So, having gone from the the core Cyberpunk 2013 box to a weird tangent about a different setting, is it time for us to return to Night City where, y’know, the actual game is supposed to take place? No, it is not. We’re going into space instead. I’m guessing no one had invented the term “core gameplay loop” at the time, but still…
Oh well. The short of it is, in the dark and distant future of 2013, there is a small but growing world of orbiting space stations and lunar colonies, the residents of which are starting to develop their own subcultures, traditions, and snooty disdain for people who aren’t them. There are factories, laboratories, and self-sustaining habitats. There are also government agencies and megacorporations sniping at each other, which means that there’s work to be had for cyberpunks. There’s nothing further into the solar system as of yet, but there are missions to Mars and Jupiter being planned.
The five major factions in orbit are the European Space Agency, who is responsible for most of the big habitats, including the Crystal Palace that hangs in the Lagrange Point between Earth and the moon; the Japanese Aerospace Bureau, who builds most of the hardware needed for space colonies and sells them to the others; the Soviet Rocket Corps, who does most of the grunt work of dragging materials up into orbit; the US Air Force, who has most of the troops and kill-sats; and NASA, who does most of the long-range exploration. Hey, I thought the USA was supposed to be a spent force in this setting, why are two of the big five still American? I feel deprived of my fictional schadenfreude! Hrmpf.
The environment of space! You have to worry about three major things here: gravity, air and radiation. Living in zero-g isn’t healthy in the long run, so you’re going to want to either live in a station that spins to generate artificial gravity, or at least spend some hours every day in a special swing that spins you around to generate the same effect. Also, learning how to get around is a whole thing and you’re going to need to put points into special skills for it. Air, likewise, is a problem if it runs out and you really don’t want to fire any guns because the walls are thinner than you’d think. Radiation, finally, can hit you from solar flares and engines, and there are demoralisingly realistic tables that set out just how screwed you are if you soak up too much of it too quickly. I’m kind of digging the hard-sf vibe, I’ll admit that much, but as always there’s the question of how to turn it into an exciting game – dying of radiation poisoning isn’t really what I want out of my fun dice-slinging…
Likewise, you may forget those all-purpose Star Wars space-fighters, we’re doing this properly here! You need a surface-to-orbit craft to get up there, then you need a trans-orbital craft to get around. The difference between rockets (that blast off and then fall apart) and shuttles (that are good for multiple trips back and forth) are explained. Deep space crafts are their own thing and are basically miniature space stations with their own gravity, though you probably won’t need to worry about those unless you’re part of a NASA crew heading for Jupiter. There is such a thing as military “deltas” and “cruisers” that can get up into low orbit for the express purpose of blowing shit up there, but they can’t get high enough to threaten the stations in geosynchronous orbit. As an alternative to lugging cargo along, there are also mass drivers that basically send big lumps of material on their way by effectively shooting them out of a magnetic cannon.
Space suits and the propulsions thereof are given some space, and so are the sort of weapons you might use in orbit – flechette guns where the projectiles are slow-moving but super-sharp, tasers, and “safety bullets” that are made to be as useless against hard targets as possible to make sure they don’t pierce the walls. Oh, and velcro. Expect to see a lot of velcro, because without it things tend to not stay where you put them.
Combat between space ships is… really not a thing. Or rather, it is, but it lasts for about two seconds before the combatants find out whose targeting computer is more accurate, and then there’s a big explosion and a lot of debris. Not the kind of thing you can turn into a very engaging minigame, it must be said.
The Crystal Palace is, as mentioned, the main place to be in orbit, being effectively a small city floating in space. Another major habitat called O’Neill One, is under construction. There are also two cities on the moon, Tycho and Copernicus. There is a snarky note that all of this has gotten funded by rich and powerful people because Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, environmentally and socially, and basically everyone who has the money to do so are working very hard on getting the hell out of there and barring the door behind them. That’s… probably depressingly realistic, also.
Culture! People who live in space called themselves “highriders.” They are predominantly ethnic Africans since there’s a mass driver at Kilimanjaro that can send people up into orbit. They’re into super-clean living because anything that can cause errors in judgment is a threat to everyone, but there are people who get addicted to “braindance,” essentially artificial scenarios projected directly into your brain. They also don’t wear a lot of personal adornments, since a lot of them are impractical, but tattoos and tribal scarring is a common way to stand out from the crowd. They still eat a lot of bland nutritional paste, but hydroponics bays can produce a fair amount of vegetables and things like fish and shrimp. Anything that leaves crumbs is right out, though.
The second half of the book is an adventure called Child’s Play. It calls for a group of 5-7 since there’s going to be a need for a lot of manpower. That seems a bit much given that I’ve never once managed to maintain a group of more than five people and right now I’m down to three again… Anyway, they get hired by a nameless employer who brings them to the Crystal Palace and puts them through some training before directing them to go raid an orbital lab. Along the way, they get to take a look around the Crystal Palace and bump into an Interpol inspector who Will Become Important Later. The description of the station from the inside is pretty nice.
Anyway, the players have to hijack an inter-orbital shuttle that’s scheduled to make a supply run at the target station, and once there they need to use a combination of hacking and bamboozling to get in, quite possibly ending up fighting the internal security. They make their way to the secure lab and find out that – the lab is creating genetically engineered humans fit for zero-g life! The bastards – they’re trying to turn this into Eclipse Phase! Noooooooo!
Anyway, the players make their getaway, likely with some fetuses in vitro and a friendly five-year-old German monkey-boy (the GM is instructed to adjust his level of gratuitous cuteness to the group’s tolerance level. Heh), but they get shot at and start venting oxygen. They have no choice but to return to the Crystal Palace, where they find out that their employer is going to kill both them and the kid, so they have to make a desperate break for it and try to make some sort of deal, possibly with the Interpol inspector from earlier. Hopefully, they only get cheated of their pay and sent back to Earth with a megacorporation murderously mad at them – practically a “happily ever after” by cyberpunk standards.
It’s all very complicated and I feel like I’d need to read the whole thing three more times to really understand all the intricate realistic considerations and details… but I have to admit that it’s got a certain charm, to the point that I’d even consider running it. There is something terribly interesting about having a (comparatively) hard sci-fi setting with lots of cold equations and unforgiving constraints, and figuring out how to give the players choices and options within them.
Anyway. The next one up in this series is Solo of Fortune, so we might actually get to see some more of the regular setting. We’ll see.