In the Cyberpunk RED Easy Mode - Free Basic Rules, just the basic rules and lore to get started have been included. For the full Dark Future lore and all the advanced rules, check out the Cyberpunk RED Core Book!

Cyberpunk RED takes place in an alternate future where the world is recovering from a devastating global war fought between two Megacorporations. Here’s a brief rundown on the history, so you know how it got this bad.

The Fall of America

By the end of the 1980s, it was evident that the United States was in trouble. Most social norms had dissolved under an all-engulfing wave of competing special interest groups, media-fueled fads, and an overall "me first" worldview.

By 1994, the number of homeless on the streets had skyrocketed to 21 million. The technical revolution had further torn the economy apart, creating two radically divergent classes—a wealthy, technically oriented, materially acquisitive group of Corporate professionals; and a down-class of homeless, unskilled, blue-collar workers. The middle class was nearly eradicated. It was this dismal beginning that led to the American landscape of the 2000s.

Here are just a few of the major trends leading to the collapse of the American Nation.

▶ Urban Collapse ◀

In large cities, business areas were clean, neat, well-lit showcases, free of crime and poverty, controlled by powerful Corporations. Ringing the central areas were the Combat Zones—decrepit, squalid suburbs, and burned-out ghettos teeming with boostergangs and other violent sociopaths. The outer suburbs were also Corporate-controlled zones; safe, well-guarded tracts where executives raised their families in relative security.

▶ Corrupt and Ineffective Government ◀

Under the corrupt rule of the Gang of Four (a cabal of four government agencies: the NSA, the CIA, the DEA, and the FBI, all led by the brilliant and psychopathic Vice President), American government descended into the realm of mobster rule. Ruthlessly pursuing its agenda of illicit profit above all, the Gang hollowed out Social Security and Medicare, eliminated Welfare (unless tied to one of their Corporate clients), and plundered the resources of the United States like a giant personal piggybank. The only untouched area of the government was the military, which the Gang lavished money upon to maintain service loyalty and to finance the Gang's expansive policy of war-based imperialism.

By the time the Gang was ousted, the U.S. Senate was no longer functional (having been suborned or intimidated by the Gang over years), the Supreme Court was no longer the law of the land for the increasing number of self-declared "Free States," and most of the federal bureaucracy was in shambles, leaving the country unable to cope with the waves of crises devastating the population.

▶ The Rise of the Free States ◀

Individual states, fed up with the ineffectual and dictatorial actions of the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. (and the recently exposed machinations of the Gang of Four), began to break away from the main body of the country; first California, north and later south, then Texas, Oregon, Washington and the Dakotas. These new "Free States" set their own laws (although most were remarkably similar), trade arrangements, and most importantly, no longer sent their collected taxes back to Washington, D.C. This only hurried the collapse of the unified nation.

▶ The New Rustbowl ◀

Unprepared to deal with the effects of worldwide global warming, vast areas of the northern hemisphere began to suffer unending years of back-to-back drought. Throughout the Midwestern states, many small towns were abandoned, as local farms, businesses, and banks collapsed in the wake of this drought, famine, and economic chaos.

What farms that survived were eventually bought up by huge Agricorporations, and were maintained with Corporate-controlled wells, hired workers, machine labor, and well-equipped guards. Midwest urban zones also suffered during this time; not from drought, but a collapse of manufacturing jobs and industries fleeing the country for cheaper labor in Asia and Africa. Unchecked Corporate mergers and acquisitions destabilized entire areas of production, especially as well-heeled investors bought successful companies, then pillaged their assets and sold the dried husks at pennies on the dollar to finance their debts.

But the hollowing out of the center of the country had an unexpected series of costs; millions became homeless, and were forced to travel the open roads to seek shelter in the urban zones in a latter-day version of the Dust Bowl period of the American 1930s. The open freeways soon became battlegrounds, as armed packs of booster gangs also traveled from city to city, looting and pillaging the homeless travelers like mechanized Visigoths.

▶ The Plagues ◀

An already overtaxed medical system found itself inundated by a series of plagues that swept the planet. Aided by easy and rapid transportation between countries, densely packed urban zones, and a willful tendency for the broken governments of the period to ignore or downplay the effects of medical emergencies, the "hot zones" spread like fusion-fed explosions, devastating entire continents. For example, the Wasting Plague of 1999, a horrible infection that attacked the intestines of its victims and made them starve to death no matter how much food they ate, tore across Europe and landed in the United States, where, ignored in the chaos of the Gang of Four's rule, it killed an estimated 14 million people before a vaccine was finally developed in Japan. The Wasting Plague was only one of a series of epidemiological disasters that hammered the planet, some natural, some bioengineered as part of various national programs. Each one was just another nail in the coffin of a society already out of control.

▶ The Rise of Cybernetics ◀

Humanity has always pushed back against its limits. Poor eyesight? Get glasses. Hearing failing or poor? Get a cochlear implant. Hip going out? Replace it with a steel one. But by the late 20th century, the explosive levels of achievements in cybernetics (from cyber = machine + netics = control) opened up a new world of human potential. Now, it became: Poor eyesight? Replace those meat eyes with cyberoptics that can see for miles, in the dark, and maybe even shoot lasers like a superhero. Hearing failing or poor? Time to level up to an enhanced audio suite that can hear sounds that only dogs—or whales—can hear. Hip going out? Replace your entire skeleton with unbreakable, never-wearing-out steel. It's a new age, and you can become part of it by endlessly improving yourself.

But this brave new world backfired. Corporations and governments began to employ cybernetically enhanced warriors to patrol the streets and fight their wars. People with cybernetic enhancements found themselves becoming impatient with the unenhanced and their (to the cybered-up) painfully slow pace. Cybernetic speed also allowed the rate of change—or engagement with the rush of a shifting world of endless information—to move still faster, leading to greater levels of technoshock (below) in society. People began to show signs of psychotic breaks, eventually culminating in a plague of cybernetically driven, murderous rampages called cyberpsychosis. And so, one more log was added to the inferno consuming society at the end of the 20th century.

▶ Endless War ◀

With the option to deploy cybernetically boosted super-soldiers and an unlimited military budget, the Gang of Four was able to prosecute a series of foreign wars to start its new era of imperialism. But even with these advantages, the United States found itself dragged into a series of military quagmires with echoes of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Old U.S. in Vietnam. This became even worse as the targeted nations began to use terrorist strikes (such as a pocket nuke in New York) to hit back at the Gang. By the time the Cyber Soldier Ten Thousand fought its way back from the SouthAm hellhole, the citizens of the United States were exceptionally tired of the endless battles filling their nightly news.

▶ And Finally, Technoshock ◀

When technological change outstrips people's ability to comprehend or fit it into their lives, it creates technoshock, one of the major contributors to the social chaos that brought about the Collapse of the pre-Cyberpunk world. Technoshock always starts small. A useful gadget or tool here. A new and very directed communications method there. Information systems that allow governments and Megacorps to watch and track you with surveillance or targeted advertising that delivers what you want when you don't even know you want it...for your own good. Machines that adjust your sense of time and place to fit their needs. And all of it happening faster and faster, so that your mind is unable to process the changes and how it's affected. The younger you are, the easier it is for you to deal with the accelerating change; you're used to it because you were born to it. But sooner or later, even the kids can't keep up. Suddenly, people freak out. They get irrational, violent. Families shatter; relationships tear apart. People feel helpless in the face of the Universe. Eventually, the whole society grinds to a halt, the victim of a mass psychosis. The vast majority of people, their lives uprooted and changed by the advancements, sat passively waiting for their leaders to tell them what to do next. Megacorporations provided a neo-feudal alternative to the new and incomprehensible reality. One smaller group tried to turn back the pace, by founding the anti-technological Neo–Luddite movement. Still others decided to immerse themselves in the technological change. They coped by adding machines to themselves, enhancing their abilities and perceptions to allow themselves to catch up to the dizzying pace of the New.

And earned themselves the nickname of "Edgerunners" or "Cyberpunks."

Dark Future Countdown

A Timeline for the Dark Future

▶ 1990 to 1994 ◀

• A secret ‘coup' launched by The Gang of Four, a coalition of government agencies led by the current Vice President, effectively ends federal democracy in the U.S. Many states begin ignoring federal authority, declaring themselves "Free States."
  
• Start of First Central American Conflict. American Imperial ambitions, justified as part of the war on Communism, terrorism, and narcotics, kill hundreds of thousands. American veterans return home dismembered and maimed, driving the demand for cyberware.
• CHOOH2 developed by Biotechnica.
• First TRC biologic interface chips developed in Munich, United Germany.
• World Stock Market Crash of '94. The U.S. is caught manipulating European and American stock markets; a worldwide financial meltdown results from the news being made public.

▶ 1996 ◀

• The Collapse of the United States. Weakened by losses in the World Stock Crash, overwhelmed by unemployment, homelessness, and corruption, many local governments collapse or go bankrupt. The U.S. government, snarled in a staggering deficit and the machinations of the Gang of Four, is totally ineffective.
  
• Nomad Riots. By now, 1 in 4 Americans are homeless. Hundreds of thousands riot for living space throughout the U.S., Nomad packs spring up on the west coast and spread rapidly through the nation.
• U.S. Constitution suspended. Martial law established.

▶ 1997 to 1999 ◀

• 'Rockerboy' Manson killed in England. A legendary force in the "populist rock" movement, his stage name was adopted as the term for any musician or other artist who took up the gauntlet for political change.
  

▶ 2000 ◀

• First "extended family" poser gangs established.
  
• Wasting Plague hits U.S., Europe, killing millions.

▶ 2001 ◀

• The framework of the NET put firmly in place with construction of the WorldSat network.
  

▶ 2003 ◀

• Second Central American War. U.S. invades Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela. The War is a disaster that costs many American lives and leaves thousands of troops to struggle home on their own.
  
• The remainder of the Gang of Four is swept away on a wave of reform. Elections resume, although heavily influenced by the Megacorporations.

▶ 2004 ◀

• First Corporate War (2004 to 2006). Commando raids and cyberspace attacks between EBM and Orbital Air introduce the world to the age of direct Corporate warfare.
  

▶ 2005 to 2007 ◀

• Cybermodem invented.
  
• Braindance developed at UC Santa Cruz.

▶ 2008 ◀

• Second Corporate War (2008 to 2010). SovOil and Petrochem fail to negotiate with each other over newly discovered oil fields in the South China Sea and begin blowing each other up instead. Even cynical observers are shocked at the level of violence.
  

▶ 2013 ◀

• April 13, 2013. Johnny Silverhand concert spirals into a riot in Night City. The rioters kill 18, wound 51. Old Arasaka complex gutted.
  
• Soulkiller virus developed. Originally designed by programmer Altiera Cunningham of ITS as a way to implant recorded personalities into cloned bodies. The transfer technology is a failure, but Arasaka spies learn of its existence and kidnap Cunningham in order to have her develop it into a weapon.
• First true Artificial Intelligence developed at Microtech's Sunnyvale, CA facility.

▶ 2014 ◀

• Ihara-Grubb (I-G) transformations redesign the NET. During this time, renegade Netrunner Rache Bartmoss plants the DataKrash virus into the architecture of the NET.
  

▶ 2016 ◀

• Third Corporate War (2016). Unknown cyber terrorists attack the networks of Corporations worldwide, causing billions of eb worth of losses.
  

▶ 2021 ◀

• Euro Aquacorp CINO attempts to acquire bankrupt Aquacorp IHAG. Rival Aquacorp OTEC attempts to act as "white knight" in the hostile takeover. As both Corps line up allies, a dangerous war both on and below the sea begins.
  

▶ 2022 ◀

• Covert operations expand as Arasaka Security and Militech spar to see who will control the outcome of the CINO/OTEC War.
  
• Rache Bartmoss, Netrunner supreme, is killed in a Corporate raid. Two weeks later, the dead man switch for his DataKrash virus activates.
• 4th Corporate War. Covert operations explode into a shooting war as Arasaka and Militech move front line troops into battle. The ensuing conflict involves operations all over the globe, with heavy combat in major cities worldwide.
• DataKrash virus now infests 78.2% of the NET. Saburo Arasaka sets out to create a secure database of uninfected knowledge in the new Arasaka Towers facility in Night City.

▶ 2023 ◀

• Total breakdown of international trade. Container ship and air travel have been totally disrupted. Supplies and food sit on the docks worldwide, unable to reach stores, factories, or suppliers. Many Megacorps totally collapse.
• August 20th, 2023: Night City holocaust. An incursion team led by Solo Morgan Blackhand and Rockerboy Johnny Silverhand attempt to steal/destroy the Arasaka Secure Database in the Arasaka Towers facility. During the assault, an area denial nuclear device is detonated, which destroys most of central Night City. Over half a million people are killed. Militech is nationalized by U.S. President Elizabeth Kress.
• Beginning of the Time of the Red. Atmospheric particles from the nuclear blast in Night City, as well as debris from orbital rock strikes, conventional explosives, and the wartime burning and annihilation of cities and agricultural areas creates an eerie red pall over skies worldwide.

▶ 2025 ◀

• End of the 4th Corp War. This includes a three-year wrap-up as pockets of fighting are quelled by Militech and national armies. While there is only one nuke dropped during the war, the world's infrastructure is severely impacted, although not destroyed.
  
• NET is officially down. Alt Cunningham establishes the Ghost World in the ruins of a bio-destroyed city.
• Japanese government almost breaks down. By repudiating Arasaka, national face is saved.

▶ 2026 to 2030 ◀

• The Diaspora begins. Groups displaced from wrecked cities now set out to Reclaim nearby cities abandoned since the Collapse of the 1990s.
  
• There is massive looting of old tech and abandoned storehouses. Only scattered Corps are still functioning.
• The remaining United States is now a functional dictatorship under President Elizabeth Kress' State of Emergency.

▶ 2030 to 2035 ◀

• Resettlement of Suburban Night City. In time, Night City Central will be rebuilt, but for now, the foothills and the small cities around Night City are overpacked with refugees fleeing the radioactive ruins of the Corporate Zone.
  
• Reestablishing of Nomad High Roads. Nomads now operate ports, container ships. Corporations are now mostly local, but as Nomads establish trade routes, Corps branch out regionally.
• Start of CitiNets, local VPNs established in some of the Reclaimed Cities.
• Start of Night City Reconstruction. Gigatons of fill are shifted from the radioactive ruins of the central City. Much of the old Bay is filled in.

▶ 2035 to 2045 ◀

• First Wave Cities start Reclamation under support from local governments and remaining Megacorps. These First Wave Cities are ones that require only a limited amount of resources to rebuild.
  
• Rebuilding of old factories by Corporations and other individuals begins to replace lost tech. New Corps start to rise from the wreckage of the 4th Corp War.
• Netwatch attempts to clear out the R.A.B.I.D.S. and reestablish the Old NET. After a losing three-year battle, they give up.
• Establishment of first Data Pools, information servers and exchange systems designed for open use within the limits of a city.
• Rise of the first Mega Buildings to handle homeless population. These are "all-in-one" arcologies designed to rapidly create safe, habitable zones.

▶ 2045 ◀

• The Present.

#DATA
There’s much more lore to explore in the Cyberpunk RED Core Book.