Comparing my cyberpunk-genre roleplaying games from the 80s and 90s to reality

[xiphias]

Because there's a CRPG version of Shadowrun out, which I've been playing, I've pulled out my old Shadowrun books and have been reading through them.

There's this bit about playing law enforcement, about "proportional response", that you'll get in trouble if you unload your automatic weapons on a teenager who only has a knife.

You see where I'm going with this? Yeah, the fascistic dystopian futures we imagined thirty years ago are not as bad as the actual reality we live in.

Comments

[l33tminion]

Yeah, sure, that's the policy, but if a Lone Star officer shoots some SIN-less teenager in an E-zone, who's going to give them a hard time about the details of the circumstances?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Sure, but in OUR world, cops can do that to legal citizens, too.

[l33tminion]

Different sort of "acceptable targets".

But yeah, you're right. It's no wonder there's been a revival in dystopian fiction lately. People write about the present, we're steeping in the stuff.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

In the "Dragonfall" setting for SHADOWRUN RETURNS, you can read some of the Humanis Policlub (an anti-metahuman hate group) propaganda. The game designers just took real-world hate leaflets, and replaced "Black" with "Ork and Troll", "Jewish" with "Elf", and "Asian" with "Dwarf".

[l33tminion]

I'm in the middle of that game now. It captures the setting (and my sleep hours) really well.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I should warn you: some of the user-created content is wonderful, too. My Steam account says I've spent over 400 hours on it since I bought it. Now, to be fair, I DID forget to log off a few times and left it running overnight, or all day when I was out, but I think I've probably legitimately spent a hundred hours on it. And if I decide to start making my own content, who KNOWS how much time it could suck...

("Nightmare Harvest" is based on a

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I should warn you: some of the user-created content is wonderful, too. My Steam account says I've spent over 400 hours on it since I bought it. Now, to be fair, I DID forget to log off a few times and left it running overnight, or all day when I was out, but I think I've probably legitimately spent a hundred hours on it. And if I decide to start making my own content, who KNOWS how much time it could suck...

("Nightmare Harvest" is based on a couple Hammet novels; if you play it, note that a lot of the "mission items" are actually page-long blocks of prose which are vital to knowing what to do.)