I know I have a vision of what this setting will be. Every thought I have, no matter the time of day or the activity, turns toward the world I contemplate for this game. I watch Robot Chicken and see it as a mincing of pop culture — a distillation of everything ever on television, the medium in its essential form. I think of returning to college to study the deepest workings of computers and I think of working for a corporation, unknowingly keeping vital engines of society running. I wonder what that job will be like in twenty years and imagine talking over IT security procedures with a security professional in full military armour bearing a rifle. He is the most junior member of the security platoon.
Genre films have grown up in the last few years. Science fiction and superhero films are indistinguishable from mainstream drams and action films. Special effects used to require a deal of imagination from the viewer, as no set was filled out to anything near realism and no effect was really convincing. Our films are now completely believable — we know what see cannot happen, but we accept the depiction as real anyway. The ham of Logan’s Run has become the dirt and rancid sweat of Children of Men.
These films now tell better stories. They are no longer cartoons, symbols of a feature portrayed by romantic stage actors. They are documentaries, dramas, artists’ renderings. Their characters are real people — or at least much so as the characters in mainstream films we idolize and emulate (but that’s a topic for another day). We see cities, planets, minds presented as if they truly exist. Our future visions have grown up — from ideas and abstractions they have have become visions and tangible things.
That is the tenor I have in mind for this future — the adult, live-action version of cyberpunk. The abstractions presaged by the progenitors of these thoughts have proven true; the future is here, along with future shock and its complications. The way they’ve been realized is essentially a special effect, albeit one vital to verisimilitude. Everything in this game will feel real.
Cyberpunk 0000 is film noir with a soundtrack by Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, and ADULT., and you’re in control.
In more practical news, I’ve been mulling over, in roughly descending order of devotion: the task resolution system (regarding probabilities of single successes from multiple rolls, the vagaries of exploding dice, the definition of the core mechanic and whether positive or negative modifiers should be beneficial, and the idea of secondary “confounding circumstances” rolls — uncontrollable limitations to success); damage, armour, and injury; the structure of the combat system; and the nature of semi-random character generation.
Sometimes I wish my aesthetic visions were as clearly defined as my mechanistic ones.
Tags: cyberpunk, inspiration, introduction, talk
