There is a missconcpetion in today's Cyberpunk literature: The Sprawl.
The Sprawl is not a MegaCity. It might be a MegaCity that failed, but a MegaCity needs social responsible and interacting habitants to function, otherwise it will selfdistruct and go up in flames.
This is a Sprawl:
A Sprawl is way less densly populated than a MegaCity and in the Dark Future it split up even more than those that exist today, being all up in arms and in constant violent conflict fueled by MegaCon financial interests, drug king ping greed and party wild excentrics all united in hedonistic turbo egoism. All against All, ego superior.
The denser we live together, the more we need to be able to share and except each other or we either go down in conflict especially if we can not just move away. In the Dark Future Sprawls all those that prefer an anti-social dysantrop lifestyle came together and will help each other only to use each other for their very own short term profit. Everybody will drop everyone as soon as it turns into an advantage of any kind in a conflict society.
For me the Cyberpunk thing was about the Punk part fighting on a lost position, but having no other choice but to fight. Not fighting was certain failure. Those I preferred to play with, those that liked the most realistic scenarios over the superhero shoot em all up runs, always played A-Team style runs against corrupt MegaCon forces, drug gangs taking slaves or helping small towns off the Sprawl under siege by gangs gone rogue and off their turf. Spartans over God Kings - Anytime -Everwhere - Always - Period!!!
Most of the time I created follow up runs. A bar fight with a ConMen and his Bodyguards trying to hire the team to hurrass some old tennants turned into a strip run on the meeting point of a drug gang that exchanged drugs against money, that turned into the villagers asking for help against the gang that called themselves the Sheriffs of Notty, that turned into a retaliation run against a MegaCon by taking out a save and gated Villa complex that was not that save and secure after all facing a highly motivated bloodthursty team of runners on a crusade. Killingsprees in table top games are way more fun when MacGyver, Magnum, Airwulf and the A-Team meet up...
Another task was also to build up the team. The arsenal I mean. So, best was a fixed group of school friends, that created their characters together complementing each other: Like the Street Samurai and the Hacker and the Driver and the Magician. Then we agreed on a story why they knew each other. Like a ConMen was looking for a new team in the local bar area of the sprawl for a beginner run and managed to put them together. So they first met in that bar being immediatelly quite unhappy with the run I offered. After making them aware that they had all options in the fantasy world they quickly decided to beat the shit out of the bloody bastard asking seriously to scare off some grannies and thereby keeping the guns, body armor, laptop, suts, armored cars and parts of the bar to have a chat with the gang that run the bar. About half a year later they turned millionairs by burning down a Villa complex while transferring the money of the habitants to offshore islands. Bullies become surprisingly collaborative looking into the barrel of a full automatic quite stolen rifle of a Troll and his angry mates after their save room got opend with a load of TNT and the security force taken down using their own tanks social engineered from the maintenance workshop complemented with the words "That was our grannies, asshole".
...
It was fun.
Point so, in a table top game it hurts when your character gets killed a lot, in real live you are dead for real. Can we just live in sweet harmony, please?
PS: Not one character died, but they needed sometimes weeks without me, testing my patience, to come up with a stratetegy based on the plans and information I gave them: If you have six hours to cut down a tree, take four to sharpen the axe and half to think on how to apply the force...
Think to survive. Execute orders to be a tool, fool.
