Zoopunk 2.0 - Grandville

Opening Mood.

Dusting off my favorite genre with a reboot of my homebrew Cyberpunk meets Blacksad world, Zoopunk.

Glimmer of a cigarette under sheets of rain and fog, an alley people hurry past, busy bees.
City shadows above, vertical horizon of steel, glass and concrete, hologram perfection beckons.
A rat in a trenchcoat steps on a cancer stick, flicks a switch on his mirrorshades.
Infotainment sticks to the walls, floor, sky, floats around, kaleidoscope of colour and sound.
No smell yet, so it’s still wet back-alley, cigarette and the memory of the dame’s lips on his.
Overriding a nearby overwatch drone, switch to UV mode, blood washed away by the rain.
Infrareds and a rewind shows a rhino beating the shit out of a shaggy dog. German sheperd?
Same breed the dame mentioned had been following her since her husband’s death.
And her husband’s, the rhino, they never found the body. There are no coincidences in this job.
Tap-tap-tap on his shoulder. He turns and gets a glance at a polar bear's claws before the lights go out.

THE GRANDVILLE SPRAWL
It creeps all cross the country like a scar - rapid urbanization from Lille to Paris, from Paris to Lyon and from Lyon to Marseille. 20 million registered inhabitants, probably twice as much without ID chips, living in the cracks.

Since January 1st of this [undisclosed] year, the Acte pour la Protection des Forces de l'Ordre is officially in action, which means the Gendarmerie Nationale is now in its right to use lethal force against any suspected threat to either their own person or National Security. Daily protests have been going on strong throughout the last few years to attempt to repell that unconstitutional law, to no avail, as well as the upcoming bill re-definining protests and rallies of more than a hundred individuals as a threat to National Security...

REACTION! REACTION EVERYWHERE!
Continental Europe and especially France resisted a bit longer against Corporate extra-territoriality, so that means our Overlords have to be a bit less overt except when they're elected into office, which isn't that hard considering that more than three quarters of the population don't vote - at least not with ballots anymore.

Above ground, the Socialists are dead and buried and presidential elections are a tug-o-war between the open fascists of the Parti National (still belonging to that same family that funds today's Rassemblement National) and the crypto-fascist Nouveaux Républicains - basically corporate sock-puppets.

Underground, the Left is still going strong, with the Anarchistes and the Garde Rouge regularly attempting and failing to federate the hundreds of smaller movements that live and die at the whims of corrupt cops and even more insidious media outlets.

UN JOUR EN FRANCE
For those who accepted or were successfully encouraged to get chipped, life is somewhat similar to today. Except there's no more birds in the sky, wearing air filtration masks is a matter of life or slow cancerous death in the smoggy streets, minimum wage has been halved (thank god for the gig economy, now you can work four jobs at once to make ends meet! And worst case scenario you can still sell some of your blood or organs to the private clinics, they're in dire need!)... Unionizing is a grey area now, and a social taboo in most productive citizens' social circles.

Life isn't so easy for those who won't, or aren't allowed to...thanks to the Social Sanitation Program (enacted by the Parti National ten years ago that two terms' worth of Republicans have not seen fit to abolish) - targetted by the SSP are the migrants (now also including 3rd or 4th generation people of middle-eastern, northern african or central european descent, and anyone who openly identifies as muslim), the queer (now including "effeminate men" and "agressive women"), the mentally unfit, the non-rich disabled and any sort of parasite, artist, or dreamer.

GIVE ME TECH GIVE ME TOYS GIVE ME STUFF GIMME

We've got ubiquitous VR-goggles for all ages! We've got Augmented Reality through the Cloud.
It's everywhere, you can't turn it off without hacks, and it's specifically designed for your needs and desires. It'll show you what you want to see and erase anything else. The streets of Paris are as beautiful as they were a hundred years ago - the Seine is running clear and there are no corpses down there either.

For my american audience: no guns allowed. You might get away with pepper spray if you look vulnerable and "normal" enough. A knife might get you arrested. A pocket handgun will get you shot. Good luck fighting the cops now. There are underground distribution circuits but you better show gang signs or be part of something political. Some say there's people in the Catacombs that are less observant about who they sell to.

Designer drugs are popular, so are Better-Than-Life Chips. The National Order of Medicine isn't fast enough to legislate all of the new stuff, so instead they made everything prescription-based, easier to regulate who gets what. Which means a lot of underground drug smuggling as national healthcare only covers a minor part of the costs of medication, and pharmaceutical companies get to set the price now, here like anywhere else.

 

Did I mention people are animals? Or, more like animals are people.

WHY FUNNY TALKING ANIMALS

Because I like to clash cartoon animals with gritty futuristic noir and pink mohawk hyper-violence.
That's really just it.

SO HOW DO I PLAY THIS

You know the drill, play worlds not rules, so here's a quick and dirty system for task resolution that you can feel free to replace with whatever you like. When trying to avoid something terrible happening to one of them, the zoopunks can try and make a saving throw, 2d6=9+ to pass, 7+ with advantage.
If someone gets hurt, roll on the Injury Table (d6), if they get injured again, roll d6+3 instead.
Anyone can sacrifice a piece of armour to avoid an injury table result.

Locations - 1 Leg (or Tail), 2-4 Torso, 5 Arm (or Wing), 6 Head

Injuries
1. Drop weapons, superficial cuts, wind knocked out of you, bruised, dazed, knockdown
2. Dislocations, shattered or broken weapons, numbed limbs or body parts
3. Incapacitated limbs, deep wounds, smashed teeth, broken bones
4. Severed arteries, internal bleeding, spine injuries, gouged eyes
5. Portion of a limb lost, organs ruptured, bleeding out, artery severed, stunned
6. Entire limb lost, body parts hacked in half, shock and blood loss, edge of consciousness
7+ Eviscerated, flying body parts, arterial spray, death in a minute or less

For character generation (and a bunch of cool tables including the injury one below), I use Sprawl Goons with the following exceptions: no Stats, no Resilience Points or Inventory Score, I just rely on Background to infer skillsets, knowledge, contacts and other abilities. The d66 Background in the Booster Pack is amazing.

Roll for what kind of animal you are here.

Closing Mood.