desert

The year is 2070. For decades nation states, megacorporations and tech-elites have sunk billions into networked metropoles that promised jobs to workers, solutions to the world and unabashed capitalism to investors. It was, after all, an easier sell than sharp inequality, unmitigated climate change and vulnerable infrastructure which is what their smart cities brought.

In desert, you play people who live off of this pretend-future. You sell corporate secrets, leak sensitive information, blackmail state employees, sabotage social movements and halt billion euro production lines. But whether state-sponsored hackers or dissidents, cybercriminals or corporate insiders – break things once too often and you become a risk the authorities are not willing to take.

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desert is a GMless near future roleplaying game. The game is currently 60 pages and in playtesting. The game offers...

• a quick way to generate your own timeline of the near future.

• city creation down to individual buildings.

• life path character creation impacted by timeline-level change.

• mechanics for research, hacks and operations, manipulation and defence.

• the impact of work stress on the characters' personal lives.

• systems for faction projects, investigations and intervention, mission generation.