Description
Welcome to the Time of the Red, Choomba! The Megacorporations spent decades wrecking everything and in the aftermath of their last War, everyone has to fend for themselves. But that’s just fine. You can handle it. After all, in a world of vicious boostergangs, rampaging cyborgs, corporate assassins, and nihilistic doomsday cults, there’s only one rule: Always take it to the Edge.
Scenario
Calling all Rockerboys, Netrunners, Ripperdocs and other Edgerunners.
Need Eddies? I got the cash if you got the goods. We know that Night City is not the prettiest or safest city but I need Teams to handle the jobs I got.
So, you wanna be a Cyberpunk?
Before you pitch off your sleepmat and jump in, there’s a few things we need to tell you. First of all, the name. Cyberpunk comes from two words. Cyber—from the term cybernetic, or a fusion of flesh and machine technology. Punk—from an early 1980s rock music style that epitomized violence, rebellion, and social action in a nihilistic way. The term was popularized in the Pre-Collapse days by a group of writers who specialized in writing science fiction with this kind of techno-melange. Their works featured a streamlined blend of rock, pop, sex, drugs, and the highest, hippest technology—usually grafted onto your body somewhere. The archetypal cyberpunk heroes of the 80s, ranged from techno-barbarians roaming a Post-holocaust world, to cyber-chipped jet-setters with designer bodies.
Of course, from our enlightened viewpoint here in the Time of the Red, this all looks pretty dated. After all, you probably accessed this article from your Agent. You used a Kamakura 19 interface cable with a direct link from your Interface Plugs. You’re used to hardwiring into appliances to make coffee, “studding” into the Benz to drive down to the corner store. But understand in 1987, this was all considered visionary stuff. No one had plugs. You couldn’t dial anyone on your Agent. Designer drugs were illegal. You could walk down most city streets without an Armor jacket. There wasn’t even a NET. Not that there is anymore, but they didn’t even have the idea back then.
Night City is healing from the ravages of the last tumultuous decades. But it should never be forgotten that like most of America, Night City, is still an armed society under a blanket of appalling poverty, violence, and inequity. It’s not uncommon to see as many guns as briefcases on the crowded City streets; and while the worst days of chaos may be over, the danger still remains—society’s rule collapsed before and may yet do so again. History can repeat itself, and there’s always another gang just around the corner, waiting for its chance to come out on top, no matter what the cost.
Always take it to the Edge.
It’s the Cyberpunk way.
— The late Johnny Silverhand
