Wasn't expecting a longform post on the value of verisimilitude in RPG worldbuilding from you, but here we are. I agree that it's the mundane stuff that cements a fictional place as one you can mentally inhabit without suspending disbelief to the point that the imaginary world around you looks like PS1 graphics, so to speak.
With that thought and what I gather are your tastes in mind--take a moment to check out the Mothership RPG, and specifically the setting/adventure book "A Pound of Flesh".
Thanks for that trip down memory lane. CP:2020 was by far my favorite RPG when I was a kid ... less cumbersome than D&D, and it felt more real than Shadowrun, for all that the latter had its moments. I always felt like CP got overlooked - no novelizations like Shadowrun or the various D&D worlds, just the rule books. But there was something so deeply compelling about it, the way that world seemed just around the corner, for better or for worse ... simultaneously horrifying and seductive.
As those milestone years of 2013 and 2020 came, I found myself checking back in with the game timeline, to compare. Obviously, we don't have the cool tech, nothing even close to it, and society hasn't collapsed entirely. Yet in so many ways it feels prescient. We're nowhere near people deliberately becoming cyborgs (RFID chips notwithstanding), but some of the prosthetic hands out there are getting remarkably good. Paralympic athletes are sometimes outperforming those with fully organic bodies. Cybereyes are being developed. Our security services are full of juicers with physiques training alone can't create ... and mercenary armies are becoming larger and more terrifyingly competent. It often feels like Pondsmith wasn't wrong, he was just a little premature.
This is a fantastic read, and I agree with your thesis on great literature. But, I believe the franchise's success might be even more traceable back to William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. He created something truly special. Everything that comes after in the genre is derivative, most obviously the RPG game, which is what great literature does.
Wasn't expecting a longform post on the value of verisimilitude in RPG worldbuilding from you, but here we are. I agree that it's the mundane stuff that cements a fictional place as one you can mentally inhabit without suspending disbelief to the point that the imaginary world around you looks like PS1 graphics, so to speak.
With that thought and what I gather are your tastes in mind--take a moment to check out the Mothership RPG, and specifically the setting/adventure book "A Pound of Flesh".
Thanks for that trip down memory lane. CP:2020 was by far my favorite RPG when I was a kid ... less cumbersome than D&D, and it felt more real than Shadowrun, for all that the latter had its moments. I always felt like CP got overlooked - no novelizations like Shadowrun or the various D&D worlds, just the rule books. But there was something so deeply compelling about it, the way that world seemed just around the corner, for better or for worse ... simultaneously horrifying and seductive.
As those milestone years of 2013 and 2020 came, I found myself checking back in with the game timeline, to compare. Obviously, we don't have the cool tech, nothing even close to it, and society hasn't collapsed entirely. Yet in so many ways it feels prescient. We're nowhere near people deliberately becoming cyborgs (RFID chips notwithstanding), but some of the prosthetic hands out there are getting remarkably good. Paralympic athletes are sometimes outperforming those with fully organic bodies. Cybereyes are being developed. Our security services are full of juicers with physiques training alone can't create ... and mercenary armies are becoming larger and more terrifyingly competent. It often feels like Pondsmith wasn't wrong, he was just a little premature.
This is a fantastic read, and I agree with your thesis on great literature. But, I believe the franchise's success might be even more traceable back to William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. He created something truly special. Everything that comes after in the genre is derivative, most obviously the RPG game, which is what great literature does.