NUYOU (campaign setting)

NUYOU is a cyberpunk setting created by Dave for the Cogent Roleplay system.

## Setting

The year is 2090. The world is not the utopia promised in the twentieth century, yet neither is it the wasteland prophesized in the early twenty-first century. Instead earth is a bloated mess of intermingled national laws and international treaty, where governments fail to meet the needs on an impossibly large number of people while giant corporations hold the metaphorical soul of the masses. The efforts of humanity have staved of apocalypse after apocalypse, managing to avoid outright war and even held back most cataclysmic effects of climate change.

But the cost has been the fire of progress, we haven't reached out and claimed the worlds of the solar system so coveted in decades prior, we haven't reached a global understanding or utopian peace, we haven't lifted ourselves from the mire of ambition and desire into anything close to enlightenment. Instead, humanity festers. It is a couch bound empire of barely think wage slaves, working their lives away to merely sustain their way of living. Eat. Sleep. Work. Game. Repeat. An ingrained malaise hangs over humanity, and even the technological marvels that surround us seem to exist only to lull us deeper into out monotony.

For decades the masses had worked in this directionless manner, but on the eve of 2090the boutique genetics firm Reboot announced a product that awoke humanity from its slumber. NuYou, part biological miracle and part technological marvel. The proprietary technology offered a new start that was more than metaphorical, as they offered to create your ideal version of yourself; young, old, male, female any race in any phenotypic combination imaginable. With this avatar made, your consciousness would be transferred into it, given full rights and citizenship and all assurances of a true continuity of self. At first, people didn’t believe it was possible.

But Reboot proved it. First, with their founder, who crossed the divide of biological gender and was reborn a man some forty years junior. Then, more shockingly, with a drone. The robotic spokesperson Noel who had served as the face of the company for a decade was supposedly transferred into a human body. He disappeared from public life soon after, but this monumental publicity stunt was the spark that ignited a fervor across the globe.

Everyone wanted NuYou. It represented a driving desire that nearly every single person wished to obtain. Even those robotic drones who had secretly begun to harbor sentience longed for the promise of NuYou and the freedom to exist openly with free thought and action. Suddenly entrepreneurship was on the rise, people who had lived content in their drudgery began to think for themselves and innovate, desperate to gain the edge they needed to ‘make it’ in the world. Ever more desperate to obtain the promised new life in the body of their dreams.

This new awakening was not without its downsides. Impoverished slummers and marginalized wastrels of humanity suddenly had a spark of hope before them. They railed uproariously against the powers that be for the first time in decades. People with nothing left to lose finally had something to gain by standing and fighting. Areas of expansive shanty town that had long since been allowed to sink into a mire of inactivity and depression suddenly exploded into a renaissance of border dweller innovation. Everyone wanted a chance for a new start, and for many the prize of citizenship for this new avatar of their desires was more of a reward than the restoration of limbs or the revitalization of youth.

Outside the megacities in the great sprawling slums that cover the world, billions of unregistered and illegal citizens throng in masses. Their lives are short and often violent, but in this maelstrom of chaos unique individuals mark themselves for greatness in a way forgotten by the rest of humanity. They fight every day just for the right to exist, and through their trials an impossibly small fraction achieve glory.

To play a game in this cyberpunk setting you are taking on the role of one such a person. Driven to the fringes of society for one reason or another, and forging your path in the hostile world. Will you become a brutal gang warlord, controlling swathes of the slums? Will you challenge yourself to uplift the impoverished and become a champion of goodwill and visionary for the future? Or will you be seduced by the call of the corporations and strive to make your way to the biggest penthouse in the city, and live in the lap of luxury? The opportunities are endless, but it all starts with the roll of the die!

## Species/Classes

* Slummer
* Booster
* Bespoke
* Drone

## Cybernetics & Fusion

#### Cybernetics

* Scrap
* Ganger
* Commercial
* Corptech

## Cybermancy

* Anarchistic
* Ghosting
* Jacker
* Swarmer