So here’s a list of starting points for descriptions of each topic. @revengeday , please feel free to edit and use these as appropriate and don’t be afraid to change anything I’ve suggested here to fit your vision of how the site should feel. So, here goes:
- Cyberware
- Brief Description: Discussions about interfacing human and machine
- Cyberspeak: “Every good Edgerunner knows that it ain’t the shine on the chrome, it’s what you do with it that gets the job done and eddies burnin’ a hole in your pockets. Whether it’s implanted, bolted on, or a disposable wearable, these are the tools that you need to survive the Sprawl.”
- Subs:
- Hardware
- Brief Description: External hardware used for accessing the 'Net. Could be cyberdecks, VR rigs, computer builds, any external technologies
- Cyberspeak: “Not everybody’s got the will or the eddies to go the implant route, ya know? This little corner of the Night Market is for finding info about pre-implant cyberdecks, data terms, AR hardware, and anything else that gets you chippin’ into the 'net without the latest and greatest integrated 'Saka hardware.”
- Ethics
- Brief Description: Philosophical discussion around the ramifications of augmenting humanity
- Cyberspeak: “Cyberpsychosis is real, choom. Some people even wonder if we should get chromed up at all. Others say if it ain’t chrome, it ain’t home. I got one word for ya, choomba: Soulkiller. Megacorps play fast and loose with ‘the human condition’ and this is your chance to tell them what you think of that!”
- Software
- Brief Description: Talk about purely software-oriented constructs: AI, ML models, Expert systems, VR software, general programming, etc.
- Cyberspeak: “Hardware of any kind is only pretty to look at without the software to chip it, and we all know that rumors from beyond the Blackwall is the stuff nightmares are made of. Is there a hot new program out there for your Ono-Sendai? Let your choombas know about it so they don’t get flatlined on their next run!”
- Chrome
- Brief Description: Discussion regarding bio-mechanical implants, augmentation, prosthetics, and artificial organs.
- Cyberspeak: “That liver ain’t gonna repair itself, choom, and unless you want to be livin’ out the rest of your days in one of those ancient iron lungs, I suggest that you take a good, hard look at integrating some chrome into your meat. Be a whole new you, chummer! Just try not to go all chrome-crazy like those techno-fetishist Maelstrom gonks, yeah?”
- Hardware
- Drop Point
- Brief Description: Items of general interest that might not fit into any other category
- Subs:
- Most Wanted (Introductions)
- Brief Description: Tell the community about yourself to help facilitate communication
- Cyberspeak: “You want a drink named after you at Afterlife? You wanna be a legend on Shadowland? Ya gotta make a name for yourself and get some serious street cred. And it all starts by telling the world who you are. Fixers don’t just hand jobs to any gonk off the street…well, at least not unless they want someone to take a fall. You don’t want to be that person, chummer - that’s really bad for biz.”
- Announcements
- Brief Description: Bulletins and postings from the admins and mod team
- Cyberspeak: “This info from your fixers might just save your life one day.”
- Most Wanted (Introductions)
- Cyber Culture
- Brief Description: Capturing the culture of cyberpunks, edgerunners, and techies everywhere
- Cyberspeak: “It don’t matter if you’re a nomad, street kid, or corpo, this new wired world we find ourselves trapped in has a culture all it’s own. Whether you’re a chromer, a media, a runner, or just some gonk wageslave tryin’ to pay the bills, you do things your way. You like what you like, you khow? Fight the corpos, my digital proletarians! Shout at the top of your implanted cyberlungs that those corpo bastards can’t tell us what to like!”
- Subs:
- Pictures & Videos
- Brief Description: Any pics and vids that other cyberpunks will find interesting, amusing, or otherwise entertaining.
- Cyberspeak: “One thing that will always survive a suitcase nuke is media, chummer! How else are you gonna know who’s got a lower life than you do if you don’t hear it from the streams?”
- Memes
- Brief Description: If you don’t know what a meme is, this topic ain’t for you, choom’
- Cyberspeak: “Always be in on the joke, spice up your tags, or have that nova-hot one-liner ready for that sweet flatline shot in your next big bonanza.”
- Music
- Brief Description: Music to code by, change your mood, or earworms that you just can’t get rid of
- Cyberspeak: “Yo all you chromers outta Night City, this one’s for you! Can’t get enough of these block-rockin’ beats! Set the mood for any occasion with these recommendations that’ll make Maximum Mike jealous! Callin’ all rockerboys, producers, and Samurai fans!”
- Stories
- Brief Description: This category is all about user-generated original short stories, RPG scenarios (a.k.a. “war stories”), and other written word explorations of cyberpunk themes
- Cyberspeak: “When that run goes bad, or your bestest choom betrays you for more nuyen from a Johnson, or your mainline calls you right in the middle of that crucial run to ask you to bring home some soykaf, this is the place to swap those stories. Night City has a million stories, most of them bad, so drop some paydata and give the deets on what happened. You aren’t the first, and you definitely won’t be the last.”
- Fashion
- Brief Description: All about cyberpunk fashion whether it’s IRL or in-game. Links to techwear outlets, showing off your own gear, all is welcome when it comes to the Fashion category.
- Cyberspeak: “You can’t just go waltzin’ into Kiroshi for a run in any old gear. You gotta look good while you’re doin’ it, with a style that’s so edgy it cuts like a katana! Ya know, that reminds me of a story I heard in Afterlife once: that even old Saburo himself actually paused for a second to take in some runner’s gear after he somehow made it past his private security to get within spittin’ distance of the old cuss. 'Course, that poor gonk got flatlined about 2 seconds later by a security turret that he forgot about, but he went to that great bitbucket in the sky knowing that Arasaka Sr. was impressed by his style in the 5 nanoseconds before he was obliterated. Let that be a lesson to you, chooms - if yer gonna flame out, look nova for the security feeds!”
- Pictures & Videos
- Braindance
- Brief Description: Escape reality in a number of different ways
- Cyberspeak: “Life in the Sprawl is hard. Sometimes it’s downright unbearable being ground under the corpo boot heel day in and day out. Sometimes you just need a way to tune out the buzz and noise and be someone else for a little bit. At the Boulevard of Broken Dreams BD Emporium, we’ve got whatever you need to slot to make the mundane details of life fade away for as long as you like.”
- Subs:
- TTRPGs
- Brief Description: Any and all Table Top Role Playing Games are welcome here, of course with preference for cyberpunk-themed games
- Cyberspeak: “When your BD rig is burned and your cyberdeck’s on the fritz, sometimes you just gotta use your imagination and kick it old school. Don’t give me that look, kid… sure beats staring off into dead space when you ain’t got no eds nor any prospects for gettin’ some any time soon. Imagination don’t cost money, nozzlehead!”
- Video Games
- Brief Description: Discussions about video games and the consoles/PCs that run them
- Cyberspeak: “BDs are the ultimate escape, my choom! Some of these are even REALer than REAL, you get what I’m sayin’? You need a rig to run them on? I’ll hook you up. We’ve even got some of Judy Alvarez’s latest stuff in stock so slot that for an hour or two and watch the master at work.”
- Board Games
- Brief Description: A space to talk about any and all board games and card games, whether old or new
- Cyberspeak: “Hey. Hey you! Yeah YOU chummer! You lookin’ for an analog experience? Something you can really feel and roll around in your hands? This is better than any trid or BD you have ever seen! Forget the digital, choom - ANALOG is where it’s at!”
- Comics
- Brief Description: Manga, Golden Age, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse. If it’s somewhere between a book and a movie, it belongs here.
- Cyberspeak: “There’s this old saying: ‘See ya in the funny papers’ that my grandpa used to say whenever he’d leave after a visit. Me ‘an the boys busted into this ancient old shack out in the badlands one time lookin’ for a place to hide from Johnny Law and underneath the floorboards was this old box full of little books that were nothin’ but cartoons! This must’ve been what old Granddad meant. They weren’t even e-paper or holograms, choom! Jax started readin’ one called ‘Archie & Jughead’ and almost got us caught cuz he was laughin’ so hard. From that day on, we was callin’ him Jughead. Sweet Bartmoss, he hated that name.”
- Books
- Brief Description: Recommendations and reviews of any books you would like to tell the community about
- Cyberspeak: “Books ain’t what they used to be, what with datapads and all that content on the ‘net, but there’s just something about holding some sort of esoteric tome in your hands and thinking about what things must’ve been like back in the days before the ‘net. Me, I can’t even imagine not bein’ chipped in 24/7 and what it would be like not to have that constant contact. Don’t know what I’m talkin’ about? Go to Misty’s Esoterica…she’s got tons of that stuff.”
- TTRPGs
- Screamsheets
- Brief Description: Articles, websites, and videos of interest to the general public
- Cyberspeak: “All the news that’s fit to print, and a whole lot of it that ain’t worth the electrons it’s composed of! Keep up on all the happenings, thrills, chills, and dirty little secrets of the Sprawl that our tenacious crew of medias comes up with on a daily basis! You don’t want to be the last gonk to know, do you?”
- Subs:
- Meatspace News
- Brief Description: General news items that are not tech focused. This is an ideal place to discuss world news and major events going on right now.
- Cyberspeak: “There’s a whole world out there beyond the borders of Night City, not that you’d know it the way N54 ‘reports’ what’s going on around here. There’s more to life than the latest exploits of Lucius Rhyne, you know.”
- Tech News
- Brief Description: Tech-related news and noteworthy items
- Cyberspeak: “Tech talks and scop walks, my man. The best way to get info on what’s nova in tech is to put your new-jack cybersniffer to the ground and start talking to the techs in the back rooms to get the skinny on what’s really goin’ down. There ain’t no place like Shadowland to get the latest intel on that big explosion you heard a couple blocks over three nights ago.”
- Corpo News
- Brief Description: Keeping an eye on the latest corpo shenanigans that make life difficult for the rest of us
- Cyberspeak: “The 4th Corporate War may be over but if you think it’s forgotten, well chummer, you got another think comin’. CEOs have long memories and even longer lines 'o credit, and they’ll do some crazy drek to make sure that they get their balance sheet into their favor. On or off the streets, ya get me?”
- Meatspace News
- Netwatch
- Brief Description: Discussions relating to specific instances in the OBEYTHESYSTEM federated universe
- Cyberspeak: “I know, I know. We all hate Netwatch. But somebody’s gotta do the dirty work of maintaining the Blackwall and keeping all the bad stuff on the outside. Sure, they’re killjoys for most of us, pokin’ their digital noses where they don’t belong. But it’s better them being R.A.B.I.D.S. targets than us, right?”
- Subs:
- Night City Bar
- Description: NCB is our Iceshrimp instance
- Cortex Implant
- Description: CI is our Mastodon instanced
- Cyberpunk Pics (soon to be decommed)
- Description: Cyberpunk Pics is our Pixelfed home in the fediverse
- Cyberware (Matrix) - Defunct (Now “OBEY THE SYSTEM” on matrix.org)
- Description: Our cyberpunk-themed Matrix chat (now hosted on matrix.org)
- Night City Bar
- Ripperdoc
- Brief Description: Your one-stop-shop for DIY and home-built projects
- Cyberspeak: “Ripperdocs don’t just install that hot new chrome you ripped out of that merc you flatlined on your last run. They also gotta keep their customers happy and the eddies rollin’ in by maintaining their chrome. And sometimes, they gotta build their own stuff and repurpose it so that it’ll fit the latest meatbag to walk in their door with big dreams of burnin’ their name in the sky and a pile of eddies to spend to get there.”
- Subs:
- Gadgets
- Brief Description: Got a new gadget you want to show off? Need specs and recs on a new device? This is the forum for you!
- Cyberspeak: “Sometimes you just can’t slot all the tech you need to survive a run, so it pays to get to know your local techie to help you gear up. Get to know 'em well enough and they might even give you a discount, assuming you live long enough to claim it.”
- Hardware Hacking
- Brief Description: Things you do that voids warranties and makes hardware do stuff it wasn’t designed to do
- Cyberspeak: “Hacking applies to just more than software, choom. The mantra of these types is ‘bigger, better, faster, stronger’ in any way possible. Have you ever seen a drop point become a holocall terminal, spout bad haiku to random gonks walkin’ by, and also brew coffee?”
- Life Hacks
- Brief Description: Ways to work the system without the need for a soldering gun. Whether it’s finding a new use for an old item or just ways to make life a little easier, this is the forum in which to discuss it.
- Cyberspeak: “If your low life is keepin’ you from the high tech, you have to use other means to survive the on the street. Punks have been gaming the system and turning it on it’s ear for a century now and you can get more out of life than you think of you just know where to look and have some imagination. Rules were meant to be broken, choombas.”
- HOWTO
- Brief Description: This is the place for all your DIY projects and works-in-progress. If you’ve figured out some way to make something or do something and want to share it, this is the place to do it.
- Cyberspeak: “Every runner’s gotta start somewhere and you’ll need somebody to show you the ropes. We don’t all start out like Morgan Blackhand outta the gate, so find you a good crew that’s willin’ ta teach ya something so you don’t get your shiny new mantis blades sheared off on your first run.”
- Gadgets
- Language Lounge
- Brief Description: Discussion of anything language related, whether it is learning a new language, tools to help one do so, or discussions of etymology and multi-lingual interplay.
- Cyberspeak: “You never think about your universal translator until it gets slagged by an EMP or gets burned by an enemy netrunner. When that happens, you’re gonna want to make sure you can speak the local language of wherever you are so you can get help or at least find a bathroom. Don’t matter if you’re in Chiba, Berlin, or Voodoo Boys territory, you’d better be able to communicate with the locals so you’ll know what they’re about to do to your jacked-out meatbag.”