Our grandchildren will say we've come to the City...because the dream we'd been promised...blew away, like the mile after parched mile of wastelandand drowned in the poisoned rivers we've left behind.They will call it the Reckoning.But we say nothing. We keep moving. A new challenge, that's all.
Reckoning is the second setting in the Cosmopol RPG universe, taking place roughly six to seven years after the introduction of the first setting.
In Century of Progress, it was hinted (mostly by cynics whom nobody took seriously) that the unchecked progress and economic high times of the past century would be unsustainable.
In Reckoning, these predictions come to fruition. The global economy collapses and ecological disaster strikes much of the developed world. The cities of Cosmopol and Neustadt can no longer support much of their own infrastructure, leaving parts of the city nonfunctional and raising the levels of red tape to those never seen before; thousands upon thousands of refugees flood into the cities looking for opportunities that may not exist, where they must compete with the cities' established denizens for the smallest piece of the pie.
Many of the rich are far richer, the middle class are almost non existent, and crime and the black market thrive. The underground economy is based upon modding, crime bosses control much of the city and former enemies may become new allies.
But for an enterprising Night Jobber... the Reckoning could be the best times you've ever known.
And in the shadows, and beneath the city streets... a storm is brewing. The storm of Retribution.
Tropes in this System:
- Author Appeal: The universe was born out of the author's own admitted love for 20s and 30s tech and retrofuturism.
- Bio Punk: Humans can no longer compete with Neohumans in many job markets.
- City of Adventure: Both Cosmopol and Neustadt.
- City Noir: Much of Cosmopol and ALL Neustadt.
- Cool Airship: The only way to fly.
- Code Name: Most Night Jobbers and everyone in the Zero One uses a callsign.
- The Cracker: A common character type.
- Keller in the framing story is this.
- Diesel Punk: It's kind of like that.
- Everybody Smokes: Cigarette smoking adds to several critical attributes, but addiction results in a drain of resources and discipline.
- Fantastic Racism: Beginning to brew against the Neohumans.
- Framing Device: The universe and its major events are introduced by fictional characters living in-universe.
- Gadgeteer Genius: One of the player character jobs, and one of the best things you can be in a post-currency economy.
- Hacker Cave: Averted, as hacking looks ridiculously low-fi: hackers spend most of their time crouching over little analog dials and scanning lines of code on display goggles or very tiny screens.
- Homemade Inventions: A major point of the game.
- Kafka Komedy: Everyday life during the years of the Reckoning.
- Keller Speak: "Hand me the twisty thing. The thing which twists."
- Justified in that he is not a native English speaker.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory
- Mr. Exposition: Keller and the other characters in the framing stories
- Punk Punk: Largely of the Diesel Punk flavor, with many Cyberpunk and Bio Punk elements.
- Romani: A minority ethnic group living in Neustadt's Unterstadt. They are known for making their living as "modders" and mechanics, and are one of the few groups aware of the several kinds of Nasty living in the lower levels of the city.
- Science Hero: One of the player character jobs.
- Schizo Tech: Computer intranets, large-scale architectural/civic projects, robotics and advanced genetic engineering... in a world that seems to run on internal combustion, fossil fuels, pneumatic mail, vacuum tubes, and display gratuitous use of pressure gauges and analog dials.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?
- What Measure Is a Non-Super?
