A fun axis to look at is the
sinister/friendly one. A sinister organization will tend to do things
to control its people, whereas the friendly will seek to help them.
Although all organizations seek to control and help the people of
which is it a part, this addresses which is more important to the
organization.
A sinister organization is interested
in using whatever power it has to control as much of the group it is
part of as possible. Consider how government law-enforcement
organizations are treated in cyber-punk: The CIA goes around
assassinating public figures that are leading the United States away
from military intervention while toppling countries in order to
foment chaos among its enemies. The FBI is not just an investigatory
agency but regularly arrests those that it sees as saying or doing
anything essentially un-American; it is almost as if J. Edgar Hoover
never died. These organizations are not just interested in doing
their job, but using their power to control how Americans deal with
the world.
Friendly organizations, on the other
hand, stay in the background. Although it can be argued that they are
using more subtle controls, they are there to help the people that
they are created by. An example of this is the USDA; although it can
be argued that it is a tool of other, more sinister forces, most of
the food safety reforms come from the USDA, as well as virtual
libraries on almost any agricultural or nutritional topic that can be
imagined. It is hard to see the USDA as a sinister in and of itself,
and it is usually portrayed either helpful or naïve.
Story-wise, the difference defines how
dark or light the universe is. Dark universes are full of sinister
organizations, where every organization is full of corrupt leaders
doing their best to hold onto whatever power they have, boring
administrators doing little more than filling out the necessary
paperwork, and highly trained and deadly agents enforcing the will of
those organizations. There is a reason why darker worlds rarely focus
on more than one organization; although their powers may be different
on paper, they are all ultimately of the same dark stripe, and only
the name matters. You just need a name to slap on an organization,
and you're good.
Friendly organizations, however, are
vastly different, and the name is of actual importance. Although an
organization may have its enforcement arm, it usually tries to talk
someone down, and bland agents are dispatched to investigate the
situation first. Eventually the investigation will be completed, and
the suspect will either be released or taken into custody. But all of
this will be done by the book, and no one will really be offended by
the investigation; it is just the agency doing its job.
Of course, specific groups within an
organization can be a different axis than the majority of an
organization, and an organization can always act differently when its
needs dictate. providing for some nice conflicts. Give those USDA
agents some machine guns to deal with a hostile corporation and
things get a lot more interesting. If you really want to mess with
your cyber-punk street samurais, have a local corp be extremely
friendly; they will wonder when the corp turns against them. Just be
aware of the axis and have some serious fun with it.
