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FanFic Redux: Cyberpunk RED
After the COVID lockdowns ended, my home gaming group (which has long since disbanded with the GM having retired to Mexico), we were playing Cyberpunk RED. That long-time GM liked to make sure that the characters had solid relationships to build on, and in a cyberpunk setting trust is so hard to come by that we had to do some extensive backgrounding to make it all work.
The brief given is that all our characters lived in a rough and poor part of town (as is almost universal of heroes in cyberpunk) where we had all grown up as kids. Essentially, we had been 'baby Edgerunners' in our childhoods, drifted apart after killing the "Oliver Twist Fagin" guy that had been giving us jobs but abusing the kids, and we were coming back together again as adults in the old neighborhood as the campaign opened. As is often the case, I took the role of 'medic' as I tend to prefer the 'smart and support' roles.
Cyberpunk RED has an excellent 'background and history' system which we used to generate ideas, and I ended up creating a medic with a focus on psychology. In the world of RED, cyberware usage is universal but leaves people feeling dehumanized, and a cyberpsychosis therapist helps you cope. My character, Astrid, was trained in this work after years of being a 'in-the-field' ER nurse. In Cyberpunk settings, people often do not respect medical personnel showing up in an ambulance to save the person they just tried to kill, so they are often armed to the teeth.
As we developed the background, my character had taken on the role of a 'mom figure' for the other people in the group as kids, was several years older than them, but eventually left to become a combat medic for a corporate health care group. Then after a few years of getting disillusioned and losing her parents, she escaped to the shadows returning to the neighborhood of her youth.
The Cast of Characters:
* Skinner: Astrid's street handle. Medtech (combat medic).
* Box: Solo (tough-guy) who at the start of the campaign is working at a coffee shop. In his past, he had been a corporate body-guard.
* Threshold: A gender-fluid Rockergirl (musician) and body-mod happy partier. As a child was called Thea.
* Arjay: Fixer who side-gig was being the equivalent of a 'YouTuber'.
* VLK: Mikos Xandros was a Tech.
* MRLD: Alt-PC for Threshold and in-game girlfriend.
As the games progressed, we started writing short-stories about background events or between-adventure moments. As with my Living Force stories, they often play back and forth off another player who was keen on writing them as much as I was. The following posts are my contributions to the story reposted from World Anvil.
The brief given is that all our characters lived in a rough and poor part of town (as is almost universal of heroes in cyberpunk) where we had all grown up as kids. Essentially, we had been 'baby Edgerunners' in our childhoods, drifted apart after killing the "Oliver Twist Fagin" guy that had been giving us jobs but abusing the kids, and we were coming back together again as adults in the old neighborhood as the campaign opened. As is often the case, I took the role of 'medic' as I tend to prefer the 'smart and support' roles.
Cyberpunk RED has an excellent 'background and history' system which we used to generate ideas, and I ended up creating a medic with a focus on psychology. In the world of RED, cyberware usage is universal but leaves people feeling dehumanized, and a cyberpsychosis therapist helps you cope. My character, Astrid, was trained in this work after years of being a 'in-the-field' ER nurse. In Cyberpunk settings, people often do not respect medical personnel showing up in an ambulance to save the person they just tried to kill, so they are often armed to the teeth.
As we developed the background, my character had taken on the role of a 'mom figure' for the other people in the group as kids, was several years older than them, but eventually left to become a combat medic for a corporate health care group. Then after a few years of getting disillusioned and losing her parents, she escaped to the shadows returning to the neighborhood of her youth.
The Cast of Characters:
* Skinner: Astrid's street handle. Medtech (combat medic).
* Box: Solo (tough-guy) who at the start of the campaign is working at a coffee shop. In his past, he had been a corporate body-guard.
* Threshold: A gender-fluid Rockergirl (musician) and body-mod happy partier. As a child was called Thea.
* Arjay: Fixer who side-gig was being the equivalent of a 'YouTuber'.
* VLK: Mikos Xandros was a Tech.
* MRLD: Alt-PC for Threshold and in-game girlfriend.
As the games progressed, we started writing short-stories about background events or between-adventure moments. As with my Living Force stories, they often play back and forth off another player who was keen on writing them as much as I was. The following posts are my contributions to the story reposted from World Anvil.