Ah that's right. k Babbysama maybe just choose one of the ones that's not biotech.
And you know what? I've been trying to cobble together a writeup here and I don't really think I'm going to require it any more. If you still want to use one, I'll take it, but it just seems difficult to me to include any significant amount of detail about the character within a short prose piece without things coming out kind of stilted. If you're putting up a character sheet I wanna see at least these things:
Name/Age/Appearance
Background(Doesn't have to be huge, but should at least cover how the character ended up in the city, how they ended up doing whatever they're doing, and maybe stuff about their life before.)
Personality(I'd prefer it if this contained at least one dimension :P)
Skills/abilities/augmentations(probably the most advanced you should to be here is a full cyborg, but equipped for espionage or something. No unstoppable killing machines. Obviously combat implants are fine, but they're extremely expensive and there should be some reason for your having them.)
Current state-of-affairs(Basically how they're doing in life, what they're currently doing, their living situation, et cetera. Useful for trying to tie all the characters together with a plot hook)
Relationships/allegiances/rivalries(Try to come up with a few characters your character would be associated with in some way and describe them briefly. What they do, where they live, general stuff.)
Feel free to add whatever you like to that, but I'd like to see info about all of those areas, at least.
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...I like the way you think. Any of those is fine.
aight b.
Yeahhhh I'll probably get mine up pretty soon, so you guys actually have some idea of where to go here.
Yeahhhh I'll probably get mine up pretty soon, so you guys actually have some idea of where to go here.
OOC for this.
The city.
It's not exactly known when the cities along the northern coast of the Gulf of Thailand merged into the single continuous sprawl of wet concrete and searing neon they are today, but the event itself is undeniable. From Bangkok to Phnom Pehn, city. Stands of spindly skyscrapers with the lumpy gray of the slums groveling at their feet. Waterways perpetually clogged with unmanned supply barges. Crime is rampant and largely ignored where it isn't brutally punished. Capitalism is the order of the day, much of the voracious expansion of the city fueled by the ambition of immense conglomerates worth trillions of baht. And of course, with capitalism comes the massive class divide: executives and investors and entrepreneurs holed up in their shining arcologies while the working people below scrabble to eat, indentured and usually practically enslaved to the companies that employ them, usually drawn from somewhere else with the promise of good work, a better life. They're trapped here, in the biggest city on the planet, in what should be a shining beacon of opportunity. It doesn't have to be just so. But, humans are humans, of course, and so it is.
Who are you? Are you a disgruntled laborer, finally fed up with the torturous state of affairs in your place of work and ready to strike? Are you a criminal? A killer-for-hire? A simple, petty, timeless thief, be it of memes or gold or drugs? Or are you something else entirely?
K there's the pretentious exposition pitch thing taken care of. Uhh yeah everything determined in the interest check still applies as far as setting goes. Augmentations exist, the government is basically a figurehead and is controlled by megacorps because duh it's cyberpunk, there's a """""cyberspace"""""-type thing that's used for recreation and also houses runaway AIs that deal in information services. Space travel is expensive but can be done dangerously and slightly cheaper via unlicensed services. The culture is cosmopolitan as hell and just about everyone's mixed-race and from somewhere else.
I won't ask you to make a character sheet. I want you to make a pretty descriptive write-up, though. Nothing ridiculously complex; just give your character some dimensions. Background, motivations, personality, in addition to standard superficial stuff like appearance. Note that it'll also serve as an impromptu test of your writing ability.
I suppose we can work out some type of plot hook once we have everyone's character, something that'll neatly include everyone.
Oh and I'm not making a formal minimum on post length. Sometimes there just isn't much to type without resorting to filler, and I don't want to create an environment where that feels like a necessity. Just try, please.
The city.
It's not exactly known when the cities along the northern coast of the Gulf of Thailand merged into the single continuous sprawl of wet concrete and searing neon they are today, but the event itself is undeniable. From Bangkok to Phnom Pehn, city. Stands of spindly skyscrapers with the lumpy gray of the slums groveling at their feet. Waterways perpetually clogged with unmanned supply barges. Crime is rampant and largely ignored where it isn't brutally punished. Capitalism is the order of the day, much of the voracious expansion of the city fueled by the ambition of immense conglomerates worth trillions of baht. And of course, with capitalism comes the massive class divide: executives and investors and entrepreneurs holed up in their shining arcologies while the working people below scrabble to eat, indentured and usually practically enslaved to the companies that employ them, usually drawn from somewhere else with the promise of good work, a better life. They're trapped here, in the biggest city on the planet, in what should be a shining beacon of opportunity. It doesn't have to be just so. But, humans are humans, of course, and so it is.
Who are you? Are you a disgruntled laborer, finally fed up with the torturous state of affairs in your place of work and ready to strike? Are you a criminal? A killer-for-hire? A simple, petty, timeless thief, be it of memes or gold or drugs? Or are you something else entirely?
K there's the pretentious exposition pitch thing taken care of. Uhh yeah everything determined in the interest check still applies as far as setting goes. Augmentations exist, the government is basically a figurehead and is controlled by megacorps because duh it's cyberpunk, there's a """""cyberspace"""""-type thing that's used for recreation and also houses runaway AIs that deal in information services. Space travel is expensive but can be done dangerously and slightly cheaper via unlicensed services. The culture is cosmopolitan as hell and just about everyone's mixed-race and from somewhere else.
I won't ask you to make a character sheet. I want you to make a pretty descriptive write-up, though. Nothing ridiculously complex; just give your character some dimensions. Background, motivations, personality, in addition to standard superficial stuff like appearance. Note that it'll also serve as an impromptu test of your writing ability.
I suppose we can work out some type of plot hook once we have everyone's character, something that'll neatly include everyone.
Oh and I'm not making a formal minimum on post length. Sometimes there just isn't much to type without resorting to filler, and I don't want to create an environment where that feels like a necessity. Just try, please.
YES HELLO I'M BACK MIDTERMS ARE OVER
Sorry about disappearing like that. If you guys are still interested put a post up and we'll keep this going.
I was actually thinking that power would be farmed out to the rural areas dominated by solar farms, which I think i mentioned awhile back, though that's me just trying to satisfy a desire for realism. Though there certainly would still be pollution, considering how ubiquitous computing equipment has become and how many environmentally-harmful chemicals go into manufacturing that. Vehicles would probably run on hydrogen cells.
Propaganda yes. Work conditions also yes. uhhh
yeah
Sorry about disappearing like that. If you guys are still interested put a post up and we'll keep this going.
whoever said this said Have you given thought to the typical method of power in this future? Fossil fuels would add a layer of grittiness and realism I guess, but maybe we've managed to find a new but equally harmful form of energy, just in a different way? Something with a higher power yield the Government is citing as clean and revolutionary, but we see the physical consequences in the slums? If it's a consumable energy source then presumably it must have some kind of waste, maybe scattered throughout the slums are highly toxic dumping grounds for this stuff? You could see the effects on the extremely disadvantaged citizens (disease, corruption of water sources, even crippling/deforming mutations), maybe robbing them of the jobs they rely on to eat? It might be a bit too videogamey, I'm not sure.
I quite like the idea of mega-propaganda, also. Maybe something about dehumanising the proletariat, making the middle-class and comfortable actively resent them? Spun news stories, manipulation of pop-culture, etc. I agree with RoadRash about it being a corporate government, it's always a decent idea when forming a dystopia. An interesting way to portray the exploitation of the masses might be incredibly restricting working contracts, to the point of them being paid slavery? Their families get fed and they're paid SOMETHING, but it's back-breaking labour that severely restricts their human rights. An alternate way to portray this could be like the Finkton system in Bioshock Infinite, in which the poor have to bid for their jobs, bidding against each other by increasingly lowering their proposed salary. Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe maybe.
I was actually thinking that power would be farmed out to the rural areas dominated by solar farms, which I think i mentioned awhile back, though that's me just trying to satisfy a desire for realism. Though there certainly would still be pollution, considering how ubiquitous computing equipment has become and how many environmentally-harmful chemicals go into manufacturing that. Vehicles would probably run on hydrogen cells.
Propaganda yes. Work conditions also yes. uhhh
yeah
The characters don't have to be native at all. It's very much a melting pot culture.
STICK AROUND ROADRASH WE'RE GOIN PLACES
Yes I think an actual government that just happens to be completely under corporate rule makes more sense.
And I do like the space travel idea. Rickety cast-off Chinese spaceplanes are very much this aesthetic, I think.
...I'll probably return to this post later with more ideas.
Yes I think an actual government that just happens to be completely under corporate rule makes more sense.
And I do like the space travel idea. Rickety cast-off Chinese spaceplanes are very much this aesthetic, I think.
...I'll probably return to this post later with more ideas.
Hmhmhmhm. I do like the sound of most of those, except for the people farms. I was thinking that the slums would be populated with more of a cosmopolitan immigrant culture, lots of ethnic tension, mostly people taken from developing nations with the promise of good, well-paying work that is actually neither of those things. Basically this situation.
Biotech: yes, but what kind of augmentations are we talking? I'm thinking basic physical ones for construction work(reinforced bones, synthetic muscle for climbing 2-mile-high skyscrapers, et cetera), maybe shady retractable guns and blades for criminals, and Google glass-type HUDs, usually implanted into the retina, for most people. Personal computing could be done through neural interface if you've got a little bit of cash, but if you don't it's still ridiculously cheap to get a little business-card-sized computer and a contact lens display/retina implant.
Matrix: I think there's a lot of potential to this idea aside from just VR. I think it could serve as a habitat for artificial intelligences leaked from finance firm databases and the like, and kind of have a weird economic/information ecosystem of its own, one based more on data than money or material goods. A rogue AI that previously worked with law enforcement might hack someone's neural implant for you and make them lose all motor control long enough to fall down a flight of stairs, for the right info in return.
Automation sounds good as well, and I like the idea of the slums being kind of a relatively lower-tech unsupervised jungle of sorts.
Other things...
Whatever country this is is basically ruled by an oligarchy of corporations at this point, in classic cyberpunk fashion. Maybe they're private companies that somehow emulate the functions of a normal government? A private prison system, private security forces, privately owned transit companies; you get the idea. Point is that the actual government is just a figurehead. Maybe it's a shell company.
What country is this? Maybe it's an agglomeration of Southeast Asian states.
Okay, maybe just southern Thailand and then all of Cambodia. There was a war. Thailand got split up and then the southern half annexed Cambodia somehow. ...We can discuss this. So maybe we've got big coastal cities that all kind of sprawl together into a big smoggy mess, with some countryside up north that's mostly dominated by wind and solar farms, as well as some more reasonably-sized cities and quaint little villages. That's not really what's important here. The big industry's at the coast.
What's the state of space travel? Could the characters end up in space if they so desired? In ~2070 I imagine there'll be a moon base of some kind, if not a colony. Maybe there are some good-sized residential space stations. Space travel's still a bit of a big luxury, probably roughly equivalent to flying around the world first-class today.
Yes? No? Maybe?
Biotech: yes, but what kind of augmentations are we talking? I'm thinking basic physical ones for construction work(reinforced bones, synthetic muscle for climbing 2-mile-high skyscrapers, et cetera), maybe shady retractable guns and blades for criminals, and Google glass-type HUDs, usually implanted into the retina, for most people. Personal computing could be done through neural interface if you've got a little bit of cash, but if you don't it's still ridiculously cheap to get a little business-card-sized computer and a contact lens display/retina implant.
Matrix: I think there's a lot of potential to this idea aside from just VR. I think it could serve as a habitat for artificial intelligences leaked from finance firm databases and the like, and kind of have a weird economic/information ecosystem of its own, one based more on data than money or material goods. A rogue AI that previously worked with law enforcement might hack someone's neural implant for you and make them lose all motor control long enough to fall down a flight of stairs, for the right info in return.
Automation sounds good as well, and I like the idea of the slums being kind of a relatively lower-tech unsupervised jungle of sorts.
Other things...
Whatever country this is is basically ruled by an oligarchy of corporations at this point, in classic cyberpunk fashion. Maybe they're private companies that somehow emulate the functions of a normal government? A private prison system, private security forces, privately owned transit companies; you get the idea. Point is that the actual government is just a figurehead. Maybe it's a shell company.
What country is this? Maybe it's an agglomeration of Southeast Asian states.
Okay, maybe just southern Thailand and then all of Cambodia. There was a war. Thailand got split up and then the southern half annexed Cambodia somehow. ...We can discuss this. So maybe we've got big coastal cities that all kind of sprawl together into a big smoggy mess, with some countryside up north that's mostly dominated by wind and solar farms, as well as some more reasonably-sized cities and quaint little villages. That's not really what's important here. The big industry's at the coast.
What's the state of space travel? Could the characters end up in space if they so desired? In ~2070 I imagine there'll be a moon base of some kind, if not a colony. Maybe there are some good-sized residential space stations. Space travel's still a bit of a big luxury, probably roughly equivalent to flying around the world first-class today.
Yes? No? Maybe?
Now, this is less of an interest check in the conventional sense, and more of an invitation to help me build this setting into something that a plot hook for an RP could conceivably be pulled from. I guess by replying it's implied that you're interested to some degree. K it's still an interest check whatever. Main point is that this is undeveloped and I want to workshop it with some people.
I'm thinking something a few decades into the future in Southeast Asia, or India, somewhere in that area. Basically countries that are developing now and would theoretically have advanced a great deal in infrastructure and general tech by, say, 2070. Now, if you've heard anything about the collateral social damage that comes from such rapid development in places like Dubai and Kuwait, namely an extreme division of wealth between those who administrate and partake in the new economy, and the menial workers who are mercilessly exploited in the name of such advancement, you'll understand the kind of situation I'm thinking of. In this RP, Malaysia or Thailand or someplace close has rapidly become a respectable economic player globally, but that's not exactly what's important. In this RP I'd like to focus on that culture of disadvantaged workers. That isn't to say that all the characters have to be construction workers or bellhops or something. It'll be a group of people with ties to this class of citizen, whether they actually are one or not.
Now, things in whatever slums this disadvantaged class live in are hard. Typical cyberpunk template; squalor and constant crime and violence surrounded by glittering skyscrapers. Leather jackets. Blades coming out of people's arms. Millions of pills with stupid names ending in "-stim". Okay, no. Probably more realism than that. But we can talk about it.
Now, as far as plot goes, I'm open to anything. Criminal caper to get enough cash or bitcoins or whatever to escape the slums, trying to survive in the wake of violent union riots, aliens, whatever. Let's just try to give it some plausibility in the setting we end up with.
I'm thinking something a few decades into the future in Southeast Asia, or India, somewhere in that area. Basically countries that are developing now and would theoretically have advanced a great deal in infrastructure and general tech by, say, 2070. Now, if you've heard anything about the collateral social damage that comes from such rapid development in places like Dubai and Kuwait, namely an extreme division of wealth between those who administrate and partake in the new economy, and the menial workers who are mercilessly exploited in the name of such advancement, you'll understand the kind of situation I'm thinking of. In this RP, Malaysia or Thailand or someplace close has rapidly become a respectable economic player globally, but that's not exactly what's important. In this RP I'd like to focus on that culture of disadvantaged workers. That isn't to say that all the characters have to be construction workers or bellhops or something. It'll be a group of people with ties to this class of citizen, whether they actually are one or not.
Now, things in whatever slums this disadvantaged class live in are hard. Typical cyberpunk template; squalor and constant crime and violence surrounded by glittering skyscrapers. Leather jackets. Blades coming out of people's arms. Millions of pills with stupid names ending in "-stim". Okay, no. Probably more realism than that. But we can talk about it.
Now, as far as plot goes, I'm open to anything. Criminal caper to get enough cash or bitcoins or whatever to escape the slums, trying to survive in the wake of violent union riots, aliens, whatever. Let's just try to give it some plausibility in the setting we end up with.
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