Genre Discussion: Cyberpunk

[Reynard]

I thought it would be interesting to talk about things in the cyberpunk genre, from television shows and novels to TTRPGs and video games.

I am going to start with two statements that might be a little controversial. 1) Westworld Season 3 is a really good cyberpunk story, and (probably more controversial) 2) so is Arcane.

Both are stories about new technology that makes the elite potentially more powerful than ever while disrupting life for the lowest rung of society, as well as being about criminals getting caught up in the mess and trying to find their way out of it. Despite Arcane being clearly fantasy (aetherpunk or magitcech), it feels like a cyberpunk story to me in every way that matters. Juxtapose this with, say, Altered Carbon, which is labeled cyberpunk but doesn't really feel like cyberpunk to me. it is just a futuristic noir, ultimately (and not a great one, at that).

Book wise, I have not read any cyberpunk recently, except Peripheral and Agency by Gibson, which both have the good cyberpunk vibe. Every time I search cyberpunk on audible the vast majority of the books that come up and LitRPG for some unknown reason. I need to do some research and see who 9in anyone) is writing good syberpunk these days.

So, how about you? What are your thoughts on pretty much anything cyberpunk?

 

[Scribe]

So, how about you? What are your thoughts on pretty much anything cyberpunk?

I've gotten to a point where the last piece of media that really screamed 'cyberpunk' was CY_BORG.

Everything else in the more mainstream has become too clean, slick, and hopeful, that it just misses the point for me.

Then CY_BORG came along, and has really just dumpstered everything else for me, to the point where I see kickstarters for other cyberpunk themed content and I just cannot get on board.

 

[Ryujin]

I cut my Cyberpunk teeth on Gibson and Sterling, who are pretty much seminal to the genre. These days I think that there's a lot of genre mixing that blurs the lines, but it's not a bad thing. To me, "Arcane" is Steampunk/Fantasy. Stuff like Shadowrun is Cyberpunk/Fantasy, with novelizations that came later. A friend writes books in a Dieselpunk/Fantasy sub genre (Airship Daedalus) which started as 1930s style radio drama, grew into a RPG, then books.

There's not a lot of pure Cyberpunk around anymore but I would say that "Altered Carbon" is, though it's projected into the far future. It has all the elements of human enhancement through tech, real artificial intelligence, drug use, and sex. The effective immortality thing results in the far future setting, rather than it being straight SciFi because of the timeframe.

 

[Valetudo]

I like how shadowrun dips it's chocolate magic into cyberpunk peanutbutter. I just hated the system.

 

[lynnfredricks]

I have always had mixed feelings about magic being dumped into cyberpunk. As a standalone genre, it also cleaves very much to the era that birthed it. It is hard to make a real replacement of the Japanese megacorp and not changing it.

 

[Ryujin]

I like how shadowrun dips it's chocolate magic into cyberpunk peanutbutter. I just hated the system.

There's a fantasy add-on for Cyberpunk 2020 out there, somewhere. Many years back I played in such a campaign and vampires were nasty.

You could also do a TORG/TORG 2e campaign and just use the Cyberpapacy, or Tharkhold, for Fantasy + Cyberpunk.

 

[Valetudo]

I used d20 modern to run a shadowrun campaign

 

[MGibster]

So, how about you? What are your thoughts on pretty much anything cyberpunk?

I think the Gilded Age makes for a good cyberpunk setting. You have new technologies transforming the world, often being adapted and used in a manner nobody expected, you have a fairly large rift between the haves and the have nots, laborers working dangerous jobs were not compensated properly and could barely keep their families fed, when labor complained the corporations were able to hire others to put them down violently, there is a great deal of environmental destruction going on and few regulations to control it, and corporations would even hire goons to go wreck the competition or anyone standing in the way of profit.

Everything else in the more mainstream has become too clean, slick, and hopeful, that it just misses the point for me.

While I played a lot of Cyberpunk 2020 when I was a teen, I had only read a handful of cyberpunk books at the time, and I didn't read anything by Gibson until I was in my late 20s or early 30s. In the first Gibson book I read, Neuromancer I think, the protagonist, Case, is so poor he has to rent a pistol from someone. We're introduced later to Molly Millions, a razorgirl, the equivalent of a Solo from CP2020, who has very few cybernetic enhancements when compared to characters from the game. It was then that I realized we pretty much played CP2020 as an adolescent power fantasy just like we did with D&D. But then CP2020 will tell you it's all about style over substance, so I guess we were doing it right.

 

[Umbran]

Despite Arcane being clearly fantasy (aetherpunk or magitcech), it feels like a cyberpunk story to me in every way that matters.

I would say that it lacks one very important element that keeps it from being cyberpunk: electronics of any sort.

Also, Arcane puts a strong focus on the craftsmanship of individuals, rather than on the mass-produced power of the corporate-state, which again, leans it away from cyberpunk. And also carries a stronger thread of the individual actually having power against the corporate-state.

That puts is pretty solidly in steampunk/magitech arena, rather than cyberpunk.

 

[Piperken]

As a genre it's arguably drifted from its punk ethos; your team or crew tends to run ops for dystopia corporations for a little profit, which then gets invested in improving or bettering... themselves.

Cyberpunk needs focus on little moments, like the brief exchange the Trauma Team medics have in Edgerunners before they choose to grab the client that has like a Platinum premium insurance coverage and leave David to suffer.

Which is not to say these kinds of games must feature a fight taken to oppressive or hierarchical structures. But I would like to see more alternatives present other than the base default: neighborhood communes, co-ops, bartering, alternate payment systems, community based cyberware centers, etc.