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Bleeding Edge ™

Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Cyberpunk destroyed science iction.

Science iction was about man’s potential. Science iction was about how man could reach out

and touch the stars. We could be better. We could be worse. All we needed was the technology.

Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the same damn bastard he always

was, he’d have the same problems he always did, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. In

those days, cyberpunk was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.

Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way. But the world did.

Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and all it has done is made us more who we

were before.

Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.

This book includes:

• Themes and props for two styles of cyberpunk game: Tomorrow Country and Metalground

• Origin, Role and Plugin Merits to add mechanical elements to your character’s background,

occupation, and technological implants

• A new kind of Morality: Alienation

Credits

Written by: Russell Bailey

Inspired by Material from: Stephen Herron

Special Thanks to: Benjamin Baugh

World of Darkness created by Mark Rein•Hagen

Developer: Eddy Webb

Editor: Genevieve Podleski

Art Director: Richard Thomas

Book Design: Ron Thompson

Interior Art: Brian LeBlanc

Cover Art: Mathias Kollros

den, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only.

Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost,

Hunter the Vigil and Geist the Sin-Eaters are trademarks of CCP hf.

CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP hf.

This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are iction

and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.

Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com

Bleeding Edge ™

Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Bleeding Edge:

Cyberpunk in the

World of Darkness

Chapter Three

of World of Dark-

ness: Mirrors kicked

the World of Dark-

ness in the center mass,

cracking it into three

different shards,

three new Worlds of

Darkness. Originally

we planned on a science

fiction section at the

time we were develop-

ing it, but the concept

of sci-fi ended up

being too broad, too

all-encompassing to

cram in 15,000 words.

But after the book

launched, fans clam-

ored for sci-fi

worlds for their

monsters to explore

and terrorize.

Cyberpunk destroyed science iction.

Science iction was about man’s potential. Science iction was about

how man could reach out and touch the stars. We could be better. We could

be worse. All we needed was the technology.

Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the

same damn bastard he always was, he’d have the same problems he always

did, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. In those days, cyberpunk

was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.

Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way.

But the world did. Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and

all it has done is made us more who we were before.

Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.

And just like the World of Darkness, cyberpunk is about those people

who can’t quite hack it. Who grind against the gears in the system: outsiders,

junkies, survivors and killers.

Tough Talk

As it turns out, cyberpunk destroyed science iction the same way the

Sex Pistols destroyed rock and roll: articulately and furiously, fed up with the

system but more about tearing it down than lipping it off. Science iction

and fantasy were starting to diverge commercially, and the information age

was coming up fast. That the American future was something other than

nuclear annihilation or a golden age ilmed in Technicolor was getting pretty

obvious. As Americans looked at Japan, they thought that just maybe the

future would pass them by.

Cyberpunk’s deining novel is William Gibson’s Neuromancer , released

in a 1984 that distinctly and happily failed to be 1984 . The biggest spectacle

out of the Super Bowl that year wasn’t the game, but ads for two computer

companies that aired partway through. Neuromancer pushed in the same

direction. The novel establishes many of the conventions of the genre:

criminal hackers, deadly mercenaries, artiicial intelligences and the omni-

presence of massive corporations along with their products and branding.

In Neuromancer , no one is local; the core characters are expatriates living

in Japan.

Neuromancer was followed by two loose sequels, further developing

computers as metaphor for human memory. Its success led to an explosion

So here’s one of those

Worlds of Future Darkness.

Think of this as a miss-

ing section of Mirrors, a

slice of extra meat that we’ve

written from the ground up

in the spirit of that book.

You don’t need Mirrors to

use this, but if you’re famil-

iar with it, these pages will

feel like home.

Think of this

as a missing section

of Mirrors, a slice

of extra meat that

we’ve written from

the ground up in the

spirit of that book.

You don’t need Mir-

rors to use this, but

if you’re familiar

with it, these pages

will feel like home.

BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS

Bleeding Edge:

Cyberpunk in the

World of Darkness

Chapter Three of World

of Darkness: Mirrors kicked

the World of Darkness in the

center mass, cracking it into

three different shards, three

new Worlds of Darkness.

Originally we planned on a

science fiction section at the

time we were developing it,

but the concept of sci-fi end-

ed up being too broad, too

all-encompassing to cram

in 15,000 words. But after

the book launched, fans

clamored for sci-fi worlds

for their monsters to explore

and terrorize.

Enough with the

So here’s one of

those Worlds of

Future Darkness.

in cyberpunk publishing. Bruce Sterling’s 1988 novel

Islands in the Net follows a public relations agent turned

diplomat across a world on ire.

The same year, writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo

released Akira . Akira combined a post-apocalyptic

backstory with a story of young gang members in a To-

kyo rebuilt to several times its original size and density.

Although the ilm’s bookend apocalypses and effective

authoritarian governments depart from American cyber-

punk, Akira ’s Neo-Tokyo nails the look , something which

had only been suggested in passing by Ridley Scott’s 1982

sci-i noir detective ilm Blade Runner .

Japanese iction would continue to contribute to

the development and aesthetics of cyberpunk. Gibson,

Sterling and others had looked to Japan for aesthetic

inspiration from very early on. The North American

fascination with Japanese industry and technology likely

contributed to the prominence of Japanese settings and

corporations in Neuromancer . In 1989, Masamune Shi-

row began publishing Ghost in the Shell. Where Gibson’s

cyberpunk drew heavily on detective and crime iction,

Shirow married it to the police story.

By 1992, when science iction was beginning to

change direction, Neal Stephenson released Snow Crash .

Snow Crash was rooted in the cyberpunk tradition even

as it caricatured it. As with Gibson and Sterling’s 1990

novel, The Difference Engine , Snow Crash proposes that

the effects of information technology—as well as the

will to repurpose it—aren’t limited to the future or even

the modern day.

By this time, cyberpunk gaming had kicked off Cy-

berpunk 2013 and the magic-meet-cyberware Shadowrun

were both hits. In 1991, Vampire: The Masquerade

introduced Gothic-Punk, substituting an ancient con-

spiracy of monsters for totalitarian governments and

megacorporations. The early years of Vampire played

strongly on cyberpunk aesthetics, from worldview all the

way to art and fashion. White Wolf’s oficial magazine

even proposed integrating the Cyberpunk roleplaying

game with The Masquerade , publishing three columns

under the banner “A World of Future Darkness.” As the

World of Darkness grew, though, the present and the

past became more than enough to occupy White Wolf.

The future of the World of Darkness, near or far, was

never explored again.

Until now.

The modern World of Darkness incorporates many

kinds of horror, from the gothic and Lovecraftian to

the hyper-real and psychological. Likewise, a cyberpunk

World of Darkness draws from the hardboiled hackers of

Neuromancer , the action-movie post-cyberpunk of Neal

Stephenson’s Snow Crash and the Japanese cyberpunk

of Ghost in the Shell . We’ll strip them for parts and wire

those up to the World of Darkness we know. As Gibson

wrote, the street inds its own uses for things.

How to Use this

Book

This book explores how to create your own setting

by blending core elements of cyberpunk with the World

of Darkness and the Storytelling System. As with all

World of Darkness products, and particularly Mirrors , it’s

intended as a toolkit from which you’ll pick and choose

and bend and solder. DIY’s a big part of what makes punk

work, so you’ll want to cherry-pick our sounds to make

your own wall of noise.

Given that, the rules here can be used either by

themselves or individually. We’ve provided a complete

set of cyberpunk hacks, but the connections between

them are strictly optional.

There are two basic reasons to play cyberpunk, and

they’re not exclusive. One is to harness the themes of cy-

berpunk iction. To play stories about high-tech lowlifes.

To explore how entities too big for us to comprehend

come from people just like us.

The second is to play with the particulars of cyber-

punk settings. Cyberspace, implanted glasses, megacor-

porations, cofin hotels and girls with ingers like razors.

We’ll call these the props .

Props change depending on when and where you set

your game. A lot of media similar to cyberpunk barely

uses technology at all – think Mirror’s Edge or The Girl

with the Dragon Tattoo . If you’re into the themes, but

not so much the props, you might use the supernatural

in place of the scientiic. The Seers of the Throne step

into the role of megacorp oficers, while the Ordo Dracul

performs horriic augmentation surgeries on the black

market.

Alternatively, a props-heavy game might abandon

entirely the conceit of being in the literal future, instead

being the future as envisioned in the 1980s. Maybe the

world took a hard left at New Wave Requiem and noth-

ing’s ever been the same. Forget the wireless revolution,

the dot-com bust, and even the brief ubiquity of the fax

machine; instead, a post-World War III megalopolis is

run by dirty corporate executives while even dirtier (but

substantially sexier) street samurai rule the lower levels.

This the retrofuture, and anybody who doesn’t like it gets

their throat slit with monoilament wire.

To illustrate different combinations of these cy-

berpunk essentials, we’ll build two example settings,

noting throughout the text how the props and themes

of cyberpunk it into each.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

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