CYBERGENERATION
Revolution 2: Evolve or Die
The View from the Street
So you wanna know how to join the Cybergeneration? Or maybe
just understand it?
Here's the way it came down. We created a great world in Cyberpunk,
a world full of film noir romance, double-crossing bad guys, stylish killers,
and disaffected, cynical heroes. And lo, we looked out upon what we'd wrought
and said, whoa, this is truly bitchin'.
But then a snake arose in Eden. A big one. The average Edgerunner
character began to profile something like this: a mid-twenties to
thirties professional (Solom Nomad, Netrunner, Techie, whatever),
armed to the teeth with high-tech cyberware, milspec weapons, aerodynes
and body armor. He had a pockey full of euro to finance his bad habits,
and a web of connections wide enough to awe the Amazing Spiderman. His
main enemies were omnipotent, faceless Corporations with private armies,
evil plots, and the bankrolls of medium-scale superpowers. As Cyberpunk
spread out to players around the world, the emphasis began to center
on guns, big vechiles, and large scale power-plays that encompassed whole
nations.
Okay, it may have the Edge. But it wasn't the Street. It was starting
to get more like James Bond Meets the Six Million Dollar Man. We
wanted to get Cyberpunk back to its streetwuse roots. We wanted
to get back to the lone hero with a gun and an attitude, up against the
brutal world around him, instead of a cyber superdude battling some megacorp
with the assets of the Legion of Supervillains.
Then somebody in the office came up with this idea. With all these
"Mister Studds" and sexy cyberbabes running around, somebody
in the 2020 universe must be having kids, right? So what were they
like?
Imagine being raised in a filthy environment where sudden death is
the norm, where drugs and weapons are cheap; where your parents sell their
souls to do dirty black op jobs for corrupt Corporate overlord, where people
commonly cut off body parts to trade them in for metal prosthetics. Would
it make you bitter? Hardened? Cynical?
Probably not. There's an axiom that every generation rebels against
its parents' values. Why should it be any different with the Cybergeneration?
If your parents are moneygrubbing Corporate materialists, you'll chuck
it and drop out of the rat race. If your elders trashed the environment,
you'll probably restore it - just to honk them off. You'll hang with your
peers: goboys, gangboys, yorunners; since your parents are either
dead or out running the Edge, you've had to raise yourselves. You'll know
how to use guns, knives, and monos, but you won't have the euro to buy
them often. When you do, you may refrain simply because you've seen too
much killing. You'll settle your conflicts with kung fu, fists and savage
beatings instead.
Drugs? You don't touch them. You saw your parents go down in a
avalanche of bad synthetics and nasty pharmaceutical "deals".
You go for "smart" vitamins: stuff that will enhance you,
not make you high. Cybertech? You won't be able to implant cyberware
because your bodies will still be growing too fast; you won't want to anyway,
because that was what your parents thought was cool. To you, it's like
wearing granny glasses and bell bottoms.
You're not a buncha "tree huggers," but you don't mind
taking over a redwood forest from a megacorp if it'll really get in their
faces. You don't know politically correct; you say what you mean and are
brutal about it, because the adults in your life spend most of their time
lying. You have your own style, and you shot it; it's an in-your-face,
take-no-prisoners, nothing-to-lost way of living, where you don't give
ground to nobody. You also have something your parents don't: hope.
But mostly, you're mad. Mad because your grandparents can tell you
about a time when there was air you could breathe, water you could drink,
cities that weren't ruled by megacorps and hired killers, and animals that
weren't in zoos. You're mad because you should have had all that, and some
greedy Corporate Dead Guys took your fraggin' inheritence and blew it away
like lint.
Then, one day, a disaster happens: another biotech spill in a
world full of toxic emergencies. It washes over the City, killing people
right and left. Until it gets to you and your goboys. It washed over you
too, but when it passes, you stand up, and you look around, and you know
you've been changed. Forever.
Beacuse now, you have the Power. Power to tackle the Corps head on.
They're not even giving you a choice; they're rounding you up in so-called
"internment camps" and shooting you down like dogs. So you draw
the line in the sand and war is declared. You and your goboys. Against
the whole fraggin' world. Mano a mano, to the death. To reclaim what they
took from you.
Now you're Cybergeneration.
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1997
Created by 
Wolf
Pack Inc, Friday, August 29, 1997
Most recent revision Friday, October 17, 1997
Generation X
