Alternate SR Campaigns, Less is More Options

[Ancient History]

Some people I know have bashed SR for not being a system around which a setting may be hung, like GURPS or d20.

I and I say this reflects a distinct lack of imagination. So presented here are alternate campaign options. New style lovin' because the old school is old.

Manapunk
In this campaign option, every character must be a magician, because everyone in the Sixth World is a magician. Yeah, there are still cybermonsters crawling around - but most of those are burn outs pitied (or feared!) by the populace. Magic isn't rare, it's so damn common that it's not even worth mentioning.

Naturally, the Big Bads in this game are the top of the heap, magic-wise: wizworms, immortal vampire cabalists, dark tower corporate wizards and the biggest, nastiest spirits you can imagine.

Cyberpunk
No magic. None. Metahumans? Mutants. Dragons are incredibly intelligent overgrown lizards, but they can't cast spells. All those disasters? Ecological devestation. In this campaign, chrome is king, and your regular humans are /out/.

Cyberzombies are the product of ultratech - the whole "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" route - and these bad boys make the wizworms cack their britches.

Matrixpunk
Everyone is an avatar in the Matrix, and the Matrix is all the world you have. Far, far away you might have a physical body - but you can't get to it, so it doesn't matter. Life and death are the stakes in this game as you struggle for influence against fellow hackers, knowbots, ghosts in the machine, and the malign forces of the artificial intelligence. Face down the viral infection and score the data, or you'll be moved to the history file, chummer!

The standard setting is an ultraviolet host mimicing the world you know. But if you delve up a couple levels you enter the Matrix, realms of the software deities and mad programming god-children that crafted the world you know. It's behind the scenes with only your proggies and your wits to keep you alive.

Slipstream
The future is now. There is no cyberware, there is no way to "Jack in" to the Matrix, there is no magic. The gadgets are cool, but at the end of the day it's you and your skills that get the job done. No metahumans, no mutant critters.

As gritty and realistic as you want it to be, welcome to a future where man is never more than they are, and "the Matrix" is a fancy name for the internet of next half of the 21st century. Your enemies might be draconian, ghoulish, evil, and insane - but they're all human, and so are you.

Necropunk
You just missed the end of the world. The epic battle of good and evil. Guess who won?

Metahumanity have reverted to barbarianism as the hungry dead stalk the blasted waste that was the Earth. The Infected spread their plague to entire cities and now nations bow before them, enslaved. Dark lords unleash their terrible legions against their foes: the shedim, insect spirits, and wave after wave of loathsome corpse cadvare legions from the Voudoun Lords. Aztlaner blood-priests commit attrocities and genocides to summon their lord to eat the sun and destroy the world. The tattered remnants living in the shadows barter their skills as hardened mercenaries...their only creed "Live free or die."