of their power. It's capitalism uber alles and globalism gone wild. Everybody has the freedom and ability to connect to a distributed community of whoever shares their particular tastes, so while there may be hard-core cells of Muslim bomb-throwers (and Christian bomb-throwers and Tamil bomb-throwers and vegetarian bomb-throwers and...), most people spend their time and energy on gambling, games, pop stars, and porn. Culturally, there's no there, there. The only real powers left are the ones which make money. It's not that evil corporations have intentionally taken over the universe. It's just that people with a desire for material gain are sufficiently plentiful and well-organized that they're marginally more effective at getting things done than groups with less pragmatic goals and no other force is in a position to stop them. Oh, and it rains all the time and everyone wears black. -- My wife's food blog is quite interesting: http://thehappysorceress.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
