Help for a Dystopian Sci-Fi RP

[Detective Rascal]

Okay, so I have an rp in the later stages of planing, with most of the ground work done and just doing some polishing, but I want to get some feedback/advice on the idea in general. For context, this rp used to be two different ideas, but they were of a similar genre and I loved both of them equally, so I mashed them together to make this. If you looked at it for like two seconds you could probably see the different main ideas stand out. 



And for easy access, I'm just putting everything in a Spoiler
 

Spoiler

World Setting
- Humans have always been obsessed with making themselves better, humanity has always strived to be better both physically and mentally, and we have a long history of altering our bodies to fit newer and newer standards that we place on ourselves


- This augmentation started out as us having braces, to replacing lost limbs, to creating better organic organs, to then replacing organics with the inorganic. As technology progressed, we progressively started to replace natural limbs with robotic ones, natural organs with cybernetic ones, slowly turning ourselves fully augmented in our progress.
- Right now, in order to survive in the world we have created for ourselves, we must get rid of most of our original organic bodies in order to survive. Normal lungs are replaced so that we can live with the air we have, our limbs are replaced to do more work and to do that work faster, and parts of the brain can be replaced with chips to do normal functions and more.  Over time we have slowly been losing our human bodies, and now we have come to the point where we may be losing our humanity all together.


- The price of our augmentation is also quite large. While we naturally produce energy from eating and such, the tech we're now made up of requires more energy than we can naturally provide, so to combat this, we have to recharge. Plug yourself into the wall, put in a new battery, stand in what sun you can get for as long as you can, you're going to need what you can get if you want to live. If you don't recharge, you die. If you let yourself get too low, your different systems will slowly shut down, until you have nothing left, and you die. That's it.


- Of course, all of this, has the exception. The Rich. The more money you have, the less you are forced to augment your body, since you don't need to do the work that the tech is required for, and with less augmentation, the less you need to recharge. There is a definite tension between the Rich and everyone else, as while the Rich stay alive and have money pour in, the not are left as empty husks of their self and slowly die in the streets. 

Physical Setting


- The actual setting of the rp is in the city of Uoria! Uoria is a kind of hub for innovation and invention, where dreamers go to get their projects funded and the more empathetic rich go to feel better for themselves. 


- The city itself, on two fronts, is very different from the rest of the world. 
- The first difference; the city itself is run by a 'Guardian' AI. Most general systems for the city is run by this AI, and this AI has a lot of reach too, with the city making citizens have a specific chip that connects with the AI mandatory (with visitors getting a special device instead of a chip) so that everyone has some kind of communication to this AI. You can use it to connect to the internet, communicate with other people in the city, anything you want. Think Google/Siri, only on a city-scale and tracking all your systems at all times. If you see someone talking to themselves, they're probably talking to the AI.


- The second different is just as big; the city has what's called 'Universal Energy'. This essentially means that the city has employed a policy that states that all have a right to energy, no mater if they can afford it or not. 'Recharge Centers' are places you can go to recharge, so if you don't have a home to recharge at you can go there, or if you need a top-me-up, or if you can't get home in time, this is the place to be. You can still recharge at home, though that comes with a price like all your other bills, and the centers are usually busy and take longer, but are open 24/7.


- While this city is seen as the beacon for innovation, that's only it's reputation. Few who come to Uoria looking for their big break actually get it; many are denied the funds from the big companies they pitch to, and since many of those people spend their life savings to get to Uoria, they unfortunately have to stay after their failure. Those who live in poverty try their damnedest to survive, with most of the born-citizens of Uoria being under the poverty line from birth to death, and those barely above it trying to survive too.
-The Rich are a different story. The Rich are usually just a few families linked together, and those families own companies that have been in the family for generations, and those companies pretty much own everyone else, sometimes including other Rich families. Often you know when you see a Rich person by the fact that they're stilling mostly human.
 



Plot Ideas 
- Revolution! Either staged by the Guardian AI of the city or not; the people of Uoria have had enough with the Rich corrupting the government in their favor, and have a revolution within the city.  (Tone: Darker)
-Just Slice of Life! People all across the city just running into each other, with different people making connections and maybe some others finding the truth of the city that others live by everyday. (Tone: Lighter/Medium)
- Syndicate! Crime and Corruption is an everyday thing in every city, but with the new AI and the new controversial policy of 'Universal Energy', every gang, crime syndicate, and corrupted official/Family now have their work cut out for them. (Tone: Darker)

Characters
- As Gm I run the AI and all NPCs, everything else is pretty much up for grabs, though character types are subject to availability with certain plots


Mechanics


- With the updates and stuff I can only hope that the site has finally stopped changing, and only with possibly more cosmetic code options coming along now, this rp should be in the Hosted Project section. The space allows me to do pretty much whatever I want, and dear god do I want that.


- I'm definitely going to enforcing/monitoring the Recharging. It's a key part of the world, and while it may be a little meta and can be a little meta at times, I do want that added pressure on players to get their characters recharged in time and live with that restriction that comes with it. I don't know if I want to go with a post limit (every 5 post you need to recharge), a base in-game time limit (every 5 hours in game you need to recharge), or the sum of a character's parts determining the in-game time limit (cybernetic chip + limb replacement + limb replacement + organ replacement = 5 hours of life before recharge) 

So, any feedback? Ideas that you love, ideas that you hate, ideas you aren't too sure of? Any Advice either? 

 

[Grey]

Couple of things that might be useful. CTRL-F cyberpunk in this thread and consider doing the same for Transhumanism.




And this might provide some food for thought.






I'll come back with more specific feedback in while, after taking some time to think on what you've got. 

 

[snowy raven]

@Detective Rascal Just some suggestions *shrugs shoulders* 


Are you going to add a government surveillance problem that society has? I'm assuming these families have the media under their control as well? 


Food for thought: the upper class has a group of mercenaries with combat specs that they use occasionally to wipe out any dissonant voices?


Keeping track of time in an RP can be difficult at times. Especially with everyone posting at different times and each post would suggest different amounts of time have passed. 


Could have a "posting order" where everyone posts after the same person (and a full day has passed when everyone posts and everyone has to charge?)  Hmm, you could also have the government issue different kinds of batteries and chargers that each make a full charge in the same time (1 hour, five hours, etc.), following the "Universal Energy" policy. 


I'd love to join this future RP btw!

 

[Detective Rascal]

@Grey I'm pretty well versed in Cyberpunk, but I had a read of that and Transhumanism and I'm glad I reached the same conclusion of transhumanism in the text. The main problem the passage highlighted was really the power source, and I have that covered, so I think I'm good, but I'm glad at least I have a name for the second slot in my genre types.


@snowy raven I have kept the Guardian AI info purposefully vague, because it is certainly a main point in most of the plots I have down, but assume that the AI has different roles in different plots.  (So there may or may not be a problem :p) 


And only the solution I've thought of is to just keep a close eye on what everyone is doing and possibly just record where everyone is at. 

And for Recharging I may change it so that everything takes a base time amount to actually recharge, but different times for how long you can last without a charge. So you can have a sum of different parts in a character, and how many hours/minutes is just taken off 24 hours on your 'Battery Life'. It makes more sense at this point. 

I'll also keep you in mind Snowy! You'll probably get a mention when the interest check goes up.

 

[Grey]

It all looks pretty solid, but I'm curious about a couple of things.


Why don't the rich have better augmentations? More effective, more energy-efficient?


The power-limited post caps seem maybe a bit harsh. Might be better for pacing to use a simple resource track, and certain actions in a post drain more or less energy? Use the special feature on an aug and you lose a bit more power?


Would it be possible to acquire more efficient batteries, energy infrastructure, or more energy efficient augs? If the character has the expertise and acquires the resources?

 

[Detective Rascal]

@Grey For the Rich not having better augmentations I went the 'I'm-Better-because-I-Don't-need-This" route. Having Augmentations is a sign of being a laborer, a sign of being someone who has to be 'less human' in order to live, and of course the Rich are above this. It's like what we have now but with food; people who can afford it are always going on about "No GMO" or "No Chemicals" or some other kind of rant when half the time they don't even now what they're talking about. Being more 'Human' is the luxury essentially. 

And I think the only thing I'm stumped on is this energy tracking. I want to have the possibility to have character die off due to no energy, but I think tracking energy loss via actions in-game may be too much tracking to do on my part, but with the time limit in-game it may be easier to track but be a little too harsh. I mean, I can wonder how much a character can achieve in like 12-16 hours in-game and still have enough room to plug themselves. I may have to just troubleshoot with my players on what they want to run on. 
Also, purely for the fact that I'm running this on my own, I am not having special items per se. If you have a robotic leg you have robot leg with the base energy requirement, but if a player can convince for 'specials' I may allow it, but also potentially be more work on my end, so a player really does have to convince me.  

 

[SgtKeens]

If AI is a thing, would there be androids running about? If you're talking class divides, non-humans would play a big part of this.

 

[Grey]

Is there a reason augmented human labourers are preferable to full automation? There's no unemployment crisis?


Because even now we've been automating a lot of jobs, and that curve looks to be climbing. Uoria sounds like it's verging on technosocialist post-scarcity utopia because if the augmentations make people better at their jobs, wouldn't necessities be abundant? If people have access to food, water, and energy they can fulfill a lot of more abstract needs and conceivably comfortably challenge the rich through non-violent political means. Is there an ecological threat that limits access to food or water, since energy is covered in Uoria? Do the rich artificially induce resource scarcity or hike up prices? Seems economically unwise - if people cannot buy your products your profit margins will fall. If you save money through indentured augmented employees that's one thing, but the initial manufacture and installation can't be cheap so if no one has the money from wages to buy products then companies can't pay wages to employees who then cannot buy... you see the late capitalist self-destructive nightmare at work here.


I mean, given the food mountain thing the EU credibly artificially inflates the value of food items even now but that seems less motivated by raw sadism than the rich in this setting.


If Uoria can generate enough energy to restore power to the augmentations of a whole metropolitan population on five hour cycles and power an advanced AI and communications network, where's the scarcity that typically drives conflict in these narratives? With energy that abundant and the advanced technology for AI and augs, water desalination is probably a solved problem. Assuming no test-tube meat or supercrops food could conceivably be an issue. I dunno. Revolution seems like the only rational response to the mind-boggling cruelty that must motivate the wealthy, and if none of them see that, then the whole upper-echelon gene pool must self-select for sociopathy.


...Which, actually, is an idea I need to keep on file.


Is there an augmented security force that prevents the rich from simply being murdered by their physically superior underlings? How is their loyalty ensured? Is it just unaugmented people with powerful weaponry?


The more I think about it, the more this setting seems to hinge on some nascent scientific advances being achieved and others being ignored to contrive the pre-existing conditions you want. Might be worth throwing in an ecological or technological disaster in the recent-ish past. Maybe some kind of soft-AI viral outbreak? You need manual labour from augmented humans because all the automated systems went haywire, a lot of valuable research data was lost re: water treatment, agricultural production, and synthetic nutritional solutions...