encanta_anima

It seems to me this project is mostly about making Middle East void. If it's void, it's uninteresting, so just declare it void and leave it at that. You don't need a whole theory behind it. It was nuked, end of story, baibai ME.

If you do want an interesting background to the Middle East in 2020, dating from 1997, you should know that most countries were rather stable around that time. The instability we're witnessing today has to do with two major attack wars by US et al in the beginning of the 21st century. Around 1997 there was no cause to believe that they would suddenly go rampant on themselves.

Consider you were living in the Middle East and were of some ethnic origin, no matter which: would you really nuke your own income source? Your own infrastructure? It's equivalent to supposing that the Soviet Union or the US would have released their weapon arsenals on themselves instead of the enemy during the cold war.

My suggestion is: destroy the oil with bacteria, let the society wither. Like DogSoldier says, destroying the oil is all it really takes to make it havoc. The self-nuking theory seems too far-fetched.

Wisdow000 is our resident fountain of... Well. He's a nice guy anyway.

And he forgets Thumper, whose qualities I cannot be entirely sure of but his picture in the gallery suggests something of a geeky nature. Probably towards computers, lots of coffee and late work hours. It's just guessing, though.

I don't even mind if Rock watches!

I think I would.

Ah! There's a profanity filter.

Is there? Fuck? Wet loins? Darn socks? Bloody hell? Satan and his lackeys on a Christmas tour? Your mother too?

edit: I see all those words. Can everyone else see them? What kind of profanities are filtered? This is news to me.

Not sure why it seems you are being hostile to me, but looks at it this way, instead of one option for the list, we just created two.

My thought was more on the aspect of... Unequal relationships.

It's like... Divorce dynamics in a relationship where divorce isn't allowed. A house-wife wife who lives to make her husband's life good, instead of making their lives together good lives would have economic difficulties and a lot of other things complicated to make/settle a divorce. If we assume that CP-verse is omnisexual the same situation could obviously come up in a man's life.

I'm just basing my story on the assumption that this particular gender barrier wont be completely erradicated in ~30 years from now, and that the likelihood of a housewife will in such near future still be larger than the likelihood of a house man.

Walking out on your role as a servant in your own home will obviously still put you at an economical disadvantage: you will have nothing but your freedom. However, this newly granted freedom will allow you to get a job, enjoy your life, depending on your economic situation and divorce laws you could divorce your partner and maintain contact with your children.

Breaking up a relationship despite there being children involved is worth it if it is saving your life and self-esteem. Having a parent who is alive and fit to take care of you in a good way is far more important than having both parents living under the same roof.

John Shirley was more spot on when he predicted what the future would be like. That's the one part about A Song Called Youth I like the best. We're not living online life connected to each other's physical bodies by a big, virtual reality net and visual stimuli; we're just making war and some of us have morbid fascinations with spelling mistakes (*cough* communities *cough*), TV entertainment consists of a lot of relatively unknown people making total arses of themselves and the European government has gone shady, corrupt and totalitarian.

Ah. If only these authors didn't exist, the politicians would have nowhere to get their inspiration.

I've heard about the Lloyd-thing before, I think. But it only goes to show that people with power would be uncertain what to do and try to act proactively when something new and scary shows up. The church done it after Guthenberg invented the paper press too.

There are recent editions? What? Where? *Looks around manically, small volcanos bursting behind his eyes*

 

I read a section of it in some compilation edited by Pad Cadigan, and I really enjoyed it. Pretty much everything I want from cyberpunk, y'know? Drugs and Revolution and fighting fascists...

Author: John Shirley

Title: A Song Called Youth (Eclipse)

Format: Trade Paperback

ISBN: 1930235003

Title: A Song Called Youth (Eclipse Penumbra)

ISBN: 1930235011

Title: A Song Called Youth (Eclipse Corona)

ISBN: 193023502X

Format: Trade Paperback

Förlag: Babbage Press (US)

ISBN: 1930235003

Publ.månad: 9911

Kategori: Science Fiction

Uppsala English Bookshop

Anyone who has not spent considerable time studying Shirley probably shouldn't be calling themselves a cyberpunk. Not only is Shirley's work expressly cyberpunk, it is seminal.

Ironic that you would say that. Cyberpunk was a popular term among hackers in the beginning of the 90s. We're talking way ahead of these fancy graphical discussion boards we have on the internet today, back when you were lucky if you had more than 256MB of harddrive and monitors came in black and white, possibly with green and red and blue text if somebody had hotted it up.

The Cyberpunk Manifesto, 1997.

Considering the etymology of both "punk" and "cyber", I would say that being able to properly define a security bug and fix it, is more than enough to be both.

City Come A Walkin' is almost too good for words to describe.

 

Read John Shirley.

 

NOW

Regardless of anything else I may or may not have said I can't argue with such words of wisdom.

Every woman who has ever cooked, made the beds, done the laundry, arranged for lovely dinner, blablabla, has helped her man climb. Logically, this would also go the other way but: despite this being to me a "climb the ladder"-relationship, would you consider all marriages of all families with successful men in the past having been unfortunate?

 

I am a cynic when it comes to relationships, this much is true. But honestly..... if the relationship is successful, especially as an event that takes place in the past, then it becomes the same as any other succesful relationship. Unsuccessful relationships, or relationships with problems, are far more interesting to have in a characters background. And provide more fodder for the GM to bring to the game.

I rephrase by removing a syllable:

Every woman who has ever cooked, made the beds, done the laundry, arranged for lovely dinner, blablabla, has helped her man climb. Logically, this would also go the other way but: despite this being to me a "climb the ladder"-relationship, would you consider all marriages of all families with successful men in the past having been fortunate?

EDIT: I can see it now. Quiet woman. A bit stout, but strong. Caring yet suspicious. She's run away from her husband on the other coast and has nothing. She left her children because they were driving her nuts with their screaming and he never helped. There would be dishes all around the house if she left it unattended for even one moment. Crumbs on the kitchen table. No matter how many times she ironed it seemed his shirts ended up sprawled on the floor ready for the old wash and iron again.

The china had been broken. It was originally from her grandmother but that insipid niece of his smashed it on the floor as if it were a rubber ball. He hadn't chided her and had laughed apologetically. But not now. And not ever again.

Well, most likely the person who isn't the climber isn't going to know they are just being used. So the relationship could continue for quite sometime, until the climber leaves the partner for an "upgrade".

I think you're being too cynical. Since this is all basically about... Romance, it doesn't really need to have any logical basis. For instance, I could meet a man I'm very happy with for some time, and then realise that by making the proper suggestions I can use him to "climb the ladder".

It doesn't need to mean that we're not happy with each other. A man who recognises my need to climb a ladder and helps me to do isn't per definition someone I'm using. On the contrary, someone who helps someone climb may push too hard (like in that WTO or whatever, Wolfowic(?) upgraded someone to the point where other people objected), leaving them both stranded.

And consider this: Behind every successful man is a caring woman.

Every woman who has ever cooked, made the beds, done the laundry, arranged for lovely dinner, blablabla, has helped her man climb. Logically, this would also go the other way but: despite this being to me a "climb the ladder"-relationship, would you consider all marriages of all families with successful men in the past having been unfortunate?

Major successful event: One (wo)man in every port.

Or every city. The idea is one major love or less wherever you go. Independent people. Long-distance, not-jealous, self-providing people who love you and who would be there for you if you were there and their being there coincided. As a triumph of modern-day relationships this could have as many twists and turns as you'd wish it to have.

Maybe there's only one person, but you live apart and have lucky lives without each other, but even more so when you're with.

The only thing that would make this a bit awkward would be children. With the right conditions in the mother's life, children needn't be a reason for her to get more keen on getting help with her own though. If the character is a woman, then obviously she needs just settle with the father if she wishes or, as is more likely with a CP character I think, she need not do anything she doesn't wish for.

This is strange. The original posts must have been written before Babbage Books republished the series revised in 2002. I got all three of them at that time (more like 2004, actually) and read them. They're very, very good, albeit not really well-connected to the current time-line.

I think the 2002 editions had been modified to go better with the whole Soviet crash of 1990 ('91?), but still a little of a stretch with those factions. Some of the more astute observations of Shirley did however encompass the massive entertainment value in humiliation and suffering later brought forth by reality TV.

If any of these people still recognise this forum I would like to know what the major differences between the '88 and '02 editions were. The '88:ers aren't available for sale anymore, no matter how hard I look. :/

Yep, them people with eating disorders would be pretty slim!

Hahaha. Irvine Welsh writes books about rather shady characters, some of them with eating disorders. Bulimic female NPCs could be nice additions to a plot, because food abuse is rather common.

I like how he expressed it in an interview at some point (several years ago, British paper): Strong women don't exist in my books because strong women don't end up in these situations.

If you have a couple of raw guys in a game, at least one of their femme friends will be that adorably mentally weak, angry yet submissive character who does get bulimia. Someone you can't leave around food. Someone who answers the phone sounding hoarse and may be found having had an overdose on her couch, but managed to puke the pills. The person whose refridgerator is full of budget stuff that's easy to anti-swallow. Etc.

I've met people like this, I would consider them to be social chameleons or similar. They don't have any concept of morality or even any concept like loyalty, however much you want to argue these concepts hollow anyway, to reject them willfully is a lot different than being blissfully unaware and faking them consistently. If you're keen enough you can tell when sincerity is faked.

They're psychopaths. That's what a psychopath is: someone who has no own set of emotional displays, but is often rather intelligent, have very high opinions of themselves (narcissistic) and are able to skillfully interact with people to get what they want. They deserve to get what they want, and the acquiring of what they want requires those skills. It's rather strange that they often don't know about their condition, or can even be made aware of it, since it all makes perfect sense to them.

-------------------

Boring rant:

Psychosis also doesn't mean that you get socially inept. Neither does bipolarity, depression or mania.

They might strain romantic relations though, since people with these disorders are difficult to live with and interact with (goes without saying, since at least part-time they will be phr34ks). Obsessive-compulsive behaviour may be more easily identified, but you'd be surprised at what I've heard people not understanding.

Suicidal people are obviously not very good to be in relationships with. Manic people tend to not care about other people's assets as long as they're used to fulfill The Brilliant Scheme. There's a subclass of mania called hypomania, present in Bipolar type II disease, which often brings trouble since it might express itself as promiscuity or very violent mood-bursts or both.

--------------------------

In an Edgerunner setting though, most of the people with Bipolar I or II, depression, obsessive-compulsive, or eating disorders would have killed themselves or are about to. Either that or they would be on medication. The disorder is usually set off in late teens or early twenties and very few people manage to live with them without assistance. The chances that they would appear in a CP setting are rather slim.

Ok, Encanta - the name should be "The Green-Eyed Monster" - i.e. jealousness. Good ol' Shakespeare .

 

Now, as Wisdom pointed it out, it should be able to work either way - we can't assume the character is a goody-good just because of being a protagonist. "We can play downright bastards too". Any idea how it ends up on the jealous party?

Loss of 1 contact / friend per month is a little too much IMHO - we don't have that much contacts in CP...

I like the roll tables you make, officer. Grrr.

Now, for antagonist characters, there would be similar developments but partly reverse:

-increase of persuasion (since you make them stay with you)

-increase of awareness/notice (since you need to keep track of them)

but also

-decrease of social and/or contacts (since you have to focus all time on checking your partner)

I would assume that lockpicking and archiving and keeping-track-of-and-violating things would rise. On the whole, it is much better to have been the Guardian than the prisoner.

There should be an upper bound of EMP 5 on this though. I cannot imagine someone with higher EMP would expose someone else to this. Low EMP + high INT will create more devious surveillance schemes.

Yessir, von Atta, sir!

Uhm. I can't make up corny names for things but I like the Control Freak idea:

Depending on relationship length there will be a loss of certain qualities, like

• Gradual loss of contacts - some scale where 5 years will be the limit for how long you're allowed to have friendship outside the relationship.
• Gradual loss of hobbies - will reflect on skills only in a far progressed relationship
• Gradual loss of confidence in a.) yourself and b.) (wo)mankind - will be prominent after the relationship ended

Of course this would depend on COOL, but I suck at making roll tables or nice and easy formulae. If the relationship is already ended when you create it, it would go something like

Roll - how many years did it last (COOL or EMP dependent)

And then there would be a loss of contacts at ~1 per month of relationship (if every contact is one person, including friends), but can be reduced with Persuasive skill (*not* seduction though, because it is a matter of trust not one of the bed chamber).

Depending on the skills of the character in question, it would make sense to give a far progressed relationship penalties in 1. Human Perception, 2. Seduction and 3. Social

Hobbies generally differ between people, but there is a way to make every one of the skills on the CP2020 charsheet sexual or sexually threatening (try!) so it will sooner or later reflect on what you can do (since I assume that skills that are not maintained may decrease - or at least not develop).

Edit: here it goes:

 

[rant]

 

This looks based on my ideas so much that I concur with no further argument

Sanity? A healthy relationship? Someone who wasn't crazy jealous?

Yes. But if you want to make a dice roll table with benefits to a characters lifepath those are hardly very helpful conclusions.

What he lost was obviously trust in womankind, so that gives him more social insecurity when looking for a new partner (presumably). Also, he has the disadvantage of having had to stop interacting with a lot of his friends, which gives him a lot less contacts. Catch my drift?

[rant]

outrageously bad

That sounds a bit like how my mum talks about her ex. She will occasionally swear and blab about his infernal stupidity. He was also, apparently, caught smuggling shrimps in Spain after they broke up. Beat that. Shrimp smuggling. You don't sink much lower.

But... Imagine she'd been the complete opposite. What would you have gained?

good sort of

In my current relationship, my boyfriend has massive knowledge of applicable maths in programming, for instance. That's very useful to me, because I will likely need to do numerical computations in some future to be useful at all, but my primary experience is with theoretical maths. This presumably means that I often find it very interesting when he tells me about stuff that is of use to me when it comes to structuring programming mathematically, but I also have the benefit of pretty quickly being able to conjure up the maths that needs to be applied.

not as good but not really lousy

In my former relationship, my ex had the benefit of me being a very dedicated worker so I always done his homework. He got the disadvantage of bad grades since he often didn't know what he'd written. I had the benefit of learning twice as much as other people my age since he didn't take the same subjects, and the disadvantage of being blamed for my exes bad grades.

Did you follow me around for the 3 years i was with my ex....

 

And people wonder why I am so bitter towards people with vaginas.............

Damn. I thought you'd never find out.

I intentionally called it an "it" though, because in my personal experience this happens more often to women than to men. I've always assumed this is because I don't follow news on "the other end" though.

Back on topic: whereas I admire Rockwolf's imagination, I also feel that Maria is quite an extreme. Not something I would see as what I want to have in the revised Romance tables.

 

Encanta, would you be so kind and drop in a few ideas / guidelines for what you perceive as Failed Romance, what as Short Lived / Barely Succesful, and what for a Long Lived / Succesful one?

Yessir! Partners referred to as "it".

Failed Romance

The most horrible kind is obviously the kind that just goes on and on while it eats your heart and tears you soul to small pieces.

Either it literally tears you to pieces every time it gets angry but you just can't leave.

Or it might just tear other people to pieces because of jealousy.

It covertly kept track of every move you made by physical and technological means and then confronted you about whatever, got pissed off and did whatever.

Could just have been a nasty filly/colt.

Barely Successful

Often one-way barely. Someone in the relationship feels it isn't working anymore. On some occasions people will have just "grown apart" or realised at the same time that the other person seriously gets on their nerves.

NOT perhaps violence or any kind of sick behaviour.

RATHER there are good moments but it just has a bad whatever is important to the character.

If you got a hitman, for instance, it might kill it not to know what the partner is up to.

If you got a 'Runner, it might kill the character that it's so clueless.

If you got a Media/Rockerboy, it could definitely kill it that it has to be in the spotlight just because the character is.

Might be less obvious things like socks on floors, it simply can't cook, there's always hair in the shower, or any other kind of small mundane thing like "I like the New Yorker" "Well, I don't", often stacked on a big pile.

Successful

Sometimes ends despite being successful, for any number of reasons (it might have a destructive personality and intentionally screw things up).

Conversation about anything I think is crucial. You talk to each other and teach each other things, or have meaningful verbal exchanges on whatever is going on wherever. Gossip is not to be underestimated: for a Fixer it might be good to have a girlfriend or boyfriend who knows EVERYONE and what they're up to at most times because Harvy said that Jenny said that...

Favours are usually granted and returned in good relationships ("will you go shopping? no milk." "yah, sure.")

And Cosmopolitan as it is, you usually learn more sexually from being with one partner for some time than being with many partners. Trust and all that. You may emerge from a long relationship as a sex god(dess)!!

I would tell any woman who suffered that kind of abuse to see a doctor as well. And it's not to gross for me to discuss, what I find gross is the idea that someone would feel the need to fantasize enough about that kind of abuse to include it at that level of detail into a characters past for something as trivial as a game.

Why? It is a very common way to deal with things you find difficult, instead of living them out IRL. Purely psychologically, that is. That rockie brings up the problem with these kinds of patriarchal structures is a sign of courage to me, not sickness.

I have never made a character who is so far from my personal perception of problems and the effect they may have an people that I can't relate at all. A Medtech would, for instance, share my view on life (if it can't sustain it's own life independently in accordance with most other member of its species it does not live - abortion). A Netrunner would be concerned or hunted about patent issues (since every piece of code that does anything at all has been patented at least once).

I also have the feeling that rockies character isn't actually played anymore. It is a fictional character for stories.

Ok man.... but seriously...... your character background sounds more like a loli rape hentai than a character description..... Not saying there is anything wrong with having a character suffer severe abuse in their past, but thats a little too detailed for my tastes.

Why? I've read that entire character story over and over and I can't find anything wrong with it. That sort of stuff happens. Either you sit there and say that's too gross for words or you try to do something about it. It certainly wont help abused women that you tell rockie to see a doctor.

The really big negative of unexpected pregnancy....... the variety of ways that could play out for a player is almost to large to list......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implanon

All you contraceptive implants diggers. They've already been around for about 10 years! USA is just backwards (and the UK and possibly other places but I can't be bothered verifying this). Contraceptive implants are really common in Sweden (about 6% of women 15-30 years of age) and preferred above The Pill for various reason. They are cheap (~$50), they last for ~4 years and what with CP2020 being so incredibly Dystopic and Free Of High Morals (because this defines Dystopia) it would make sense that this is a very common means of contraception.

Unless you wish your in-game women to be stupid, I would say you should assume that they have warded off the risk of being left with child by some idiot.

(Roll=failed) - Sh!t Happens. The romance - no matter how long - had negative results on your character.

(roll= barely passed) - short-lived romance of minor consequences

(roll= passed with good result) - a serious romance, either long-term, or very important to the character. A positive thing, even if it ended in a sad way (i.e. accident, or something( - that's my addition.

Bought sex is something that any character would have to decide for themselves since the roll has about as much point as a roll for how many times you've visited a post office. Personal opinion. And purely from the buyers perspective. Please add your own views and justifications.

Now, any suggestions for what could happen there?

Indeed. You only need to make lists of bad things and good things, don't you?

Sh!t would be lower self-esteem, lower empathy, if violence then maybe scars.

Short-lived is as longlived but with the advantage of you having lived it possibly more times, and the disadvantage of not getting long-lived relation whatever you get out of those. Pick-up-skills.

"What's a pretty boy like you doing in a place like this" always does the trick if he's already in your bed.