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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1041543" data-attributes="member: 3649">From the <a href="http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/alt.cyberpunk_faq.html" target="_blank">alt.cyberpunk FAQ</a> Cyberpunk literature, in general, deals with marginalized people in technologically-enhanced cultural "systems". In Cyberpunk stories' settings, there is usually a "system" which dominates the lives of most "ordinary" people, be it an oppressive government, a group of large, paternalistic corporations or a fundamentalist religion. .... However, in any cultural system, there are always those who live on its margins, on "the Edge": criminals, outcasts, visionaries or those who simply want freedom for its own sake. Cyberpunk literature focuses on these people, and often on how they turn the system's technological tools to their own ends. This is the "punk" aspect of Cyberpunk....There is often a sense of moral ambiguity; simply fighting "the system" (to topple it, or just to stay alive) does not make the main characters "heroes" or "good" in the traditional sense. Far from being a banal appeal to 'kewlness' (though certainly many recent aspects of the WoD systems can be characterized in this manner) the 'punk' aspect of these systems is as it says above. The irony of this having been reduced to a buzzword - by which I mean a word used to promote a product where said product contains little or no actual relation to said word - is rich <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Or, perhaps not. Many times the word is being used to describe the style rather than the substance, which does indeed fit right in <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The punk aspect of the WoD titles, for instance, comes from the overarching theme of each game: the young and powerless must shake off the bonds of the old ways of thinking and take the reins of power from the Old Order - be that the Primogen, the Sept Alpha, whatever - if they are to survive at all. If they don't, then Hell (Gehenna, the Apocalypse, etc) awaits them. I see the same things in ShadowRun (any disavowal on their part to the title 'cyberpunk' must come from, IMO, a desire to distance themselves from a term that has been overused and thus cast in a bad light). Certainly you can have a 9-5 job and 'do well' for yourself, but you're really just putting more money into the palms of UCAS (or whoever runs things now) instead of ditching the hopelessly corrupt system and making your own way.D&D could certainly be cast in a light of 'dungeonpunk' <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> from the part of the definition that focuses on outsiders. What 'class' is more outside the mainstream than these nuts that willingly go into monster-haunted wildernesses? Also see the statements about moral ambiguity.</blockquote>

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