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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tav_Behemoth" data-source="post: 1903337" data-attributes="member: 18017">Both of the big guns of cyberpunk SF evolved away from nihilism in their later (and IMHO better) work; check out Gibson's Virtual Light and Sterling's Holy Fire for good examples. Neither is particularly game-ready, but it's a good proof of concept that what you're trying to do is not impossible.Keep the core concepts of cyberpunk: transformative technology that blurs the line between human and machine -- superhuman entities (AIs and megacorporations) that don't care about the welfare of anyone else -- outlaw  protagonists from misfit subcultures like computer nerds and S&M fetishists -- and the neverending quest to live faster and leave a better-looking corpse through better chemistry.Ditch the nihilism by giving your characters a chance to be heroes, not just anti-heroes. They'll need a cause worth dying for and adversaries who can be defeated, instead of just burning themselves out fighting a hopeless battle against the very nature of modern existence.Here's a campaign I'd like to play:The PCs are eco-terrorists, fighting against the corporations who are planning to devote their last resources to get off the planet they've poisoned. They take the battle vs. the corporate forces up to the L5 dock where the starship/escape pod is being built. Here they meet bizarre inhuman masterminds - now it seems that the corporations are the pawns of aliens who are trying to "terraform" the Earth, using pollution to make it an enviroment they can colonize. The final twist is that these beings are actually the future selves of the PCs or their allies, who have become altered beyond recognition by their own bio-cybernetic alterations, and who have traveled back in time to shape events the way they are currently playing out - either because they have, in the future, gone over to the dark side, or because they believe the only alternate to this course of history is an even worse cataclysm.Shorter answer: have each PC choose some ideal they believe in, and give them every opportunity to live up to this ideal (against a fully cyberpunk background).</blockquote>

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