Autonomous Zone started out as a vague mental urge to explore the namesake setting of William Gibson's 'Bridge Trilogy', which is about life on the derelict and inhabited remains of a bridge in San Francisco. It is what is termed an autonomous zone (funnily enough) and what that means is that it operates outside of the reach or control of any existing government or governing body. They exist independently (or perhaps in parallel of) the conventional economy, supply chain and infrastructure. The concept of Autonomous Zone as a game is also highly inspired by the comic series DMZ written by Brian Wood which deals with a second civil war in America which comes to a stalemate and creates a demilitarized zone out of the island of Mahattan, and it looks at the lives of the people still living there and unwilling or unable to get out.
My intent with the game is to explore a variety of issues, or to at least use them to inspire interesting stories. Stories about community, want and need, supply and demand, the cost of being self-sufficient or relying on others, of living outside of what is deemed 'normal society' and a whole bunch of other things.
I'll admit, originally it was supposed to be a slick postcyberpunk future with all kinds of neat people like hitmen and couriers and such. It can still be that! But I realised that instead of making other people play around in my derivative setting based on someone else's work, I would open it up to explore the whole concept of an Autonomous Zone. A large part of the game will be creating the characters you are going to play and you cannot create those characters without creating the structures and networks they depend on for survival.
So at the end of the day your zone can be a derelict bridge, a self-contained aquatic habitat, a space station or a hippy commune in the desert. What's important is how and why it is autonomous.
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