Octas/cyber is set in a world not unlike our own. Technology and society has taken a slightly different path but both are still quite recognisable.
Geographically, the game-world takes place around the Pacific Rim, so east-Australasia, SE- and E-Asia, and the West coasts of North and South Americas. Possibly also Pacific-facing Antarctica. Let's not forget the Central Pacific Island nations, at least those few that are still above sea level! While I have no personal interest in exploring the world beyond this region, the rest of the world certainly does exist and others should feel free to utilise all parts of it.
I am tentatively imagining mainland Europe as a bit of a consumer-protection paradise, in contrast with the corporo-fascist hell-scape of The Rim, though otherwise with plenty of its own troubles despite this one redeeming feature.
Politically, The Rim hosts a mix of every system: (arguably) democratic, (arguably) communist and (inarguably) dictatorial countries roughly where you might expect them from our own world today. But over the top of all is a strong implication that a shadowy group of perpetually in-fighting multinational mega-corporations are really running the show. So typical CyberPunk themes.
Climatically, the world is a few degrees warmer, and ocean levels a few meters higher, resulting in smaller coastal towns and cities being abandoned as people moved into the big cities with little to show for their previous lives. The large coastal cities were not spared and host a mix of inundated and abandoned poor coastal districts contrasted by wealthier coastal districts buttressed against the encroaching Pacific by thick sea-walls.
The disenfranchised Basics live in large slowly-degrading 'mega-block' high-rise buildings, while the Dregs make do on the streets outside. Many live on a barely-survivable Basic Income stipend from their regional government, plus a lot of informal social support from family and neighbours. As dire as it sounds, the average citizen is not necessarily unhappy, but happiness is a thing measured in small bursts of momentary low-level pleasure, often achieved vicariously through popular-media immersion.
Those few with paid work - usually in the vast highly-automated factories producing wholly-synthetic foods, drugs, toys or popular-entertainments - may manage a slightly less bleak existence in gated penthouse-communities squatting on top of the mega-block towers, semi-isolated from those below. The truly-wealthy live a different life all together, usually on private islands or in fortified redoubts in small pockets of naturalistic beauty outside of city limits.
Beyond the cities are vast tracts of intensive commercial agriculture, highly automated also, dotted with the scars of open-cut mining, feeding the city factories with the organic and inorganic materials of the societal machine.
And beyond that? Small pockets of degraded wilderness still hold out in regions too economically-inaccessible for the machinery of modernity to have yet bothered with. And wasteland and desert beyond the edges of civilised humanity. Both are host to small communities of lo-tek scrubbers as varied as the condescending names used to describe them.
Technology is advanced, with computational power portable and ubiquitous, as is mechanisation. Electrical-energy, from nuclear generation, is cheap but portable energy in the form of liquid fuels are expensive and largely the domain of the wealthy, who have access to air travel via multi-copters over short range and fixed-wing jet aircraft for inter-city travel.
The ordinary citizen relies on cheap electric light-frame vehicles, bicycles, and public transport, both rail and ship. Few travel far or often anyway, however, and travel by foot is often sufficient. With goods ordered online and delivered by autonomous road-drone, it is quite possible to live barely leaving one's apartment at all, and many Basics seldom exit the perceived safety of their own mega-block and the limited physical social interaction other residents provide.
While violent crime is not extreme, unless one goes looking for it, petty crime is rife as people struggle to survive by whatever means they can.
The world of Octas/cyber is quite class-stratified. It is unusual for an individual to move up in the world, though moving down is somewhat more of a risk!
Undocumented residents of their region. This group has no paperwork and are not entitled to any kind of government support. They are subject to being pressed into forced-labour in mining or agricultural mega-facilities if discovered, a life guaranteed to be as short as it is harsh. They can be found hiding amongst the Dregs.
Illegals may be unauthorised immigrants, or they may be local-born children to previous generations of such. And sometimes a legal resident's documentation records just mysteriously disappear! Some people also take some trouble to disassociate from their legal identity to try to escape criminal justice, or domestic violence.
Un-official, usually low-level-criminal, work is their only means of support outside of begging, but the latter is an obvious flag of Illegal status, so it is not a thing that is done openly.
These are the disenfranchised homeless living in the streets. As legal citizens, they receive Basic Income support and minimal healthcare, but little else.
Much of what applies to Basics is the same for Dregs, except that dregs don't have formal permanent residence. They also usually miss out on even the Basic education, though some informal schooling in the form of in-person learning, for the children of dregs and illegals does happen. Ironically, this schooling is often somewhat better than Basic education, bringing many Dregs and Illegals up to a junior-high-school level of education, by 20th century developed-world standards. While not actually illegal, such education is discouraged and disparaged by the ruling Elite, usually on the excuse that it is either an unnecessary waste of people's time, or that the teaching methods used are 'wrong' in some undefinable way.
Dregs are popularly assumed to be more criminally-inclined, but the reality is that they are far more often the victims of crime.
The term 'Dreg' is a slur, and many resent the label, but some wear it proudly. If you are unsure, the term 'homeless' is more neutral, if not entirely accurate (although Dregs and Illegals haven't been allocated homes, they often have found or made places to live in, some way or another). 'Disenfranchised' is supposed to sound sympathetic, but it is often used by Elites as a faux-sympathetic back-handed dog-whistle, and everyone knows it.
Dog-Whistle: Language that appears innocuous, but is coded with extra messaging intended to be understood only by an 'in group'.
Named for their living on government-provided Basic Income Support, this is by far the largest social group. They exist one step above Dregs, only because they are also allocated a small living-apartment, with basic amenities for cooking, bathing, and an audio-visual entertainment screen. Most Basics are not actually miserable in their lives, but they do lack much in the way of fulfilment, gaining pleasure only in small bursts of vicarious experience from their vidfeeds.
Basics are not inherently lower in intelligence than other classes, despite promoted social opinion on the matter. Some Basics are pretty dense, some are brilliant. None have any opportunity, irrespective of ability.
Public education for Basics is provided en-mass by semi-interactive automated lessons on the family-home wall-screen. There is no formal schooling, although a minimal 'attendance' at the screen is expected. Basics are not considered needing much in the way of education: just enough to be reliable consumers of whatever products are deemed suitable for them. By twentieth century developed-world standards, they are educated to around fourth-grade level, unless they have sought further knowledge and skills on their own initiative.
The term 'Basic' was originally coined as a mild slur, but as more and more people entered this class over the past few decades, it lost its sting, and these days is at worst just a normal term that people use, even to describe themselves. With some it is even used with a form of self-depreciating pride. Referring to someone of Elite class as 'basic' is, however, still a pretty mean insult!
A small part of humanity still maintains paid work, usually as the minimal human-supervisory element in the giga-factories producing all the food, clothing, machinery, toys and popular entertainment for the masses to consume. Their lives are luxurious compared to Basics, yet still quite bare and empty.
Moving into the Salaried class from outside is not easy, but it is possible. Surplus children of the Salaried class, as well as the less competent (or just less corrupt) of their number generally end up Basic. Or a new technology wipes out an entire career-field and everyone in that job wakes up the next day to find their access codes cancelled, an eviction notice in their message bank, and their first Basic Income Support payment in their account.
Education for the Salaried is comparable to a 20th-century route through Primary and High school, then a specialised trade college. In the technical or machine-supervisory roles that they largely perform, the Salaried have, by far, the best education available.
Being demoted to a Salaried position is about the worst fate an Elite can imagine. Unless they end up falling through the iron floor to end up Basic!
People with a genuine strong ability for some form of art might be able to transcend the normal class boundaries, although their background will always be a dark shadow just behind them.
Artists have generally started with the best education their prior social class could provide and then applied as much self-motivated learning and exploration as they could muster on top. Apprenticeships with more established artists or artist-collectives in their chosen field are a common intermediate stage in this.
A talented artist can move relatively freely amongst social classes, though might no be actually accepted by any. Even an artist popular at Elite level can get away with openly associating with Dregs by claiming to be slumming it for the purposes of artistic development, or some such drek!
Elites without the constitution (or just possessing a modicum of self-reflective ability) for all the conniving, back-stabbing and self-delusion necessary for life in this class, often try their hand as Artists. A small number even become actually-good at it!
What it says on the tin. These are a combination of military and police with no real differentiation between the roles. The line between citizen and enemy are so blurred you need spectrographic-analysis equipment to determine any bounds at all and if you aren't paying their salaries, you might want to stay beneath their notice most of the time.
Enforcers are highly trained in the application of force, and generally not much else. There are a wide range of roles within the occupational class, from standard beat-police to military assassins.
The most surprising thing about this class is that they are not all corrupt bullies, and a good number are genuinely concerned with maintaining order. Unfortunately the order they are usually most concerned with maintaining is the current social one, with them nearer the top than most other people. But if you are in genuine trouble, they are not actually a bad help to call for, even if their methods may not always be the most kind or fair.
Many privately acknowledge the problems with the system they are working within, but also feel powerless to do much about it beyond stopping the whole thing crashing down to something almost certainly even worse.
When an Enforcer treats civilian life as cheap, it is only because they know their own life is not any more valuable to those in power.
The tiny fraction of humanity that runs the whole world. They are invariably corrupt, selfish and greedy, often with a bit of idle-viciousness thrown in just for kicks.
Elites invariably view themselves as the peak of humanity and fully deserving of their status, but they cover the same range from smart to stupid as the rest of humanity, largely being in their position purely from handed-down opportunity, which they will guard ferociously.
The smart ones can be dangerous in their ruthlessness, but it is the less intelligent ones you really have to watch out for since they tend to fly off at any number of ill-considered tangents for 'genius ideas' at any time, often multiple mutually-contradictory ones simultaneously. And when it all crashes down in front of them, you really don't want to be the most convenient scapegoat to hand!
Elite education is primarily focused on management, of both people and wealth. It is of quite high quality, but also quite narrow, avoiding many areas considered more appropriate for the Salaried. There is also an awful lot of esoteric social etiquette education involved which, while useless in practical terms, is actually essential for navigating Elite social structures.
Elites don't like to demote their own to Basic, but will do so on occasion if it is really warranted. Worse, they might be demoted to a senior Salaried position, for which they are entirely untrained and unsuited, and the people they now work over just have so put up with it!
The chances of your character being from this class is very low, although a disgraced Elite, thrown down into Basic existence is an outside possibility. If you do go this route, your character might want to keep their origins a bit low-key: the general jealousy of the lower classes can be annoying, but the risk that some criminal decides that you, or various parts of you, might be worth something to them is what you most need to be wary of!
A number of groups exist within the society of Octas/cyber. Some are more or less welcome/accepted by various social classes or even each other, so beware if you are associating with the wrong kinds of people, at it may prove socially, or even physically, fatal!
This list is not exhaustive, but represents generally-useful examples. Feel free to invent your own extra ones.
Also, I expect to flesh this out a lot over coming months/years, adding things like built-in skill requirements, bonus equipment/mods, and so on.
A trans-class group of technology experts, that primarily devote their native genius towards subverting technology. Many are motivated by purely selfish needs, but some are just doing what they need to do to survive. Rare few might even be considered 'good' depending on how you stretch the definitions around the grey areas. This is probably the least 'social' of the social groupings, being more a loose federation of loners and tight cells than a real social construct.
Some say it's a cult. Some say it is just a fashion statement. Some say they actually do engage in ritual sacrifice and the drinking of human blood. But the average Vamp is not going to tell you what is true or not: they like the dark mystique such stories generate.
Vamps are mostly drawn from the wayward adolescent children of the Salaried class, though the odd low-end Elite might sneak in, as might Basics of a particular mindset. Vamps don't really care much where you are from, as long as you can maintain the group aesthetic,
Much like their historical namesakes, this group is not outright anti-technology, but is very concerned with its misuse as a tool of social oppression. Unfortunately the group does attract its fair share of outright-loonies as well, and it is not always immediately obvious which kind of Luddite you are talking to.