Cred It S INTERFACE ZERO IS CREATED by WRITTEN AND
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CREDITS CREDITS INTERFACE ZERO IS CREATED BY David Jarvis, Hal McLean, Matt Conklin Jr, and Patrick Smith WRITTEN AND DEVELOPED BY Aaron Davidson, Curtis and Sarah Lyon, David Jarvis, David Harriss, Darrin Drader, Hal McLean, James Cambias, Jason Blair, Jeff Ruiz, Joel Waalkens, Jonathan Thompson, John Dunn, Kenneth Spencer, Richard T. Balsley, Rob Weiland, Robin English-Bircher, Sean Bircher, Sean Huempfner COVER BY Vladimir Manyukhin GRAPHIC DESIGN Alida Saxon, David Jarvis, Karl Keesler LAYOUT David Jarvis, Thomas Shook ILLUSTRATIONS Adam Kuzcek Vladimir Manyukhin, Eduardo Brolo, Jason Walton, Tan Ho Sim, Sam Manley EDITING & PROOFING Aaron Davidson, Andreas Parducci, Aric Wieder Carinn Seabolt, David Harriss, Mable Friedman, Mathew Caron, Mike Zebrowski, Rasmus Hilander, Ron Blessing PLAY TESTERS Ashton Dickerson, James Domanico, Steven Domanico, Amanda Hughes, Matt Lyle, David Harriss, Sean Huempfner, Joel Waalkens VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO EVERYONE ON THE GUN METAL GAMES FORUMS FOR ALL OF YOUR FEEDBACK!! 1 2 CREDITS 3 4 CREDITS 5 FOREWORD As you read through this book, you’re going to realize Interface Zero 3.0 isn’t a traditional cyberpunk setting. It’s not all about raging against the “Big Bad” megacorporate machine because they are messing up the entire world. Nor is Interface Zero 3.0 just another grim and gritty “living on the edge and celebrating the fact that you survived another run on a corp” type of game. Sure, those elements are welcome, even mandatory in the world as it exists in 2095, but here’s the deal: We want Interface Zero 3.0 to be more than that. I want it to reflect (however abstractly) the world you see when you walk out your door, or browse the internet on your laptop, smart phone, or iPad. I want Interface Zero 3.0 to have relevance to the world as it exists now, and to do that, I have to draw from what is happening around us in the world, in technology, in culture, rather than rely on what was cool two decades ago. I must do this because the world we live in today isn’t the same world my generation grew up in; the generation that gave us cyberpunk. To do that though, we have to ask ourselves “What IS cyberpunk?” Or perhaps, as is more pertinent to this discussion, we should first ask “What WAS cyberpunk?” I’m 50 years old. I was lucky enough to see Blade Runner when it first came out, and I remember watching all the awesome sci-fi movies that came out during that crazy decade as well, movies and anime like Akira, Freejack, Repo Man, Alien, Aliens, They Live, Judge Dredd, Robocop, Road Warrior, TRON, Escape from New York, Outland, Terminator, The Running Man, Scanners, Total Recall, Max Headroom… I could go on and on, and that’s just movies and TV of the 80s. The 90s brought us tons of great stuff too, like the iconic Ghost In the Shell, Equilibrium, the short-lived Dark Angel television series and of course, the sublime post-apocalyptic cyberpunk movie known as The Matrix. You can’t write cyberpunk without paying homage to 1984 (probably the best dystopic novel ever written) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the novel Blade Runner was based on), Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero, Johnny Mnemonic, Burning Chrome, Snow Crash, Altered Carbon; again, I could go on and on. The generation—”X,” just in case you were wondering—that gave birth to the genre we all know as cyberpunk grew up under the umbrella of the constant threat of nuclear war. Politically speaking, the decade was largely about President Reagan facing off against an array of Communist leaders—Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Andrei Gromyko (who was largely a figurehead) and finally the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. It’s interesting to note that the first three [Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko] actually died while in office, and under Gorbachev’s leadership, the Soviet Union finally collapsed. That’s a decade of political instability in what—at that point in time—was a formidable, yet declining nuclear superpower going bankrupt from both an insane M.A.D.-spawned arms race and a costly (and ultimately unsuccessful) war in Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen. The counter-culture of the 80s reflected this geo-political drama, not only in the afore-mentioned movies and literature, but also in the music and even fashion trends. Punk Rock, Hard Core, Blue Mohawks, loud, gawdy, shredded apocalyptic “war” fashion and apocalyptic culture fused into this aggressive beast dominated by tribes of youth labeling themselves Freaks, Punks, MOD’s, Thrashers, Skaters, Straight-Edger’s, Rockers—and believe me when I tell you this is just a sampling of the monikers we embraced in that decade. And let us not forget the computer geeks, or Nerds, as they were more commonly known back then. While popular culture mocked and reviled these young men and women with their taped-together RD glasses, their MENSA-level IQs, their pocket protectors, and general lack of any muscular definition, they were quietly building the world in which we now find ourselves. W So from a cultural viewpoint, the “punk” in cyberpunk—in my humble opinion—is firmly rooted in R the geo-political atmosphere and various media of the 80s, though it could be argued one could (and FO E O 6 CREDITS perhaps should) go back as far as the works of George Orwell, or Aldus Huxley to really see the “proto- genre,” if you will. Of course, cyberpunk isn’t cyberpunk without advanced technologies like cybernetics and especially computers. It could be argued that computers didn’t really become truly popular on a global scale until right around 1996–1998 when the Internet exploded into public consciousness with the dot com bubble, but here’s the thing. I don’t care what Al Gore says, he didn’t invent the internet. It’s been around since the 1960s. But I digress. In 1982 the movie TRON took viewers inside the machine and revealed a virtual world filled with AIs, glittering data lines and Intrusion Countermeasures that made Kevin Flynn—the main character—play gladiator’esque games where death was very real; but always remember that William Gibson did it first. Johnny Mnemonic, Burning Chrome, and later the quintessential sprawl trilogy—Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero—hardwired cyberpunk into the consciousness of film makers, readers, and writers—especially RPG writers—over the next two and a half decades, which brings me to the next thing I want to talk about; cyberpunk games. We’ve seen numerous cyberpunk-styled RPGs over the years. R. Talsorian Games brought us the masterpiece that is Cyberpunk 2020 and other iterations of the game (including Cyberpunk Red!), FASA created Shadowrun, Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Cyberpunk, and Iron Crown Enterprises also published Cyberspace. In their own way all of them perfectly captured the feel and tone of the 80s cyberpunk scene. As cool as Shadowrun and all the other cyberpunk games that surfaced in the latter half of the 80s and early 90s are, every one of them are firmly rooted in that gloriously decadent, wild decade of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. We’re talking about games that broke ground in the industry, games that made not only cyberpunk a great genre to play in, but also made it cool to play modern and postmodern RPGs in general. Don’t think I’m bashing them because I’m not. I love them. It’s just that I believe Interface Zero 3.0 isn’t entirely about what cyberpunk WAS; it needs to be about what cyberpunk IS, and perhaps even what it WILL become. Which brings me back to the first (albeit modified) question I asked: What IS cyberpunk in the year 2019? I once read a definition of the cyberpunk genre that said, “Cyberpunk is High Tech and Low Life.” It’s a good, simple statement that really says nothing at all about the heart of the genre, but just defines the two terms which comprise the name cyber [high tech] and punk [low life]. “High Tech and Low Life” are simply trappings, salad dressing to give the genre flavor. In my opinion, cyberpunk is so much more than just technology and life in the gutter, but if we must condense the entire genre into a simple phrase, I ask that you consider this one: Cyberpunk is freedom vs. control. Now here’s a longer definition. Cyberpunk is the power of social media. It’s no longer being wired into the machine, but having the machine exist all around you in the form of networks that, via GPS and wireless technologies, allow you to access your Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts, or your YouTube channel from anywhere. It’s families texting at the dinner table rather than talking. Cyberpunk is touch screen technology, and powerful computers so small you can carry them around in a backpack, or your purse. It’s the irony that you express your individuality using the same mediums as everyone else. Cyberpunk is reading this book on your favorite electronic reading device that was purchased with digital money. Cyberpunk is about drugs that make you go crazy and eat people. Cyberpunk is Fake News and Alternative Facts. Cyberpunk is Fight Club. 7 Cyberpunk is WikiLeaks. Cyberpunk is the spirit of a man standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square reborn in Occupy Wall Street, Occupy L.A, Occupy London, and Occupy [insert your city here].