Right now—in the 2020s—it’s K-Pop. Before that—at least in Asia—it was J-Pop. While there might be superficial similarities to manufactured pop stars and boy- and girl-bands in North America and Europe, the term Idol has particular significance when applied to the star system in Korea and Japan. These stars are not only trained in music and dance performance, but cultivate an image of accessibility and even connection—an intentional para-social relationship that is based on the idea that the Idol is just like you, they are your avatar in the world of superstardom, and that they rely on you to support and protect them. That probably isn’t true of every Idol and Idol group, nor is it necessarily intentional, but it kind of helps identify and categorize a particular approach and style.
And this is definitely not intended to denigrate the Idols. They are amazing performers—singers, dancers, and actors all in one. They work insanely hard and undergo incredible stress in pursuit of their art. Maybe they are doing it for the money or the adulation, but aren’t we all? Pick any singer-songwriter of note. They could have stayed in the coffeeshop or the club but they instead sought the limelight. We want to share our art with the world (man, can I relate to that!) and maybe bring some joy. I would expect that most Idols are no different. Money is how the world shows it cares.
This adventure is designed for a cyberpunk or near-future dystopia kind of setting, but could certainly be adapted to almost any genre with a bit of work. Instead of an arcology, maybe it’s a village the local lord has abandoned. Maybe it’s a neighbourhood in a city in an ungoverned space.
The basic premise is one that has been seen throughout history—when the authorities decide not to resource civil order in an area, someone ultimately arises to impose it. Those that arise as alternative providers of civil order are either criminal organization or they evolve into one. It then becomes really difficult of state authorities to then reassert power over the area, if they ever try. The areas have often become heavily criminalized with extreme sanctions for those cooperating with the authorities.
The adventure works best if the region is one the PCs know well through previous interaction. It might be the location of a safehouse, or perhaps an informant or other ally that has helped the PCs previously. A situation like this might end up feeling like a status quo the PCs do not consider shifting or that the PCs do not need to address. I mean injustice and oppression is everywhere, right?
This one-pager is inspired by the key event in Cyberpunk 2077—the theft of a super-rare technology from a scion of a corporate empire. It’s a heist with major stakes and major repercussions.
Story
The PCs in this adventure have all been burned by the same corporation. Palantine Security Solutions is a private security company that had also once had a private military corporation. After the Central Asian War of 2033, Palantine closed down its PMC and focused on security and law enforcement. Something happened, something so heinous that even a powerful corporation would feel the repercussions. Stock prices, contracts, and even corporate alliances would be shaken.
Inspired by our character creation sensation for Todd’s Headspace game, here’s a little Headspace fiction. The names are changed, as is the precise situation:
In my head canon, Cutter is played by Ha Ji-Won
She sat there, staring at the drink, knowing it wouldn’t help but lacking any other alternative. She had died. No, not her, Stocker. The boss. He had died. But she had been in his head, she had witnessed it. More, she had endured it. She had shared his mind as Stocker died. That was after Whistler disappeared into the grid. Mills might have still been alive, she didn’t know. If not dead, Mills had lost her implant, had lost her link.
Dead by any other name.
In there, in the head that held remnants of her teammates, still dwelt the ones who lived. Their doubts added to her own. Their grief piled on top of hers. Even when she slept, their nightmares intruded.
She had plenty of her own.
Was their some change in the pressure in the room, some palpable tension that rippled along its surface? As much as she tried to turn it off, she had become attuned to emotions, maybe even to thoughts. It was as if someone had opened a sepulchre and the stench of the dead wafted out.
“Hello Cutter”
Her hand almost went to her pistol. He kept it still and on the bar. She turned her head to meet Ashton’s eyes. She didn’t know if he had a uniform of charcoal suit, white shirt, and red tie, but she had never seen him in anything else. The two brutes flanking him, just a step behind, should have had a corporate brand on their forehead.
She offered him the most insincere smile she could muster. “What’s Hayashi-Senko doing sending it’s best and brightest into this dive?”
In an email exchange, friend of the Accidental Survivors in Germany, Wolf, mentioned Innocent Gun, which another listener had mentioned (for those not in the know, we talk a lot about Innes & Gunn’s line of beers), and I wrote that it would make a good RPG title.
Wolf suggested a western, gothic, cyber-punk. I like that, but I’ll go one further – post-apocalyptic.
Dig this: it’s hundreds of years after a cataclysm that is known in the region in which the PC’s begin as the Event. Every culture has a different myth about it, but it was a huge disaster. The world is only just starting to recover. Part of this new recovery is an organic network into which certain people can tap. It is a decentralized information network that evolved after the Event. Resurrected industry is taking advantage of this much the way it takes advantage of computers and the internet in our world.
From the movie Priest
But this recovery is very localized. Certain places have factories, electricity, transportation and communications, but much of the world remains outside these “points of light.” Yes, “civilization” is advancing, but slowly. Carefully. The people who live on the fringes have civilization, sure, but it’s a frontier civilization. In many places, might makes right.
And there is a secret, whispered about on the network. Something is growing. Something powerful. A global geothermal energy project is coming back online. Its substations are spooling up one by one. An energy grid built to power a world beyond even the 21st-century’s voracious needs could change everything.
In my conception of this, I have no idea what the Event was. It’s unimportant. The network is due to nanobots that existed before the Event and are replicating, but due to the specifics of the ones that survived the Event, they can only work with individuals with very specific genetic markers. The nanobots are also powering up the geothermal grid – working on parameters set hundreds of years ago and happening now because they have replicated enough that there is a cascade, as more power increases production, which allows more power, etc.
Gothic, I think, is generally very intertwined with the aesthetics of cyberpunk. The world is constantly dark as the Event created an almost impenetrable layer of clouds (yes, I know this would have huge environmental repercussions, but so would magic and no one ever seems to care about that ;). It rains all the time. It’s a dark and depressing world in which wealth has created the kind of class divisions known during the Middle Ages (a representation of the current wealth gap).
And the PCs are the ones bringing order to both the cities (protecting the underclass rather than taking the barons coin) and in the frontier (where the network is starting to have a great impact).
They are the Innocent Guns. But how long will they remain so?
