Dystopian Future style games

Coriolis is a Sci-fi game where you play part of a ship’s crew. 

What sort of ship depends on what sort of group you are. Are you Free Traders, Mercenaries, Explorers, Agents or Pilgrims. 

Which faction are you aligned with or against. Factions include the Consortium, a group of powerful corporations; the Zenithian Hegemony, who are the descendants of the captains family onboard the colony ship the Zenith; the Free League, the union of free traders; the mercenaries of the Legion or Ahlam’s Temple, with its courtesans and philosophers and others.

Your characters and your ship are built in the first session when you decide on your patron. Once that is done you work out who is your Nemesis and why. 

For your character profession you can choose things like Agent, Pilot, Soldier, Negotiator or even a fugitive. You can be Human or a Humanitem, a genetically altered human that is looked down on by some people, but perhaps able to breath underwater or work in sub zero temperatures in their shirt sleeves.

Professions are just a starting point for your character as you can then pick up any skills and talents you wish as the game goes on. These can include newly manifested mystical powers like ESP or telekinesis. With enough money your character can get cybernetic implants or bionic sculpts that allow for greater than normal abilities or even extra limbs and wings.

Coriolis uses the Year Zero Engine which mainly uses D6s where a 6 means a success and more sixes means a better success. If you are interested in the game you can pick up a starter set for free from the Free league web store or on DrivethruRPG. 

Paranoia is a game of dark humor that occasionally — or frequently, depending on the group — veers into absurdity. The player characters aren’t misunderstood heroes; they’re bumbling idiots with little power of their own, caught in a rigid hierarchy that pits them against each other. Ruled by an erratic tyrant, the PCs are ordered from place to place with little explanation and tasked with resolving problems far beyond their understanding or capabilities. Petty infighting and character death are not just possible; they’re actively encouraged. This game isn’t meant for min-maxers: players aren’t even allowed to know the full rules, nor are GMs expected to strictly follow them. 

The key to making all this work is the setting. When Paranoia was first published, the Cold War had been looming over the world for more than 30 years. The game builds on that history using some stock science fiction tropes, imagining a future where humanity has been either partially or completely eradicated (presumably by nuclear war). Before this great cataclysm, a number of bunkers were created to preserve the future of the human race.

One such bunker is Alpha Complex. Its overseer is The Computer, a perfect satire of Cold War programming. The Computer is erratic, manipulative, authoritarian, demanding, and above all paranoid: its overriding fear is that Communists, mutants, and traitors are lurking everywhere within its otherwise spotless enclave. To defeat these (potentially imagined) threats, The Computer enlists the help of select citizens called Troubleshooters who, as the name indicates, find trouble and shoot it. Of course, if nebulous ne’er-do-wells have infiltrated Alpha Complex, then it stands to reason that some of the Troubleshooters might also be Communist mutant traitors…

In this game, you are a hitman, an assassin who eliminates targets for anyone paying the right amount.

Whether your skill is stealth, approaching your enemies unseen, firing a bullet from a neighbouring rooftop, hacking automated defences or demolishing a building to eliminate everyone inside, you are always in demand. You might be new to being an assassin, or you might be a grizzled veteran about ready for retirement. None of this matters to the Assassins’ Guild; only that you can complete the job and your team are assigned.

TALISMAN, a sci-fi adventure set roughly 12000 years in the future. 

It'll be using the Lancer TTRPG system via Roll20, a "Mud & Lasers" game with a good mix of narrative play and bombastic combat. 

If you like the idea of piloting your own giant Mech suit, hacking into terminals with cybernetic implants, or stealing sought-after equipment from powerful MegaCorps, then this is the game for you. 

-------- 

Sometime in the millennium 2XXX, a catastrophic event dubbed “The Fall” decimated most of society, leaving us to struggle in the mess we created. 

Those who survived managed to spread their wings and form a great interstellar Union of countless star systems. 

The (give or take) 12,000 years it took to build this new utopia were fraught with violence, so it’s no surprise that remnants of these wars still remain today. 

You are a newly licensed, fully-fledged pilot of your own personal mechanised chassis (or ‘Mech’ for short). 

You could be a rusty engineer from the outer Cascades, a no-nonsense trader from the Karrakin Baronies, or even a simple baker from the deserts of Moonhammer. 

Whoever you are, you’ve just been awarded your Lancer License – giving you access to state-of-the-art technology that some could only dream of. 

Welcome to Misspent Youth. This is a fucking awesome game. You’re gonna have fun with it. So much fun you’ll wonder why it’s not illegal.

Misspent Youth is a science fiction game about friendship and rebellion. It’s a roleplaying game, which means you create a world, pretend to be people you’re not, and create a story in real time as you play the game.

The protagonist in the stories you make is called a Youthful Offender (YO), and is a heroic kid between 12 and 17 years old who won’t put up with being oppressed.

The antagonist is called The Authority, the force that’s fucking up your world and making it a shitty place to live. You or one of your friends plays The Authority and everyone else plays a single YO.

https://markgmrpg.blogspot.com/p/burning-wheel-misspent-youth-sell-out.html

Cyberpunk Red is a tabletop RPG sharing its world with Cyberpunk 2077. Is it worth plugging your datajack into?

The game is set in a dystopian world. The global superpowers have collapsed, leaving world power in the hands of large Corporations that fight amongst themselves for dominance. Food blights have caused disastrous famines, and the Middle East is a radioactive desert. 

"Technoshock" is a widespread psychosis, as many people are unable to cope with synthetic muscle tissue, organic circuits and designer drugs. 

A nanotech virus epidemic has resulted in a subgroup of teenagers with unusual, superhuman skills.

With the lack of government and police, casual violence is endemic.

Play as, encounter any or all of the following:

• Cop - Maximum lawmen on mean 21st century streets.

• Corporate - Slick business raiders and multi-millionaires looking for any way to move up the corporate ladder.

• Edgerunners - "AltCults", a society of full-body cyborgs that can switch their brains into a variety of purpose-built body frames

• Fixer - Deal makers, smugglers, organizers, and information brokers.

• Media - Newsmen and reporters who go to the wall for the truth.

• Netrunner - Cybernetic computer hackers.

• Nomad - Road warriors and gypsies who roam the highways.

• Rockerboy - Rebel rockers who use music and revolt to fight authority.

• Solo - Hired assassins, bodyguards, killers, and soldiers with implanted cybernetic muscle and upgrades.

• Techie - Renegade mechanics.

• Med-Tech - Street doctors

Dark Heresy is a RPG set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It is to 40k as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and indeed uses a very similar system.

Basically you're fucked like in WFRP, only instead of dying from blood poisoning caused by a dirty pitchfork you get to have your innards blown across the wall and then subsequently set on fire by a plasma gun (probably your own). This is if you are lucky. All kinds of worse things can happen - being eaten by xenos or hungry daemons, afflicted by Chaos mutation, and if you are especially unfortunate... *gulp* ...surviving to reach Inquisitorhood. It has the best critical hit charts ever made. You don't even need the rest of the game (although it is all good, it's just a LOT). Just start a campaign, wing it, and whenever anyone gets a good hit, roll on the critical hit charts. Holy fucking hell, did boiling bone marrow just turn my femur into a frag grenade? Fuck.

All player characters are supposed to be human acolytes working for the Inquisition, although they may come from many different vocations. From the feral world warrior to the hive ganger, from the inducted Guardsman to the detached Sister of Battle. However, whilst the official adventures focus on inquisitorial investigations, the authors themselves have acknowledged the ease of relocating the game's focus to other aspects of the 41st millennium, such as an Imperial Guard platoon where all player characters are soldiers in one of the many warzones.

Heavy Gear is a mecha science fiction game universe. 

Heavy Gear is best known for its humanoid combat vehicles (or mecha) – the Gears and Striders used by the military forces in the setting.

Heavy Gear is set on a distant, fictional planet called Terra Nova around 4,000 Earth Standard Years from now (AD 6132). Terra Nova was once the pride of the United Earth Government's colonies. However, an economic collapse forced the UEG government to abandon Terra Nova and all its other colonies centuries before the period depicted in the game setting, leaving Terra Nova in a dark age. Eventually, City-states rose from the ashes and either through treaties or tyranny, united to form national unions called Leagues. These Leagues would in turn ally (again either peacefully or forcibly) to form the superpower blocs that dominated the temperate southern and northern hemispheres of the planet.

The planet's geography is primarily land containing deep underground water reserves, but few large bodies of open water, and no oceans. This is unlike Earth which is covered by 70% ocean. The planet has its own existing ecosystem of plants and animals, though most animals are reptilian in nature, such as the bison like Barnaby used as livestock, and the prolific Hopper which is the equivalent of Earth's rabbit. The single dominant land feature is a massive mineral rich, hot, desert belt around the equator of the world known as the Badlands. This territory is not dominated by any one political group, and is considered open territory to everyone, and contains many bandit groups known as Rovers. Most people live in the northern or southern polar regions where temperatures are more acceptable to human life, and other terrain types such as forests, grasslands, swamps and jungles can be found. Small ice caps with arctic conditions and glaciers are found on the true north and true south poles.

"Sir! They've made it into the bays!"

Sous-Commandant Sabourin cursed loudly. He strode up to the security console and assessed the situation. The Northern infantry had made it into the Eagle Star's vehicle hangars. The red blips marking the enemy on the monitors were moving out and spreading like viruses. Sabourin knew the situation was hopeless. All that was left to do now was to either fight to the death or surrender.

Sabourin turned to Sevigny, his executive officer. "Evacuate all stations before the Norheads get to them. I don't want any more casualties than we've already suffered. There's probably another way out of this mess."

Minutes later, the Northern infantry burst onto the bridge. The fight must have taken a lot out of them. Several soldiers were badly bruised, some were bleeding, a few were noticeably injured. They were high on adrenalin, as if they expected the bridge to be defended by a dozen Gears. Sabourin cleared his throat and stepped forward.

"What can we do for you, ladies and gentlemen?"

Adventures in the ruins of a titanic starship. 

Two generations ago your civilization expended the bulk of it's resources building a gigantic 80km long starship to escape your home galaxy.  It was a desperate effort to escape certain destruction.  Three sentient organic computers were built to aid in it's design and operation, the SENTINELs, but a generation ago one or more of them revolted.  The ensuing war ravaged the ship and millions of crew died.

Shadowrun is a science fantasy tabletop role-playing game set in a near-future fictional universe in which cybernetics, magic and fantasy creatures co-exist. It combines genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy and crime, with occasional elements of conspiracy fiction, horror and detective fiction.