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TheTome /
InsideTropolisIntroductionYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. NB - postponed to second semester 2004 Inside Tropolis is a cyberpunk-themed mini-campaign I will be starting in the second semester. Characters will be hackers, people who can jack themselves inside the Tropolis system and illegally manipulate the code. It will use the Sorcerer game system, which is new to most people, including me. The focus is on player-driven action (no metaplot, no pages of setting) and the choices your characters make. Fountain of YouNo matter who you are, there's a place for you inside Tropolis - if you earn it. Everyone knows what happens once you get jacked in: they ask you how old you want to be, and then you are - young again, forever. And that's why everyone's prepared to sacrifice anything to get inside... we work ourselves to the bone, we lie, we cheat, we sell ourselves to the highest bidder, we steal. Except you. You haven't payed R-Corp a sheckle - you hack your way inside. If they catch you they may well kill you, but in the meantime... who needs a day pass? AnarchyOn September 11, 2001, the anarchists won: skyscrapers fell, planes dropped from the sky, at least one atomic bomb went off. What was left of the world's governments scrambled to contain a menace they couldn't pinpoint. Within a month there were more attacks. Within a year civil wars had engulfed smaller countries, and the corporations were securing control in the larger. In 2020 the global hegemony is dead. The world is a network of city-states, beholden to steel-hearted warlords or tyranical corporations. People do what they can to survive: contracting to corps, keeping a small store, shadowrunning or simply stealing. Two years ago, R-Corp unveiled Tropolis, a better-than-virtual world. Day passes became a unit of currency, if you could afford big things. It is now common knowledge that Tropolis has permanent residents, a few who are simply wealthy, but mostly oldsters who have saved everything they can for another chance at their youth before they die. R-Corp The R stands for Quality Welcome] to TropolisInside is a large city, filled with steel and concrete, just like we remember the world before the anarchy... except better. Clean streets. No crime. And filled almost exclusively with 20-somethings. Permanent residents fly in to Tropolis Airport, while day passers bamf in at bathrooms. The rejuvenated oldsters relive their youth the way it was meant to be, they find love again, finish what they abandoned and take everything they can from their last moments. Hack the planetThis is all the detail of the world that there is. In the character creation session you will define the city-state that your character comes from, how you learnt to hack, how you jack in, how you learnt martial arts and so on. If you like perving over Cyberpunk and Shadowrun supplements, here's a good excuse. Although society has fragmented, technology has continued to advance (hence Tropolis), so don't feel shy. Inside Tropolis, though, the world is caught at the turn of the millennium, few anachronisms from beyond that exist. Much more likely are nostalgic recreations from the 1950s thru 1980s as oldsters try to relive their youth. Hacked code objects (called daemons) are what give you power inside. You begin the game with one daemon, but you can always code more. Consorting with the nostalgia and artifice of Tropolis draws you in, though, away from the real world. Will your character abandon the truth and those he loves for a the power he has inside? Or will she use that power to achieve her goals and, just maybe, come out unscarred? That's what the game is about.
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