I think Star Trek is the perfect setting for a cyberpunk game.  Particularly the 90s shows.

Even the original series had hits of the underbelly of the Federation and the underclass that inhabit it with characters like Cerino Jones and Harry Mudd.

The first real hint that there are underworld operations going on that I remember was the episode where the crew of the Enterprise was tracking some criminals and ended up in a moth ball ship yard where a Federation ship was supposed to be in lay-up was missing.

Deep Space Nine had lots of traders coming through and from time to time one of them was up to no good.  Often it was played soft and was merely a way to get Oto some screen time or introduce a complication for the cast to solve but there were hints of the hard edge life of outlaws.

Does anyone remember the pilot episode for Star Trek Voyager?  Viewed from the perspective of the Federation, it was the pursuet of  criminals smuggling weapons but it could have been viewed as a group of edge runners on the run from the holier-than-thou authoritarians while they try to get away and finish their run before taking some much needed leisure time in their favorite dive bar full of other outlaws.

So here's my pitch;

In 2372, a crack STARS unit was sent to a penatentary planet by a Star Fleet court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security prison ship to the Alpha Quadrant underground. Today, still wanted by the Federation they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The Away-Team. 

I like the way you think, BadApple. 

Also, don't forget the Orion Pirates. In the universe of the FASA Star Trek RPG I'm pretty sure they had a region of space near Orion known as "the Triangle" full of scum and villainy. Perhaps I'm getting that confused with the Tholian Holdfast region, at the intersection of Klingon-Romulan space. Either way, a hotbed of action there. And with the Klingons and Romulans trading tech, there must be some group of smugglers assisting the transfer.

An interesting vision of Star Trek. 

What you really want is Babylon 5. It's everything you're talking about, and more.

Quote from: finarvyn on November 20, 2023, 08:21:18 AM
I like the way you think, BadApple. 

Also, don't forget the Orion Pirates. In the universe of the FASA Star Trek RPG I'm pretty sure they had a region of space near Orion known as "the Triangle" full of scum and villainy. Perhaps I'm getting that confused with the Tholian Holdfast region, at the intersection of Klingon-Romulan space. Either way, a hotbed of action there. And with the Klingons and Romulans trading tech, there must be some group of smugglers assisting the transfer.

An interesting vision of Star Trek. 

Everyone likes to dismiss the scene of the slave girls from The Menagerie/The Cage where Christopher Pike was talking to slave traders as just a hallucination.  I like to think of it as his memories about something that actually was part of the universe.  Star Trek has such a squeaky clean image that the gritty parts really stick out to me.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig on November 20, 2023, 08:29:32 AM
What you really want is Babylon 5. It's everything you're talking about, and more.

I can definitely see that.  Bester was my favorite character on the show becuase he was so compelling.  I think B5 tipped their hand a little too much with him though as it would be fun to have a character to see as an adversary but be kept guessing as to his real nature.  This is just one glimpse into the way a hopeful and shiny scifi setting can also be a great dystopia from the right perspective.

Dunno, Federation worlds always felt to clean, too sanitized IMHO, maybe that's why the series takes place in outer space.

There was ANOTHER Sci-Fi show, a cop show that William Shatner starred in IIRC or maybe he wrote it? Dang my aging brain, can't remember the name of what I'm thinking, who made it, who starred in it or even if it's real and not a dream.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 20, 2023, 02:43:03 PM
Dunno, Federation worlds always felt to clean, too sanitized IMHO, maybe that's why the series takes place in outer space.

There was ANOTHER Sci-Fi show, a cop show that William Shatner starred in IIRC or maybe he wrote it? Dang my aging brain, can't remember the name of what I'm thinking, who made it, who starred in it or even if it's real and not a dream.

You may be thinking of the TekWar novels, which Shatner created and Ron Goulart ghost-wrote. They were pretty gritty in comparison to ST.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 20, 2023, 02:43:03 PMDang my aging brain, can't remember the name of what I'm thinking, who made it, who starred in it or even if it's real and not a dream.

TekWar starred Greg Evigan, with Shatner as his too-cool-for-school-old-man boss.

Quote from: BadApple on November 20, 2023, 06:08:59 AM
I think Star Trek is the perfect setting for a cyberpunk game. 

Then you simultaneously don't understand Star Trek or Cyberpunk.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on November 20, 2023, 02:49:16 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 20, 2023, 02:43:03 PM
Dunno, Federation worlds always felt to clean, too sanitized IMHO, maybe that's why the series takes place in outer space.

There was ANOTHER Sci-Fi show, a cop show that William Shatner starred in IIRC or maybe he wrote it? Dang my aging brain, can't remember the name of what I'm thinking, who made it, who starred in it or even if it's real and not a dream.

You may be thinking of the TekWar novels, which Shatner created and Ron Goulart ghost-wrote. They were pretty gritty in comparison to ST.

Quote from: Grognard GM on November 20, 2023, 02:56:09 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 20, 2023, 02:43:03 PMDang my aging brain, can't remember the name of what I'm thinking, who made it, who starred in it or even if it's real and not a dream.

TekWar starred Greg Evigan, with Shatner as his too-cool-for-school-old-man boss.

YES! That's the thing I was thinking about!

Thank you both!

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 20, 2023, 02:56:31 PM

Quote from: BadApple on November 20, 2023, 06:08:59 AM
I think Star Trek is the perfect setting for a cyberpunk game. 

Then you simultaneously don't understand Star Trek or Cyberpunk.

Then you didn't read my entire post. 

The juxtaposition of the clean Utopia setting of Star Trek and the gritty live on the edge of a knife of cyberpunk I think looks like an oxymoron but actually blend together well.  If we assume that even the garbage man and the fast food worker are living their perfect life then I have to call BS.  If you're saying that those jobs don't exist, clearly they do because we've seen them on screen.  So maybe the Federation is an imperfect future and we're being shown the glossy, glamorous, noble aspects of it and not the part where the less fortunate live.  Maybe the dirty underbelly is still glossy but a miserable place to be anyway.  Maybe this might be a great place to be an edge runner in.

Star Trek itself hints at this in multiple places.  Rogue colonies, remote mining colonies where the supervisors act without regard to the lives and welfare of the miners, merchant ship captains not able to make payments on their ship so they stoop to smuggling Romulan ale, and cloning projects that got out of hand so they were buried rather than properly cleaned up are all plot devices of episodes of Star Trek.  Some of those TOS episodes were really dark when you take and consider the implications of the content.

Quote from: BadApple on November 20, 2023, 03:25:26 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 20, 2023, 02:56:31 PM

Quote from: BadApple on November 20, 2023, 06:08:59 AM
I think Star Trek is the perfect setting for a cyberpunk game. 

Then you simultaneously don't understand Star Trek or Cyberpunk.

Then you didn't read my entire post. 

The juxtaposition of the clean Utopia setting of Star Trek and the gritty live on the edge of a knife of cyberpunk I think looks like an oxymoron but actually blend together well.  If we assume that even the garbage man and the fast food worker are living their perfect life then I have to call BS.  If you're saying that those jobs don't exist, clearly they do because we've seen them on screen.  So maybe the Federation is an imperfect future and we're being shown the glossy, glamorous, noble aspects of it and not the part where the less fortunate live.  Maybe the dirty underbelly is still glossy but a miserable place to be anyway.  Maybe this might be a great place to be an edge runner in.

Star Trek itself hints at this in multiple places.  Rogue colonies, remote mining colonies where the supervisors act without regard to the lives and welfare of the miners, merchant ship captains not able to make payments on their ship so they stoop to smuggling Romulan ale, and cloning projects that got out of hand so they were buried rather than properly cleaned up are all plot devices of episodes of Star Trek.  Some of those TOS episodes were really dark when you take and consider the implications of the content.

Cyberpunk is a near future setting where corporate greed and government incompetence creates a space for an underground of people living on the edge of society. It features issues like the impact of technology on humans generally being neutral to very bad indeed. Tech is commonly a tradeoff of increasing human capability at the cost of identity. Or horribly misused to abuse people for personal and corporate gain. Humanity failed to solve their problems. There's always a war going on somewhere. Pollution and crime are rampant. People are constantly living in shades of moral grey.

Star Trek is a far future setting where humanity has evolved socially to solve all of the pressing problems of the world. Disease, hunger, war are no longer problems for earth. The government is a benevolent quasi-socialist utopia where everyone's basic needs are met, and technolgy allows people to pursue their interests without having to worry about going to a "job" to pay the bills.
Technology is typically a boon to people, allowing them to perform minor miracles as everyday occurances. War still happens, but it's very rare and usually involves alien species. People are living in a morally upright society where they don't have to worry about trusting their neighbor.

Now, yes, you can argue that the elevator pitch of the Federation is not quite what we get on the screen. And that's an interesting bit of wiggle room for writers to actually write interesting Star Trek stories instead of showing how boring humanity would be if the Federation were that perfect.

But, I think even pushing the gritty edge of Star Trek and the most hopeful edge of Cyberpunk still don't get very close. You can do it, but there does come a point where it isn't Star Trek anymore. Some would say the newer versions of Trek (09 and beyond) already do this.

Start Trek has an optimistic setting where many of humanity's problems have been solved.  Hallmarks of cyberpunk are cynicism, nihilism, and dystopian settings.  I don't think you could connect the two without changing one or both into something utterly different.

I disagree, Ratman.  Because yeah, we're told that the Federation is a post-scarcity utopia, but we rarely if ever see that.  The characters we see are people who are choosing to work and have productive careers, but I suspect in a post-scarcity socialist state there are millions or billions of people laid up in public housing with no work and no ambition.  I could very much see a grim statement about human potential withering beneath the benevolent boot of such a society, of people growing up among generations of ancestors who never had to lift a finger and instead idly consume entertainment until the day they die, becoming desperate to actually make some kind of mark for themselves on the world and turning to any means to do that.

Is that cyberpunk?  I'd argue that it's a technological dystopia and close enough to count.  The corporate hyper-capitalism is lacking, but it's still a commentary on human nature being warped by technology.

Aspects of cyberpunk that Star Trek is missing:

-Out of control Corporatism
-A tiny population of the ultra rich, while the majority live in poverty
-Rampant criminality
-The horrors of extreme Urbanization, usually with ecological disasters
-A nihilistic sense that things can not improve
-A merging of man and machine, leading to a loss of humanity
-Violence and degradation as a daily occourance
-Human beings being considered largely expendable
-Centralized government being some combo of toothless/bought/powerless
-The loss of nature and spirituality, creating new pagan or tech-based cults
-A slick visual aesthetic. Everything is shit, but chromed up punks in leathers rock


It's like calling Friends Grimdark because there was an episode where they insinuated the guest star's character had a coke problem.

Cyberpunk isn't about corporations, greed, or even dystopia.  Nor is there any limit to either time into the future nor the kind of technology available.  Any of those limits that can be placed can be nullified by simply pointing out established and recognized cyberpunk stories that break them.

There are two elements needed in order for a narrative to be cyberpunk, punk and cyber.  Punk is a counterculture lifestyle of outcasts that lies out side the acceptable social structure either because people rejected society or society rejected them.  Cyber in this particular usage refers to the information made readily available due to computers and networking and the impact that has on people.

I am open to differing opinions on whether Star Trek has enough meat on the bones to make for good cyberpunk stories but I think I make a good case.  I'll enumerate a few points here for further thought and discussion.

1. Cyberpunk is about social outcasts and no society, ether utopian or dystopian, will have a place for everyone.  If there are outcasts that are willing to strive to live and refuse to capitulate to the social order, then we have a basis for a cyberpunk story.

2.  I think a cyberpunk story set in the Star Trek setting would be very compelling because you'd have to try really hard to keep them from just being villains.  In fact, the very idea of two adversaries who cannot coexist yet have equal and legitimate claim to a space make for a very interesting conflict.   It's an excellent way to explore human morality without being amoral.

3.  Players with attachments to the Star Trek setting would be great players.  Their love of the setting and those that inhabit it would greatly reduce the chances of murder hobo behavior.  The increase in drama from the need to complete a mission and the innate desire not to sully the setting would be immensely rewarding.

4.  There's enough material about the Star Trek underworld just from the TV show and movies to at least give a solid frame work to the idea of edge runners without breaking lore.  Take into account the licensed books and video games and I think we have enough for a solid source book on the matter.

5. The idea of exploring Star Trek through the eyes of an outcast would serve to strengthen the virtues of it rather that sully it.  I would argue that the best Star Trek episodes were those where the Federation came up against their failures to be the ideals they hold.  I also think that contrasting them with other moral codes would make those virtues more real to the player.