The world did not end in a sudden nuclear apocalypse. It was bought in instalments.
This chapter presents the setting, the tone and how to use the book. It is for everyone at the table, not just whoever runs the game.
What this book is
FictionA whole world in 2126 and the start of an adventure, for Cyberpunk RED.
The Corporate Tomorrow is a near-future cyberpunk setting for Cyberpunk RED. It takes place in 2126, a hundred years from now, on a planet divided between the ESTEMPs (corporate states), corporations so large they became sovereign countries, and the REGESTs (state regimes), what is left of the traditional governments.
The book has two parts:
The world (chapters II to VIII): the Timeline from 2026 to 2126, the world map, every ESTEMP and every REGEST, the life of those who work for a corporation, the spoon taboo, the resistance and the rules.
The start of an adventure (chapters IX and X): four pre-generated characters and Audit at Descoberto, a campaign opening at the reservoir that supplies Brasília. It has no written ending: it stops at two open scenes, so every table can carry on its own way.
The Cyberpunk RED core book, by R. Talsorian Games. Only what changes is here (chapter VIII).
Three to five players and someone to run the game.
A taste for stories where nobody wins cleanly.
The tone: grounded cyberpunk
FictionLethal bureaucracy, scarcity and lost sovereignty, with no magic neon.
Here cyberpunk is grounded. There is no uploading of minds, no floating cities, no immersive virtual reality. Technology is industrial, bureaucratic, and aimed at two things: maximising profit and controlling people.
Implants exist, but they are expensive, bureaucratic and take a toll on the body. Almost always they legally belong to the company that paid for them: the person carries the arm, the company holds the deed (see The implant is yours, the title is the company's).
The danger of this world is not a mystic hacker but a form. Nobody here is killed by a rogue artificial intelligence; people are relocated, blocked, dismissed, and sometimes dismissed seconds before they die (see The Great Dismissal of the Djibouti Triangle).
Chapters I to IX are common knowledge inside the world: every collaborator knows what the quarantine is, everyone has seen a Colony Dream ad. The GM note boxes and chapter X are for whoever runs the game.
The setting deals with mass murder treated as procedure, forced labour, disposable people and victories that cost innocents (see Grey morality). Before the first session, talk about what stays off the table and what can only happen off screen. Simple tools, like Lines and Veils or an X-card, cover most cases.
Fact and fiction
History + FictionThe real places and precedents the setting stands on.
The future is invented, but the ground under it is real. Every present-day fact used in the book has a numbered citation; the rest is marked Fiction.
Companies have had armies and territory before. The East India Company kept its own armies and ruled much of the Indian subcontinent [1]. The ESTEMPs invented nothing.
The Afar Triangle lies below sea level. Lake Assal, in Djibouti, is 155 metres below sea level, the lowest point in Africa [4]. In the fiction, that is what made it possible to sink the region by opening a canal.
Alcântara is one of the best launch sites in the world, because it is closer to the equator than any other [3]. In the fiction, it is the prize of the First Corporate War.
The Descoberto reservoir has nearly run dry before. The Federal District lived through about a year and a half of water rationing in 2017 and 2018 [6], with the Descoberto at its lowest level on record [7]. The adventure starts from there.
The Ogallala Aquifer is being drained by irrigation since the middle of the 20th century [8]. Jakarta is sinking, and Indonesia decided to move its capital [9]. France has a nearly empty inland band[10]. These places became REGESTs (see The twenty REGESTs).
Asteroid mining has been studied for decades as a source of metals outside the Earth [2].