Music in the future

Back in the late 80's and all through the 90's, I was an avid roleplayer. Back then, my favourite games were Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and any sort of Cyberpunkian world run in just about any game platform, particularly GURPS. I also tried to run a few games over the years. I was no grand expert at it, but as a Sci-fi fan, and writer, amateur filmmaker, and artist, I felt like I could tell a good story.

But today I'm thinking of one game I ran in the mid 90's. A sci-fi crime-fighting game, set in a dystopian future year of 2012. Close enough that the landmarks and social structures of our town should have remained somewhat familiar.. but far enough in the future that I could take a few "leaps of faith" in terms of technology.

Of course, as we now sit on the cusp of the year 2012, obviously the world hasn't been devastated by a orbital war of aggression by corporations angered over punitive taxation. While we do have a rather severely "banded" social hierarchy, and a massive dichotomy between the upper class, and everyone else.. that difference is not defined by the orbitals, versus the sub-orbitals. And as far as I know, corporations are not secretly equipping street gangs with their latest high technology to see which side, and which tech, wins out.

When I ran this game, I ran it with the idea that I would run a story arc, and then someone else in the group would run another story arc. We'd bring the same characters to each story, only the GM's character would be relegated to more of an NPC role during their run. Sadly, outside events put an end to the game, before it could ever come to that, but recently I've begun to think of my unused character from that game.

Since he was going to be an NPC for the first run of the game, I decided to give him the role of pilot. I used him as a sort of "let's go here" indicator.. but very often the group would go their own way, which made for laughable situations, when the entire crew went "slumming" paying exorbitant prices at the nearby McDonalds, while their pilot got a massage and a 4 course meal, all gratis at the corporate lounge.

One of his affectations, was that like other young adults of the fantastic year 2012.. he was a sincere devotee of a style of music that was.. let's just say.. annoying to others. When I ran the game, I described this type of "new hip music" as something generally grating, that had been created almost entirely by computers, with a difficult to follow beat that changed tempo frequently, with no discernible melody for large parts of the song, yet seemed repetetive. Generally the music in the game had a disorienting, almost nauseating effect on those who weren't fans.

It's kind of interesting.. in the mid 90's, I described dub-step.