Underground (role-playing game)

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For other uses, see underground.
Underground
Image:RPG_underground_cover.jpg
Designer Ray Winninger
Publisher Mayfair Games
Publication date 1993
Genre(s) Science fiction, comedy
System Mayfair Exponential Game System (variant)

Underground is a satirical role playing game released by Mayfair Games in 1993 as a commentary on the politics and society of the early 1990s as expressed through the year 2021. Inspired by the Dark Age of Comic Books, Aeon Flux, and the political and social uphevals of the early 1990s, the game attempts to inspire social and political debate among its players as well as provide entertainment through playing renegade superheroes. Players typically play unemployed, genetically enhanced veterans of corporate wars.

The background setting for Underground borrowed heavily from the comic books Marshal Law (genetically engineered super soldiers fighting an unsuccessful war in South America) and Marvelman/Miracleman (technology gathered from a crashed alien spacecraft and psychological conditioning in a virtual reality environment), two of the earliest of the deconstructionist comics of the 1980s.

Contents


[edit] Setting

It's 2021, and the Dream is Dead

The future timeline of Underground begins with a UFO crash in 1996 in the Florida Everglades. The UFO was a small escape pod from a larger interstellar starship and contained a pair of lobster-like aliens. While officially a secret, the entire world witnessed the crash and the secrets of the UFO leak to the entire world within a year, apparently the alien technology was based entirely on manipulation of amino acid chains and advanced biotechnology, which starts a revolution in genetic engineering. This results in major corporations and the wealthy gaining even more power and becoming far more decadent, while the poor are oppressed.

World politics are dominated by the Second Cold War, which is a three-way deadlock between the United States (which has annexed most of Canada as the 51st through 58th states in 2003), European Community (dominated by Neo-Deutchland), and China. In Canada, Quebec separatists managed to form an independent Quebec right before the American annexation, creating the Peoples Republic of Quebec, a communist state allied with Neo-Deutchland.

An entire subrace of human beings has been created through cloning, the "pre frontals" who only have 45 chromosomes. The "pre frontals" are relegated to blue-collar jobs and have extremely low intelligence, have trouble separating fantasy from reality and live in the ghettos of major cities. They exist as a servant class that is literally deprived of all civil rights by redefining what it means to be "human".

Apartheid in South Africa didn't end until 2010, when the entire nation went into bankruptcy from worldwide boycotts. South Africa has been replaced by "New Providence" a gigantic nationwide vacation resort operated by the South African population.

The Democrat and Republican parties have fused into the ineffectual Republicrat Party which exists mainly to provide token opposition to whatever is said by the dominant Plutocrat Party founded by Ross Perot. The basic doctrine of the Plutocrats is whatever is good for the rich is good for the nation.

In a twist common to cyberpunk literature, megacorporations have gained legal sovereignty. Large multinational corporations can legally enter into treaties, grant diplomatic immunity, and field armies (which they typically rent out to other countries).

In Europe, Scientology has become the dominant religion, and rules all of a unified Europe under a tyrannical theocracy (with heavy fascist overtones) administered by the ARC Party, having sent the Holy See into exile in Nicaragua (which it takes over as a theocracy of its own).

The most popular restaurant chain in the world is Tastee Ghoul, which serves human flesh, as cannibalism is extremely popular, first gaining prominence at secret underground resturaunts in the late 1990s. Instead of signing an organ donor card, people sign a card which gives their next of kin a token fee and consents to having their body processed into food when they die. The book contains grisly art of what the meat lockers in the back of a Tastee Ghoul franchise look like, and the unfortunate teenagers who work there as a first job. A competing cannibalism chain is Sweeneys.

The Constitution of the United States has been heavily amended, with many new amendments, among other things, sharply limiting free speech, granting some corporate bodies the legal right to enter into treaties, and defining human beings as only beings which have or had 46 chromosomes. Constitutional amendments now have corporate sponsors, with the amendments themselves having corporate slogans or names inserted as product placement.

The president in 2021 is Daryl Gates, who is quoted as saying in his inaugural address "As a good friend of mine once asked, 'can't we all just get along?'"

Much like in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a lunar penal colony has staged a revolt and become an independent state. A sourcebook that detailed this part of the setting, "Steel Deep," was one of the last Underground products produced.

Player characters in the game are genetically enhanced ex-mercenaries who were given superpowers by reverse engineered genetic technology recovered from the UFO crash. People are given extensive genetic modifications, along with psychological conditioning in the form of a Virtual Reality simulation that looks just like a Silver Age superhero comic book, except it's ultra-violent, as they are taught how to use their new powers and become desensitized to violence. Then after being augmented they work as mercenaries for any one of several private armies operated by giant corporations, fighting in small wars around the world.

A Player Character begins as he's discharged from service as a genetically enhanced warrior conditioned to think of himself like an ultraviolent superhero, into a decaying ruins of American culture with civilians who fear and hate them and a corrupt and totalitarian government (an intentional reference to the state of Vietnam veterans coming home after the Vietnam War). It is presumed that the player characters join and form various "Underground" movements to oppose the government, giant corporations, or other tyrannical forces in the world.

[edit] System

The game rules for Underground is an adaptation of the Mayfair Exponential Game System, originally developed at Mayfair Games for the earlier DC Heroes roleplaying game depicting the DC Universe, however the rules were modified to depict lower-powered characters and a more deadly setting.

The Underground game books had color-coded text. Each line of text in the books was colored differently if it was part of the rules, an example of game play, optional rules, or fiction and exposition for the setting. The art used in Underground was intentionally inspired by Aeon Flux, as well as the comic books Marshal Law, Watchmen and Elektra Assassin!.

As part of the political and social nature of the game, to encourage games to be about righting the many wrongs in the setting, the rules included a mechanism wherein the players could change the entire setting. The rules allowed, over time, for players to change the political affiliation, morals, or even the entire culture of an area, or even an entire country with enough time and effort.

[edit] References