The New Untouchables

The Cyberpunk game I want to run for you guys is what I'm calling The New Untouchables. In this game, you will all portray young police officers who are freshly graduated from the academy. Your characters will be approached in the first game session and offered a spot in a special task force. The idea is that your characters will, in theory, have yet to be tainted by the corruption that is rife in the world.

As Sean Connery's character Malone in De Palma's The Untouchables said: "If you're afraid of getting a rotten apple, don't go to the barrel. Get it off the tree."

The world of Cyberpunk is like our own, only darker. It's been changed by a constant influx of new technologies. Society often has trouble keeping up with these advances. In addition, integration of cybernetic systems into humans has brought about a dulling of humanity. The world is a nasty place, rife with brushfire wars, crime, corruption, and broken dreams. The USA is a shell of what it once was, a second-world nation at best, with the European Union replacing it as the closest thing to a world superpower.

What you need to do is think of something that will set your character apart from everyone else. What sort of cop would your character have aspired to become had he been taken from the academy and dropped into a precinct in a crime-infested suburb? Sure, everyone starts as a beat cop, but what would he have become if given enough time on the force? A crime scene investigator? A homicide cop? SWAT? A computer crime specialist? A detective?

Combine this with his background in the world, prior to attending the academy. What sort of background does the character have? Why did he want to be a cop? What was he good at in high school? If he attended college, what was his major?

If you have questions or ideas, drop by my desk, send me an email, hit me up on Jabber/Pidgin, or contact me at my AIM screen name, Hutt Jedi. Let's get a dialogue going.