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Cyberpunk: Settings
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The basic rules system of Cyberpunk 2020 (called the Interlock System) is skill-based instead of level-based, with players being awarded points to be spent on their skill sets. New skills outside their expertise can be learned but in-game time needs to be spent on this. A large part of the system is the player characters' ability to augment themselves with cyber-technology and the ensuing loss of humanity as they become more machine than man.
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Cyberpunk's world is a sinister, dark place with networked computers that dominate every aspect of life. Giant multinational corporations have replaced governments as centres of power. The alienated outsider's battle against a totalitarian system is a common theme in science fiction; ... in conventional sci-fi those systems tended to be sterile, ordered, and state-controlled. Cyberpunk, in sharp contrast, shows the seamy underbelly of corporatocracy, and the Sisyphean battle against their power by disillusioned renegades.
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Cyberpunk has ... inspired several tabletop, miniature and board games. Most notably, the now defunct company - FASA - which produced Shadowrun. Games Workshop’s game Necromunda which is a branch of their Warhammer 40k line of games, is also worth noting. However there are several other examples, such as Dark Future and Etherscope, while Warmachine is a miniature game that incorporates some elements of steampunk. The game Battletech also incorporated industrial cyberpunk themes and elements. These games allow artists to not only work out new story lines for their cyberpunk universes but also to give their audiences a chance to design and designate groups of cyberpunk warriors.
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Cyberpunk fashion in the RPG world set forth by RTalsorian is a mix of street punk, 80's glam-rock style, and most importantly cybernetics. People replace their real eyes with designer bionic eyes, their real arms with robotic arms that have computers or guns built into them. Bodysculpting (extreme plastic surgery) is not unusual, some people even have themselves made over with exotic hair or skin tones, even animal features like tiger or zebra stripes. Attitude is everything. It's not how good you are, it's how good you look doing it.
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In a comparison of Cyberpunk- and Hippie-movement many differences can be seen. Cyberpunk " preferred the rave, with its hyperaccelerated remixed digital music, to simple acoustic folk songs; their drug of choice was Ecstasy, not pot. These were not New Age flower children looking for 'peace and love'; instead they were New Edge hiphoppers out for 'tech and cred.' Rather than having some kind of 'back to nature' romanticism, these folks preferred the urban disorder of the city, and they saw technology as their weapon of choice, not the enemy. Their heroes were not the Hippies of Peoples' Park - instead they looked to the pioneers of pirate radio as their icons." (WWW: Mizrach: 1)-->--> But there are as many similarities as there are differences: their sympathy for drugs, their civil disobedience and the fact that " The computer culture of the 1980s was as global as the youth culture of the 1960s." (Hafner; Markoff 1991: 10) For Timothy Leary the basic philosophy for both movements stayed the same: " Think for yourself; question authority (TFYQA)." (Leary 1994: 69)
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Cyberpunk societies are basically capitalist dystopias. The mega-corporation becomes the very symbol of the uninhibited greed, power hunger and merciless exploitation in the unrestrained, capitalistic society. The corporation has ceased to be exclusively an economical entity: it has transformed into a miniature state with own government, constitution, code of laws, police, army etc. The power of the national governments has been fatally weakened; perhaps by themselves even. The only governmental authority which has managed to preserve its power is the military; possibly ... the police.
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