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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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The land and the sea. Only fools believe them to be different and only bigger fools believe the sea to be more free than the land. Fools. They are both cages, with the bait of freedom, security and power in both of them.

And who has the key? People too powerful for you and I to imagine. The question is whether or not you have the guts to break your bars......










It begins with a date.

2099. The eve of a new century rising from the ashes of the old.

It’s been 60 years after the Dark Crash. 50 years after the Nine Mile War. 45 years after the signing of the SEAEZO Treaty. 15 Years After the Pan Pacific Agreement. It’s a miracle we’ve managed to make it this far.

2099. The twilight of the 21st century.

It is the age of the Cyber. Machine has consumed flesh and code has subsumed thought. Man and machine have become intertwined as one. Bone is shed in favor of reinforced titanium, eyes are replaced with fibre-optic camlenses and limbs with multi-axial nanotube assemblies. Fashion catalogues have been replaced with designer aug catalogues. Spider legged mercenaries march into the Congo to wage war. The head striker of the Palladium Posse shows off his new Mark 5 mechano-thrusters. The meat is obsolete whilst metal has become the new human.

The body is no longer sacred.

It is the age of the Gene. To fight back against the metal, life must be altered beyond its natural boundaries. The GMO fear-mongering of the twenties lacked imagination and in spite of the constant protests of gene purist groups, genetic engineering is now as commonplace as dollar store candy. The human genome and all of its possibilities are now a playground for alleyway geneticists and laboratory eggheads to tinker with. New varieties of New Babylon’s halophytic seaweed soy grow in the hydroponic gardens of soccer moms. Adverts for children’s kera-mods surge as halloween comes around the corner. Crowds part as a person screams out, his features half-man half-turtle, clutching a syringe of bootleg transcription stabiliser. The definition of human is quickly becoming more and more blurrier.

Life is no longer sacred.

It is the age of the Corp. Transnationals, mobile enterprises and startups permeate every facet of our lives, a capitalistic ecosystem of shadow warfare and trade deals. Though government institutions hold strong, corporate greed will soon erode it away like tides against a cliff. Your blue-collar livelihoods are dictated by the rise and fall of Lee-Platine’s stock values. Offers for university scholarships offered by a number of fast food industries dot the e-papers. Your package deliveries are sent over by an Iridium Heavy Industrial sky-bird, bristling to the teeth with anti-personnel smart guns. For your protection, of course. To be an individual underneath the yoke of the Corp is a paradox and the only way out is to fight dirty.

Your personhood is no longer sacred.

It is the age of the Deep. Everything and everywhere is interconnected by an ocean of encrypted servers and data transmissions ranging in the gigabytes. The physical and virtual worlds have melded together in two, forming a symbiosis of abstract and concrete. AR addicts doze off in the streets, trapped in a constant cycle of chip abuse and sensory deprivation. Poachers surf the forbidden territories of the Deep, hunting down wild malware to capture and reuse for their own purposes. Hidden deep within, remnants of malfunctioning intelligences roam around like lost children, enslaved to their own subroutines. Those who desire can sink deeper to search for the truth but at what cost?

Reality is no longer sacred.

Let’s take a closer look at the situation.

The South China Sea. An ocean of red and riches. It has been fought and contested over by countries in South East Asia since the beginning of the First IndoChina Wars. It’s not hard to see why. It’s the hub of maritime trading in South East Asia, worth more than the Suez Canal in asyuan. Borders have been drawn up, agreed upon, re-negotiated and destroyed more times than history can count. It’s best not to ask too many questions about who started it since finger-pointing is the usual response. SEAEZO is the only thing keeping the region from becoming the battleground for World War 3.

Where are you now?

New Malacca.

If there’s one word to describe New Malacca, it’s maze. It is a haphazard ramshackle arcology of docking harbors, hollowed out ships and hydro tunnels shifting in size and shape. Along with the ever changing assembly of warships and merchant vessels that come in and out every second, no sight in New Malacca is ever the same.

It is a land of the lost. The Great Flood spared few and sunk many. Those who remained either succumbed over time to the Corps or went on a pilgrimage of their own. Splintered sects of Buddhist monasteries live out a meek existence on shanty boats. In the hustle of the wet markets, you hear Tagalog, Hokkien, a zoo of endangered languages forming a creole. On the docks, you see a crew of Burmese pipe spanners play a homebrew version of Poker on shipping containers. When all other options are off the table, New Malacca is what remains.

It is a utopia of the illicit and illegal. Crime, poverty and gangs wrack those who float above on water whilst the corps lurk underneath the offal, biding their time to pull strings and influence the state of power in the floating city. Trafficking routes for black ganja and Hype Out can be found all throughout the city. Gang wars are the city’s morning alarm clock. Just last week, an Armalance convoy was robbed and assaulted by full body cyber-loons. Violence and lawlessness are a constant within its rusting walls whilst duplicity and caution are as essential as oxygen.

To be a part of New Malacca is to navigate this slippery maze. Most give up trying.

You didn’t come here to surrender, though.

You came here to rise.



//PREMISE AND PLOT




June 15th 2099. 7:00 PM. Dead of the night.

Suraiboshen. Best five star omakase this side of the Indian Ocean.

That’s not why you’re here, though. You aren’t here because you got lucky on the ten thousand reservation list, nor did you have some fat cat pull some strings for you.

You’re here because you got hired for a job. Top secret. A job that promised a 500,000 asyuan payout. Just the thing needed to propel you back up this world.

Whether you were a discharged lawkeeper, a wanted script hacker or a news anchor stretching the bounds of investigative journalism, your background doesn’t matter. Your desperation and needs mattered more than your skills and now, you’re here.

The two guards standing by the side of the door cough and nod towards you, the ancient hinoki oak door sliding open. You walk inside to take a seat...........





Straits of Steel is a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk ® roleplay set within the region of SouthEast Asia. Players will be taking the role of a group of savory and unsavory individuals that find themselves wandering around in the floating aquapolis of New Malacca. Your adventure begins when an unknown power broker contacts you about a one-time job offer that promises high risk but high reward. With nothing to lose, you accept it and find yourself waiting at the entrance of a seedy sushi bar to meet your man. Too bad no one told you that this wasn’t going to be a solo operation…….

The roleplay will be a hybrid-sandbox linear group roleplay that revolves around a collaborative tight narrative centered around the personal interactions of the players with each other and the natural environment interspersed with sections that allow for limited open world exploration, albeit with certain caveats. This approach is meant to allow for a sustainable level of player freedom without compromising the cohesion of the RP. The actions of the player will determine their influence and position within the landscape of New Malacca along with their relationships to each and every faction. Every decision that you make will have consequences or repercussions further down the line if you do not think carefully.

//RULES


一 )If you’re seriously considering god-modding, powerplaying or metagaming within a play-by-post roleplay, don’t make me the target of wasting your time on the internet. It’s rare enough around these parts as it is. If an attempt at any of these aforementioned actions is made within the IC, then, repercussions will follow. Depending on the severity, this can range to a stern warning to permanent removal from the RP.

二 )The genre of cyberpunk and adult themes are inextricably linked together. Therefore, this will be considered an 18+ RP in which adult and mature topics can be discussed and explored within the confines of the setting. However, all CS applications, IC posts and OOC posts must fall within the guidelines of RPGO’s terms of service. If you are seriously considering to engage in explicit NSFW behaviour with another poster, take it to the PMs. If not, I’m going to force you to take it to Pornhub via banning you from my RP.

三 ) Start shit, get hit. Wheaton’s law applies here in this RP, both within the confines of the OOC and the IC. There will be absolutely no toleration for any bigotry, assholery, harassment or bullshit within this RP. When the GM tells you to stop, you stop. If you have problems with how this RP is being run, discuss it within PMs with me. If you have problems with another poster in this RP, discuss it with me in PMs. If there is any way to approach a situation without escalating conflict, do so.

四 )When creating your character sheet in Straits of Steel, overpowered is not optimal. You are expected to create dynamic and fleshed out character concepts that fully embrace the nature of this world. You are not a former wetworks supersoldier packed with miniaturised thermonuclear weaponry. You are not the CEO of a Triple-A corporation. You are essentially a schlub near the bottom of the rungs of the socio-economic totem pole, attempting to claw your way up the food chain.

五 )As Straits of Steel is an advanced level RP, posting quality and length are of the utmost priority. A minimum of three-four paragraphs is required for a post along with a reasonable level of descriptive writing. Quality over quantity is best but when quality goes hand in hand with quantity, it’s even better.

六 )The rules for posting frequency are undecided as of now but a minimum requirement that all players must follow is to inform the GM of any discrepancies or possible IRL events that may interfere with post writing. The RP will be a mixture of regular cyclic posting order, collaborative Google docs posting and an experimental ‘free period’ posting where fast posting is allowed and there is no set order.

七 )Discussion about storybuilding and worldbuilding is not only encouraged within this RP but to be promoted. Forging your own possibilities in this setting and writing out the backstories of new factions is always welcome.

八 )Any questions or queries that have not been resolved after reading these rules can be followed up if you believe it to be necessary in the OOC or privately.










//MECHANICS


• In Straits of Steel, an emphasis will be placed on creating a closed sandbox environment for players to interact in within the confines of the narrative. To help accentuate this, interactive objects and NPCs in the environment will be highlighted with specific colored text.

• The status of objects and health of NPCs will also be illustrated at the end of an GM post as such below.

Yikil Borosky: Minor concussion, perforated femur, dislocated shoulder joint, in severe distress


//CHARACTER SHEET


Keep in mind that the format and style of your character sheet can vary, but it must include all the essential details listed in this example character sheet.

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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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//THE SESE FTZ AND NEW MALACCA


After decades of border disputes, military standoffs and proxy wars between China and the ASEAN coalition of South-East Asian countries, the Dark Crash of 2035 was the death knell of the Chinese mainland power structure. Having transitioned most of its infrastructure to A.I firmware, the massive EMP effectively knocked out most of China’s economic and social capabilities. The civil war between the ROC and PROC, along with internal strife and corruption compounding the rot, only served to sink the knife deeper. With their position untenable and most of South East Asia’s infrastructure left unscathed by the global cataclysm, China’s political bargaining power was a pinprick of its former self. All other options exhausted, the only choice left was that of a diplomatic route with ASEAN. The negotiations almost failed when Taiwan and the Autonomous Region of Hong Kong were involved as parties but the Chinese government reluctantly agreed.

In the year that followed, negotiations followed more easily given that China’s political power was fractured and the economic prosperity of ASEAN's member countries outweighing that of China. Therefore, the SESE (South East Special Economic) Free Trade Zone was drawn up to allow a single exclusive economic trade zone which every country had the ability to use. When China dissolved its disingenuous territorial and historical claims, the SESE was signed almost immediately with countries bound to never once again engage in direct warfare with one another. Unfortunately, having been moderated by parties bought out by corporate interests, the SESE gave a huge leeway. Thus, the wars in the SESE shifted from international tensions to outright corporate warfare.

The effects were immediate. Corporations almost immediately made investments in the region in the form of natural gas mining, oil drilling and the building of aquaplexes - new habitable cities that were the new trend given the irradiated nature of most major cities after the Dark Crash and the lopsided battle against rising sea levels. Now, the SESE is a landscape of corporate wars, floating aqua plexes and piracy, a darwinistic terrarium of growth and greed.



Straits of Steel is set in the gigantic, burgeoning aquaplex of New Malacca, the self-proclaimed pearl of South East Asia that’s on the precipice of sinking yet always managing to just float above the waves.

Situated south of the Paracel Line and the Spratly Islands, New Malacca started as a simple ImperialChem refueling station built for tanker ships in 2000. Slowly over time though, it evolved into a self-sufficient environment as more and more of the corporation’s tasks would be outsourced to the station for greater efficiency, ImperialChem continual remodelling transforming it into a miniature city.

During the Nine Mile Dispute in 2010, the refueling station fell into disarray as ASEAN countries forced strict economic sanctions on Chinese exports. This effectively resulted in ImperialChem selling the remaining assets of its refueling station over to an ambitious startup company specialising in land development known as Baharu Developments. Its CEO, Kwan Chen, envisioned it as a corporate haven for ASEAN, where trade would flourish, free from governmental bureaucracy or urban rot.

Kwan set to work straight away, offering lucrative corporate welfare packages to ensure investment. Like a pack of moths, every rookie startup and corp in the Pacific and South East Asia flocked over towards Kwan’s. Putting their stock into Kwan’s ludicrous idea, New Malacca became more and more of a reality with each buoyant hull, syncrete panelling and high-fibre cable installed into the superstructure. By 2025, New Malacca was officially booming.

As economic growth ensued, growth of urban inequality and crime increased. Cyber gangs, yakuzas, drug traffickers and more lurked and grew in power as more and more ships illegally entered the borders of New Malacca. Finally deciding enough was enough, the Malacca Corporate Committee assembled their private security forces and began a war to stamp out gang influence within New Malacca. This resulted in the establishment of corporate owned public institutions in New Malacca such as a police force, firefighting force and social support services.

Since then, corruption, economic growth and crime have bloomed within the confines of New Malacca. It’s survived all the way through the Dark Collapse, the Nine Mile Dispute and the South China corporate scuffles while still remaining what it is. A beacon to all those looking for an unattainable dream.



//GROUPS OF INTEREST












//TECHNOLOGY











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Hidden 4 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Rapid Reader
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Amazing work! Glad to see the OOC up!

Related, I'm almost done with a diver/rigger (to steal from Shadowrun). So expect lots of Russian, some drones, and an atmospheric diving suit.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Opposition
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Opposition 𝕋𝕖𝕔𝕙𝕟𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝 𝕊𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕪

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Might go full high seas CPAF Burmese pirate on this one, not gonna lie.
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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Humble1
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Working on a street rat turned cat burglar. Where do you want us to submit character sheets? Here, or PMed to you?
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Habibi359
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Interested. As of late I've wanted to have a corporate businessman that wants to hit it big. So a guy with social and business skills, possibly extreme poker face in a startup company.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Shiva
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I'm considering a nice hacker type character. Computer in the brain, built in screen into the arm to type code into, all that jazz. Spends all her time exploring the Deep as much as she can.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by WaywardK
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Going for an Ambassador by the code name “Gemini.” In control of various incomplete copies of his own mind running around in the deep as well as AIs referred to as “thought forms” who are basically customized digital “familiars.” Gemini himself is a clone and is on the verge of physically dying due to an issue in the cloning process.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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Working on a street rat turned cat burglar. Where do you want us to submit character sheets? Here, or PMed to you?


In the thread, of course. If you feel uncomfortable, then, PM it to me. If you PM it to me first, then, you’ll just post it in the CS section if I’ve approved it.

Loving all these ideas so far, guys!
Hidden 4 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Rapid Reader
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Although I promise I will pick this apart in the next couple of hours, here is what I have right now:



Not strictly part of my character sheet, but I wrote some related if random stuff in present tense (please forgive me):


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Hidden 4 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by vietmyke
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Gonna go with a classic noir-esque investigator type, former lawman, with a big gun on his hip and a bigger chip on his shoulder- or maybe a former military man down and out, and looking for work.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Mao Mao
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I'm going with your standard anarchist, fuck authority character.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Mixtape Ghost N
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Mixtape Ghost N SOMETIMES EVЕN RICH NIGGAS GET LOST

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I wanna run a loud mouthed mechanic chick
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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by WaywardK
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WaywardK The Most Paradoxical of Beings

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I wanna run a loud mouthed mechanic chick


Bonus points if she’s a raging lesbian... but that’s just me being queer 🥺👉🏻👈🏻
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Mixtape Ghost N
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Mixtape Ghost N SOMETIMES EVЕN RICH NIGGAS GET LOST

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<Snipped quote by The Ghost Note>

Bonus points if she’s a raging lesbian... but that’s just me being queer 🥺👉🏻👈🏻


does being sexually attracted to automotive engines count?
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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by BingTheWing
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How many hackers are we having? Our roles might overlap a lot...
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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How many hackers are we having? Our roles might overlap a lot...


You actually bring up a valid point. This roleplay does not have any predesignated roles that players fill. My message to everyone is not to focus on competing for a singular archetype and just focus on making your own character. My hope is that every character sheet posted will be distinct enough from one another.

On a side note, I've decided that the maximum number of players I will be accepting for this RP is approximately 6. The final due date for posting character sheets hasn't been decided as of yet.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Humble1
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Well, here's a start.


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Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by WaywardK
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WaywardK The Most Paradoxical of Beings

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How many hackers are we having? Our roles might overlap a lot...


It’s cyberpunk, hackers aren’t rare lol
Hidden 4 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Shiva
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I still need to do her backstory and equipment, but this is my current WIP.

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