Cyberpunk and Traveller

[ottarrus]

So, I've been diving back into CyberPunk 2077 lately and a couple thoughts occur to me.

For different reasons, CP77 REALLY makes me thing of two worlds in Traveller: Strend and Ruie.
- You add a few TL's and the pervasive cyberware is a real dinger for Strend/Menorial. The slow and inevitable dehumanizing transition of Man the Tool-User into Man the Tool ought to strike home.
- Ruie, OTOH, it's all about living conditions and ambience. Ruie is the Canker on the Ass of Regina Subsector. A balkanized, argumentative world that is poisoning itself and beset by high population, widespread poverty, an inability to feed itself, and the manufactured-crisis-of-the-month with bad actors from both on- and off-world, Ruie reads like Night City feels, just without the cybernetics.

 

[CordwainerFish]

(I think I'm the only person who wishes computers in Trav were still like they were in the LBB era: big, clunky, expensive, and absolutely no cyberpunk allowed.)

 

[Jame Rowe]

I think that there is one on Drivethrurpg.com, by a third party publisher.

 

[ottarrus]

Check Cephus Engine on drivethrough for a more LBB style.

In my games, I distinguish between bionics [the replacement of damaged organic systems with mechanical substitutes] and cybernetics [the removal of perfectly functioning biological limbs, organs, etc. with mechanical substitutes]. Bionics are accepted in the Third Imperium and cybernetics are frowned upon, depending on homeworld. 'Full borgs' are quite possible at TL15, but in order to travel offworld, the 'borg must be registered with Imperial authorities. Lawful bionics do not include weaponry and top out at STR and DEX 12.
And yes, I include cyberpsychosis in my game.
It should be noted that the Third Imperium grants citizenship to all 'sentient sophonts' within Imperial borders, but a fully independent and operating AI has not yet been developed [the OTU timeline deals with this during the Rebellion in 1130]. FBCs would be wise to carry with them documentation that they are biological in origin or they may very well be treated as property.

Meet an Heroforge I did of an FBC, Props to Maks Smelciak for his name, Eneri Borg-9

 

[Vormaerin]

(I think I'm the only person who wishes computers in Trav were still like they were in the LBB era: big, clunky, expensive, and absolutely no cyberpunk allowed.)

Well, I don't need 1970s computers back, but anyone who thinks that cyberpunk/shadowrun style hacking works in my campaign is going to be disappointed. As far as cyberaugments, I don't really care either way. But they are significantly more expensive (as well as time consuming to acquire) than just buying the equivalent gear. I definitely don't do the shadowrun trope of everything implanted is better than its unimplanted equivalent.

 

[GypsyComet]

absolutely no cyberpunk allowed.

Ignoring the frequent themes in Amber Zones of striking back at the evil corporations, with more than a little Breaking & Entering.

 

[Vormaerin]

Ignoring the frequent themes in Amber Zones of striking back at the evil corporations, with more than a little Breaking & Entering.

Silly Comet, no one thinks of cyberpunk in terms of what it's actually thematically about! It only refers to the set dressing of chrome and hacking That "punk" is totally cosmetic.

 

[Otronatis]

anyone who thinks that cyberpunk/shadowrun style hacking works in my campaign is going to be disappointed

Thanks for that. I love Shadowrun, but as a developer, that part always makes my eyes roll. The proper timeframe for a targeted intrusion (by opposition to scanning random hosts on the network to find a weak one) is 1D months, with a very difficult check at least. It would even make sense to make it a luck roll (did somebody forgot to perform updates when you looked and there happen to be a recent vulnerability in a software they're using?). Of course, it's a bit different in Traveller because of possible TL differences.

 

[Condottiere]

Pay through the nose for an exclusive zero day exploit.

Or social engineering.

 

[GypsyComet]

Silly Comet, no one thinks of cyberpunk in terms of what it's actually thematically about! It only refers to the set dressing of chrome and hacking That "punk" is totally cosmetic.

Or the fact that the default game mode is awfully close to what Cyberpunk RPG does with the Nomad archetype, and feels like everyone is a Shadowrunner at times...

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, I think that's more that shadowrunners were created to try to make "cyberpunk" act like traditional RPGs, not because that's a behavior particularly common in the original literature. Most "cyberpunk" gaming is just dungeon crawling in office buildings with cybernetics replacing magic items.

 

[ottarrus]

The Cyberpunk genre isn't about the hardware or the Net. It's about the devaluation of humanity, it's about making a virtue out of greed, it's about hopelessness, hunger, and those brave enough to rebel against a system that offers no hope at all. It's about the transition from Man the Tool User to Man the Machine Tool.
The easy way to play a game in a cyberpunk setting is as Vormaerin puts it, 'a dungeon crawl through an office with cybernetics replacing magic items'. This is a trap that all too many cyberpunk game authors fall into, be those games tabletop or computer games. A real cyberpunk game, one true to the ethos of the setting, requires difficult moral choices and challenges to one's ethics. If it's played as William Gibson or Bruce Sterling intended it to, players should feel just a little bit guilty about the nasty crap they had to do to accomplish the mission.

 

[Sigtrygg]

What is needed for a cyberpunk game is a dystopian future where human life is worthless to the elites, just like the high population core worlds of the Third Imperium.

Large numbers of colonists were recruited and shipped in cold sleep (1) from the Imperial
core, with arrival times set from 1110 to 1120. .
An interesting aspect of such colonization projects is the recruitment method
used to supply the personnel who will actually make the colony function. Since
virtually no amount of money will entice an individual to leave his home and
livelihood for the bleak desolation of a colony world, (2) the Ministry of Colonization
has established several programs to produce colonists. Most obvious is the colonize
in lieu of prison term program. However, several other programs have also shown
signs of success. In the unemployment insurance program, high population worlds
have successfully used the colonization project as a means of reducing unemployment
over the long term. In a similar medical insurance program, indigents
unable to obtain medical treatment are provided with their needs in exchange for
signing on to a colony. The needs of a colony for skills are met through the
anagathics program; qualified (and aged) individuals can be provided with
anagathics to extend their life spans in return for their providing such skills as
administration, mechanical crafts, or medical expertise.(3)

1 - cold sleep kills people at the time this was written
2 - why does a TL15 society build bleak desolated colonies in the first place?
3 - and when no longer useful the anagathics can be taken away

I really don't think there is a single Traveller author who has looked into just how bleak and dystopian the lives of the masses within the Imperium are as suggested by early Third Imperium details.

 

[Vormaerin]

The Cyberpunk genre isn't about the hardware or the Net. It's about the devaluation of humanity, it's about making a virtue out of greed, it's about hopelessness, hunger, and those brave enough to rebel against a system that offers no hope at all. It's about the transition from Man the Tool User to Man the Machine Tool.
The easy way to play a game in a cyberpunk setting is as Vormaerin puts it, 'a dungeon crawl through an office with cybernetics replacing magic items'. This is a trap that all too many cyberpunk game authors fall into, be those games tabletop or computer games. A real cyberpunk game, one true to the ethos of the setting, requires difficult moral choices and challenges to one's ethics. If it's played as William Gibson or Bruce Sterling intended it to, players should feel just a little bit guilty about the nasty crap they had to do to accomplish the mission.

There are a few games that make an effort to focus on that aspect. The Veil is about personal identity and Hard Wired Island focuses on resistance and humanity. But most of the big titles don't. Shadowrun doesn't even try. I don't find Cyberpunk Red and its antecedents to really do so, either. That always strikes me more as "it's cool to be street" than anything else. They are still fun games, but they aren't really thematically in line with the literary genre of cyberpunk, imho. YMMV.

 

[ottarrus]

What is needed for a cyberpunk game is a dystopian future where human life is worthless to the elites, just like the high population core worlds of the Third Imperium.

1 - cold sleep kills people at the time this was written
2 - why does a TL15 society build bleak desolated colonies in the first place?
3 - and when no longer useful the anagathics can be taken away

I really don't think there is a single Traveller author who has looked into just how bleak and dystopian the lives of the masses within the Imperium are as suggested by early Third Imperium details.

Well, Sigg, the two planets I specifically mentioned [Ruie/Regina and Strend/Menorial] aren't in the Imperium, where there are some controls at least.
Ruie is balkanized and most nations refused the Imperium's offer of membership. For the Imperium's part, they feel like they dodged a very expensive bullet. The effort to correct the ills of society on Ruie are vastly more expensive than what Ruie can bring to the Imperium. It's not a strategic location and it's only a TL 7 marketplace, of which the 3-I has many.
Strend, however, is another ball of wax. This is a TL 15 world but very little of the populace enjoys the benefits. Strend was subjugated by a small fleet during the Long Night and the rulers [the officers of that fleet] maintains themselves using cybernetic augmentation. The world is described as a high population dystopian hellscape where the population is kept suppressed by several methods and small army of cybered up soldiers and operatives.

 

[ottarrus]

I really don't think there is a single Traveller author who has looked into just how bleak and dystopian the lives of the masses within the Imperium are as suggested by early Third Imperium details.

Agent of the Imperium deals with some of that in the stories of the underclass Vargr on Capital and Enna's story about her homeworld.
Obviously, the benefits most citizens get out of the Third Imperium largely depends on the conditions of the world they live on. Living on a High Tech High Pop world with a reasonable government and law level is gonna be WAY different than living on some uninhabitable rock whose only settlement is a corporate mining operation a'la Outland.
I think that overall by encouraging trade and the dispersion of technology the Third Imperium does a pretty good job for most of its citizens given the technological limitations of Jump Drive and so on. Are there awful worlds with crappy conditions, draconian governments, and little chance to improve one's circumstances in the 3-I? Yes, there absolutely are. But no interstellar government in the OTU can absolutely control the living conditions of all its citizens without some major suppressive or cohersive ability. The Vilani tried it with a rigid social struction that was too brittle to bend when needed. The Zhodani use psionics to the extent that most citizen's privacy, even of their own thoughts, is sacrificed for 'the greater good'. In the Consulate, you don't even have the right to be unhappy...

 

[Vormaerin]

I think his point is that the Imperium is dystopian and dehumanizing, even if its not cybernetic. The world generation system is designed to create places that make good adventures, not places that are good to live in. High pop worlds are mostly tyrannies. Lots and lots of worlds are harsh, unpleasant places with generally crappy governments. The Imperium basically doesn't care how awful the worlds are as long as they trade and don't use nukes.

Space travel has a horribly unsafe option (low berths) as standard. Life extension is only available to the elite. And plenty of other nastiness around. It would be easy to make the Imperium a dark dystopian society. Not over the top Warhammer dark, but not a place anyone would really want to live. And it wouldn't require changing anything except the tone of presentation of the same facts.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[ottarrus]

I think his point is that the Imperium is dystopian and dehumanizing, even if its not cybernetic. The world generation system is designed to create places that make good adventures, not places that are good to live in. High pop worlds are mostly tyrannies. Lots and lots of worlds are harsh, unpleasant places with generally crappy governments. The Imperium basically doesn't care how awful the worlds are as long as they trade and don't use nukes.

Space travel has a horribly unsafe option (low berths) as standard. Life extension is only available to the elite. And plenty of other nastiness around. It would be easy to make the Imperium a dark dystopian society. Not over the top Warhammer dark, but not a place anyone would really want to live. And it wouldn't require changing anything except the tone of presentation of the same facts.

The Traveller rules have never tried to portray the OTU as some post-scarcity fantasy like the Federation. Even at TL 15, you're gonna have poor people. You're going to have the less talented, the ill-educated, the bad attitudes that contribute to lower 25% of any society in any and every civilization. In the T4 main rulebook, there is a wonderful article called 'What Is Poverty At TL 12' [Marc Miller's Traveller Core Rules pg 64] and encourage anyone who has those rules to look it up. The main gist of it this: the living conditions of a poor person at TL 12 is similar too and at point superior to those of a millionaire at TL 7. But for whatever reason that person is still poor. And poverty sucks no matter what TL it's portrayed at. What's more, no society has ever stamped out poverty, corruption or bias. Our forefathers in the 1800's thought that society would progress to the point where poverty would be a thing of the past 'in a hundred years'.
But human nature is what it is. As tech levels increase, the definition of 'poverty' goes higher and machines will never solve all the problems that lead to poverty.
There will always be poor people. There will always be sick people. There will always be the disenfranchised and disaffected. No matter how much the cracks are closed, some people will slip through.

 

[Condottiere]

Civilizations thrive on energy.

If there are gatekeepers, resource allocation is going to be uneven.

The best example I ever read about the theme was:

The Diamond Age - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org