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submitted 5 months ago by moonguide@hexbear.net to c/ttrpg@hexbear.net

Hey all, hope this is the right place to ask this. I made a homebrew setting for SWADE, taking inspirations from Cyberpunk RED and World of Darkness, basically a neo-noir urban fantasy.

  • The things it shares with cyberpunk: corporatist dystopia, "high tech, low life", cyberpsychosis.
  • the things it shares eith WoD: hidden supernaturals, struggle with reconciling past and current identity

Where it differs from both is that I'm ditching the doomerism of both and hopefully replacing it with revolutionary optimism. That is to say, things may be fucked now, but communally the struggle can be overcome, though it may be violent. The other thing that is different is the flavor behind the existence of the supernatural (human belief reshapes reality as opposed to a distant event linked to one religion or another).

What I'm struggling with right now is I wonder if I'm communicating this effectively through both lore and mechanics, and if anything in the text could be misconstrued as queer/trans/phobia (as I'm not part of those groups). Dunno what the best place to share the pdf would be.

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[-] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

I'm queer. Is there something specific you are worried about? Is there a specific element or section of text, because just combining CPR and WoD does not seem inherently queer or transphobic. Am I missing some context regarding these properties?

I'm not keen on reading several pages of homebrew lore, but if you want to provide specific sections you're concerned about or just pastebin it, depending on length I'll take a look.

[-] moonguide@hexbear.net 3 points 5 months ago

Hey, appreciate you for taking the time read through it. I selected the two most important pieces of lore to get the gist of the setting. Here: https://pastebin.com/NyNxtU2y

I think I should've made a summary of the setting beforehand. Key takeaways from the setting:

  • Human belief shapes reality. The effects of this encompass reinforcing existing structures, as well as creating new weirdos.
  • Weirdos are supernatural beings, with the most powerful being the triumvirate of Vampires, Lycanthropes, and Specters, however other supernatural beings exist on the sidelines, without enough belief behind them to make them particularly relevant to the way of the world. Weirdos carefully curate human belief around themselves to ensure that their existence remains hidden, while also spurring human belief to generate rumors and tall tales. Just enough to maintain their strength. This creates a power imbalance, with weirdo councils emphasizing the plights of the triumvirate while leaving less affluent weirdos to make due.
  • Humans are the only ones able to have cybernetics, as cybernetics are physiologically incompatible with weirdos. However, weirdos can pass as heavily augmented humans with the right wardrobe choices.
  • Corporations now have entrenched themselves into a feudalistic structure, where they exploit absolutely everything they can with basically no resistance. Upwards mobility is mostly a myth, with only a select few making it out of poverty.
[-] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

No problem! Seems like your OP was asking if 1) it communicated effectively and 2) about queerphobia.

Regarding 1, I think the influences are apparent. I'm not picking up on much antidoomerism, but that's definitely something that could be more obvious in gameplay or in different sections of the document not provided here. Overall I think your worldbuilding is coming across.

Regarding 2, I'm not a trained sensitivity reader or anything, and I'm not trans, but I don't see anything that would be directly offensive to the queer/trans experience. Unless you're concerned about the whole belief thing, in which case my response is that being trans or queer is a part of the natural human experience and that it's not a belief any more than being brunette or tall is. If an individual human cannot believe their body to change, which it seems like they cannot hence the prevalence of mods, then the trans or queer experience is the same, potentially with different levels of or expression of cultural discrimination. The main places I see problems with representation with these kinds of themes is the prevalence of queer characters as part of the underclass or exclusively sex workers in cyberpunk. Unless queerness/transness is going to play a role in the story I would probably not concentrate on a disparity in representation of them in upper echelons of society. The other place would be them as predators. It's fine to have a vampire be queer, but it's a statement if the queer vampire is the only one actively feeding on people. Not sure if I'm missing a big part that you were concerned about, but I think the advice is the same as with any other monster/futurism adjacent media. Queer people are just people. Good, bad, ugly. Tacking on or ignoring queer identity is a problem in media, but not as big of a problem as centering it in a hollow or othering fashion. The best place to start incorporating them into the world imho is to have a same sex npc couple or a party ally with they/them pronouns. Don't draw any more attention to it than you would for any other NPCs partner or pronouns. I'm sure there are more in depth posts or videos online, and you didn't ask for gm tips, but I figured mentioning it might be relevant.

Hopefully that was helpful. Good luck running your game!

[-] moonguide@hexbear.net 3 points 5 months ago

Very helpful, and thank you for being in-depth! And yeah, there's some stuff missing from that pastebin, but it's mostly details that expand on what's already there (mostly on the doomerism and the day to day of weirdos). Glad it isn't inherently problematic, as the belief thing, in retrospect while I was moving the text into publisher, seemed a bit risky to me.

The book was deliberately left quite sparse in regards of lore, just enough to justify mechanics, and because of that I wanted to make sure the lore wasn't problematic.

Again, thank you for taking the time!

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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