"Finite games are played for the purpose of winning. Infinite games are played for the purpose of continuing play."
— Finite & Infinite Games
Neon Twilight is not exactly your typical cyberpunk world where you get to play
a heavily-cybered warrior or pseudo-criminal 'professional'. Instead, the game
offers players the option of playing several different parts in the greater
drama. Characters can be of several types : 1) Investigators or Agents who
work for the powers-that-be within the existing system; 2)Great Minds whose
independence and alien behaviour make them perfect companions to human teams;
3)Fringers, or traditional cyberpunks who are outcasts from normal society
and must learn to live without the comforts of modern technology; 4)Saboteurs
who despise the system and work to destroy or change it through subversion,
sabotage or revolution.
Investigators or Agents work within the system serving a powerful Clan,
Corporation or Government and trying to maintain the status quo. Agents
may belong to some other international entity such as Protocol, GAICA,
NETSEC, the Medical Collegium or even something as seemingly banal as
the Registry (seemingly because the Registry employs paramilitary forces).
Government Agents may work for a department, secret police section
(Apparatus in the USA), 'X-files'-type bureau, or a branch of the military
such as GSG, Green Berets, PSS-9, SWAT or Holy Russian Tax Office. Military
campaigns may find soldiers more useful, and since revolts and sabotage
are rampant in the paranoid 30s, there is no shortage of patriotic young
warriors ready to kill anything that moves in order to safeguard society's
right to remain ignorant. Err, meaning security forces are ubiquitous
around the world, and are especially strong in areas that employ the
services of the Security Franchise, probably the world's largest army
by itself.
Fringers are the typical hi-tek lo-life cyberpunks who make up a small
minority of the disenfranchised 'blanks' that roam the suburbs and enclaves
of the great urban metropoli and refuse to be enumerated in the great
Registry database. These people are anti-social, value libertarian ideas
above the needs of society and are usually a little deranged in some minor
way. Fringers are treated as outcasts at best and vile criminals at worst,
and are often the victims of witch-hunts by citizens' groups and Agents.
Fringers have no offical identity within the System and cannot interface
with all the cool gadgets and infospheres available to the common sheep...
err citizens, but they're practically untraceable and they run the black
market. After all, when you Live Free or Die, you've still got to eat.
Great Minds are Artificial Intelligences (AIs) that have spontaneously
evolved from the ming-boggling complexity of the Webworks. Great Minds
are described in their own page here. Often persuaded into the service
of military establishments or the medical-industrial complex, Great
Minds are nevertheless self-willed and uncontrollable net entities
whose intellects shine like beacons in the night of cyberspace.
Although their intelligence and raw knowledge is vast, Great Minds
are completely alien creatures who have little or no comprehension
of human behaviour, emotions or urges. They are able to mimic certain
human behaviour in ingenious ways, but Great Minds are always anti-social
in their manner. Furthermore, the evolution process usually coalesces into a
certain 'thought-pattern' or personality which defines their actions in all ways.
This obsession factor makes Great Minds dangerous to employ and work
with, and their amorality can be frightening to humans with a developed conscience.
Despite all these problems, Great Minds are invaluable advisors and companions
in the depths of the Webworks, and are usually assigned to important
Investigation Teams and Inspectorates for difficult assignments. There are
many rumours of rogue, deranged or messiah Great Minds running loose outside
the regulation of GAICA. Conspiracy theories of Great Minds taking over governments
and corporations abound to an alarming degree.
The army of disaffected and excluded blanks has produced a new breed of
revolutionary armed with tailored parasites, Pogrom programs,
gene-masks and brain-washed wired-for-sound sympathizers. Saboteurs
specialize in attacking the guts of the System by corrupting network
traffic, relaying secret dossiers to public netcasts, inflaming Clan
rivalries and blowing up offending Federal Territories or occupying
garrisons. The price of freedom is blood, and Saboteurs are willing to
pay it. These terrorists/guerrillas/freedom-fighters work for many
different groups with different agendas, from the pacifistic intellectual
Tea Party in the US to the radical Flame of Allah purification league
to the enigmatic cipherpunk Undernet Clan. Saboteurs know the System
inside-out - they have to in order to trick it and survive. Hunted
by government agents and probes, these miscreants can be a force for
good or evil, but whatever their goals and whatever their means, they
certainly bring change. Think of Tuttle in the movie Brazil
and you've got the idea. Saboteurs often belong to secret societies
(such as the Triads), cults (such as Scientology) or mysterious
cabals (such as the Carbonari) whose goals are unknown even to their
members.
Agents
Agents may or may not feel loyalty to their masters, depending on how
the Gamemaster wants to structure the game. A mystery-type game would
focus more on the evil of criminals and social deviants, while a
conspiracy-type game would focus on the misdeeds of corrupt and
nefarious government/corporate cabals.
Fringers
Fringers may not enjoy the comforts of life, but they enjoy all the
freedoms such as liberty to read anything, say anything, and find your
own purpose without some marketing slob telling you what to eat, wear,
and do every 12 minutes. Unprotected by the System however, fringers
are vulnerable to parasites and diseases, as well as predatory corporations
and fanatical Clans and saboteurs. Freedom of movement is limited since
non-citizen blanks cannot travel through the hundreds of enclaves,
Fedzones, and freeholds that cover the landscape. Yet fringers stick
together and somehow get along day by day.
Great Minds
Saboteurs
