Cyberpunk without the Nihilism. I need campaign ideas!

[EricNoah]

I seem to remember a novel called Snow Crash that was cyberpunkish but had a sense of fun about it. May be inspirational reading.

 

[reason]

Transhumanism

Cyberpunk without the nihilism is transhumanism - modifying the self in order to positively transcend the human condition. The merging of biology with technology does not dehumanise, it makes you more human, makes being human a more wonderful thing. Transhumanism is a flowering of possibility and potentional. Transhumanist authors include Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, Charles Stross (especially so - check out Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise), David Zindell, and so forth.

Real life transhumanist groups can be found below:

http://www.extropy.org
http://www.transhumanism.org

Gaming material for transhumanist ideas can be found from Anders Sandberg:

http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/game.html

-----
'What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree'

--- David Zindell, The Broken God
-----

Reason

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

BuyTranshuman Space, from Steve Jackson Games. A near-future setting without nihilism, and with more fancy technology then you can shake a stick at. But then, you don't need Nihilism when you're out exploring what it means to be Human in a solar system where technology allows to transcend the limits of the human form...

Or if the tech in it is too advanced to your tastes, you could always shift the timeline back to the 2050s - where you have the beginning of the great Transhumanist revolution. And your characters could also get involved with the Infosocialist movement...

 

[Scribble]

In my opinion, cyberpunk is about characters overcoming the inherent nihilism of the human race.

The characters are mostly antiheros to a degree. Thrown into a situation that they don't really want to deal with but have to.