Plot
Player characters in the game are genetically enhanced ex-mercenaries who were given superpowers by reverse engineered genetic technology recovered from the UFO crash. They are given extensive genetic modifications (called "boosting"). Then after being decanted they work as augmented mercenaries (called "Boosts") for any one of several private armies operated by giant corporations, fighting in small wars around the world.
This is paired with psychological conditioning (the Bushmiller Process) in the form of a Virtual Reality simulation (called "Dreamland") that teaches them how to handle and use their new powers. The virtual world looks just like a "four-color" Silver Age superhero comic book, except it's ultra-violent and merciless to simulate combat conditions and desensitize the recruits to violence. Subjects are made to believe that their fictional life in the virtual world was real, then are later deprogrammed and normalized into accepting mundane reality after their discharge.
A Player Character begins as he's discharged from service as a genetically-enhanced warrior who had been conditioned to think of himself as an ultraviolent superhero with a bizarre origin story and a dramatic past. They tend to see the world in the uncompromising black-and-white ethos of superhero comics filtered through the mental illnesses and phobias triggered by the process that grants them their powers. They are dumped in the decaying ruins of an American culture with civilians who fear and hate them and a corrupt and totalitarian government that ignores them (an intentional reference to the state of Vietnam veterans coming home after the Vietnam War). The fact that they were brainwashed by the corporations that employed them and were betrayed by the governments that hired them often makes them distrustful of authority. It is presumed that the player characters join and form various "Underground" movements to oppose the government, giant corporations, or other tyrannical forces in the world.
Read more about this topic: Underground (role-playing Game)
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