How Dystopian Are We Going?

[Blue]

Well, that makes me wonder just what happened to the world to make it so... well, dystopic. I assumed The Net was a major contributer, given its emphasis in your What is Vostok thread. The Net in your game sounds little different than what we have now, so unless its become some sort of evil giant in the minds of the people, there should be something that provoked the downtrend of civilization. It could just be a reaction to the increasingly terrible things we've come to expect from ourselves, I suppose... A transition of the horrific to the banal.

[Jonathan Meer]

I didn't intend the What is Vostok description to be either dystopic or idyllic. It's meant to describe a state of the world. I can imagine a number of sincere and intelligent people, for various reasons, being thoroughly comfortable with the world-state, and I can imagine a number of sincere and intelligent people being concerned with the power of megacorporations, the loss of Net freedom (by way of coerced non-anonymity), and the 'great unknown' of the societal structure (that is, that humanity has never operated in this way before; what does this mean for civilization?).

This groupwrite isn't intended to create a big baddie that we each unite against. There is no Sephiroth in this world.

EDIT: There was a substantial edit in my previous post.

[Blue]

I read the edit. It all makes sense, except that I was under the impression we were doing a dystopic sort of world here. At least in comparison to our own. Then again, it seems most people would rather than a world operating under a more modern sort of view. I can work with either one. At the moment, I'd just like some clarification on what it is we're working with. I operate under the old G.I.Joe adage: Knowledge is power.

Also, if a Sephiroth style big bad guy were to show, that'd be pretty epic.

[Jonathan Meer]

We all seem to be meaning different things by the word 'dystopic.' I think it'd be more useful to leave such value judgments to the individual characters.

[Blue]

That may or may not work. It'll be disconcerting if one person talks about how they're out on the town, having a great time at the city's thriving barscene and another talks about meandering through a near ghost town.

Edit: On that note, just how much interaction are you expecting from this groupwrite?

[Jonathan Meer]

But that's a difference in fact, not a difference of value. We should be consistent about whether or not the nightlife is populated (I'd argue for a robust Waking World nightlife). These sorts of objective, 'Yes/No' questions should be resolved by discussion, if they haven't been decided already. But subjective questions, on which reasonable people could disagree, should not be decided in the same way. That's up to the individual characters.

EDIT: I have no expectation for level of interaction.

[Blue]

I may just be visualizing cyber-punk in a different way. My assumption is that it's a futuristic setting where things are... well, going to shit. I visualize this more of a standard futuristic setting, where the technology is advanced, but people basically get on with their lives much as we do now.

[Sigfried Hunin]

I don't really know how to turn the conversation into empirical terms.

I'd say, regardless of the choices, that almost 100% of people use the Net on a regular basis.

The real jam is what percentage of people use the Net as much as humanly possible, also known as "addiction."

I would, under the previously determined descriptions, GUESS at these percentages:

Not-Very: >10%
Brink: >30%
Decline: >50%
Very: >70%

Again, these are just ROUGH ASS, NOT PRECISE numbers. Because everybody also WORKS online not a single one of these, in any way, indicate that society as a whole is falling apart, just that the PHYSICAL WORLD is in great decline.

That the physical world is in such great decline might have something to say about how "dystopic" the world is, but let's save that massive ball-twisting bullshit argument for later.

[Tyr]

I think after the posts in this thread I'm more inclined to be in the Decline setting, but I'm with Blue in that I just would like more information to be established about this world/setting/city. I want to know how the world was before it fell into a decline or was on the brink of it or whatever. What is actually in decline here? Is the city as a whole falling apart due to lack of interest in preserving it, due to the tantalizing draw of the Net or is the politicians taking control of the real world while everyone is jacking off in a fake world or even vice versa?

I think we should "hastily" establish a few concise key points in the setting and then flesh it out, that way it's easier for a lot of people to see where their wanted character can be fit in or what kind of character would.

[Orion]

I like the idea of the "Brink" and maybe even seeing the beginning of the "Decline" as the story of the RPG progresses (if we choose to progress it such).

[King B]

I'm for the Decline phase. I feel like a big part of what I want to capture is a whole descent into savagery thing. I think most of the people that are voting for Not-Very and Brink have this mindset that Decline or Very Dystopian means that there is no more real world.

Personally, wanting to write in a darker atmosphere makes me think I want either "at the very brink" or at "the start of the decline."