Cyberpunk 2077 - Eweryday Life

[Tarathelion]

Cyberpunk 2077 - Eweryday Life

There is quite a lot of threads about weapons, cybernetics and all thats help you kill enemies while being cool but there is no much talk regarding how the life really looks like in year 2077 of Cyberpunk universe. As someone who has never played Cyberpunk pen and paper game I am ignorant in this area of technological advancement. Having said that I think its a good idea to have a thread regarding all this new fancy stuff that doesn't fit into weapons and cybernetic category. I am aware thats is something thats in a background during game most of a time but i would like to see it handled properly. So many times this things have been neglected by films and games (you often see some fancy new guns and toys but you go inside a house and it looks almost identical to usual houses in present times)
So post your ideas and opinions about home improvements, entertainment ( i guess braindances fall in that category), education (do people even go to school anymore - isn't it easier to upload all the information if you need it) and all the other stuff people does not care much about.

 

[videopete]

Well, it sucks. I'm not just being facisious. The thing you have to remember is this, the nuclear family is dead, the enviroment is wrecked to hell. The economy well you either have money or you don't. The best most can hope for is to be a wage slave. That wage slave is not a euphemism, you sign a contract pretty much ending your life for a paying job, and maybe a place to keep your kids safe. Oh yeah forget workers rights, oh and if you get fired well your still under contract so no one will touch you. But what if you are really in demand well anouther Corp might send a extraction team after you. That means kidnapping, you might not get your wife and kids in the deal. Most of the time for researches prepare to disappear. Real food is a luxuary. The middle ground you have soy/algae based stuff that looks like real food, to kibbble at the botttum of the shelf. Kibble looks like its name sake, if you splurge you can get the kind that makes its own gravy.

 

[Sydanyo]

If you're a player character, your life is most likely pretty damn awesome. It all depends on your special ability level. At level 10, you'll be making incredible amounts of eb every month. Then again, if you're a player character, chances are you won't live to see next week, let alone the end of the month.

If you're an NPC, there are varying levels of existence. There are obviously a great number of poor people, but then there are also a lot of well off and middle class people, at least in Night City. In western Europe and Scandinavia, things are pretty nice. In Eastern Europe, not so much. The rest of the world is much like you'd expect; in South-East Asia, China, Russia, Africa, things pretty much suck ass. In Japan though, things are much like they are now.

You could take the world as it was in the 80's, and mostly how it still is now, and just boost the contrast a lot more.

 

[wisdom000]

Pete paints a bleak picture, and its not a lie... but it's not the whole truth either...

There is still freedom in America... it's lived on day at a time on the open road. It's the life of a nomad.... The popular nomad picture is that of the Snake and Aldecaldo nations. Truckers, bikers, smugglers, construction and resoration workers... living life hand to mouth, and in constant danger of the man, the corps, or raiders blasting them to hell for the scraps in their trunks. But there are also the Folk and Jodes, argicultural migrant workers, made up of farmers, illegals, and former street gang members. Then there are the thelas... fisherman, pirates, aquatic smugglers, and ferrymen. The bloods, traveling circus freaks and entertainers. And finally the Meta, more of a corporation than a noamd group, they act as liasons between corporates, governments, and the nomads. And that bit about the raiders... yeah those are the Raffen Shiv, outlaws on the fringe with no respect for anyone or anything, and will kill you for the leather on your shoes... or because they don't like the way you look. The Raffen are what most people think of when they think of nomads though... due to their raids on corporate trucks farm, and their frequent dust ups with Hi-Way, the law, or what passes for it on the open road. Regardless nomads only take what they can carry, what they need to survive. Their is no room for luxury on the open road, no room for mistakes, and nothing goes to waste. They survive by getting what work they can, and picking through the abandoned ruins that was once rural america. They can et real food, fresh vegetables, sometimes even beef... what they can barter from the corporations who pay them to haul their produce and beef, or steal from them. But there are no hospitals for them, no handouts, nothing... they don't even exist in the eyes of the law... they are S.I.N.less... zeroes...

There is also the zone... the most dangerous ghetto you can imagine.... cops don't go there, its completely taken over by the gangs and predators who thrive on the misery. But its streets and burnt out hovels are filled with the desperate, the homeless, the addicted, and the unstable. In the Zone you can actually get fresh meat, so long as you don't mind rat or dog... These people are S.I.N.less as well... meaning they have no state identification number. The government has no concern for them, as long as they stay in the nice little slum that has been turned over to them, and don;t try to escape through the tightly patrolled perimeters. Medicine here is a bottle of moonshine and wishful thinking. The children here watch the world around them, but there is no sparkle in their eyes, no sense of hope. The strong feed off the weak, and everyone is caught in the crossfire of the gangs. Everything has a price here, and the only thing that seems to hold no value whatsoever, is life.

Outside the Zone, life is the same as it has been in any city for as long as civilization has been around. You work all day, you come home, either to an empty hovel, or to your wife and whatever kids you were foolish enough to squeeze out. She works at the same dead end job you were, and you children are raised by the television. That's if you are still together. If your kids show potential, maybe they can get into a corporate training facility. You won't see them again for several years, but at least you won't have to try to pick which one of them gets to eat that day. In the meantime you fill your house with the same consumer crap the tv tells you to buy. You watch the screen, escaping into the fictional lives of people who live in a world you long for, but know you will never attain... it gives you just enough hope to go back to flipping monkey burgers, or assembling toys you will never be able to afford for your own children.

And then there is the corporate sector... here you have made it... here you look down upon the city, your city. From this height you cannot even see the people upon whose backs you have climbed to reach your glass and chrome accented tower. You eat fresh foods, you drive to work in your own company car, if you make vice president you may even get your own luxury AV-7. The wife is a trophy, but she gets boring... you spend your paychecks on power lunches, snorting synthcoke off the overdone plastic breasts of high end call girls while trying desperately to remember enough Japanese to impress the foreign investor next to you drinking a bottle of wine that costs more than your parents made in a year. You wear the finest suits, you dine at the best restaurants. You have a corporate funded Trauma Team account, and those boys will swoop down in their aerodyne gunship to pull you out of any jam. But you have seen the edge to dance across. One mistake, one missed deal, one failure to bring profit to the company, and it all gets stripped away, and you are left destitute, like those wretched people you wiped your 2000eb Italian loafers on this morning. you never think it could happen to you, but you keep a small pistol in your desk just in case... and one bullet.

 

[wisdom000]

btw, I added this thread to the forum guide....

 

[watchfulcomet]

And the reason for mass rebellion never having happened is? It may be difficult now, but when it was clear this was coming?

 

[wisdom000]

And the reason for mass rebellion never having happened is? It may be difficult now, but when it was clear this was coming?

Well... several reasons... economic collapse and worldwide hunger shortage, as well as 2 failed wars, the deaths of both a presidet and a vice president within hours of each other....

Martial law was declared...

And while there wasn't a civil war, several of the better off states, realizing they wee going to have share the federal relief burden, chose to secede. They are still part of the US, and still subject to federal law enforcement and must maintain military bases... but they neither pay in to federal tazes and national debt, nor can they receive federal Aid.

It tended to bite them in the ass. Nor Cal, where Night City is, is actually one of the better off Free States. Texas, long overly concerned, xenophobic, and paranoid, closed off their borders, and promptly became nearly destitute, a true shit hole... Southern California was set to do alright, then the Quake hit, inundating Los Angeles... Other freestates met with varying degrees of success as well.

The corporations moved in as the last economic hope, and people grabbed on to them... Now they have so much influence and control over peoples lives, that they are almost too big to bring down...

Everyone points there fingers at Arasaka and Militech as the big baddies... buts its the agricorps that are really destroying everything... Biotechnica, Monsanto, etc....

 

[kilravok]

Love the descriptions here. I sincerely hope that they will bring the normal life in Night City into the game...visible on NPCs and livable for PCs....there needs to be some time to heal between jobs that are not just fade-to-black, there needs to be a reason for earning money aside form just buying the next augmentation...there needs to be a life to be lived, no matter how destitute.

 

[gregski]

Well written, Wisdom, thanks.

 

[kilravok]

I would like to have the story quests introduced like in WingCommanderrivateer. There you start as a nobody with nothing but the bare essentials to survive. You earn money either by buying and selling goods between planets or doing random mundane lobs from the freelancer jobsearch database. You don't even have enough dough to take on better paying mundane jobs from the mercenary or merchant guild until you done three or four freelancer jobs. An that is your life until you get to a certain bar and happen to talk to a certain NPC who gives a little story and a mysterious item....and that is where you are torn out of your normal "peaceful" life and thrown into the story.....

I want to see that kind of introduction into the plot lines in CP2077. Starting as a nobody without any rep, depending on your class and wealth level (in 2020 determined by your class skill level) you live in the Zone, Urbs, Suburbs, Downtown or even Corp District. You just do what you do, get up in the morning, do your mundane boring every day job (if you have one), dodge a few bullets, frame some kid for the window you broke, pass out in a bar, log into the data terminal to see what kind of jobs the freelancer hiring database has to offer.
And that is your life...and if you survive long enough, one suddenly you happen across some NPC in the bar buying you a drink, a scream in a dark allay as you pass by on a mundane delivery job or some random dude bumps into you and scurries off...only to be shown in the news a few days later as a corpse and leaving you suddenly in the target scopes of several corporations because of some worthless piece of metal in your pocket that you have no idea what it is or how you got it.....
Every class shall have it's own story line and it's own introduction into the story, every class it's own kind of mundane life, but the freelancer database should just have random jobs in full disregard of class or skill level.....sometimes there are several jobs for you on the base, sometimes a week passes with nothing you can actually do...and between storyline quests there can also sometimes be weeks passing with nothing but mundane sidequests and freelance jobs and other times you haven't even finished one storyline job when three others are already been pressganged onto you and even more urgently than the one you were just about to wrap up.....

 

[username_3643957]

Pete paints a bleak picture, and its not a lie... but it's not the whole truth either...

There is still freedom in America... it's lived on day at a time on the open road. It's the life of a nomad.... The popular nomad picture is that of the Snake and Aldecaldo nations. Truckers, bikers, smugglers, construction and resoration workers... living life hand to mouth, and in constant danger of the man, the corps, or raiders blasting them to hell for the scraps in their trunks. But there are also the Folk and Jodes, argicultural migrant workers, made up of farmers, illegals, and former street gang members. Then there are the thelas... fisherman, pirates, aquatic smugglers, and ferrymen. The bloods, traveling circus freaks and entertainers. And finally the Meta, more of a corporation than a noamd group, they act as liasons between corporates, governments, and the nomads. And that bit about the raiders... yeah those are the Raffen Shiv, outlaws on the fringe with no respect for anyone or anything, and will kill you for the leather on your shoes... or because they don't like the way you look. The Raffen are what most people think of when they think of nomads though... due to their raids on corporate trucks farm, and their frequent dust ups with Hi-Way, the law, or what passes for it on the open road. Regardless nomads only take what they can carry, what they need to survive. Their is no room for luxury on the open road, no room for mistakes, and nothing goes to waste. They survive by getting what work they can, and picking through the abandoned ruins that was once rural america. They can et real food, fresh vegetables, sometimes even beef... what they can barter from the corporations who pay them to haul their produce and beef, or steal from them. But there are no hospitals for them, no handouts, nothing... they don't even exist in the eyes of the law... they are S.I.N.less... zeroes...

There is also the zone... the most dangerous ghetto you can imagine.... cops don't go there, its completely taken over by the gangs and predators who thrive on the misery. But its streets and burnt out hovels are filled with the desperate, the homeless, the addicted, and the unstable. In the Zone you can actually get fresh meat, so long as you don't mind rat or dog... These people are S.I.N.less as well... meaning they have no state identification number. The government has no concern for them, as long as they stay in the nice little slum that has been turned over to them, and don;t try to escape through the tightly patrolled perimeters. Medicine here is a bottle of moonshine and wishful thinking. The children here watch the world around them, but there is no sparkle in their eyes, no sense of hope. The strong feed off the weak, and everyone is caught in the crossfire of the gangs. Everything has a price here, and the only thing that seems to hold no value whatsoever, is life.

Outside the Zone, life is the same as it has been in any city for as long as civilization has been around. You work all day, you come home, either to an empty hovel, or to your wife and whatever kids you were foolish enough to squeeze out. She works at the same dead end job you were, and you children are raised by the television. That's if you are still together. If your kids show potential, maybe they can get into a corporate training facility. You won't see them again for several years, but at least you won't have to try to pick which one of them gets to eat that day. In the meantime you fill your house with the same consumer crap the tv tells you to buy. You watch the screen, escaping into the fictional lives of people who live in a world you long for, but know you will never attain... it gives you just enough hope to go back to flipping monkey burgers, or assembling toys you will never be able to afford for your own children.

And then there is the corporate sector... here you have made it... here you look down upon the city, your city. From this height you cannot even see the people upon whose backs you have climbed to reach your glass and chrome accented tower. You eat fresh foods, you drive to work in your own company car, if you make vice president you may even get your own luxury AV-7. The wife is a trophy, but she gets boring... you spend your paychecks on power lunches, snorting synthcoke off the overdone plastic breasts of high end call girls while trying desperately to remember enough Japanese to impress the foreign investor next to you drinking a bottle of wine that costs more than your parents made in a year. You wear the finest suits, you dine at the best restaurants. You have a corporate funded Trauma Team account, and those boys will swoop down in their aerodyne gunship to pull you out of any jam. But you have seen the edge to dance across. One mistake, one missed deal, one failure to bring profit to the company, and it all gets stripped away, and you are left destitute, like those wretched people you wiped your 2000eb Italian loafers on this morning. you never think it could happen to you, but you keep a small pistol in your desk just in case... and one bullet.

In this one post I've learned more about the world of CyberPunk than all of the searching I've done in the past week or so since I saw the Teaser, combined...........I commend you, sir.

 

[walkingdarkly]

Let's also add that because of Euro Space Corp there's no real huge wars anymore.
Because to put it simply, they'll drop moon rocks on anyone that acts up. Which they've done twice before 2020.

 

[rmtuggle]

And the reason for mass rebellion never having happened is? It may be difficult now, but when it was clear this was coming?

I know others have likely answered this in one form or another. I will answer with this: Look at the world around you. Things didn't go south overnight. It was a slow progression, people gave up more and more power to the governments, who in turn gave more and more of that power to the corporations so that they could continue to get re-elected. People became brainwashed by mass media that was discretely controlled by the government and the corporations. They were convinced slowly and carefully that the only way they could be secure was to give up their liberties. They were told that if they would just sign the dotted line, they would live a good life. That they would be taken care of. That all of their worries would be over if they would just let the government or the corporation take good, good care of them. But much like ancient Rome, the governments and the corporations soon overextended their reach, they found the pinnacle and still tried to climb higher. That's about the time the crash happened...everything fell apart. The Government finally went bankrupt from not controlling its spending, from trying too hard to kiss ass to foreign powers. It was a domino effect....SHTF and governments around the world toppled. That's when the corporations stepped in. They no longer needed the government, they were world powers unto themselves. You learned to play the game their way or you found yourself, and your family if you had one, living on the edge. Living in the Combat Zone or the DMZ...sleeping in a coffin if you were lucky, sleeping in a gutted building or the streets if not. People did not fight back because by the time they realized how badly they had been screwed, it was too late. Overall, by that time, they were powerless to fight back against godlike and corrupt corporations. And the government was largely useless from its own collapse and all the power it had signed over to the corporations. Look around you at the world today, take info from multiple sources, don't believe just one newsfeed. The truth will scare the hell out of you because we are playing right into the scenario above, we are hurtling toward the end of our world and way of life. And it's happening ever so slowly...gun control, speech restriction, no more doctor-patient confidentiality, companies poisoning our earth, and so on...self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[rmtuggle]

If you're a player character, your life is most likely pretty damn awesome. It all depends on your special ability level. At level 10, you'll be making incredible amounts of eb every month. Then again, if you're a player character, chances are you won't live to see next week, let alone the end of the month.

If you're an NPC, there are varying levels of existence. There are obviously a great number of poor people, but then there are also a lot of well off and middle class people, at least in Night City. In western Europe and Scandinavia, things are pretty nice. In Eastern Europe, not so much. The rest of the world is much like you'd expect; in South-East Asia, China, Russia, Africa, things pretty much suck ass. In Japan though, things are much like they are now.

You could take the world as it was in the 80's, and mostly how it still is now, and just boost the contrast a lot more.

If you will recall, for a player character...that Special Ability dictated only how much a month you were making and how much you had saved up...prior to the start of the game. It didn't guarantee that your character had a job at game start. It was simply a reflection of how competent you were at doing your job. Sure, you have that doctorate in cybertech research and design...doesn't mean you wont be flipping monkey burgers at the MegaBurger come next week...

 

[rmtuggle]

Let's also add that because of Euro Space Corp there's no real huge wars anymore.
Because to put it simply, they'll drop moon rocks on anyone that acts up. Which they've done twice before 2020.

They might if I let them...hard to aim a shot, even with a round that big, when your tech's brains are bleeding out of his ears from a bolt to the cortex.

By the way, choomba..thanks for mentioning me in your siggy there!

 

[walkingdarkly]

By the way, choomba..thanks for mentioning me in your siggy there!

Oi' ya drekker, don't even go there. Ya try to claim name to Saint Gibson like that and you'll run into an iceman that'll get lucky on your six and dry gulch you and then you'll face up pixel to pixel with Alt Cunningham's little bundle of joy she left on the nets before Arasaka brain dumped her.


AS for everyday life, I pray to Saint Gib's that CDPR makes Night City as hardcore, harsh and cruel as it is in the books. Break all these little posers thinking their powerhouses when they try to one on with Mili or Arasaka or a Boostergang led by some brained up lace head with more metal than that an ironworks yard that scares even C-SWAT.

 

[rmtuggle]

Oi' ya drekker, don't even go there. Ya try to claim name to Saint Gibson like that and you'll run into an iceman that'll get lucky on your six and dry gulch you and then you'll face up pixel to pixel with Alt Cunningham's little bundle of joy she left on the nets before Arasaka brain dumped her.


AS for everyday life, I pray to Saint Gib's that CDPR makes Night City as hardcore, harsh and cruel as it is in the books. Break all these little posers thinking their powerhouses when they try to one on with Mili or Arasaka or a Boostergang led by some brained up lace head with more metal than that an ironworks yard that scares even C-SWAT.

Oh right...yeah...you can shut down the whole fraggin Net, right? Good luck acing someone with no body and more backups than Emperor Palpatine! lol
Love ya, Bro!

 

[Sydanyo]

If you will recall, for a player character...that Special Ability dictated only how much a month you were making and how much you had saved up...prior to the start of the game. It didn't guarantee that your character had a job at game start. It was simply a reflection of how competent you were at doing your job. Sure, you have that doctorate in cybertech research and design...doesn't mean you wont be flipping monkey burgers at the MegaBurger come next week...

Core rulebook, page 58:

How good a job you currently have is based on the level of your Special Ability.

Core rulebook, page 59:

Take a quick jump to the Occupation Table on page 58. Find your Role (or the role closest to it), cross reference it to your current Special Ability, and that'll give you a monthly salary. Multiply this amount by a 1D6/3 to determine the number of months you've currently been employed, and that gives you the total amount of cash your character starts with.

Now, nothing says you can't quit your job as the campaign begins, and often the campaign has you join some other group of people, employed by someone else. It's obviously up to you how you choose to play, or how you choose to run your players, and definitely depends on you how you interpret the written language, but the RAW is clear, and clearly indicates you are employed, and have been employed. It would be worded completely differently if player characters had to start the game unemployed.

 

[wisdom000]

Well written, Wisdom, thanks.

In this one post I've learned more about the world of CyberPunk than all of the searching I've done in the past week or so since I saw the Teaser, combined...........I commend you, sir.

Thanks, sorry about the numerous typos, I was writing that after being up for 38 hours straight. And to be honest... I really suck at typing anyway!

But yeah, I really reeaaaaaaaaaaally love me some Cyberpunk 2020.

 

[wisdom000]

Core rulebook, page 58:



Core rulebook, page 59:



Now, nothing says you can't quit your job as the campaign begins, and often the campaign has you join some other group of people, employed by someone else. It's obviously up to you how you choose to play, or how you choose to run your players, and definitely depends on you how you interpret the written language, but the RAW is clear, and clearly indicates you are employed, and have been employed. It would be worded completely differently if player characters had to start the game unemployed.

Actually...... you are both right... and conversely both wrong...

Highlander, two paragraphs down from the one on pg 59 you posted:

One last thing. Roll one more d6. If you roll higher than a four, you just got unemployed.