Terra

A: Terra is a near-future setting that is completely homebrew. It is a growing Cyberpunk world with a huge wellspring of story potential. It takes place on our very own Earth, but in a different timeline and an alternate reality, in the year 2078. In this reality, Artificial Intelligence is dangerous, hackers are trying to take over the world, and vicious cyborgs are becoming more powerful by the day. You will be thrown through a spiraling staircase that only gets deeper and darker as you descend it. You will find yourself in new heights as you look down upon a world, much like our own, but in a dark and treacherous future.

A: Yes, sort of. Terra itself is a large and expansive setting with its own history and estimated future. Think of Terra as the alternate reality to our real world Earth. "Terra" is just a word that means "Earth". We call these chapters "eras".

Dark Future is the Cyberpunk era of our Terra setting and takes place during and after the year 2078. This is the era we're using right now.

A New World comes After 2123 or so. It's assumed that the setting would then become Post-cyberpunk, which is a lighter, more utopia like cyberpunk.

The Dark Beyond is even further in the future. At this point, Space travel would be established thoroughly. It's probably taking place around 2349.

These other chapters don't mean anything to you right now, we're only concerned with Dark Future for this roleplay.

A: Homebrew means what it sounds like. You take an amalgamation of ideas, throw them in a pot, and stir them up. It defines that the setting isn't part of some larger "official" setting like Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun. It's custom built. You might take ideas from other settings and add them to the pot, but in the end what you're cooking is different from other settings and more adapted to what you want from it.

The difficulty with homebrew settings is that there are a lot of things to define, since you're basically starting from scratch like anyone else did. It becomes a little more difficult to work with without knowing 'for certain' what's what. At the same time, though, it depicts a setting that is largely left up to your imagination—a veritable sandbox for you to play in! It's in everyone's power to add on to the setting, lore, mechanics, and everything else you can possibly think of.

A: Where most groups on this site use Furcadia, we are more oriented towards a tabletop style visual. The Roll20 site coincides with our roleplay for a more visual experience. It has all the real-time details of our world depicted on it in tabletop format. A map, areas, and character sheets, so on so forth. We use the Roll20 site on occasions where we would like a more fluid and real-time roleplay.

We really encourage you to check it out here. If you're set on joining up with us, click here. It will put you right in the game. Keep in mind, a GM will need to present to move you around areas, but you can still browse the journal if you like.

A: Take a moment to think about what the meaning behind "cyberpunk" really is. Latch onto that idea. Envision what kind of people would exist in that kind of world, both good and bad. If you need inspiration, just hit Google.

Our golden rule is this; If it can conceivably exist in the setting, you can make it. That means, don't make any space-age musketeers; this is near-future, we're not there yet. Don't make space pirates or aliens, because we're not there yet either. Etc, etc.

As far as the character sheet goes, don't worry too much about the mechanics until you have a concept. When you go to make your character, you can then build on that concept with statistics. Remember, the mechanics take a lesser priority than just playing the game. You're building the sheet around your character, not the other way around.

Feel free to post on the forums if you're stuck.

A: As we've said many times, we believe in an immersive and truly player-driven experience. The world of Terra is literally your oyster. It has a perfectly dynamic story that begins to change and grow as soon as you step foot into it. Any of your actions have rippling effects on the events of the game, however small or large, or insignificant as they might seem.

So how do we do it? It's simple; our Storytellers react to what you do just as you would react when it's the other way around! A lot of what we do is improvised. You're in just as much control of the story as we are. When we build a story-arc, we do it with intention to leave it open. Possibly outcomes can only be guessed at. We write up a plan with predictions of what the players might do, and then we build on those actions to push the story in the direction it's most likely to go. No linear plots or rail-roading here.

A: (please read this whole segment to the end)
As we mention below, a lot of the more intense themes are put on the back-burner. We try not to throw those in your face. Usually, we even ask you first. We implore you to make sure that we ask first. People can get into the mood of a story and sometimes get pretty descriptive. Even still, we're all adults here playing a game for fun and it should stay that way. It's good to mention beforehand what you're comfortable with, too, maybe in your biography or something.

I'll start with violence. Violence is one of the main reasons why we're an 18+ community. Things can be fairly visceral, and gore might be involved on occasion as well. You're likely to see fights, either with guns or knives, and other things that result in blood being spilled; so on so forth. Murder and violence is going to happen, just like it does in the real world, but the intensity of it can always vary. Try to focus on how your character would react to it, rather than you investing too much emotion into something like that. If it's something really explicit and descriptive, just gently nudge us to tone it down if need-be.

Now onto the sexual stuff. It's possible to see sexual themes in our world, but it typically takes a spot on the back-burner. Of course, if you want to interact with the world by trying to have sex with it, who are we to stop you? I mean, you're the one contracting an STD, not us.

No, but seriously, you're looking at an RP world that is built in the future, when sexual standards are kind of... different. Taboos are different, cultures are more intermingling, it's just so hard to say what's 'inappropriate' or not anymore, at least, in the in-character world. Out of character, we ask you to be responsible with how much of it you include.

For instance, you're likely to walk into a strip club and see naked men and women dancing; it's part of the atmosphere. You might be walking down an alley and witness a rape. We might be very descriptive with that rape. Generally, though, we try not to throw it into the foreground or in your face. It's just there to add to the feel of everything.

A general rule of thumb: When you're including a theme that's likely to invoke emotional distress in a player (such as rape, for a woman who was actually raped it can be pretty scary and intense, but it isn't limited to just this) a good thing to do is ask first. Use your best judgement. If it's really intense and something that could have happened to them and affected them in a negative way, don't destroy their enjoyment over trying to make the story follow a theme. You can always glaze over things.

A: Mainly because we wanted to be. The reality of the situation is that it is what we preferred to make this setting, but let's take a look at how our real life world is progressing. We've got debt, economic collapse, poverty, and so on so forth. Terra takes all of this and assumes that it continued degrading.

The world of Terra is polluted, dark, dingy, but still functioning.

A:

A:

A: Mmmm. Yes and no. Let me explain.

You might remember that we mentioned the Mars colonization due to happen in 2025. This is a real thing, go look. Anyway, it was successful in our setting. Who knows how it'll go in the real world, but there you go.

Ever since then (speaking from an in-character standpoint now) we as a species have realized that space travel is not only possible, but it's very beneficial. We don't have FTL drives yet, all of the space travel we do is "generational". It takes a long time to get from A to B. Because of this, 99% of the world will never experience space travel. It's a one-way trip and only specific people were and are selected to go to Mars.

The only places we've really messed around with are the Moon and Mars. We have moon bases (including a prison where we ship really bad people) and even a few colonies on Mars. Will you, as a player, get to go there? Probably not.

You might be thinking, "oh, this opens up a whole new door for character concepts", and I'm thinking, "you're damn right it does". What if my character was a prisoner on the moon and came back to Earth somehow? Yes, it's possible, but you're looking at a pretty terrible success chance. You remember when I said space travel was a one way trip? Yeah, it is... there's only a select few ships that can come back after landing on another rock, and they're pretty freaking expensive. These concepts are not something that should be done without special consideration. We don't want to drive in the direction of space travel being a 'normal' thing for our cyberpunk setting because it's not.

A: Near future, dystopia cyberpunk. So let's think for a minute. Brain-maps, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, cyborgs, androids, flying cars (you'll still see stuff with wheels though) and... hm... unmanned weapons. That's about what you're looking at. Plasma... is... sort of established as a weapon type. Lasers? Well, if you have something that produces a laser sufficiently powerful to cause damage, then it's probably the result of a pretty advanced corporation or something. A lot of weapons use Gauss/Rail technology now, though, but ordinary guns are still preferred because they're cheap and available.

Think of it on a scale like this, from most expensive and powerful to least expensive and powerful.

---

- Spaceships.
- Owning a country or continent.

---

Game-breaking past this point.

---

- Owning a state.
- Owning a city.
- Laser weapons.
- Plasma weapons.

---

Above this you're looking at stuff you're not likely to have in the game world.

---

- A building of your own in the city.
- Supersonic planes.
- Helicopters.
- A city estate.
- Flying cars.
- Genome augmentations.

---

Anything above this line is difficult to get and pretty expensive.

---

- Gauss-powered guns.
- Superheated weapons such as swords.
- Rail-powered guns.
- EMP weapons.
- Electric-based weapons.
- A city penthouse.
- Advanced cybernetics.

---

Stuff below this line is fairly easy to get. This stuff is considered 'standard issue'.

---

- A city apartment.
- Cars and motorcycles like what we have today.
- Cheaper forms of cybernetics, knock-offs and stuff.
- Guns like what we have today.
- Carbon steel knives and swords.
- Steel knives and swords.
- Furniture and such.
- Metal rods or skewers like what you might find next to your fireplace.
- Plastic stuff and improved weapons.

---

A note to keep in mind is that while weapons have developed, so has everything else to a certain degree. You're not going to punch a hole in a carbon-steel building with a rail pistol. I hope you're making sense of all this.

A:

A:

A:

A:

A:

A: