Okay SR is set in the dark future, but what is the most Dystopian thing you have seen in SR? I know people always suggest the using homeless as bomb carriers etc. However I'm curious as to what have you seen, or done that gets on your most dystopic thing ever list?

After clearing out a local bug-nest, myself and another runner learned that a few people made it out and there was a good chance they were probably used as hosts and could become fleshforms any minute.

We left our team behind and tracked them down to a nearby hospital but we weren't sure which patients were hosts and which were not. So....to make sure no new nests were started.....we blew up that entire wing of the hospital.

Had to keep what we did a secret from some members of our team but we truly believed that killing innocents was worth preventing any new bug nests from forming.

...ghouls would be another one. For one mission, in addition to the base payment we were offered a bounty for every one we could prove we destroyed.

I think K10's write ups about the average wage slave's life - and reliance on mind-numbing entertainment, are the most dystopian-within-canon things I've seen. The usual stuff from ou campaigns, violence and such, I'd caracterize as gritty more than dystopian.

Edit: added link to K10's writings.

Agreed. People doing amoral things isn't that dystopian to me.

It's people doing horrific things as a way of life, and not realizing any different.

Edit: Bugger, and reading k10's stuff makes me wanna go hide in a hole and cry myself to sleep. Man.

I need a NERP!

I think it would also vary with location. Most big urban centers probably would be pretty dystopian, but more rural and tribal areas less so. It tends to be that way today: smaller towns have less crime and such and the community tends to be stronger. That's not always the case of course. It could also vary within a city. The Barrens would be really messed up but the sections for middle management and up would probably be alright. Yes there would be the corporate tension, but it would be as bad for management as it would be for the wageslaves.

This is the way it seems to be in the older canon and it how I played it in my campaigns. That is why my characters would try to maintain at least a middle or high lifestyle, putting them in nicer parts of town or even living in the country or a small town. Just because they worked in hellholes didn't mean they had to live there too.

Acid Rain and bad air quality is indeed one of the best way to get your cyberpunk going.

...one place: Plainfield Wis.

...one name: Ed Gein

Yes very bad things happen in small places too.

BTW He was not only the inspiration for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but also Norman Bates (Psycho), and Buffalo Bill (Silence of the Lambs).

Yes, I agree Dystopia is when things are screwed up as a way of life. After all 1984 is Dystopian not because Winston's is a bad person, and does bad things. It is because him getting ground down and dehumanized is par for the course.