Companero

Another book idea would be something like the Sprawl books for Shadowrun (considering I've cannibalized/adapted them for my CP2020-derived games before). Call it a "Building Collection," or something. It could actually link very easily to both the city kit and the NPC generator/collection. Include some basic floorplans, some basic environmental stats (SP/SDP in CP2020 terms, etc) and some NPCs, along with a little fluff, maybe some game hooks, etc.

That was one of my original plans for Vircades Project but I keep getting halted in my tracks by my lack of graphic design skills.

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I was thinking about my favourite OSR sourcebooks what would be fun to convert...

Vornheim is done.

Darkness Visible and Starvation Cheap are also amazing, but already cyberpunk. They don't need any conversion. That said, a fixer book along the lines of Suns of Gold could be brilliant.

Some of the fun bestiaries - like Paolo Greco's Chthonic Codex - I'd love to do something like that for drones.

And then the adventures.

Blood in the Chocolate exploded my little brain last month. The layout and design is soooo good. It's inspiring just to look at the colour coding on the maps.

But i'm also a massive fan of the Hydra Collective stuff, the stuff out of the Hill Cantons blog. Something like Fever Dreaming Marilinko... that almost seems like the most interesting line of development - small, very individual, beautiful and functional...

I enjoy her material, but feel like I start catching on to the premise of each piece more than halfway through so tend to enjoy the stuff in measured doses.

It took me 100 pages to figure out who everybody in Synners was, let alone what reality they were inhabiting (to be fair, the characters didn't know either). I love a lot of Cadigan's work, but I'm glad I'm not reading it all at once...

Interesting, but takes some processing. I'm still trying to discern whether she was pulling ahead of the Cyberpunk cohort early on with her explorations of cyberspace, virtual reality, and headware, or if this is quintessentially Cyberpunk because of those same features.

I'd say it's absolutely the second option. Virtual Reality - "the mass consensual hallucination" was at the heart of cyberpunk. So many of the original novels are based around it - more so than post-cyberpunk, in my estimation. Cyberpunk, always remember, is the heir to "inner space" science fiction movements, especially the British New Wave of the early 1970s, that were absolutely concern with mind spaces, psychiatry, cybernetic systems - everything in Mindplayers.

Talking of inner space:

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear...

As I might have implied, I wasn't hugely looking forward to this because I've struggled with Bear's prose in the past. Also, because I read the short story that this was fixed up from already...

Which was interesting - the short story, in which a mad scientist unleashes a very specific, plausible and terrifying

A setting book doesn't have to be a huge undertaking. Something on the level of Fever Dreaming Marilinko or Into the Odd would be perfect in size.

Stock NPCs is what everything asks for. I've been meaning to do it for the blog since the beginning but the scale of the project is offputting - all those numbers are far less interesting than tables and adventure hooks

That's as beautiful as I imagined...

Quite aside from the content itself, the cover is amazing. Like what every Pat Cadigan novel artist aspired to but never achieved

I'm glad I could pester someone into creating something beautiful!

I used the New Year break to read all the books and listen to all the music, at once, sooooo

(I've got two reading projects going on ATM - one is this, the other is simply to pare down my looming half read pile. Luckily, half the books on the second list are also on the first list. On the other hand, it does feel like I'm trying to avoid reading Greg Bear novels when I end up skipping ahead...)

Pat Cadigan's Mindplayers - first novel I've read as part of this project that's really highly regarded in the science fiction canon (Steve Aylett is a cult writer in Britain, but his audience is specific and perhaps doesn't regularly cross over with ordinary SF readers ... although perhaps more with cyberpunk fans, because of the transgressive elements of the genre and his workDIGRESSION). Bruce Sterling put it near the top of his list of essentially books in the genre canon, and it really is very good.

The setting isn't the usual Streetlethal-style gutterpunk, but a world in which the mind can be modified at will, has been, will be, all commercialised just like any other product. I love the way Cadigan builds worlds - CP's show-don't-tell ethos taken to extremes. She's a master of neologisms - I love the way she casually mentions household appliances that don't exist yet without ever explaining them. This is a good complement to novels like Vacuum Flowers and When Gravity Fails concerned with the moulding and remoulding of personalities, much headier than most of those novels.

I tend not to enjoy books that spend a lot of times in dream/hallucinatory space, which is a bit of a problem for a cyberpunk fan - and having been introduced to the world and the main character my heart sank when I realised that it was heading in that direction. But it all works - if only because it's a really clever book, on all sorts of level. Not much plot to speak of, more a character study. Luckily, Deadpan Allie might be one of my favourite characters in the genre - and not just because I relate to her emotional flatness and her "mistake time."

It's a very good book. Smart and original while also complementing some themes other genre novels deal with. Highly recommended.

So Streetlethal.

Somewhat generic setting, lots of noir and neon an... well, if I didn't like that stuff I wouldn't have read it. Interesting that most of the original cyberpunk movement writers - the people in the Mirrorshades anthology - all tend to write much less stereotypically "cyberpunk" settings. Aubry's an interesting enough character, if only because he does break the mould - instead of a fast thinking fast talking hustler type, he's all violence and practically illiterate. I've read characters like him in George Pelecanos novels set on the streets of modern Washington DC and I don't think that's coincidence.

Still, it's not Hardwired. No wonderful revelation lurking under the cliches. Ending was - not bad exactly, just a little stupid (cyber-Jedi!). The core romance didn't much work for me - seemed to be based on the female character's desperate need for emotional support rather than any chemistry between them or desire on her part. Voice of the Whirlwind and Frontera both do the zen monk thing much better.

Also - I'm glad Leviathan dropped that minor minor spoiler about the lack of Null Boxing into the post above. It helped me temper my own disappointment at its absence!

Weirdly, I am kinda curious about the sequel. The internet is unanimous that it's better than the first.

(also, it's funny that Gorgon Child isn't on Malcolm's List. It's one of at least three novels on the CP2020 reading list not on this list...)

It does raise a question about what do about series novels left off this list. I could add another Steve Aylett novel, two Steven Barnes novels and an Alexander Besher book and all that before I reach a novel on this list I was actually excited to read . I think for my sanity, I might just leave it for now - or cover just Gorgon Child, since it was on the CP2020 list.

The question with all of this stuff is, do the players care if they find a bag of moist towelettes or a bottle of coke on a corpse?

Everything on these lists should (try) to be interesting or memorable or useful or story developing, or else try to create atmosphere in the world.

So Interface Cables - being an important piece of kit - are great.

So are Work ID Cards, because they create possibilities for 'runner shenanigans.

I guess the hope would be, does everything on the list create a conversation at the table, ranging from:

- who wants this?

- cooooool

- where do we fence that

- oh crap, we can't just leave this here...

- wait, they knew about us

- huh, there are a lot of cultie weirdos around here

- what the fuck is that?

- wait, could we use this to do [x]?

- oh crap, what an opportunity to [x]!

- ugh, the future is weird

- etc.

If it isn't supporting some kind of conversation at the table or reinforcing the setting somehow, it probably isn't worth putting on a list, because what's the point? The players could have spent the 45 seconds spent generating a moist towelette and saying "we leave the moist towelette" looking for/creating more interesting corpses to loot.

And the other purpose is to support whatever atmosphere the GM is trying to generate. When I showed my very experimental, semi-failed attempt at a list - i.e. the one posted below - one of his points was that it

Talking of big lists of archetypes, I wrote a bestiary for an OSR cyberpunk game. Not entirely relevant on this forum, but it might provide some inspiration!

 

http://vircadesproject.blogspot.co.uk/2016...r-bestiary.html

 

I've got no intention of doing a conversion because anything involving rules takes me ages.

The stupid thing is, as I've just been reminded of G+, is that it's a real (and insane) gap in the published books. What game doesn't have a "bestiary" or generic NPC guide.

Maybe I have to commit to actually writing one

Thanks

I think you might well be right about Streetlethal.

Malek77 has been suggesting I do this in chronological publishing order, to get a better sense of the history of the genre (he also compared this project to a doctoral thesis, and I don't think he was being complementary...). If I was to do that, I reckon we'd see an interesting bell curve in quality.

...Like, the novels that people claim as inspirations and precursors are novels that inspired them - I.e good. Meanwhile, post-cyberpunk is a nebulous genre and picking what to read would basically come down to personal taste - I.e (what I think is) good.

It's the bit in the middle - especially around 1986 through to Snow Crash, at the height of the style - where I suspect you'd have to read through a tide of derivative crap. Some of it seems to have found it's way onto the CP2020 reading list...

Same as any genre, really. There's the revolutionary bit, the squelching tide of copying and bloat, and then the interesting tendrils reaching out towards new things.

I read one Witcher novel - I found it fun but lacking in original characters. Read it very fast, tho..

I SEARCH THE CORPSE D66 TABLE

http://vircadesproject.blogspot.co.uk/2016...ber-corpse.html

I loved that technology post I somehow missed the other day

I had a go at writing a D66 "I search the corpse" table. I'd expected it to be really difficult - I've had trouble improvising this stuff in the past - but what I've come to realise is that these things could go on forever.

I've tried to stick to the Vornheim model of "plot hooks first."

GDoc below:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h20DGjGPq...VYvkXAFVDdaSEyM

I'm about to post this to my blog because I can't spend the evening writing a table and not post it to my blog. It needs any update it can get! That said, please use, chop, change, whatever any or all of it .

Speaking of which, maybe Geist should write Wage Slave 4! He got a bunch I didn't think of...

That "What's their poison" table is really neat.

I wasn't particularly excited by the idea of a prostitute table - a bit 1970s... - but I have to admit, that is nice and science fictional. If i'd have written the sexuality table it would have been about 400 times longer and full of new genders enabled by technology, inspired by Ian McDonald, Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Egan novels...

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At the big London rpg convention yesterday I bought a copy of Into the Odd, which has lots of interesting new city tables in the back. I rather liked the "Quickest Route Across Town" with entries like "through a riot" and "the wine cellar network" and "right through the crazy part of town."

Also the "What happened to them?" table, with entries like "Getting (Re)Married" "Lost at Sea" "Found (new) Love" "abducted by underground weirdos" etc

You've independently created the cartoon Batman Beyond

BEST CYBERPUNK TITLE SEQUENCE EVER:

It was a cyberpunk show from the DC animated universe - conveniently known in Europe as BATMAN OF THE FUTURE - in which a random street kid breaks into elderly Bruce Wayne's house and ends up, after various events, taking on the mantle of Batman, complete with a high tech suit.

The rogue's gallery was a wonderful collection of cyberpunk tropes - there were the chimeric gangsters, the cybernetic gang types, the angry kid who mind-links with a construction robot, plus a sequence of recurring villains who are all pretty cool - aside from Bane turning up once, they were pretty much all new, and a pretty varied bunch.

They also had a nice line in poser gangs - aside from just the inevitable "Jokerz."

They even did a movie version called Return of the Joker in which the Joker returns and Wayne has to relive the mistakes of his past (also Harley Quinn). And there was a spin-off with much worse animation called "The Zeta Project" about a military robot on the run in the company of a spunky teenage hacker, that I've not seen much of (this is all stuff I watched when I was 12).

There have been a fair few comics based on the characters in Batman Beyond since, tho I can't claim to have read them.

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The other big source for Cyberpunk Batman is The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller's seminal 1980s comic in which superheroes have been made illegal or co-opted by the government, Batman assumes control of a maniacal gang called the "Mutants" and ends up fighting Superman. The artwork is probably more overtly inspiring to what you're thinking about than Batman Beyond, actually.

It had a few sequels I haven't read that really seemed to dive - based on my flick through in a bookshop - into Max Headroom-y television nightmare plus the usual Miller derangement.

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But yeah, Arkham Asylum - with all the crazy theme gangs - is perfect fodder. There's lots more specific someone could say about it, but I've got to go to work

So Greg Bear's Tangents.

I confess I was scared of walking into a stodgy prose Bear-Trap at the outset of this project. I've never much liked his prose. Tangents didn't necessarily change my opinions of that, although I have to admit four great stories towards the end very much changed my opinion of the book. The title story in particular is as good as people say.

Although to tell you the truth, I can't really consider it "cyberpunk." The stories range from from alien contact tales to odd fairytale fantasies to scientific fables. Quite a few of the stories are concerned with very high concept physics and feature highly competent scientist-protagonists of exactly the sort CP was trying to get away from. Even the original short story of Blood Music feels like it comes from a different, high concept science fiction tradition.

So as a short story collection - sure, lots to see here.

As something that should be on a cyberpunk reading list? Not so much.

And a gamedec (also known as solver) is a protagonist of a Marcin Przybyłek's series I'm about to read.

I have no idea who that is, which is sad. Polish writers who aren't called Stanislaw Lem or Andrzej Sapkowski just don't seem to get translated into English.

...on reflection - two writers! That's an incredible hit rate. One of them even still alive, and with no vague dissident cred either... I can't think of any Slovenian or Hungarian or even German science fiction writers regularly getting republished in English. Nor post-war French. In fact, the only country I can think of with a higher hit-rate is Japan...

Hurrah!

It's only a matter of time until we can recreate the Cyberpunk 100

So for logistical reasons I've jumped ahead to books I already own - halfway through Pat Cadigan's Mindplayers in paper and Greg Bear's Tangents in audiobook (only the second audiobook I've ever listened to, still not sure about it...). Meanwhile, I went on a second-hand book rampage with a £25 Amazon voucher I got given lately, which is why The Demolished Man, Lewis Shiner's Slam, Rudy Rucker's Transreal! and John Shirley's Heatseeker all arrive in the post this morning.

Holy fuck does John Shirley write a good sentence. He's the master of sensory overload.

Still to come - my copy of the Mirrorshades anthology and Lewis Shiner's Deserted Cities of the Heart...

So I read The Inflatable Volunteer.

Every sentence is perfect. Every paragraph is a non-sequitur. There's no plot to speak of, except the one your mind tries to impose on it. The author freely admits to be wasting the reader's time. It's on the blurb, even. I have no idea how it's "cyberpunk" except that the author has written a lot of things also sometimes called cyberpunk. The only thing coherent about the book, aside from the chapter naming scheme, is the tone, which is wonderful.

I fucking loved this book and I literally can't tell you why. I suspect 90% of people reading it will hate it or even throw it across the room in disgust. It's one of those books so actually unique that I can't really, like, recommend it because there's so no way to say "Oh, you liked that, so you'll probably like this."

Anyway, onto Steven Barnes' Streetlethal, a novel that Interface Magazine called "Most Triumphant." A book that looks coherent as all fuck.

Are gold farmers not on the list anywhere? WTF, me.

Although Cory Doctorow wrote a novel about them a few years ago which probably means they've already been and gone

I do like the Online Merc a lot. Something that probably already exists in EVE Online.

GameDec is fun as well - it sounds like something from a Pat Cadigan novel.

I'd suggest running an entire game in an MMORPG, but I've noticed that there's a strong correlation between forgotten cyberpunk culture and the amount of time the story spends in virtual reality. The "unreality" takes away something from dramatic tension.

Or maybe I'm saying that because I can (just) remember life before the internet.

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Talking of big lists of archetypes, I wrote a bestiary for an OSR cyberpunk game. Not entirely relevant on this forum, but it might provide some inspiration!

http://vircadesproject.blogspot.co.uk/2016...r-bestiary.html

I've got no intention of doing a conversion because anything involving rules takes me ages.

That said, if someone would help me stat up the animals, I'd love to do a silly post about that with CP2020 stats

So, simply going in a straight line, I went onto Steve Aylett's Slaughtermatic - after reading Atom by the same author, which I (mistakenly? irrelevantly?) thought was the next book in the Beerlight series after The Crime Studio.

Atom was nigh incomprehensible, full of sentences that could have been loaded with meaning or complete bullshit.

Slaughtermatic was great, albeit equally hard work. Much more overtly cyberpunk than The Crime Studio, actually, in a gonzo way. Also, bitter as fuck - basically what i'm finding with Aylett in general. These books are basically the scream of a trapped man too intelligent for the world. I love the individual sentences in Slaughtermatic and The Crime Studio far more than the combined effect of them.

Next book in Malcolm's list would be The Inflatable Volunteer by the same author. Although, to be honest, after three Aylett novels in a row i'm kinda jonesing for a novel in which essentially neurotypical characters act in somewhat predictable ways . Call me a coward if you like.

So I was looking through Malcolm's list of cyberpunk novels at the top of this board looking for a new book and realised I've only read 55 of the novels on that list . I've never even heard of Alexander Besher, and I thought I could name every derivative writer in the genre!

Clearly the thing to do was to start at the beginning of that list and start reading.

Luckily, that meant Steve Aylett - who, for all his talents, I've never once heard described at a cyberpunk writer - and his The Crime Studio.

The Crime Studio was short and really funny and described a thug "whose face resembled something glimpsed through the porthole of a bathysphere" so that was a good start...

I'm pretty sure I can finish the other Aylett books on the list soon enough - they being also really short and funny so far, and then it's onto Steven Barnes' Streetlethal - a book that I've put off reading for years because it looked hideously generic. I did that with Hardwired and that novel turned out to be a forgotten classic. So I have high hopes here

I don't suppose anyone else wants to join me on this ridiculous journey? Frankly, without help I'll probably stall halfway through the Greg Bear novels as I've never liked his prose!

Thanks, but that would just be more stuff on my blog - not the creation of a public scene that people recognise and get excited about

I'm not saying you need to do any more work than you're already doing - I'm just saying "put the links to the documents you're making into a blog" before posting them on G+. Put them in a public archive with your name on them.

Maybe every week or so take something cool like Cheap FBC you did five years ago and put up a three line post that says "here is something cool I did three years ago." If you wanted to go crazy you could write a paragraph about what you'd do if you were doing it again now, but...

This post is also aimed at Gomiville and Geist and everybody else here

Yeah, but that lacks the excitement of seeing a new post on Goblin Punch or Hill Cantons or whatever and thinking "oooh, what's new today?" It doesn't have that sense of identification with a person or place so much. It also - importantly - doesn't have that thing where a group of different blogs in a scene all cross-posting to each other build each other's audiences.

It would be great to have a whole group of different exciting spaces, monthly themes, the whole net of things that helped rebuild old school D&D. It would be great to have 100 things to go on a CP2020 top 100 again

Nah...

You know, I always get more done on VP when people are posting interesting things here.

My fantasy - as I've said before is - is we could reboot CP2020's fan community in the same way the OSR did, by creating a network of blogs producing interesting things.

Honestly, you guys should start posting things like the Nomad Encounter tables somewhere public. We can start bringing new people in