The Unowned City is a post-cyberpunk setting where megacorporations failed, hyper-capitalism was rejected, and survival systems were collectivized.
Housing, food access, healthcare, transit, and baseline cybernetics are publicly owned and universally accessible.
This is not a utopia.
This is not a dystopia.
It is a functioning society with friction—where people argue, innovate, exploit loopholes, hoard influence, form movements, and test the limits of fairness inside a system that is trying, and often failing, to stay just.
No one owns the City.
Power still exists.
The primary setting is Commonwealth City, a dense East-Coast megacity built on the idea that survival should not be profitable.
The City works through layered civic systems, public infrastructure, and slow-moving governance. It does not collapse easily—but it also does not adapt quickly.
The City remembers.
Commonwealth City is divided into seven districts, separated by function rather than wealth:
The Core – Governance, public administration, civic systems
Harborline – Ports, logistics, transit, and external contact
Stackside – High-density residential megablocks
Oldstone – History, culture, legacy institutions, memory
Neon Row – Art, nightlife, identity, expression
The Grayline – Infrastructure, maintenance, invisible labor
The Fringe – Borders, experiments, radicals, refugees
District borders are administrative, overlapping, and political.
Laws are contextual.
Reputation often matters as much as legality.
The districts are not factions.
They are pressures.
There are no megacorporations.
Power instead concentrates in:
Institutions
Expertise
Logistics
Culture
Access to systems
Factions exist across all districts: civic authorities, labor unions, community councils, cultural collectives, underground clinics, historical institutions, infrastructure workers, ideological radicals, and external interests.
No faction owns the City.
All of them believe they are necessary.
In Commonwealth City, personhood is not biological.
Citizenship is based on sapience, consent, and participation—not species.
People include:
Humans
Anthropomorphic peoples
Artificial sapients
Heavily augmented post-humans
Hybrids and chimerics
Non-Terran sapients
Digital consciousnesses
Individuals who reject classification entirely
Discrimination exists socially.
It does not exist by law.
Difference does not determine worth.
The City struggles—constantly—to live up to that promise.
Power does not come from magic or money alone.
It comes from:
Access
Reputation
Belief
Skill
Control of systems
The ability to act without being stopped
Some people wield power openly.
Others do so quietly, procedurally, or invisibly.
The City notices patterns, not intentions.
Money does not control survival.
Survival is guaranteed.
Comfort is not.
Currency exists to manage:
Convenience
Customization
Speed
Privacy
Influence
Wealth creates advantages—but never immunity.
Non-monetary value matters just as much:
Access to systems
Reputation within communities
Favors and obligations
Attempts to convert wealth into ownership or authority are treated as systemic threats.
Players are participants, not chosen heroes and not rebels by default.
They may be:
Civic technicians
Community defenders
Runners and fixers
Cultural figures
Infrastructure specialists
Data ghosts
Ideological extremists
Reluctant public servants
People trying to matter in a system larger than them
The City will not force their hand.
It will react—slowly, bureaucratically, and permanently—to what they do.
Agency over alignment
You decide how much you belong.
Power without ownership
Control exists even when property does not.
Systems that remember
Actions echo long after intentions fade.
Equality with friction
Fair systems still generate resentment and loopholes.
Identity in a shared world
When survival is solved, meaning becomes the real currency.
There are no clean answers.
Only consequences.
This world supports:
Long-form campaigns
Political and social intrigue
Street-level stories
Ideological conflict
Character-driven change
The City will not collapse because you exist.
But it may change because of you.
If no one owns the City…
What do you claim as yours?