Runner fashion, Beyond the black trenchcoat and katana. Options

[emo samurai]

How do your players dress in-game? What fashion nightmares have they come up with?

[James McMurray]

Camoflague armor usually. If they're on the street it depends on the occasion. Walking around is usually jeans and a t-shirt. Going to meet the Johnson is business. Going to fancy spots is fancy dress.

That's just the current character though. I've had characters wear jeans to the Ritz.

[mfb]

i try to play around with the idea that stuff that's looked on as being edgy or uncouth today could be mainstream or even haute couture in SR. for instance, it's pretty common to see respectable people with facial piercings, when i'm running things. sometimes i'll build functionality into them--lower lip studs that double as microphones, stuff like that. my main character tends to dress fairly fashionably and is basically a family man, but he's usually got a temporary tattoo somewhere on his body.

[Witness]

Nice thoughts, mfb.
On the tattoo front, there's a Nokia ad on in the UK at the moment full of people with moving tattoos. Looked very SR to me.

[Squinky]

Think Mad-Max and that pretty much describes fashion in the low to mid level runners in my games.

[emo samurai]

How many of them wore black trenchcoats?

[Teulisch]

my own idea, is that as a runner you want to look like everyone else around the target area, so you can blend into the crowd more easily. armored jacket and helmet go very well with a motorcycle. respirator is a good idea, as the air tends to be bad these days- plus i dont like getting bugs in my teeth at 80 kph.

You general need 3 types of armor- the business look, the street look, and the stealthy look (either camo for enviroment, or a long coat). it dosent matter whats better armor, so long as you have some armor.

that said, i would expect any profesional to have their armor modified and upgraded when possible. this depends a lot on tools and materials, but adding a hidden pocket inside a jacket behind a plate, lined to stop scans, seems like a simple trick to pull.

putting hidden sensors in your wardrobe is always fun. a skinlinked cyberscanner adds so much to your AR.

[The-Mighty-Buddh...]

Most of the time my players go with that suit line in CC, if its some grubby ass place then the mage and gun bunny physad normally are in normal clothing, kevlar trench coat or winter coat and some FFBA.

[hobgoblin]

[Wounded Ronin]

Well, in my games, it was almost universally Full Camo Suit or Lined Duster with the occasional Armor Jacket. Pretty boring.

Of course, t3h r34l SR fashion isn't a *black* trenchcoat. It's a *tan* trenchcoat with the gigantic Blade Runner collar. Didn't you ever play Rise of the Dragon?

[Calvin Hobbes]

One of our teammates, an orkish face, wore clothing made of ribbons. Thousands of them. He was a clubber.

[Voran]

For concealment sake I like using knee-length coats, the full ones just strike me as something that would tangle too much, as I don't really think they're meant for gunbunny or physad movements.

I mostly wear things suited to situation. Even took a knowledge skill "Appropriate Attire" to help brain farts, since me as the player is much less knowledgable on what to wear in a given situation than my char is.

Oh he tends to like tailored armored suits too.

[hobgoblin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[SL James]

Suits. Bespoke, armor-lined made by a Mexican tailor in Los Angeles (The guy is also reasonably priced). Even into most parts of Redmond and Puyallup (He once wore a grey suit with a crimson shirt (under an armor vest) on an extraction mission into the heart of the Puyallup Barrens. Unfortunately the jacket was damaged because some dickhead decided to shoot him.

While he usually wears black BDUs on missions, there is the occasional change in clothing depending on what the mission is. Sometimes he has had occasion to wear something akin to executive-golfer (khakis and a polo, sans the beer gut) or even *gasp* jeans and a t-shirt (though rarely, because then he can't walk around strapped in "straight" places).

For most extractions and wetwork, actually, he wears the suits. It's just how he is, and because he learned to fight and kill while wearing cheap suits (so now the difference is in the quality). He has several of them in different cuts and colors along with interchangeable shirts. He shares my own fashion sense when it comes to clothing - minimalist, solid colors or muted patterns, so forth. I could probably spend 200 words or so just describing a single suit.

Most of my other characters are also mostly into that casual anonymity look, especially considering how almost all of them have backgrounds in espionage and undercover operations. One guy, however, only wears Army surplus clothes. Another is barely above squatter and so he is even more obssessive about his 4 pieces of good clothing (3 shirts and boots) than the first guy since he can't replace it easily.

[Willowhugger]

For my game, I'm going to describe the idea that poverty is so prevalent outside of corporate districts that everyone wears second hand (or more) clothes. It'll give everyone a sense of grunge and rattiness that will work well with establishing the prevalent mood I think.

Also, that fashion in a world of such is more based on flashiness than it is on style.

[mfb]

i've always liked the idea of paper clothes, for poor people. in Heavy Weather (Bruce Sterling), relief workers passed out paper clothes to refugees whose homes had been destroyed in disasters. as prevalent as such disasters had become in the book, paper clothing had basically become anonymouswear.

the problem in SR, i guess, is that it implies that somebody actually cares about all the poor people.

[SL James]

There are paper clothes in SR. They're dispensed from vending machines, and are mentioned in SSG. They are pretty cheap, too.

[mmu1]

One of my characters is big on army surplus jackets (or armored look-alikes), leather work or combat boots, jeans or cargo pants, and t-shirts. He likes all the pockets, and having a heavy jacket to hide a gun under. He's got several sets of "nice" clothes, ranging from casual to designer suits, but he only wears them when he needs not to look out of place.

When working, he usually goes with the most armor that the situation allows for - anything ranging from FFBA to Light Security plus helmet.

Another guy I play has something on the order of 20K worh of clothes, and IIRC once wore casual designer clothes (his attempt at dressing down) when going to a bar on the edge of the Barrens. (leftover from growing up well-off in a corp environment) When working, he's almost always in a ruthenium covered armor suit, and generally working hard on not being seen.

[bclements]

[Nasrudith]

[Chrome Shadow]

I go with Armor Jacket for normal street wear, and Form fitting armor for runs..

No long coats; they get in the way and could "tip me off" when I'm hiding...

[mfb]

oh yeah, forgot about the vending machines in SSG.

[hyzmarca]

Chinos. Definantly Chinos.

[creatorlars]

http://www.pyke-eye.com/cyberpunks.html
A photography portraits gallery of London cyberpunks in 1990. Excellent stuff.

Check out the band Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

The more ritzy/night life characters and locations in my games usually look like 70's/80's new wave videos. Missing Persons. Etc.