Here is my suggestion for a cyberpunk / futuristic / partially post apocalyptic theme for the "vanilla" mod of Cardshift that we have been discussing in chat. We tossed around the idea of cyborgs/aliens/robots as characters in that theme, and here is an elaboration on a potential story for such a world.
In the not so distant future the world gets tremendously overpopulated, so much so that in many places people cannot go out onto the street without being surrounded by a crowd of people. Pollution is everywhere, and clean water is increasing unavailable. They invent goggles that, when you put them on, completely immerse you in a virtual world with all the other people wearing the goggles. After a few years conditions get so bad that most people live in small closets and spend all of their in the virtual world. All over the world people do this, except for a small minority of people who do not want to adopt the new technology. They formulate a plan to migrate to Australia and form a collective. They live the old savage life without computers and virtual reality, and segregate themselves from the rest of the world.
Then a few years later, aliens crash land on the earth. They are stranded in this part of space, completely out of resources, fuel and food. They scan the Earth realize that most of the eople there are almost completely lifeless, living in small rooms, except for in Australia where they see a lot of movement and activity. So they target Europe, crash land and start terrorizing the place, killing people and stealing whatever resources they find.
The government sends their current army of robots against them to try to stop them, but it doesn’t work. Most of the war robots have been switched off for years because they were no longer needed to control the populace. They try to get the people to fight against the aliens, but they are too immersed in the virtual world to want to ever fight to defend themselves. Or maybe, by this time their consciousness stays in the virtual world if they die, so they don’t even care.
The aliens destroy lots of the cities of the Earth and cause terrible devastation. The government retreats to secret bunkers and starts inventing new robotic armies and drones to fight them.The savage outcasts of Australia defend themselves and keep trying to preserve the old ways. The rest of the survivors are caught in the middle, just trying to live in the virtual world still as the world collapses around them.
This is where the game begins. The outcasts are under increasingly violent attacks from both the governement and the aliens, so they have to augment their bodies with cybernetics to fight them. The government invents new and more destructive robot armies, trying to protect the remaining undestroyed cities. And the aliens continue to attack and expand, using our technology against us to defeat us.