My buddy Chunkbot, aka Obyn the cleric in my D&D game, has been contemplating a Cyberpunk game for a while. It has run through a number of conceptual phases, ranging from a Cowboy Bebopish space opera using modified deep space rules from R. Talsorian’s orbital suplements to Delta Green-styled horrific near-future sleuthing.

He has called upon his fellow D&D players to start generating characters now, with the stated premise being a near-future (2009AD) sans-cyber Cyberpunk campaign revolving around a group of UC Davis students working their way through college pulling night shifts with a future-noir Pinkerton Security outfit. We expect Pinkerton to have returned to its union-busting roots in a post-energy-crisis near future.

Our RPG group, which has met weekly for about five years now with a rather low churn-rate of players, has developed an internal reputation for irrationally making situations more violent than necessary. Our first Cyberpunk game together resulted in a rather ugly massacre at a Starbucks coffee joint. Chunkbot has made ominous references to making sure that such behavior is immediately and unmistakably discouraged. I project a 50% casualty rate amongst PCs during the first two sessions of play.