#termination shock

[orchurisarts]

havent done fully rendered pieces for myself lately; so I did one GJHSHJEHJE

I actually adore this.. rediscovered the bloom tool as well <3

corrupted yuri ….

[hacksawing]

mildly curious, have you drawn the boat from jsab before? what would they look like in your style?

THE CAPTAIN AND HER CREW !!

[zimcard-artblog]

A pride themed server icon for the JSAB fan server I own plus some doodles :3

[potatobugz]

To those of you who follow @bluecubeblues this is my apology 4 not updating in almost three weeks

[violetkirk]

I'm illustrating the new Termination Shock book on ship-to-ship combat and building your own space vessel. Here's the mysterious snail-like War Angel aliens and one of their ships.

[callme6olet]

The Neon Glow

The struggle with cyberpunk is that it's supposed to be punk, but it's also all too real. The days of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic are behind us. The idea of the sci-fi corporate supercity, this neon-limned sprawl of concrete, vice, and pollution no longer seems like a frighteningly possible dystopia, but like an exaggerated reality. At its inception, cyberpunk existed in a liminal state between the primary and secondary worlds. These stories were ostensibly set on a futuristic Earth, but there was a sense that it was an alternate future, that these worlds were a warning about something that only had the slimmest possibility of really happening. They read like secondary worlds in the same way that Middle Earth reads as a secondary world: familiar in its bones, in its soul, but not in its details. The fact that that gap is closing, that we're watching those prophecies unfold, is at the heart of the current generation of post-cyberpunk fiction. Gibson's Agency, Stephenson's Termination Shock. Matrix: Resurrections. These stories deal not only with the dread of capitalism's brutal advance, but also (in my opinion) with the writers' mixed feelings over having predicted it, over creating a vision and aesthetic so powerful that our world is actually changing--purposefully--to match it. Just look at the MetaVerse. A Stephenson invention, now marketed as a reality, like that's supposed to be exciting.

This is a problem for me, because I love writing cyberpunk. I stumbled onto The Matrix in middle school, but it didn't sink its teeth in until I came across Shadowrun 4th Edition at Borders. Here was a world that felt lived in, in much the same way that the original Star Wars must've wowed people in the 70's. Arguably, Star Wars and cyberpunk both fit into the classic definition of the latter: high tech, low life. Luke is a farmer; Han's a drug trafficker. And while Star Wars is and will remain my all-time favorite, the cyberpunk genre brought an edge with it, something that grabbed hold of me, hit the dopamine button in my brain: the neon glow. Holograms and flickering advertisements in a rainy night. Smog dyeing the sunset crimson and purple. LEDs glowing from every nook and cranny.

And now, your average gamer's battlestation looks like something out of Bladerunner. And part of me rebels against that: do we not realize that we're losing? We're a couple short steps away from corporate citizenship, for god's sake.

That sense of doubt, that itch, pokes at me when I'm writing and find myself describing more of the same. It made me feel sick watching Edgerunners. The idea of losing your family to random violence because you don't make enough for health insurance isn't fiction--so why is this show dressing it up like it is? Like that's just as outlandish as a thousand-foot holo ad, a street tough with mantis blades in her arms? Did the showrunners not know what they were doing, somehow? Were they just jumping into this genre because they read Neuromancer once, thought it was such a wacky idea?

But then--oh-so-late to the party--I started playing 2077. I rebelled against it at first, felt the same itch, the same existential dread. But then the story revved into overdrive, and all at once, I realized: this here, it's the classic example of tropes done right. The world might be forty years old, but it's flawlessly realized. And, more than that, it is aware of the genre it exists in, of the evolution. There's something about the game that makes me want to be V, to live in a world where you have to carry an SMG to leave the apartment. To live loud. Even a month ago, I would've said it's the feeling of agency, the idea that, in a world of violent conflict, each person is more able to make a large-scale impact. But I don't think that's it, not really. Night City crushes you, makes even the most outrageous victories seem short-lived, insignificant blips against the weight of the world.

The moments that shine out aren't the big ones, they're the small ones. Seeing Mama Welles at the wake. A visit from a stray cat. Going to the ripperdoc and seeing the option to change appearance, because in that world, it's just that easy, and all of a sudden, I can be seeing a face I like in the mirror.

And here's the crazy thing: part of this reality we've stumbled into, this pseudo-cyberpunk corporatocracy, is the fact that's it's almost that easy to switch bodies here, too. We're getting there. There is beauty in all things, even the dark ones. There is beauty, too, in the impetuous, borderline-nihilism of an edgerunner, in the willigness to engage in hopeless rebellion. And there is a beauty in neon lights.

The meaning of the word punk hasn't changed, never will, but its expression has. In the 80's, it meant drinking and smoking because Mom and Dad said not to. Now, what gives me hope is going to punk shows in underground venues and seeing drug-free youth graffitied across the PA. It's realizing that rebellion changes as society changes. That, even though we might live in a dystopia, that dystopia will never choke out the beauty of our reality. So, I'm keeping the mirrored shades; I'm switching the LED strips back on; and I'm going to keep writing about cities bathed in the neon glow.

[extraspectrumed]

Risky please...

[rppr-podcast]

Game Designer Workshop: Termination Shock and Crowdfunding with Greg Stolze

Game Designer Workshop: Termination Shock and Crowdfunding with Greg Stolze

I talked with Greg Stolze, author of Reign, Termination Shock, co-author of Unknown Armies, and writer on many other books (and my co-host on Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast) about his new Kickstarter for Ships, a supplement for Termination Shock. We talked about the core mechanics for Termination Shock, game design, and crowd funding RPGs. Back Ships: How to Build and Blast Them on Kickstarter…

View On WordPress