Dump List - Campaign Themes

The city@night campaign has a number of themes or recurring topics that affect the setting, and thus the situations the characters often find themselves in.

### **Agency**

Not just in terms of who one works for, but as a person or personality interacting with the environment, and as a physical being.  Who is in control, who you are, what makes you you, where all that came from.  Are you who you think you are? How do you know? Most other people are pretty much just along for the ride, for however long that might be.

### **Biological Augmentation**

Bioware, Genetech. Permanent modification of internal organs, tissues, etc. in an effort to improve the effect or functionality.  Involves the use of custom designed and cultivated biological matter, and genetic manipulation.  More popular than cybernetic augmentation, despite being more expensive, because its hidden nature bypasses much of the current stigma around cybernetics.

### **Bloodsports**

Violence as entertainment. While capital punishment still remains off the law books in California Free State, professional "non-lethal" bloodsport such as Combat Bikers and Urban Brawl teams have recognised and regulated global leagues and championships. Getting feeds for "non-lethal" (and black market feeds for lethal) gladiatorial leagues from Aztlan and Asia isn't too hard.

### **Car Trashing Action**

People love car crashes, mostly as long as they don't happen to them. Even then though, they're okay if you can walk away unscathed. While self-driving cars are everyday, their low-level pilot brains are hardly infallible. They are open to hacking, as is the grid guide that directs nearly all traffic from destination to destination. Out in the wastelands, the highway patrol is tasked with keeping the roads clear and safe. Nomad packs don't use the 'guide, but Roadwarrior gangs are becoming problematic. In both cases many utilise throwback combustion vehicles, and the latter are notorious for setting traps for motorists and state police, using vehicles and wrecks for maximum chaos and carnage.

### **Chipped Civilians**

Civilians are often required or encouraged to adopt the installation of certain cyberware designed to monitor, track, and in some cases, control them.  This often includes internal commlinks, security tags, and skilljacks.  Those who refuse face having their citizenship revoked and/or privileges reduced.

### **Cloning**

The creation of living metahumans through artificial gestation using genetic sequences.  With the advances in medical technology, the mass production of clones is more feasible, but still firmly within the realms of black market (read corporate and/or military) operations.

### **Corporate Colonies**

The growing influences of corporations and their cultures leads to self-contained corporate microcosms where the corporation in question owns everything and everyone.  This allows them to control and manage their workers to an unprecedented degree, and cut down on costs.

### **Covert Military Operations**

Military operations that are designed to achieve their objective with the minimum amount of exposure, including the unacceptability of non-combatant fatalities, collateral damage, and most importantly, attention by the media or authorities.

### **Cybernetic Augmentation**

Cyberware, Nanotech. Permanent modification or replacement of internal organs, tissues, etc. and in some cases external physical structure, in an effort to improve the effect or functionality.  Involves the use of custom designed and crafted electronic and mechanical matter.  Openly sporting cybernetics is frowned upon in most areas of polite society.

### **Death by Statistics**

With management decisions being increasingly made by algorithms, software, and statistical modelling, people and property have been rendered down into data. The Decker mantra "data is everything, everything is data" holds true in the meat world. Paradigms have been developed to facilitate acceptable casualties and death toll thresholds. Coupled with ever-present mortality rates, these have long been the metrics of doom, and being on the wrong side of the line means your needless death is within bands (i.e. as it should be).

### **Different Worlds**

Because of the significant inequalities and differences inherent in the physical and societal situation, it is entirely possible for two people to live in very different worlds, and as such, lack a very important understanding of what it is like to live in that environment on a day to day basis, let alone a long-term basis, and what effect that environment has on a person, and what they view as normal.  This in turn leads to lack of understanding of, and empathetic connection to, otherwise unknown others who exist in these situations, leading to bias, prejudice, discrimination and conflict between the groups. (see Island Communities, Scavenger Societies)

### **Dwindling Resources**

Resources that society requires to function effectively are either running out, have run out, or are now in the hands of a powerful few.  Whether this applies to human resources, physical wealth, infrastructure, medicine, metals, fuels, or even technological understanding, the effects of this scarcity led to many of the situations that now exist. (see Powerful Corporate Influence, Scavenger Societies)

### **Escalating Gang Violence**

Due to the breakdown in communities and widespread social dysfunction, many fall into gangs and other collectives, using competitive illegal methods to try and achieve the same ends outside of the system.  Those with no real training or direction often become part of gangs.  Many gangers earn the skills and direction they need to survive and even prosper outside the system.

### **Independent Personal Contractors (IPCs)**

The current slang phrase to describe the mercenary free market within California Free State. Mostly comprised of ex-services National SINners and the SINless, that engage with the legal and quasi-legal mercenary system. However most "true" Runners consider IPCs to be lesser versions of themselves, "weekend warriors", amateurs or wannabes (although there are arguments as to whether Runners are truly outside the system). Nevertheless, some IPCs later become Runners if they live long enough, and many "true" Runners pretend to be IPCs as a cover. Business is business.

### **Independent Collective Contractors (ICCs)**

A group of IPCs that work together for their collective benefit. While often passed off as mercenary units, or no better than gangs, ICCs can also include extended family mercenary enclaves, idealogy-based mercenary units, ex-police units, etc. As can be expected, groups of Runners often operate as ICCs when it suits them to.

### **Inverted Totalitarianism**

A system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy, and where economics trumps politics. In an inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse, as the citizenry is lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties, and their participation in government, through excess consumerism and sensationalism.  This also comes with the expectation, by the authority and the people, of absolute, blind, and unquestioning obedience to authority, and the mutual understanding that, rather than individual freedom, this is what is best, for the individual, the people, and the authority.  Couched in the language of benevolent unification in obedience, many power structures utilise social dynamics of conformity such as compliance (public conformity, while keeping one's own original beliefs for yourself), identification (of and with the idealised social norm), and ultimately internalisation (where the citizen brings their thoughts and beliefs in line with that which is expected).  While this is common in most nations, this is especially true of many corporate structures. (see Corporate Colonies, Powerful Corporate Influence).

### **Island Communities**

With the withdrawal of society towards places of high social gravity, communities tend to be of four types: isolated and condensed around physical locations and/or resources (desert island or nomad communities), physically interconnected but mostly socially segregated communities organised by ethnic, cultural, or ideological identities, comprising in their sum a larger society (city sprawl societies), socially isolated homogenous cultures based around a shared and enforced corporate identity, divided by occupation and pay grade (corporate communities), and organised groups of disparate individuals united by occupation and ideology (stellar clusters).

### **Mass-Surveillance Society**

The infrastructure of a society is designed to facilitate the mass surveillance of its members through a virtual panopticon where the authorities can monitor citizens without them knowing if this is taking place.  This is mostly facilitated through the Matrix/Grid and cyberware. (see Chipped Citizens, Corporate Colonies, Inverted Totalitarianism, Powerful Corporate Influence).

### **Modified Memories**

Through special techniques, it is possible to remove (or suppress) memories, and/or create new memories of things that may or may not have happened (or happened to someone else).  By extensive and careful application of this technology, identities can be copied, pasted, edited and even stored for various purposes.  It goes hand in hand with cybernetics, and cloning technology which is just as expensive, rare, and highly illegal.

### **Overt Military Operations**

Military operations that are designed to achieve their objective under the aegis (or facade) of accountability and transparency, including the acceptability of fatalities, collateral damage, attention by the media or authorities.

### **Paramilitary Force**

A military organisation that exists and operates outside the bounds of the formal armed forces, whether with or without the blessing of respective authority, but operates in mostly a similar fashion to these forces.

### **Political Extremists**

Various groups exist in or outside of the system that have resorted to extreme tactics to broadcast their message, and influence or force the actions of the individuals or collectives. Whether separatists, reactionaries, racial purists, or luddites, they believe in their purpose and their methods. Like other criminals, they exist in competition with the existing power structures (i.e. big gov, corps, 'nasticorps).

### **Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia**

Many elements of the setting are the results of previous events that lead to large-scale and long-lasting changes, such as conflict, crisis, and devastation.  The things that are acceptable are judged by different standards, most often dependent upon the current sustainability of one's lifestyle (i.e. the less you have, the more goes).

### **Powerful Corporate Influence**

Corporate influence is felt in every level of life, for people inside the corporation, inside the system, or those on the outside.  They have relatively unrestricted access and control, relative to how much they are given by their citizens.  For those on the inside, the corporation controls every aspect of life.  For those still in the system but not working directly for the corporations, their lives are still influenced by their actions.  Those on the outside, the outcasts, the SINless, gangs, nomad families, and runners alike, all feel the effects of pervasive corporate influence.

### **Quasi-Criminal Corporations**

Because of the power that corporations hold, what is legal becomes less clear as the corporation becomes the authority as much as national authorities, or the influence of standard social norms.  The norms of corporate culture and their rules of conduct replace pre-existing social norms and laws.

### **Reanimation**

The reanimation of dead tissue and deceased persons, including memories, skills, etc.  While in the past this was mostly restricted to physical reanimation, it has progressed largely onto reconstruction of identities using gene-cloned hosts and extensive memory manipulation.

### **Reconstructionist Identity**

Who you are is who you remember yourself being.  If you remember being Tex Martin, used car salesman, that is who you are.  If you then remember that Tex is a fake identity and you're really Theo "Chuckles" Hernandez, a runner on a deep cover job, then that is who you are.  In general, the mind tries to fill in the gaps and make things plausible in an effort to maintain identity integrity, the greater the gaps - the harder this can be, and the more problems it causes. (see Modified Memories)

### **Recruitment by Abduction**

The agent is recruited against their will, by their removal from their pre-existing life, and forcible integration with their new life.  This can be achieved with a number of methods. (see Agency, Modified Memories, Reconstructionist Identity)

### **Recruitment by Manipulation**

The agent is recruited by fooling them into thinking that they want to do it, resulting a more agreeable integration with their new life. (see Agency, Modified Memories, Reconstructionist Identity)

### **Recruitment by Selection**

The agent is recruited by application and /or selection by the new employer, resulting a more agreeable integration with their new life.

### **Remote Manipulation**

Individuals and/or collectives manipulated remotely by individuals and/or collectives.  This can be achieved with a number of methods. (see Agency, Modified Memories, Reconstructionist Identity)

### **Scavenger Societies**

Forced to get their hands on whatever they can to survive or prosper.  Whether it means reclamation, or murder and theft, people will do many things to keep, or get their hands on, the things they think they need.  Most often these societies live outside the dominant social system, but there are also many corporate projects to acquire or reclaim useful and “unclaimed” resources.  Those who thrive in these situations are very good at making things work, and working with what they have.

### **Virtual Panopticon**

The purpose of a Panopticon is for the few to watch the many.  The watched know they are being watched, but not exactly *when* they are being watched, or if someone is watching.  The idea was originally planned to be applied to prisons and other management environments. But with the integration of the matrix to all things, coupled with SINs, created a virtual panopticon which allows the few to watch the many as envisioned (all through the power of consumer electronics).

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