[Cyberpunk Stereotypes] Cultures and Trades

[Vulpinoid]

I've got a project in the works where players take on the role of a secretive manipulator in a cyberpunk setting. These secretive manipulators don't go out into the world for one reason or another (they might have severe allergies to the outside world, they might operative behind a veil of secrecy, they might be a disembodied AI).

Instead the players affect the world around them by calling on pawns, followers, mercenaries, cultists, etc. Each player controls a bunch of these, and should have a team who are capable of succeeding in a variety of cyberpunky tasks.

A pawn is defined by two custom designed cards...placed side by side to form a complete character template. The card on the left defines the culture to which they belong (who they grew up with, their genetic heritage, etc); the card on the right determines their occupation, trade or training.

Beyond this, a range of other cards provide quirks to personalise the templates and learn a bit more about these pawns as they become more significant in the context of the developing story. But the core of each character is the pair of cards.

What suggestions would people have for some appropriately cyberpunk cultures and some appropriately cyberpunk occupations? I have some ideas, but I'm throwing the question out there in case someone else has a great concept that makes me go..."YEAH! AWESOME. I've gotta include THAT!!"

V

[Andre Canivet]

Sounds similar to what I'm trying to do with Gangs of the Factory Zone--a background, a career, and a power template; with some added feats.  But to answer your question; if you're going for an old-school Cyberpunk setting, some cultures and professions off the top of my head are:

Culture -- corporate, Yakuza, street, orbital colony, religious community, wasteland nomad

Profession -- fixer, hacker, tech, face-man / manipulator (possibly journalist or executive), warrior / street samurai, pilot, cop / detective. thug / gang member...  all using varying degrees of cybernetics or other enhancements.

These are pretty standard, of course.  You could modernize the setting a bit by including cultures like "libertarian transhumanism" "bioconservatism" and that sort of thing.

One thing I've toyed with in Gangs (which is a sort of frontier / apocalyptic cyberpunk) is religiously motivated warrior types.  There are several different types of religions, each with their own types of warriors (and each of those has a different philosophy and set of common tactics).  I suppose it's sort of an oblique way of incorporating topical issues like terrorism in the game. 

If you want to get really wild--something you might look at for inspiration is a game called "Wasteworld."  I think you can find a review or two over at RPG.net.  It's a post-apocalyptic game; not strictly cyberpunk, but it features several city-states with widely different cultures.  They all use various means of augmentation, but they're different.  One city is modelled after Feudal Japan, with force-sword wielding samurai--who can be resurrected by the city computer if they please the Lords of Karma.  Then there's a city which uses weird biotechnology, living armour, and that sort of thing.  Another city flies above the world, and is filled with aristocratic men & women who fight using flying power armour.  Another city populated by off-world aliens and sentient robots, etc.

There's also the route 3rd edition Cyberpunk takes; which is about 6 basic groups...  I forget what they all are, but one lives in floating ocean colonies, another rolls across the wreckage of the US, a few more are standard city-state type things...

I'm just kind of rambling at this point, but maybe there's some ideas in here that you can use.

Cheers,

-A.

[Vulpinoid]

I've got an old copy of Cyberpunk 2020, so I'm familiar with the basic stereotypes, but using the update idea of including transhumanists and bioconservatives is good.

I'll expand a bit more about where I'm heading with this.

The left and right card templates will be advanced separately. Each with a branching tree of options (basic template may upgrade into one of two veteran templates...each intermediate template may branch into one of two master templates).

Eg.
Following a warrior-type progression...

A Street Thug (generic basic warrior) can become a Hitman (intermediate warrior focusing on Offense) or a Guard (intermediate warrior focusing on Defense).

A Hitman can be upgraded to a Sniper (advanced warrior focusing on ranged attacks) or a Shock-Trooper (advanced warrior focusing on close combat attacks).....(as I said, I'm still working on the names, and that's where I'm hoping some inspiration might come from someone who looks at the thread).

A Guard can be upgraded to a Sentinel (advanced warrior focusing on protecting a location) or a Bodyguard (advanced warrior focusing on protecting a person).

Similar occupational trees start with the concepts of a socialite, a gadget creator, a computer hacker, an investigator, etc.

Cultural trees also spread out in a similar fashion...starting with gang members (ascending to mafia, yakuza, triad, etc.), corporate types, religious fanatics, etc.

I'm running into a couple of immediate obstacles though; as an example, the core notion leaves me unsure whether to include law enforcement as a cultural parameter or an occupational one. If I leave it as occupational, then I can have dirty cops (with an organised crime culture linking to a law enforcement occupation), If I make it cultural, then I can have a wider variety of cops, including investigators, guards, traffic-cop drivers, etc.   

Still plenty of thought to go on this project.

[Brendan Day]

It might be useful to add a third card, representing the pawn's industry.  For example:

Occupation: guard, street
Industry: city police, district
Culture: organized crime

Occupation: guard, street
Industry: private household, gated community
Culture: organized crime

The first character is a beat cop in the pay of the local gangs, while the second is a security guard stationed outside a crime lord's mansion.  They have the same occupation and culture, but they move in very different circles.

Occupation: guard, street
Industry: sales, illegal drugs
Culture: lower class

The third character is a shooter in a street gang, but has no connections to the wider culture of organized crime.

[Vulpinoid]

That's a nice idea and definitely worth considering.

An industry is probably something I'll be incorporating into the quirk cards that I mentioned (these allow a basic two-card template to be personalised a bit).

I'm actually thinking of making the templates a bit more organic in their progressions.

My original concept was to specifically have a cluster of template halves each focused on a specific aspect of society. With one basic, upgrading into 2 veteran and then upward to 4 master templates. I've been finding a few of the clusters have gotten a bit too constrained, some look like they should offer more diversity (different types of street warriors), while I'm having trouble expanding out the possibilities to fill out the master level tier on other clusters.

I'm at a crossroads.

[Andre Canivet]

It sounds like you've got a really interesting foundation going, Vulpinoid.  If I might offer one suggestion--the name "death dealer" or something of that nature might be an interesting substitute for "shock trooper."  When I hear shock trooper, I picture Roman legionnaires or Nazi foot soldiers--members of an organized and probably totalitarian military force, as opposed to something that evolved from a hitman.  Anyway, it's an idea.  The rest of the names sound good.

With Gangs, I was thinking of calling techie type characters "Gearheads"--that might also work for one of your gadgeteer levels.  "Net Dancer" for mid to high level hacker, "flat-foot" for basic investigator, "made man" for your mid level or advanced criminal cultural trait, or something like that.  I find when I'm trying to name things, I usually head over to Thesaurus.com or Wikisaurus, or plug the word into search engines and translating dictionaries, and that sort of thing.  I have yet to find a really good slang dictionary or thesaurus (then again, haven't really needed to), but something like that might help.  It might take a while, but I usually come up with something that seems to sound cool.

I'm curious why the cultural parameter would allow for a wider variety of cops--couldn't you just add more basic professions?  Brendan's suggestion of adding an industry may work as well, although that may complicate things, too. 

Also--it's understandable to want all the trees to have the same number of branches, but do they have to?  What would be the disadvantage of having more warrior types than, say, socialite types?  It means the socialites would be more general while the warriors would be more narrow, but...  well, I guess it all depends on where the pawn interactions are going to be focused.  Is combat more or less important than social interaction, police investigation, or computer hacking?

Anyway, the concept sounds really cool.  If it's just the naming that's holding you back, complete the trees anyway with generic names ("advanced defensive warrior"--unless you already have done this), and come back to the naming later.  I find that sort of stuff kind of comes to me at odd times; usually when I'm not thinking about the game I'm working on.  I always keep a pen and paper handy for such occasions.

-A.