Need ideas for a cyberpunkish near future campaign!

[shadow]

Now that d20 Future is out, I'm thinking about running a near future/cyberpunk style campaign. Actually, to be technical I'm looking more at a near future, postcybrepunk campaign. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcyberpunk) Unlike the standard cyberpunk genre, which tends to be defeatist and nihilistic, I'm looking to run something a little more "heroic". (After a few too many sessions of World of Darkness and Shadowrun, my group has complained that they're a little burnt out on the nihilist "you can't win" style of games.) I don't mean that I want some black/white, high fantasy-esqe style of game, in fact I like the idea of a dark/gritty future. However, rather than just accepting everything, the PCs are on a mission to at least attempt to change things for the better. Rather than simply being mercs, the Pcs need to have some type of higher purpose.
This leads to the question, what should the overally focus of the campaign be? I have come up with three different possible campaign models:

1. Freedom Fighters: Many cyberpunk/near future campaigns assume that the government has become a fascist dictatorship. In this campaign model PCs would be fighting against the government to restore freedom. This has an advantage of offering a lot of direct action and a relatively easy way to come up with plots. However, the disadvantage is that it is relatively clichéd, and has the potential to become another "shoot 'em all up" style of game.

2. Dark Conspiracy: There is some type of conspiracy led by a powerful secret society. The PCs stumble across it and now have to fight against the secret cabal before they can unleash their plan, whatever it may be. (For an example of this type of plot, see Tad Williams' Otherland series.)

3. Supernatural Horror: Think d20 Modern's Shadowchasers campaign set in the near future. The PCs are the last line of defense against some type of supernatural menace. They work for some secret agency (whether private or government funded) to fight against the threat while the majority of the world remains unaware. This could allow me to integrate psionics and other FX abilities, but it has the potential to become another "monster of the week" campaign.

What do you think? Any other ideas for campaign models?

 

[Runesong42]

How about...

You Break It, You Bought It: The PC's are hired to perform some great service to a community, only to have it go horribly awry and cause massive damage rather than any appreciable good. The mayor of the city cracks, unable to handle the stress of constant complaints, city bills, and the well-being of (let's say) 20,000 people. Just before he commits himself to the crazy bin for a much-needed vacation, he hands off the mayorship to the PC's who caused the damage. He gives them one year to make up for the losses to the city, otherwise they'll be incarcerated for life. Now the PC's are left with the responsibility of a whole community of people, and the clock is ticking...

Past, Present, Future: The characters are again called to service as "strange things" start appearing at random around the city. This is essentally the Shadowchasers campaign with a twist: The city happens to exist in a bizarre area of space-time that causes things from the past and future to appear or replace the present day items. In effect, the area exists in three distinct time periods/planes, and the boundary that keeps them apart is losing strength. As such, the PC's will be whisked away to past/future/alternate Earths to try and prevent the boundary form complete collapse.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

1. Freedom Fighters: Many cyberpunk/near future campaigns assume that the government has become a fascist dictatorship. In this campaign model PCs would be fighting against the government to restore freedom. This has an advantage of offering a lot of direct action and a relatively easy way to come up with plots. However, the disadvantage is that it is relatively clichéd, and has the potential to become another "shoot 'em all up" style of game.

Well, maybe you want the PCs to be "memetic warfare specialists" - people who don't shoot up the enemy, but try to convince the general public that their side is right and should be supported. Just shooting up regime supporters won't help, and maybe even make them into martyrs, but smart and well-executed plans that not only humiliate the regime but also cannot be suppressed are much more effective...

See Transhuman Space and (especially) its supplement Toxic Memes by Steve Jackson Games for details. It's not d20, but should be easy enough to convert.

2. Dark Conspiracy: There is some type of conspiracy led by a powerful secret society. The PCs stumble across it and now have to fight against the secret cabal before they can unleash their plan, whatever it may be. (For an example of this type of plot, see Tad Williams' Otherland series.)

For this, I recommend Delta Green (currently not in print, but a d20 dual-stat version should be released this summer) and Delta Green: Countdown. They are contemporary, but it's hard to find a better treatment of the Dark Conspiracy genre for RPGs.

3. Supernatural Horror: Think d20 Modern's Shadowchasers campaign set in the near future. The PCs are the last line of defense against some type of supernatural menace. They work for some secret agency (whether private or government funded) to fight against the threat while the majority of the world remains unaware. This could allow me to integrate psionics and other FX abilities, but it has the potential to become another "monster of the week" campaign.

For this, again Delta Green is recommended, as well as GURPS Cthulhupunk, which provides lots of ideas for mixing the two genres...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Since I can't get my players to play anything but straight D&D (BASTARDS!)...I'll share some stuff from my own stillborn modern fantasy campaign.

(BTW: If you can, read Clive Barker's Imagica, and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and American Gods. You'll get plenty of ideas.)

1) The war between good and evil (as in Angels vs Devils fighting over Heaven and Humanity) is still ongoing. "Gods" are just Angels who have become delusional. Mortals sometimes get recruited to fight in the war- somebody has recruited the PCs...

2) All those great artifacts you read about (Excalibur, The Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, etc.) exist. However, they have been hidden by powerful illusions to prevent them from being found and used as ____________________. (Ever see the Doctor Who episodes where he's looking for some disguised rod or whatever? Or Friday the 13th the Series? Same idea.) In my campaign, the Holy Grail had become the Stanley Cup, Excalibur was a letter opener in the British Armory, and the Spear of Destiny was the lightning rod on top of the Empire State Building. Acquisition and control of these artifacts is a primary goal of the campaign

3) Magic is not generally believed by the populace at large, and the reason is that Earth (and this entire Prime Material Plane) has become seperated from the greater cosmos. It is essentially a battleground, depleted of most of its magic. Getting this PMP rejoined to the rest of the cosmos is a primary goal of the campaign (yes, this is based in part on Imagica). There are portals to the rest of the cosmos: Stonehenge, Machu Piichu, certain tapestries and films...

 

[James Heard]

Since you're going cyberpunk without the "punk" dark parts I think I'd focus on them. I mean, highlight the dark, gritty industrialism by running an eco-warrior sort of game. Trees or die. I'd probably make the "sinister" secret society the players, who are after all terrorists acting against the monolithic monstrosity of progress in a way. The important thing would be in forever reinforcing the "peaceful" nature of the hippie terrorists compared to the oppressiveness of outside society. If you turned it to a mystic bent and your players are already comfortable with the WoD games I might even turn nature into a sort Druids Fight Back! campaign owing a lot to Werewolf. The main problem would be in keeping the tone of the game far away from Captain Planet and deep in Swamp Thing Meets Neuromancer I think.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Another campaign idea:

Honest law abiding citizens.

Put the PCs in an (honest!) government unit. Run them up against greedy corps and the evil cults that control them. i.e. proper scum. Should push the PCs in the direction of playing nice. Gives them a set of laws they might be able to bend, but can't fracture too far.

If they're used to playing Runners, then being part of a government organisation could make for a refreshing change. Has the bonus of working with any of those other setup ideas!

Ideal choice would be a relatively covert unit of the FBI. Must maintain secrecy, so they can't call in the national guard at the drop of a hat!

I think a Hellboy take on this sort of campaign could be fun. Freaky monsters fighting evil freaky monsters.


[2 cents]
I've seen what you're talking about happen with a lot of near future style games. Tends towards an amoral mercenary feel. Think the way sessions/rewards are constructed is the general cause of that. If you want a more 'feel good' type of game, incentivise the PCs!

For Shadowrun, an old GM friend of mine used to offer plenty of straight up cash or karma situations. You could do the 'wrong' thing and get the cash or the 'right' thing and get the karma (and feel good about your character!). Worked well for us and tended to steer us towards nicer play.

Don't know if it's a regular feature of your game, but the one that used to burn us out was double crossing employers. They all used to betray us. I'd make the bulk of the employers honest, have the plot complications come from other sources - 3rd parties, the bad guys and so on. IME, Trust no one does not make players drive towards a higher purpose...

YMMV
[/2 cents]

 

[shadow]

Friendly *Bump*

 

[VirgilCaine]

1. Freedom Fighters: Many cyberpunk/near future campaigns assume that the government has become a fascist dictatorship. In this campaign model PCs would be fighting against the government to restore freedom. This has an advantage of offering a lot of direct action and a relatively easy way to come up with plots. However, the disadvantage is that it is relatively clichéd, and has the potential to become another "shoot 'em all up" style of game.

Well, maybe you want the PCs to be "memetic warfare specialists" - people who don't shoot up the enemy, but try to convince the general public that their side is right and should be supported. Just shooting up regime supporters won't help, and maybe even make them into martyrs, but smart and well-executed plans that not only humiliate the regime but also cannot be suppressed are much more effective...

Remember that part in the DMG about evil republics being really bad? Use that in the near future.