Console Cowboy

 

OH. NOW I GET IT. Ok . Your secret is safe with me. .. and my friends. Gosh, you are playing a real game! You've got a nice site by the way.

 

 

So, the beat goes on. No wonder no one wants to take the lead but all want change. I say only trust your other PC friendlies. And keep the party small.

 

CC

Dog Soldier,

 

You said it right. The EdgeRunner is the symptom. There are a few more symptoms as well so I might change the article from "the" to "a" but sticking to the problem, which creates EdgeRunners, you are correct. And what is that problem? Find it, and you find the manifesto. The solution only EdgeRunners care enough (in CP2020 terms: are put in a positon where they give a damn due to personal interest) to fight to achieve - whether they are conscious of the manifesto, or even have a leader figurehead.

 

It's not about power. It's about the misuse of power. And, subsequently, there can be no escape: Cyberpunk is all about a revolution either keeping the status quo or changing it. If the Player Characters do not change it they die.

 

 

It was Chairman Mao that said: Political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Yet, the modern day Chinese Punks have made a difference in China (along with the force of world economy and the Hong Kong handover). I will never forget what I saw from Tiananmen Square

 

For readers who do not recall the world event of 1989, I have linked to a picture not the document. (I have not read it or care to as it has an agenda I do not entirely trust as a pr specialist.) Regardless, thinking of Mao, this photo clearly captures the sheer force arrayed against the Chinese Punks: students armed with ideology, rocks, pacifism and, lest we forget, attitude. Many disappeared into the prison system or escaped to exile. But 04 China has changed from what it was in '89 and it will continue to do so, reacting to the ripples from even the tiny pebble dropped. Some of us foreigners would call it revolutionary, from the outside looking in. But, IMHO, the persons more deeply involved (committed) on both sides of the conflict, would call it a revolution.

 

encanta anima,

 

The Black Panthers, Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Anwar el Sedat, etc., all had the revolution in mind. Some were more flashy than others. Yet look at the ones that really made the difference and you will not only see why a Game Moderator groans when everyone wants to be a Solo but also understand the explanation of the true dichotomy between AD&D and CyberPunk2020 (according to the Console Cowboy definition, maybe not according to Hoyle ). YMMV

 

 

To me, this embodies the challenge (and the Role Playing Challenge) of Cyberpunk2020. This challenge brings with it complicated NPCs and complicated opponents. It requires Player Characters with skill using mighty swords and clear articulation. CP2020 delivers this opportunity because the game's environment is set in a complicated world. There is absolute black (intention of the dark status quo or a counter revolution agenda) and white (the intention of clarifying, understanding and changing involved in the CP revolution).

 

Mostly, though, there is the grey area. The wide ranging place for the anti-hero. But, IMHO, the anti-hero is going more towards the white than the dark because the world wherein the PC survives is dark from the start. Just to survive the PC has to break rules and not appear too goody-goody white. PC's die quick in my universe if they're too good. But the absolute heart of black is for me to play in ..... Muuwaaahahahaha! I give out the problems and create the dark future.

 

You bring up another good point, concerning containment, and I'll give you my view on this in another post.

 

In real life, I consider myself an EdgeRunner. Not because of my occupation but because of how I choose my approach to it. I bring back to management useful information from the public and I argue for its inclusion into the corporation. I bring in change from without by working from within and, in CP2020, that could make for a solid Corporate EdgeRunner .

 

The antithesis of my real life role, in a CP2020 game, would be a PC with an agenda that EdgeRunners would fight against. So the GM would have to create EdgeRunner NPCs to foil the PC's plans. And the company could be full of these counter revolutionaries, each slipping a dagger into the other Corpo's back - like Spy vs Spy in Mad Magazine.

 

This can be done, of course.... I don't recommend it. It's not Dilbert. PCs die off quick unless players are really sharp. And IP distribution gets a little fuzzy..ok, player Y you get a cookie for dodging the trap and player X you get a cookie for creating the trap player Y dodged. I'll just take away 1 INT point caused from bagging your head against your cubicle wall.

 

For me, were I wanting a promotion or to silence a supervisor's objective... well a good slush fund could hire a good servant. Let's put it this way Besides, I'm not a fan of Player Killers. Hey, Chum, that's my job.

 

The world setting is still a revolution, Dog Soldier. Sorry.

 

And the best weapon is the organ pulsing between our ears.

 

Shared power. The answer is the leveling out of the vast extremes: your manifesto for the revolution. At least it is to me.

 

Hey. More reality. In adjusted figures. In North America, Cocoa-Cola costs 2.30 per 2 litre bottle. The average slave wage is 6.75/hour. Here in Poland, the same bottle costs 2.30 and the average slave wage is 2.20/hour. The product is bottled in Poland. Is there another reaction possible besides: WTF?!

 

Henry Ford Sr. is not a great figure of the revolution but, I quote: No one is going to buy your product if you don't pay your employee enough to buy it from you. Ok. The context was assembly line automation and the lowering of built-in consumer costs... not an archetype of CP2020 rebellion in my world. But a complicated industrialist come capitalist for sure. For the near future, I think of the thoughtless corporate executives who speak of globalization as if it were plans for a landfill while forgetting the solid financing principle we simple folk can call humanarian.

 

Here is where cognitive System and cognitive Machine epitomise the villian in my game. By that I mean they are, simply, evil. I, the GM, play them. And to fight evil from within sometimes requires the EdgeRunner to adopt some cyber. But I will start trailing off into a digression instead of detailing my thoughts on the revolution in CP2020. I'll leave the debate as to whether cyberware is a prerequisite to character generation for another time.

 

A sweatshop does not lower the consumers' built-in cost. It creates problems that governments have to spend money to fix - lots of money because most governments are run by a headless, Teflon chicken. Governments get money from taxes. And who has the biggest tax burden? The consumer. The cost returns to the consumer with compound interest charges.

 

Granted, these corporations intend for the built-in consumer cost to be passed to the governments of foreign countries - hence I refer to their style of globalisation as landfill creation. But there is a globalisation happening, which the corporations have no control over: electronic communication. And that means increased empathy and increased activism at home and abroad.

 

(Ok look! A cheap pair of running shoes.) Meanwhile, grandmother can't get a decent social security because money is being siphoned off to pay the built-in consumer cost of a product that does not help grandmother. And the children of grandmother pay twice (higher taxes and the $ burden of grandma) - if they're nice kids. No telling what the grandchildren will pay except that it's so big we can't comprehend it yet. When I think about this cycle and the three generations involved in this devastating web.. that's a dark future social spiral!

 

With global organisations like the IMF and, in CP2020 terms, the Global Stock Market, corporations can expect that what they do in one place will come back to financially haunt them directly. Not only by terrorists and Solos but because when a loan gets written off, someone is out of pocket. When interest is forgiven, the value of money is lost.

 

The Socialist Nords may have something useful to say on this equation. But, til now, no one is listening close enough. I think such places will NOT suffer in the CP2020 world to the same extent as capitalist salivating countries. IMHO, Talsorian is missing a big chunk in its world view. I would also recommend scrapping the world history as being dominated by North American insight.

 

Or deter us from believing in the change (or revolution) we wish to enact.

 

So, like JQP states, the revolution is already happening around us. I am not an anarchist but I do present the revolution to men and women. They may not comprehend beyond the bottom line revenue figure so that is how I put it to them as above so below, so to speak. And I protect the public (my personal ethics) by protecting my clients from backlash (my professional explanation).

 

I do not know JQP, except that he is a caregiver in the medical profession. If he would assist someone who comes into the emergency room who does not have a Social Security ID number, then he is involved in the same revolution as I. We do not have a communications hub or a recognised leader. Our manifesto is not published but moreso understood. Yet we are soldiers nonetheless.

 

And we fight the good fight.

 

CC

 

It's possible, even beneficial within the company, to not toe a 'company line.' It is certainly better to look at, in your morning mirror.

Thanks, Split Great to be here.

Course, you know I do crowd control .. ehr, I mean public relations for the corps....

CC

Succinct and well put, JQP!

 

How is the Satan depicted again... as an Angel of Light? And Satan merely means "opponent" so the opposing Angel of Light does not have to be so conceptually big to create attention either. Still, minor annoyances can get a PC killed, like a poisoned thorn.

 

Sorry, I did not address this in my last post but, after nearly 48-hours straight jacked-in to this Forum, I had to give the meat a rest 3/4 into the post above.

 

I think creating a con sensual RPG world is why fleshing out a character is so urgently important in a Cyberpunk game. Even the NPCs' characters! I am not one for using arbitrary dice roles except in actions where the risk factor exists. I like to have a history that's coherent and works - especially between PCs! ! ! !

 

The Dungeons and Dragons party meeting at the local Denny's Mead House just does not cut it (for me) in CP2020 for a great number of reasons, many of which keep some CP2020 players playing the other games just to holiday from the complicated thinking built into an information-overload, cybernetically small but lethal world. CP2020 is "complicated" because everything exists in relationships to each other. I don't know this, but I seriously doubt I would find a real world Thread about physics on an AD&D Forum.

 

But, of course it works here. We're in a complicated world in CP2020 and the lines between there and here blur.

 

This complicated nature has to infect the PCs Cyberpunk world too. The isolationism caused from extremes, to which I refer above, has to be removed at the start. I favour giving out good pre-generated (pre-gen) characters with solid backgrounds to players and then blue booking the past with important characters rather than taking 2+ hours in game sessions to do dice rolls and exclusively focus on stats. Not a good model to welcome role players, IMO

 

Can we call it a gaming session when we haven't "left" the real world of pen and paper - I doubt a deck jockey would call a chat room con sensual cyberspace. Nothing beats the Ethernet home on the range for a console cowboy. Talking about it just ain't the same. Give out the characters, IMHO, and then take the initial session to blue book and develop role playing personality.

 

Hmm.. on topic of Characters.... Characters have three facets. Stats are the coins in the pinball machine. Your health goes to dead, you die. You're inept, you fail. You're clever and a high stat means you succeed! I put equipment into here, too, as these are part of the cause and effect leading to the affect correlation I make about stats. Personality This is the Role Play. I would also throw in what the rulebook calls Roles here. A Solo and a MedTech may share the same personality traits but they're gonna react in a different way. It's the concept of the whole character. [i am still reading old postings but it would be interesting, I think, to see a Thread discussing individual ideas on role playing archetypes like a sensitive Solo PC or a MedTech PC with a sociopath personality disorder] Appearance is the third side I can think of and this is the outward reflection of what's on the inside. Appearance trails back to stats as far as equipment choice goes.

 

Anyway, I'm drifting off-topic I think.

 

The point JQP made concerning the subtlety of the revolution I wanted to emphasize. It should be built into the characters by the Moderator as best as possible before, IMHO, it is turned over to the players and the "life and death" game begins. This means a list of pre-gens from which Player(s) may choose. YMMV.

 

It does not hurt to have the rest of the pre-gens become well-defined NPCs or spare back-ups to counter the possibility of PC death and Player boredom!

 

As a Moderator, my job to weave complications into the story is made a little easier with pre-gens. I am good at the adlib when the direction is clear enough but when PCs flounder, my adlib goes to hell quick unless I know the detour the Player(s) and I have taken. Forcing them back into the story arch with clever adlib goes against my personal feelings: a detour is meant to be a mini holiday from the story. Players may need this to recharge. This fleshing out, the built-in controlled starting point, is our shared road map. Off ramps are commonplace and flexibility from the starting gun is de rigueur, the norm.

 

PCs will co-operate in my experience. They will become the comrades they are in real life. Heck, they may even merely transport themselves into the roles they play as a cathartic fantasy of personal power, indigenous to the adventure. My concept of Cyberpunk is that of a revolution against a System... so does it sound familar to your real life? Nice guys'n gals who gather together at a table for a little catharsis will bond "just because."

 

I think this has the tendency to make the PCs unwary of NPCs sent to them by the very civil, even understanding Moderator. Put another way, this comradeship within the party group predisposes the PCs to overlook NPC motivation. Ouuuh... bad move in a Cyberpunk world.

 

[Pirates of the Caribbean: Will turner is the PC. Captain Jack Sparrow is the NPC. When the PC and NPC get to the cave where Elizabth is being readied for blood sacrifice, the PC dies. Perhaps never knowing what hit him. Sparrow subsequently screws up the deal trying to get back his ship from Barbossa but by then the PC is beyond caring about the story anyway. hehe... too bad about the other PC, Elizabeth ]

 

And, too bad for the Moderator. The game ends at the midway point, five minutes into the second session before the pizza arrives. Uhm, what do we do now? I know. Lets roll new characters! What's on the catharsis-box (TV)?

 

Every rose has a thorn and, while a pretty flower, it will remind you of its thorns if you don't take care. Make sure the PCs realise this fact of Cyberpunk2020 life and they might appreciate the need for revolution a little more and watch a little less TV.

 

CC

Dog Soldier,

 

That is exactly why the Punks in 2020 are allowed to carry on the fight and why they are not outright exterminated. It is why the revolution will not be televised - because that would commodify the revolution, undermine it and topple it as it did the situationalists in Paris. Like a cancer, Punks bring the counter culture under the radar of a system arrogant enough to consider these punks bottom feeders - shells, scrounging Euro along the puerile back streets of vomit and grit, passive and nonthreatening to the System's world and directionless agents ripe for manipulation. That's how I understand the sky to be the colour of white noise from a channel off the air - the opening of Neuromancer.

 

But, of course, we know this is wrong-headed. As Moderators, we must affect that "who cares" attitude for the Characters' benefit because we embody the entire scope of deep politics, which allows greedy and arrogant yet faceless men to cheat on their wives from Chiba to Night City without so much as a ripple of disturbance in their social conscience. These are the reactive and complacent actors we play. The ones from where the power flows. But this attitude of status quo and complacency are stigmata that let the power slowly bleed out and dissipate like hourglass silicone particles from the hands of these men.

 

This blood letting spawns the one-time corporate extraction adventures or the mini wars between firms, divisions and departments each vying for promotion under the sleeping power. The major Character roles are not here, IMHO. These adventures ONLY allow for the Players to see that the System does not discriminate in its corruption: no-one is safe. However, this is not the counter revolution. It is Systemic blood letting.

 

The Punks, themselves, cannot be reactive. They must be proactive. Revenge can be part of the game, for sure, but it is best served cold and there should be a plot line that allows this alternative to blazing guns. Characters need to think their actions out ahead of time, and the choice in how to prosecute their decision. They must find themselves within the revolution or their spirit is no better than the welfare Proles or Saburo Arasaka. They lack charisma if they lack purpose.

 

I like to put it this way. The Proles and Arasaka watch television (cyber-neuro-anesthetic). The Punks do not. Both the Proles and the Corporates feed on mainstream media: news and entertainment. The Punks do not. There is a Punk network and grape vine. A major part of my adventures requires the Punks to find the network and I make it a part of their survival to do so.

 

So, in this 2020, we implicitly say the movement is cyclical by our actions that permit them to remain free. But the truth is, the Characters must feel empowered and we can only encourage them explicitly by the driving force of the situations they need to resolve. Everyone is a star but so long as the Punks do not commit the same folly of arrogance and greed that the System allows for its pawns, then the Punks appear disparate and separate. They appear to perform the necessary function of keeping the adversary looking mighty by allowing the perception of their weaker standing.

 

Taking It Up A Notch (The Fantasy Element of CP2020)

The AI can and does perceive this threat from the EDGERUNNERS and can appreciate the balance of control, which the EDGERUNNERS hold over the System administrators as symbolised by powerful men like Saburo Arasaka. A mechanized bureaucratic System epitomizes the inhumane processed-simulacrum of living that needs to be toppled in the 2020 game.

 

A Prole gets in the way, the result is the same as when an assailt team opposes the Punks. Death. Does not matter if the Prole is a booster or the family man down the street that has heard too much and falsely believes he has to snitch on the Punks' operation to protect his family. There is no sentimentality in the 2020 world. There is survival. As Morpheus told Neo, these are just agents for the system to use. The Prole dies. If the Punks are smart, so does his wife and kids. If not, the Punks have Prole enemies. If the Punks are sentimental, the information leaks and the Punks are dead.

 

Remember, an underground movement means secrecy and murky diversion. And everyone is 6 degrees of separation from everyone else. If the EDGERUNNERS do not respect this they get hammered and their part of the revolution gets mired like a Toyota Avante in a meter of mud. This is one time where Style will be laughed at because they look good but ultimately go to nowhere and fall from fashion.

 

Style = fashion. Fashion never sleeps. The EDGERUNNERS do. From a style perspective, they are perpetually behind. To be really stylish, they need to set the trends and this by default means they get to where the revolution must ultimately take them: beyond the conflicts with powerful people, like Arasaka, and into the fight against the System (with allies like Arasaka).

 

To get to where they need to go, EDGERUNNERS and the men with their hands on the switch must act together to break free from a System that mutually enslaves them. Never, even on our worst game play day, will we Moderators bring men like Saburo Arasaka to the cyberpunk asking for help. Arasaka is even more alienated from the revolution because of his insulation of extreme wealth than the most newbie characters. And I am even less inclined to explicitly explain this delicate systematic balance to a Cyberpunk in game play.

 

I say, keep the Punk abstemious - away from the extremes of wealth/poverty that will only alienate them from the revolutionary cause - and let the Punks piece this puzzle out themselves. Let them make the move on Saburo Arasaka. That is revolutionary.

 

The challenge is for the Characters to bring themselves as close as possible to achieving this goal. The fantasy element players buy into is that they, we the real people, have the possibility to do this in real time. I happen to live the fantasy - being a public relations counselor. But, the real juice for adult players is when they see in your cyberpunk world something they recognise as familar enemy territory: greedy corporations or special interests, failed justice process, de-humanizing media, or some asshole no-one will miss pestering them one too many times.

 

The Punks will not change the world or we stop playing Cyberpunk 2020 of course. But this does not mean that Saburo Arasaka cannot be turned to the Punk cause if he realises what's going on: remember he may be pleased to meet you but he is just a Prole of wealth and taste. But if the Arasaka Corporate zaibatsu does convert to the Punks , what will that mean to the arms merchant Militech? And how are Arasaka's competitors likely to respond? Not sitting down!

 

CC

Bunnycakes:

 

I agree with 100%. If Neuromancer is done right, I see it as a new Star Wars. Okay, it won't break cyberpunk cinematic ground but the book's reputation and coolness will draw fans faster than a Solo draws contracts. Good casting could revitalize the franchise. Remember American Graffitti? Breakfast Club?

 

I liked Johnny Mnemonic but I was in the loop sort to speak - it's Santa's list of Cyberpunk goodies, as Gibson admits himself. Too much maybe for the average film goer to take in. Sort of like a party where everyone knows everyone else but you.

 

Casting is difficult because I don't know many who would fill the shoes. I don't get to the cinema much and the only things showing here are blockbusters so I have not seen any new faces for about four years. Still, I'm chippin' in.

 

Armitage or the Dixie Flatline (McCoy Pauley?) : Gary Oldman. No one sees it? Wow. This guy could play any one in my book: Sid Vicious, Beethoven, Dracula, Joe Orton, Drexel from True Romance and less we forget the hopped up FBI agent from The Professional. Yea, he's the guy to oversee Case. This is the Sir Alec Guinness of our Star Wars franchise.

 

Another pick for Armitage is veteran John Mahoney. This guy can act when he's not limping around on Frasier. He did a film years back called The Agency (I think) and was a standout in support. Solid stuff.

 

Case: Okay, breaking the Bunnycakes rule but what's a guy to do after four years of nothing, besides cry? Kevin Spacey is pretty sound. Still, I want a screen test with Steve Buscemi and how about the unlikely, under-rated and weathered look of William H. Macy?

 

Molly: well, Dr. Frankenstein says a mix of Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Eartha Kitt (Meow!). I favour Molly as demure sexy but for sure deadly. How about Chloe Sevigny? Any takers?

 

Maelcum: This has got to be Scatman Crothers.

. . . .

 

 

Okay, I was just wondering if someone was reading.. Let's go with either Marcus Chong (Tank from the Matrix and I have never seen this guy before but somethng tells me he needs a break) or Michael Dorn (to perfectly tightcast all black men for the Jah lovin' Rasta)

 

It's been years since I read the book so I am sure I have ommitted someone somewhere. But I had time off for good behaviour so I'm a little out of tune.

 

CC

 

Viserael,

Don't think this is an isolated event. It is actually a taught method to get a confession. It is legal, and if you had confessed you'd be in for a court battle you'd not soon forget. See, it's not considered coercion or undue duress - though the training is drawing some fire. The 15 guys who (shall I dehumanize them and write "that") did this to you were just doing their trained jobs. Nothing personal

 

Think about it for a moment... what kind of person does this to another person and then goes home to a normal family? And we're not talking about a criminal element using this technique but a protective societal authority.

 

I like to remember the Q&A: How do you make a dog ugly? Answer: You beat it. How many times was this training beat into these men who were boys you might have befriended in high school? We get into the whole idea of enculturation and socialisation and that is what environment and atmosphere is all about in cyberpunk, as it's been said before.

 

There is no reason a riot in Night City should be the same spectacle as in Helsinki. Sure, people will get upset. That's the point. But the mechanism to do it will be determined by the culture. A peaceful march can do it, or a well place piece of lead can do it. What does your culture need and respond to that a punk can grab by the short and curlies?

 

CyberPunking Is What You Think It Is

 

The idea of re-humanizing society in an apathetic world is a punk conceptual ideal; to take back 'our' little space within the greater construct of an calculated steel construct of globalized efficient mono-culture. Automated reality is anathema to the Punk subculture, and this struggle dates to the 70's.

 

A cyberpunk world just takes the concept of automation from the assembly line lives of the masses, people being told what and when to do, eat, wear, say, etc., and vividly supplants the symbolism of the machine with the actual cookie cutter mechanism. It's gestalt.

 

Kid got ADD? Fit this chip into his head and he'll be normal. Having dreams of electric sheep? Set your mood organ to whatever you need to fit in with the herd. Need to lose a little "excess" potency? Enjoy a brain dance. Something you want to forget? Visit us at Lacuna. Meet the new life cycle: Nice. Peace. Calm. Sedation. Death.

 

Children are no longer symbols of immortality to be cherished but a drain on personal space already encroached upon by the masses' sloth, apathy and undisciplined consumption. Citizens of 2020 have less power exactly because it takes less responsibility for them to accept the autonomy that is handed to them. The populace of 2020 are pets, not people. NOT constituents.

 

The 70's Punk movement took the flotsam of society and made a fashion statement with its wearing garbage bags, army surplus, tattoos and self-inflicted mutilations. The Punk of (my) 2020 takes the cyber junk and puts it to use against itself, aka the system. I mean "punk wear" has actually become retro fashion in 2020 and the frustration with the punk movement as a subculture has erupted in violence. Punks are gone but the movement hasn't died. Sure the subculture as we know it has been co-opted but there is a punk counter-culture, Chum.

 

How many times have I heard of cyberpunks in 2020 meeting in a bar, no matter how Forlorn. And I don't care how loud the death metal is played or if Johnny Silverhand is playing there - IMHO, cyberpunks do not hang in bars. They are denizens of after hours clubs that open during hours. They are invited to some guy's basement by a mutual friend who can vouch they're not with the system even if they dress like Emperor Tanaka - though they'll make some patrons nervous. Sure when they gotta score they'll go to Ye Olds Publik House because the client would have them all dead if they meet where they normally chill.

 

Punks are acting out, to use the psychological phrase. And, I venture to say, we like to act them out through RPG. As moderators, our job is to give them a face to boot stamp. In 2020, the dogs are uglier than 2004. Anger is higher and there is no clear focus for it for the general population to march on.

 

The violence is co-opted into entertainment. It is reported more (and encouraged for ratings). If this sounds like the here and now or near future it's supposed to. Remember, the film Network? It's over a quarter century old, man!

 

 

Life and reality exist only in their perception through the relationships we create between objects and/or people, and we structure our world this way. In the Cyberpunk world, this structure has completely broken down.

 

Pause. . . .

 

Today we acknowledge nothing is real - it is structured. We say reality is defined by the relationships one thing has to another. Meat thinking. Tomorrow we know there are no relationships. We are no longer decorators of our living rooms. We are the chrome furniture. So where does that leave us Cyber Punks?

 

Angry. Betrayed. Robbed of our freedom. Did we consent to this? Are we going to allow it to continue? As Johnny said: I've had it with all this! I want room service! I want a club sandwich! I want a cold Mexican beer! I want a $10,000 a night hooker! I want my shirts laundered, like they do at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

 

Welcome to Console Cowboy's vision of The Cyber Punk World. It is populated by Situationalists taken to the extreme, beyond the riots in Paris and the Watts neighbourhood. Disk Jockeys, Poets, Rockerboys and anyone with a little charisma and a soapbox (like yours truly) has the potential to change the world. EDGERUNNERS from middle class backgrounds, some happy some not, see past the Society of the Spectacle and understand that the more you consume the less you live. These are educated punks not career squeegee kids!

 

Rather than against one bad guy or one archetype villain, the rebellion is against what Baudrillard termed repressive ambience - the environment where society has become controlled through its inclusion in the spectacle of consumption. Bad news, gossip and conspiracy theories sell and entertain but the EDGERUNNER is not an entertainer. He's a militant combatant, whether the player knows this fact or not. Unlike the teeming masses, a Cyber Punk is smart enough to know that Millitech may be the face of his enemy today but it may also be a willing collaborator to his revolution tomorrow. And, whatever you have heard, the revolution will not be televised - unless the signal is narrowcast to a chosen audience.

 

Lastly, there has been some debate about a Corporate Cyber Punk's place in all this talk of revolution and rebellion. Now, I have made the case that the problem isn't people but a system. If Saburo Arasaka wants to march shoulder-to-shoulder with Johnny Silverhand then that's great. But, how would that maneouver work within the confines of the boardroom? Such a defection would shake things up! And I like this for inspiration. These two punks are examples of what the revolution can accomplish inside the corporate world of 2020.

 

Time to jet.

CC