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[color=lightgray][center][sub][b][h3]F A S T  F A C T S[/h3][/b][/sub][/center]
[center][sub]▲ Cyberpunk setting
▲ Action, adventure, drama, romance, and mystery.
▲ Androids, robots, cybernetic augmentation, repressive governments, drugs, and the unrelenting youth.
▲ Story shaped by the players. World-building encouraged.
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[sub][color=darkgray] P I T C H [/color][/sub]
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[sub][i]Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Richard M. Nixon[/i][/sub]

The year is 2066 and the world has changed. As humanity marches ever forward into the 21[sup]st[/sup] century, the thin line between man and machine has been inexorably blurred as humans continue to rely on the enhancements of cybernetics and robots are continually upgrade to become more and more life like. This web of connectivity grows vaster by the day as common day occurrences like the internet have become even more engrossing do to advances in neurological and virtual reality technologies, that have made the dreams of "cyberspace" closer to reality. Humanity seems to have arrived at a golden age of innovation and advancements as new tech is released everyday making the augmentation outdated within weeks, but social tensions continue to bubble beneath the shining exterior.

Following the burst of the American asset price bubble in the mid 2030s and the subsequent depression whose ripples felt as far from Topeka to Shanghai, humanity was left in something of a slump. Governments failed to reign in control as entire towns and cities fell into total anarchy. To combat such chaos many governments were forced to pass acts which allowed prosperous companies primarily large PMCs to reign the populace back into control - such as the Private Intervention Act of 2035 in the United States. When the chaos finally subsided these companies manged to retain much of their power and today they made no attempts to hide their "security forces". Most national governments have either collapsed or stayed as shadows of their former selves puppets used by the corporations to pass laws and judgement in their favor. As a result nearly thirty percent of people under the age of sixteen are unemployed and over a quarter of the world's population are considered homeless vagrants as urban sprawl has slowly consumed the land and destroyed peoples homes.

These corporations, these faceless entities moving in the shadows wage a quiet war against one another and it is not uncommon for everyday citizens to be caught in the crossfire of two different enforcer groups. Rebellions and protest are crushed as quickly as they are formed, the instigators vanishing into black bags slick with rain never to be seen again. But even these revolts few and far between don't cause many waves if any. The people have become complacent to what is now everyday life for them. You wake up in your corporation paid for apartment in your crappy tenement housing, you go to your corporation paid for job where you worked like a drone for most of the day and face the ever constant danger of being fired if you move two seconds too slow with that filing report, and then you come home to watch your television who constantly remained you whose in charge. And they don't question a thing because how could they?

But this world like any has a darker undercurrent. Those forgotten by the corporate society above. Deep in the ghettos and the back alleyways, a different world can be seen. Here is a land that no even the CEOs and officials don't dare to enter without armed escorts and vans with ten inch thick windows. Those homeless and without work scavenge for what little they could to survive. Most fell into one of the many street gangs that roamed the back alleys and stalked the roads on cyber cycles. Holding strong control on many more illicit dealings such as drugs, prostitution and, black market dealings. But even they are still subject to the wills of the powerful as many have become little more than puppets for the bigger corporations to deal with threats and monopolize on illegal trade. And it is not uncommon for some of the bigger corporations to have multiple gang leaders on their payroll.

This is where you come in. You aren't some corp with a three piece suit and a fancy open floor office space. You aren't the rough and tumbled mercs working with a 'Conflict Resolution Firm' taking on whatever dirty job as long as the pay is good. You are the slumrats, the unemployed, the junkies, and the vagabonds. Those that picked up the new brain augmentations because the memory recorders beat any drug high out there. You are the kid that went to film school only to end up as a garbage man. You are the rioters wanting jobs and a government that isn't just a puppet. The slums are you home and its people your family. You live by on what meager living you managing to squeeze out. 

You and your friends have their world turned upside down when you managed to salvage a box of prototype neruo-chips from a car wreck on the outskirts of the slums. Chips that happened to be very valuable to very powerful people. Soon Corporations, PMCs and gangbangers alike are all trying to kill you for one reason or another. 

Sound like fun yet?
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[sub][color=darkgray] O O C  I N F O [/color][/sub]
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And we are back.

Hello and Welcome to Fear and Loading, a world soaked in rain, drenched in neon and corporate haunted. In lieu of events happening in the world, I've been craving some good old Cyberpunk and so here we go. It's very much rooted in the heart of science fiction movies such as Blade Runner and Strange Days. The works of men like William Gibson and games like the original Syndicate and Deus Ex. It's a story decidedly not about 'heroes', 'hardened mercenaries' or 'possibly android robot detectives'. It's a story about the script kiddies, the vagabonds and the disillusioned. It's a love letter to adolescent rebellion and the feelings of uncertainty that go along with that. 

The Earth of 2066 is close enough to our own as to not feel too alien but distant enough to keep you guessing. A world with its own pop cultural icons, slang, drugs, media and history to make it feel believable. Yet at the same time much of this background has been intentionally left as vague snippets. Allowing players to add to the lore as little or as much as they please.

The story itself will go at a slower pace focusing more upon character interaction and development in the interest of creating good scenes and interactions between players rather than rushing forward from action set piece to action set piece. The focus always being on telling a good story. It's a tale about stupid kids, friendship, corporate plots, the infringement of basic human rights, and how far you'll go to uphold your ideals.[/indent][/color]

[sub][color=darkgray] D A T A B A S E [/color][/sub]
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[indent][center][i]General world-building stuff for your reading pleasure. More will be added as we go on.[/i][/center]
[Hider=Technology]
Technology in the world of 2066 is omnipresent. Without tech you get left behind in the dust, you yourself became outdated. Technology is everywhere from the self driving cars, virtual reality programs, rail guns  and the rich being able to make genetically perfect babies through modifications and gene splicing prior to birth. But the most prominent of the new technologies are of course cybernetic augmentations. These augmentations were supplement by the boom in the robotics and biomedical fileds in the late 2010s and early 2020s. As robots became more lifelike and able to perform more complex tasks so did our own cyber limbs. But most people aren't big old walking destruction machines. Today's cyborgs are stylish and sleek. Cybernetics are designed to be streamlined for that high mover lifestyle. Whither it is a simple neurochip to make you better at judging stocks or cataloging files or hydraulic piston in your legs so that you can crush a man's chest with one kick. The man of today is defined by high tech living.

Cyberware and augmentations are in style it is what everybody does these days. For those that can afford it you will probably have at least a couple of enchantments to give you that edge. Maybe your eyes are the new EYE-SEEU model with the digital display and tainted crisis (neon blue is in this year). Everybody's got something because if you got nothing than you don't got any edge over the other guy. Some keep em internal with neruochips and responders built into the body hidden beneath flesh, but some go all out and start chopping limbs off to go forge to get the newest arm model. It's addicting, it's exciting  and it's all the rage.

But it is here that people begin to run amuck of chances of becoming a so called "C-Freak". Basically since these augmentations link up directly to the brain eventually the brain becomes overloaded with stimuli and information and you snap and become a ravenous psychotic murder. The only way to combat the unset symptoms of becoming a C-Freak is to take a drug called Neurotop. Problem is Neurotop besides being highly addictive it is also very pricey to produce. Meaning that Corps are usually the ones that have possession of the drug to keep their armies of cybered up robocops from snapping and murdering them instead of the other guy. Neurotop can be found on the streets very rarely where it is marked up at about 1000x the market price and when the drug already costs a small relative fortune, meaning that unless you try and rob a Neurotop facility (which would be highly suicidal, since they have some of the best security in the world and even if you do make it out they will hunt you down and find you) most of the common day man has to continually play the game of will this next aug be the one that makes me snap?
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[hider=Bots and Droids]
Robots are pretty much common place these days. They pack crates, guard factories, cook your food, and clean your streets. Coming in a variety of shapes and sizes with 'dumb AI' being fitted into most of them allowing for semi-autonomous movement and control able to most basic tasks without any direct human oversight. Generally like the rest of the world the higher up in the food chain are the more shiny the robots are. Not that the slums aren't free of the creatures of course. In actuality there are probably more of them but where in the high rings of society they are streamlined models in the slums they are Frankenstein creations made of various contrasting parts merged together to keep them just running for another day. 

Then you have the Androids. Where in general robots have become something of a common place, the idea of Androids still raises some level of controversy. The idea is simple enough it looks like a human, acts like a human, thanks to some new synthetic coverings even feels like a human but the thing is it aint' a human. It's a mesh of machinery which happens to contain a very smart computer that can replicate sentience with freighting accuracy. Generally they serve functions that most people wouldn't want to do. Falling nuclear reactor? Send in the androids. Bomb disposable? Send in the androids. Live weapons testing? Well you get the point at this point. This has raised some level of concern among certain activist groups who petition for greater android rights while talking about big ideas such as digital souls and the like. Right now though? There property not much else.
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[hider=Drugs Drugs Drugs]
You got uppers, downers, screamers of every variety under the rainbow. The biggest and newest craze hitting the world comes from Virtual Stimulation. Originally designed for rehabilitation and therapy purposes it wasn't long until some smart idiots at some university saw potential for something else. Using VS they record user experience everything from getting shot, running a marathon, to getting the best head of your life, hell even death if your into that shit and allow a user to experience all the sensations that the record user was able to. According to users it beats out any drug on the market. As a result the VS market is booming from every sector rich to low.
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[hider= Weapons]
On the surface weapon use is highly regulated by the Corporations. With most firearms, combat augmentations and advanced bladed weaponry being unable to be bought without the proper license. In reality its as easy as going to the corner store and asking for the special stock. A good Rigger and hacker have the ID locks on most weapons broken in minuets for the right price of course. Most people carry at least something to defend themselves as the world isn't generally that nice of a place. And to those that can't afford the price of admission. Well a good old fashion pipe or bat never really goes out of style. 
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[Hider= The Belt]
The main setting of the story.

The Portland-Miami Metropolitan Belt or the Belt as most people call is something else. Stretching across the entire span of the Eastern Seaboard of the Continental United States unopposed Urban Sprawl had unified the many metropolises into one super city stretching down the coast. A continual sprawl of concerted and steel stretching for miles without end. The Belt was one of the first true mega-cities to come into existence outside of China after the Private Intervention Act and stands as one of the most influential a thriving hub of business and cultural fusion. Tech in the Belt is always on the cutting edge even if the prices are a little high. A mix of cultures and high and low life styles where authentic Chinese rearrests stand next to centuries old Irish pubs and a Russian chop shop. 
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[Hider=The LiveWyre]
The Wyre is known by many to be one of the worst dives in the Belt. Something that is frequenters take much pride in. Run by one Simon Dupuy, a former hotshot in the hacker scene who got burned by a security worm real bad nearly frying his brain in the process. Simon runs a 'don't make a scene and I don't have to shoot you policy' and as a result the Wyre is a haunt for all types looking to get away from the world for a little bit. The brew tastes like a cat pissed in some paint thinner but what do you care? It's cheap.
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