Coole neue Sachen für Cyberpunk 2020

Es gibt ein paar sehr coole Sachen, die in jüngerer Zeit für Cyberpunk als Genre rausgekommen sind. Da ist zum einen eine Vornheim-inspirierte Settinghilfe namens Augmented Reality.

Awesome Setting Help for all kinds of Cyberpunk games.

Und dann bin ich über eine tolle Serie gestolpert, die Jobs auflistet, die für jene sind, die keinen gut bezahlten Konzernjob kriegen. Das Gegenstück zum Burger wenden beim Macces könnte es sein, die Drone zu polieren, die deinen alten Job macht. Mein Favorit:

Rental Smart-Car Attendant: across the city, travellers rent their driver-less smart-cars by the hour or subscribe to commuter vehicles. For all their efforts, the corporations have yet to create the drone that can reliably pick the used condoms and burger wraps out of the lining between the car seat and the door.

Es gibt drei Teile:

Fashion: Drugs

This drug is the future of coffee. Take it, and even not having slept for 36 hours won’t lessen your ability to function. The DARPA has funded scientists who discovered a drug that will eliminate sleepiness and keeps the drugs user alert.

orexin A is a hormone that is naturally occuring in the brain. Monkeys treated with the drug after 36 hours without sleep were as able to do awareness tests as well as monkeys who had been allowed to sleep. More about the study can be found here.

I figured that everybody would be addicted as soon as this drug hits the steets: Soldiers (for whom it has been developed), corporates, freelancers… so here are the stats (based on Ocelots Drug Lab 101)


orexin A

Drug Effects:
No need to sleepUntimed Side Effects:
Mildly Psychologically Addictive
Drug Features:
Longer DurationTimed Side Effects:
None
Totals:
Strength: +3
Difficulty: 30
Duration: Medium
(1d6x10 minutes)
Legality: Legal/Common
Drug Form: Nasal Spray Time to Effect: 10+2d10 sec
Purchase Price: 10

Designed using Night Flyer’s Drug Lab Java Calculator for Ocelot’s Drug Lab v3.0 @ www.paper-dragon.com


I had to edit some stuff. The drug is based on the effect “Increased Duration”, so please look there for overdosing rules. Purchase Price would be 0eb, but there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, so its 10eb.

Was ist Cyb3rpunk?

Ich habe die Ehre [hier sich langsam steigernden Trommelwirbel einfügen], mit RabenAAS einen neuen Autor für dieses Blog zu präsentieren [Trommelwirbel endet in ohrenbetäubendem Crescendo]. Sein Projekt Cyb3erpunk ist der Versuch, die Technik und das Setting aus dem Cyberpunk 2020 Regelwerk werktreu so umzuschreiben, dass es den heutigen Stand der Entwicklung berücksichtigt. Ein Beispiel ist das iSpy, über das ich hier schon mal berichtete. Er wird sein Werk (und was ihm sonst so einfällt) hier posten und freut sich sehr über Kommentare, auch kritische. Seine Sachen sind in der Kategorie Cyb3erpunk abgelegt, einfach drauf klicken und sehen was von ihm stammt. Bis jetzt stammen von ihm:

New free Cyberpunk 2020 Sourcebook

Deric Bernier (and his helpers) managed to publish an impressive online cyberpunk 2020 Sourcebook for South and Central America, Conflict II.

It’s great! Everything you need to know to run adventures in the jungles of the Americas,

I’m most impressed with the amazing detail of the sourcebook, the lifepath and they even thought of random encounter tables to help the GM with slow moments! From Derics “advertising”:

Well folks, I am pleased to announce, THE CURSE IS BROKEN. After exactly 361 days of work, and a collaborative effort of 6 writers, and 20 other contributors, Conflict II: The Central And South American sourcebook. That’s right, from the only site that could possibly do it justice, the long awaited project is finally finished and available to you. Detailing every country in the region, the people, the resources, the wildlife, travel, and more, the Sourcebook also sets the stage for the Third South American War. With full descriptions of all the major armed forces involved including detailed weapon and equipment lists for the U.S., EDF, Neo-Soviet, Chinese, Mexican, Militech, Arasaka, Argentina, Chile, ICMF, and the South American Alliance armed forces. It also contains information on the Media presence covering the conflict as well as a more detailed look at the previous wars and a Journal of the Long Walk. There are even Lifepath charts and Random Encounter tables to make the experience complete. More than just a sequel to Conflict: Africa, this sourcebook is twice the size and much more detailed and comprehensive.

Link: Conflict II: Sourcebook for South and Central America.

Cyberpunk Band Names?

The AV Club has a list of the worst bandnames of 2007

its great fodder if you need to compile some kind of Top 10 list or being asked by your players whats on the radio. Also, remember that Boosters are music fans gone hooligan. So they need bands to adore, too. I selected my top names, but check out the original post for lots more.

William Gibsons take on giving a city description shames my GM skills

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Here in my Akasaka hotel, I can’t sleep. I get dressed and walk to Roppongi, through a not-unpleasantly humid night in the shadows of an exhaust-stained multilevel expressway that feels like the oldest thing in town. Roppongi is an interzone, the land of gaijin bars, always up late. I’m waiting at a pedestrian crossing when I see her. She’s probably Australian, young and quite serviceably beautiful. She wears very expensive, very sheer black undergarments, and little else, save for some black outer layer – equally sheer, skintight, and microshort – and some gold and diamonds to give potential clients the right idea. She steps past me, into four lanes of traffic, conversing on her phone in urgent Japanese. Traffic halts obediently for this triumphantly jaywalking gaijin in her black suede spikes. I watch her make the opposite curb, the brain-cancer deflector on her slender little phone swaying in counterpoint to her hips. When the light changes, I cross, and watch her high-five a bouncer who looks like Oddjob in a Paul Smith suit, his skinny lip beard razored with micrometer precision. There’s a flash of white as their palms meet. Folded paper. Junkie origami.

William Gibson is god. The bits of text are from a piece he wrote for Wired, the cyberpunk geek monthly.

Netrunning – can it be salvaged?

The Net in 2020

[Netrunning is probably the part of Cyberpunk 2020 which troubles the GM most. It’s neither very realistic, nor does it work fast. It also forces the GM to either focus on the netrunner OR on the rest of the party. James tries a more realistic approach, which might be more in tune with todays internet, but also requires a deeper technical understanding of the working of the internet.]

Author: James Lownie

This is a description of the basic features of the internet as it *may* function in 2020 (or any near future setting, see assumptions). It is intended as a framework upon which detailed rules can be built, and also as guide for players to understand how their characters will use the net, and what they can do on it. Comments and constructive criticism are eagerly awaited. Continue reading “Netrunning – can it be salvaged?”

Snitch-Chip today its for pupils, tomorrow for the wage-slave

The ARCH Blog informs us about a projekt in a british secondary school where pupils have RFID chips in their uniform that transmits rather sensitive data:

The chip connects with teachers’ computers to show a photograph of the pupil, data about academic performance and whether he or she is in the correct classroom.

Well, next time you start your Cyberpunk 2020 game with the PCs flipping burgers somewhere, you know how to make them rebel… why wouldn’t they be chipped, too?

“Mr. Anderson, we noticed that your average toilet time is 0.4% higher then the average for male employees. This reduces your productivity and costs the company a lot of money. See to it that you come to terms with this problem!”

Its stunning what you would be able to learn about the person chipped.

With this amount of spying, its easy to rationalise why someone would feel punk enough to grab a gun and become an outlaw…