Cyberpunk setting Neon Myth: six races of Gigapolis, the city of eternal night

On Habr I came across an article about Neon Myth, a tabletop roleplaying setting: an unusual cyberpunk set in Gigapolis, a city of eternal night and neon lights. Non-human beings of six races live there, while humans hide in a concealed district called the Epicenter. No children are born in the city: newcomers arrive from outside, and newborns in the Epicenter are first human and only later become one of the races.

What I liked most was the Digit, a multilayered virtual copy of the city governed by “media gods”. The digital world is monochrome, with green lines of connection visible between gadgets, and messages can be intercepted, erased or altered. There is also a lovely logical detail: there are no firearms in the city, because the link with the Digit limits the speed of real objects. And keeping books is forbidden by law.

The races are designed with distinctive quirks. Neo-vampires have blue-black skin and float above the ground, and each day they must “drink the color” of another being. Zen-chi have no hands: instead they have two stone blocks with “fingers”, which they control with the power of thought. Diodes are metal or plastic beings with a holographic animal companion, and mushroomoids are fond of linguistics and oratory. There are also beastfolk and shadows. After severe shocks, residents can even “drift” into another race.

The game's foundation is the “Pact”: different heroes are bound by a common task from an observer in the Epicenter, and receiving an invitation is considered prestigious. For the rules there is the app “Neon Myth: Catechism”, where generators replace the d6 die, and for rare complex situations a deck of Tarot major arcana is used.

It is a good example of how a world is built from interconnected constraints rather than from a set of random ideas.

Source: Habr