The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off
- Marek Jastrzebski

Dystopia is set in the usual post-whatever future that is dark and grim. The world is controlled by various large corps (corporations), governments and religious states, all fighting each other for the upper hand. Freedoms only exist for the few who serve their State well (and if you fail, you're often dead). The lives of most people are perpetual poverty but the governments provided free VD (like a TV, but virtual) for all homes that anyone can use, so most citizens spend their time vegging instead of formenting dissent (and they also get indoctrinated, as an added bonus). However, due to housing shortages many outcasts* end up living on the streets where life is even harder and cheaper than in homes and literally no one cares if you live or die. On the up side, they're not indoctrinated as much; on the down side, their lives suck big time.
* Likely often PCs :p

THE RULERS

Question: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"


Answer: It shall profit him the world.

Corporations

Business men tell us they ought to be running the country, as if they weren't already. They tell us they should govern it because they are practical and efficient. This is business efficiency: an executive says "Look, we've cornered the market at last. Now that we've eliminated our competitors, we can increase prices as we like. But to do that, we have to keep selling. Our products last a year. If we make it last nine moths, we shall increase our sales by 25%."
- Herbert Lomas, "Who Needs Money?"

Alpha: The first Corporation, Alphas Corp consists of New York, Pennslyvania, Ohio, Michigan and southern Ontario. It is feared by others for it's policy of isolation. No one has been in or left Alpha in centuries ... and it guards it's secrets well, the modern ? on all maps. It's not even part of the Net.
Delta: The largest and most competitive Corp, Delta controls most of Europe and has a good stake in the Easterm united states as well as making heavy inroads into Asia. most other corporations leave them well enough alone and they tend to have more pull that governments, having allegedly taken a few out over the years.
Frag: The South American corp. Think one corp, one continent. Think the Mafia, but really mean and nasty. They tend to have an in with the drugs trade just about everywhere.
Gamma Inc: An upstart Corp, Gamma has climbed into the top Four (generally neck to neck with Frag). They began in japan and expanded outwards, viscously, and have left a lot of dead bodies and very few live enemies of note behind them. They will destroy you and backstab you and be terribly, horribly polite about the whole thing. Face and rep tend to carry an increcible amount of weight with them and they tend to be really big in the pacific rim.
Indocas: The weakest of the big 4, Indocas controls mexico, central america and a good portion of Africa, insofar as anyone really has a hold on Africa.
The Net: No one knows who runs the net. Some say it's a corp, some say it's a group of hackers called the Illuminati, others one called Windows. Some speak of it being the remnants of an old league of governments and still others believe it's AIs. But it's free to use, so no one really asks questions - if they're unlucky they might get answers.
Omega: These folks give corps a bad name. Seriously. You name it, they do it, and really nastily. They have more black ops than every other corp combined and are beyond brutal to work for. But they always find people desperate enough to do it, in exchange for cyber or nano or bio stuff being done to them. Few, if any, baselines do their grunt work.
Theta: The friendly corp. We kid you not. A combination of Japan and Canadian interests combined together, Theta gets it's own way but does it in a nice, kind, humanitarian fashion. It's made them small, but they're elite: work with them, and you get medical backup, no lies as to missions and all the elite want to work for them, because they can be - get this - trusted. And, somehow, they manage to make sure no one pisses them off.

Governments

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
- Barry Goldwater

Almost all Dystopian governments are enigmas to the people. They tend to rule in a brutally autocratic manner and would likely have Stalin find their methods extreme. For the most part, they use brutal oppression to keep the masses in line and fear to keep those oppressing the masses in line. As well, they try and juggle various Corps against each other in an effort to maintain a freedom of their own. Despite the fact that the Corps know what they are doing, this tends to be a rather effective technique, as long as the government manages to balance things reasonably well.

Most citizens seldom know much about the government (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, after all .. best not to tempt them) and many governments only last for perhaps a decade at best before being brought under by corps, assassins, revolts, coups, bad luck or sheer incompetence. Then they get replaced by governments that claim to be "new" or "improved" or "reformed" but are generally more of the same, if not trying to be worse than the previous governments. (In some cases, that is practically impossible if they want to have a population.)

Most governments do like to keep tabs on citizens, and lack of housing - as well as few people stupid enough to want to try and take a census - mean that the police/military grab people routinely for no reason to fingerprint/DNA scan them. Any psychics are kept for use as government employees - and whether they like it or not is irrelevant. Mutants are generally killed unless they can prove they have some value to the government and don't take up needed air by existing (they generally get sterilized anyway). Naturally, all mutants and psychics - heck, everyone - is required to identify themselves as what they are to the government. Failure will result in termination, and trying to evade such demands is treason. Have a nice day! :)

Theocracies

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.
- Charles Caleb Colton

About a hundred or so years ago, many thought theocracies were on their way out. many of their strictures were causing people to abandon faiths and move to other places (no using drugs! - for the love of all that's holy, what were the thinking?). Then they began to work on technology, on the uses of Virtual TV as a visual medium and, more importantly, an emotional medium. They invented a way to connect the speaker to the listener in the virtual realm, to allow emotions to be broadcasted by baselines over the Net to others. While this in and of itself is not too astounding, somehow it is used to control and manipulate the feelings of listeners as well. At least, that's what governments and corps say. Theocracies say it's just people responding to the truth and, even under torture, claim that the design for the "empathic resonator" came from [insert deity, messenger or prophet of faith here] and was used/discovered by [insert chosen disciple here] on the Net.

Government wise, most theocracies tend to be lenient - if you obey the tenants of their faith. Since they can effectively control people via the VTV they often have less problems with revolts and the like and are more stable than secular governments. The downside is that they tend to lag in technology because most corps tend to be a little wary about dealing with fanatics - even for money, some theocracies are just too unpredictable to deal with and expect a reasonable profit.

& THE WORLD

Drugs

"A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums."
- Hunter S. Thompson

Drugs are big in Dystopia. For one thing, they make all the bad stuff in life just ... seem a lot less bad. Even good, sometimes: "ooh, lookie, he cutted off me hand. coolios! i can gets a new one t'morrow, an' it'll be nice and neat an' fresh". For the most part, drugs are used for recreation (mental fun), or sex or for making you into a walking killing machine. Combing that with sex is generally ill-advised. Combining all three tends to produce addicts. Some sample drugs:

Boosters: Get stronger, faster, you know the drill. Also can get rid of pain, or enhance pain (or both, for really weird types).
Cross (aka on the cross, crucifixion, sleep): A new designer drug who's kick is temporary extinction. It costs a lot, but the high is out of his world.
Soma: It makes you calm, and happy. Very old, made by Alpha Corporation.

Jargon

The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves.
- Mary Daly

Bot - Robot, also an insult to Cyborgs and Androids
Body - Someone wanted by a Corp, often dead.
'Breed - Half-breed. One of the politer terms for cyborgs - or mutants.
Breeder - Geneticist
Busting - Escaping from any prison, also known as a Suicide Run.
Clokt - unconscious (clocked out)
Cooked - The state of someone's brain; direct reference to a drug overdose.
Cow - Easy target for a crime, or someone who has been framed for one.
Corp. - Short for a corporation, an slang term.
Corpse - Corporate Security agents, again a form of slang. Generally only common in lower class areas.
Croach - Snitch, often paid.
Dregs - Lower life forms. Refers to (depending on who you ask) as: a) Corp workers or b) Everyone else.
Fat Cow - Pre-picked target for some crime, often assassination.
Fink - Guess. It begins with F.
Flew The Coop - Left the planet or sector
Freak - Insulting term for mutants. Also refers to someone doing really impressive drugs or a psi in some cases.
Halfman - Cyborg or someone with cybernetics visible. Considered politer than 'Breed, but still an insult.
Head Hunter - Someone under the employ of a corporation who searches for new employees.
Heat - Anyone wanted by a Corp.
Holding - a Corps minor officers in a location.
Hound - Low ranked Corpse, trained to obey any order.
Jer, a - Strange folks who are often nuts and attack you for blinking at them. Often very unstable. Refers to anyone who is or is going nuts
Jock - Pilot or driver.
Joe - Rebel, member of any anti-corp group.
Klod (Killed on Discovery) - an Undercover Corpse.
Krypton(ite) - refers to someone incredibly addicted to a drug and unable to get off of it and not deliberately an Addict.
Lassie - psi-tracker, used to find illegal (not registered) psychics.
Mental - Often used as "gone mental." Refers to someone who developed psi powers or being attacked by them.
Outted - Any hacker whose real ID is discovered by a Corp. Or psychics who have been discovered.
Personnel officer - A pretty way of saying Slave trader.
(Psyche) Rat - Sniffer for Corps; often a telepath trained to find and disable others like him or her.
Rutting - Having sex with someone of another class. Very derogatory.
Schlep - to leave, generally leaving evidence you were there.
Schooled - trained in something.
School-eyed - Dazed. Often someone in shock who has learned stuff outside of the education system.
Shadow - Areas of the City only nominally under Corp control (for a variety of reasons).
Skyed - Slang abbrev. for School-eyed, or someone in a permanent state of shock.
Slave - Slang for anyone not working for a Corp, derogatory to those working for a Corp.
Slave Driver - The Corps or governments.
Slave Herder: Person responsible for moving large numbers of slaves from one place to another.
Snake - a) any member of a corp b) a low life that thinks only of themself
Sniffer - Person trained to detect used of psi powers or other abnormalities. Almost all work for Corporations.
Sparked - On drugs so strong you think you'd God. You get Cooked (brain-fried)fast.
Suicide Run - Escaping from any prison, also known as a Busting.
Tek - High Tech
Wage Rat - Same as Wage Slave.
Wage Slave - Anyone earning a living with a Corp.
Zipped - High on illegal adrenal drugs. They make you Superman, but you become you're own kryptonite.

Religions

We have yet to offer a more compelling alternative to being brain-washed.
- David Hopkins

Church of the Risen: A religion that has grown up around the drug Cross, where users claim to have received visions of the future or loved ones or really weird things like carnivorous peaches in a tasty cream sauce. The actual beliefs of the members tend to vary widely but since a few users of the drug don't come back from dying, they see themselves as having been reborn, or special, or gifted with some message. Most people ignore them and they're mostly just homeless people.
Luddies: The luddite religion is found almost everywhere among people who really don't like current technology. Granted, the idea of a "golden age in the past" doesn't exist in Dystopia - the past is something best forgotten, chains that hold people back from the brighter future - but future advances like extreme cyborgs and replicants tend to meet opposition, as does any piece of hardware with a user manual heavier than it is (this especially applies to cybernetic exoskeletons, arms, and torsos). Luddites tend to occur spontaneously when someone seriously vents and groups of them are rather rare since they'd have to use the Net to communicate.
Sword of Damocles: The sword of Damocles is a religion that deals with any threats via monofilament swords and lots of liberal cutting of bodies. They tend to travel in planes, find something worth dealing with, and destroy it. Even Corps are valid targets for them. Hell, even other sects of the Sword have become targets of other ones. Everyone generally gives them a wide berth.