Umm, have you read "Snow Crash"?

I disagree. I like Sir_Psycho's view more. Way more dystopian and fits the cyberpunk theme well. Why wouldn't you be armed if you were a wageslave? You never know when you just walked in to a gang war, or how you can't trust orks and trolls to not be constantly killing everything, or ghoul attacks, or some other thing the media sensationalizes. Your average person is probably really paranoid, highly conservative, and doesn't like anything that isn't almost exactly like them in every way. And anything that isn't like them, they'll probably think its a threat to their very lively hood and will shoot first and ask questions later. And odds are that the law will probably back the average wageslave that shot some ork kid, then ask questions.

Have you read "No Country For Old Men"? It's also a good book.


You're free to do that. That just isn't Shadowrun as written then.

What makes you say that? When you have a company like Lone Star providing security, gangs in every sprawl, ghouls, etc. What makes you think everyone wouldn't have a gun, and that Lone Star wouldn't equip their officers with better gear then your average ganger? There are even some examples of Lone Star cyberware and gear, and they're pretty good. And most Lone Star have a shot of jazz or some kind of drug to help even the odds more so.

Please read my answers above to these questions. This discussion is getting repetitive. I'm out.

Why do I have to make it that simple? That does not enrich the setting, it diminishes it. A hold-out or light pistol is a different beast to an assault rifle, both legally and functionally. The material has time and again introduced examples where either can be the norm. The absolutist approach baffles me.

This is not the first time you've made this assertion, and it's not the first time your assertion has been backed by nothing but current affairs and... No Country for Old Men?

Look, I am happy and interested to engage in discussion with you, but your engagement is starting to drip with contempt. I would like to better understand your view of the setting, but if you're arguing that the source material is on your side you need to provide that basis.

And legality codes, and writeups of countries.

And yes, my engagement is starting to be contemptuous. Look, you can play the setting any way you want, just don't claim it'S the truest setting possible or as described anywhere.

And really, take a step back and look at the world you live in, especially the United Sattes, which is Shadowrun's core setting, more or less. And please tell me why that is less dystopian than Shadowrun's vision of the 10s society.

And with that, I'm out of this thread on behalf of going to bed. Good night.

We don't have nearly as much violence in the modern US compared to SR for one thing. Despite media sensationalized acts of violence, violent crimes have been on the decline for years.

SR basically takes all our current (or 1980's) problems and exaggerates it, or takes current fears of technology and plays off that. But that's true of all dystopian settings. But it also adds in some mythological and fantasy fears to set it apart from other cyberpunk settings.

But violence in the US was pretty high during the 1970's during the counter culture and civil rights movements. And considering that SR seems to be constantly in a similar time frame, with new things constantly popping up every few decades, political boundaries constantly changing, fear and paranoia of the Powers the Be or new forms of life, or whatever. I don't understand why it wouldn't be like this. What are you looking at that would imply that things are different and not dystopian in this way? What source material would make you think that almost everyone wouldn't keep a gun or at least a taser on them when out in public?

I'm away from my books at the moment, but when I get a chance I'll be flicking through some things. Can anyone remember and suggest places to start? I'll try Shadows of Europe and Shadows of Asia for specific settings, and my old Lone Star hard copy, but I hope some-one knows something illuminating. We're getting wildly off the topic of Ares' dysfunction, so if you don't want to contribute to this derail, PM'ing me somewhere to start reading would be appreciated. Also, I can try and factor legality, availability, and the price of a weapon and fake permits, but do we know what the cost of a permit is for a SINner?

Deathstrobe, I wouldn't consider a massive amount of concealed weapons likely, even low-lethality ones, among wageslaves. I'd imagine most of them keep their guns at home, locked up (or with biometric/codelock safeties). I guess I think more people own the guns marketed to them than possess the will to carry them. Either way, most of them are going for their Panicbutton before they go for their tiny Fichetti piece. Some more food for thought is professional ratings. If you hit some-one in Shadowrun with a light pistol or holdout, you may not fill up half their damage track, but they will think they're dying and probably pass out or start blubbering about their wife and kids.

Wow.... that all escalated quickly didn't it!?

I think Wakshaani gave a really good reply in post #34. It is an explanation that could work and fit and also meet the information we've been given.

I think Sir_Psycho also has a point. The firearms market in shadowrun is many many many times the size of our current one. Not only are they selling to the people on the street but they're also outfitting corperate security forces, and private police. They're outfitting gangs (( not directly but the guns still get made/bought/passed along)), merc companies, etc etc etc.

Sir Psycho is TOTALLY correct that guns are part of common culture and are fashion accessories. There are cannon books talking about getting some guns in 'This season's power colors'. There are also books where you can get high fashion custom body armor. Books. Plural. Over decades, that re-enforce this.

Yes the average guy you meet on the street WILL have a gun. He might not know how to use it well but the thing about guns is.. they're not that hard to use. You point them and pull the trigger. Yes, the average guy on the street is going to have a gun. So is the average gal. And probably many of the kids. As pointed out, you don't only have to worry about gangs, or ghouls rolling you for body parts but there's huge sections of the country where a giant frigging armadillo could just start --EATING YOUR CAR--- with you in it. A critter that can take a rack of cluster bombs and keep moving. lol. The countries have balkinized. Disease has taken out huuuuge portions of the populations. More than once. Urban blight is not only accepted, but common. They --nuked-- central Chicago. You can go on and on and on.

So yes. More people have guns. Yes they very much ARE about like Ipods or Iphones to the common person. You get one.. then a year or two later they come out with the new versions, with a new bell or whistle, etc, and you'd get another one.

Yes. The "Real world" Current US has a goodly number of guns. We rather like them. Always have. We have a strong gun culture. I'm a gun owner. As I'm sure many here are. For the record though, I'd like to point out, that number tossed out there. that 88 guns per 100 people thing. It's..... easy to misunderstand. It takes all the guns and spreads them over all the people. Which just isn't quite true. 88% of the people don't own guns. It's alot lower. Those that do own guns, usually own more than one. Some own a great deal more than one. I won't personally point out how many I own, but I do own more than one. My father, owns a great.... great..... --GREAT-- Deal.... more than one. My brother.... more than me, but less than my father. Between the three of us, if we were to pass out our firearms one per person, we could very likely increase the gun ownership well over 100 people, we might break 200. Just the trio of us. That is the reality of that number. Those 88 guns per 100 people... are not in the hands of 88 people... or 80... or 70... or 50... those 88 guns are very likely in the hands of 30 or fewer people.

In shadowrun, the gun ownership numbers go up. In the US when you go to Walmart, how many people do you think are packing? --AT Walmart--? Probably not a huge number. In Shadowrun it's the other way around.

Now this doesn't at all change the fact that the one failed product wouldn't break down Ares. I very much like the explination Wakshaani gave. I was just putting some information and opinion in on the gun thing that seemed to pop up today. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, as a general rule, I try and stay out of real world politics (Ironic, in that I ran for office twice) in the forums. It just stokes bad vibes and, really, it isn't needed. Religion's another one that you'd better be safe around before diving in. And Barbeque. Duck those three, you're probably doing good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

IIRC, Ares brings in big bucks from Ares Heavy Industry, which includes their cars and military vehicles, and AresSpace, which does the sat stuff. Ares Global Entertainment used to do better (They kept some, but not all, of Truman ... it's all over the place these days), and Ares Consumer Products always makes money, just not vast gobs of it.

Knight Errant is kind of Damien Knight's personal hobby. It isn't the big profit-generating arm of the corp, but he loves it, so nobody dares to touch the financing he lavishes on it. He takes damage to it quite personally.

Well, I cant really contribute to a lot of this thread but this part I can help with! The back of Sprawl Sites has a section about Sprawl Law. In there it details the costs of licenses, the different categories of restricted/dangerous items and what the standard punishment/fine is for a crime involving those items. So for example, possessing restricted muscle replacement cyberware only costs 300 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for a permit, but having it illegally will set you back a fine of 20k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

The price of handguns and riffles (evean assault riffles) compared wit htoher weapon system means that even widespread presence, they remain a sideline for Ares - a single serious weapon system (say IFV or tank) will represent the equivalent of easily a thousand guns. Stray into the high ticket items (planes, helicopters and the like) and it gets even worse. And since we'r espeaking lower number there's no need for many shops, sals representatives and the like. The maintenance will often bring along a contiual cash flow if it's outsourced to the builder. Even if it's done in-house, spare parts will sell.

Which means that small arms will, in hte overall scheme of things, be a sideline.

And a point to consider in the AAA's profits : if they represent a majority of the wolrd's economy and each and every one of them strives for self-sufficiency, whio's supposed to buy their stuff to enable them to build up that profit ? Even if they trade with each other, I'd expect their 'trade balance' to be be fairly balanced. Which in turns means that the theen AAA may represent a significant part of the world's ecnomy, but they are by no mean the majority of it. A rough guesstimate would be in the 5 to 10 percent range. In today's dollars, with a world GNP of 72 trillions$ that would translate as roughly one half trillion to one trillion for each the AAA - which would place them about on par with the Nertherlands as far as percentage of the world economy goes.

Which would put them on par with a modern country of 15 millions. Another comparison, probably more interesting as far as world-stage clout go, would be that it's about half Russia's GNP. For only one of the ten AAA. Added together it gives them a China level share of the world economy.... Sounds beefy enough for me.

Keep in mind that on the other side of the equation, most of the world powers have fragmented pretty badly. Sure the corprations have risen high, but the governments gone down. Both moves have improved the corp's relative position.


Complement : Going back, My postcand dispense with absolute numbers and let's go back to straight. percentages. The relatvie economich wight means that with each AAA having a 1% share of the world's economy, it puts each on them on par with Netherlands, halfway to Russia and makes the AAA together the equivalent of China. Which sounds hefty enough to have a big lot of clout in the balkanized 6th world.

5 to 10%, total?

Methinks you have not grokked how pervasive the AAA megacorporations are. Each of them, should be around 5% of the global economy. Yes, they are that pervasive.

The sheer volume of talk about the Excalibur, combined with attributes like "disaster", in recent books


You mean when he takes the corp shuttle from his workplace to his corp housing block? Why would a troll in leathers get on there, and why should the company allow people to carry weapons?

That raises the question of who the hell can they sell their products and service to maintain their profits ? With that large a share, there's very little room for the second-tiers corps and very little outside market to extract profit from.

As far as I know, ther's still supposed to be several second-tier contenders hoping for AAA slot as well as many third-tier corporations around. With such a concentraed economy, there would be simply not enough room for them - and even less for governements, hobbled as they might be.

I've asked myself the same question when writing Style Over Substance (link in sig.). My answer is twofolds:

1. Product differenciation: Each corp has products that are above the competition or that some people might prefer over the products of another corp: MCT has Fairlight which (according to the gear in the books) always had the best decks/commlinks, Ares has Buzz Cola (and you know how picky people can be about their cola brand). Corps could - one way or another - try to prevent their citizen and employees from buying competitors products, but that would just lead to black market and might even make such products more desirable.

2. Internal sale and consuming enforcement: The corp will sell their products to their own employees. At first glance, it might look like a zero-sum gain since the employee can't spend more money than the corp pays him. Except that the employee doesn't pay with money he has: he borrows money (from the corporation's bank) to buy things. This way the corp gets now the money the employee will generate with his work during his whole life. With this extra money, the corp can extend its size, getting more employees which generates more money, etc.

1 : the end result is probably roughly balanced between the various corps. They're also porbably carried though the parent corp's chains of stores to prevent black market and capture at least some of the value (you'll probably find Azzie food into "Ares subsidiary X" shops rather than anyhting with a visible Ares brand.).

2 : With such a dominant position, there's simply no more room for that growth - and it would have been for quite a while. Once your wageslave has to fork most of his salary to repay his loan(s), he no longer can afford to make others loans to buy anything. Unless you lend him more than he can repay. Unfortunately, in such a concentrated economy, there's nobody to dump that bad debt onto, which means you'll have to choose between no looaning and stalling sales (all their spare cash goes to service their debt) or pile up bad loans over bad loans until it implodes in your face 2008-style.

Accounting tricks might hide the dirt under the carpet for a while, but sooner or later, the carpet will bulge enough to blow up in your face.

If I was a 6th world wageslave, in my corp housing block shuttle and the like, I'd still like from time to time to travel elsewhere (like IRL I want to visit other places) and if it was dangerous everywhere (gangs-bikers and so on) I'd certainly buy a gun - especially if no cop would care if I carried one -.

Security IRL is a major concern, so it's hardly believable to imagine bikers roaming and destroying passengers at night, but if you buy that dystopian reality, then it makes sense that everyone has a gun around from time to time.

There's always room for growth, though past some point it's getting harder and harder to grow significantly. Imagine that today's 10 biggest state could basically have their way with the rest of the states without getting too much in trouble for this. They could find a way to keep on growing by feeding on the growth of the smaller states. That's probably what the AAA do: they prey on smaller companies that are innovative or successful and growing, buying them to benefit from their growth, while dumping all their less successful business on other small companies.


Megacorporations are big and trusted. Plus they own their banks. As long as they don't go overboard, they can probably live with it for a very long time, just like the US or any of the bigger European states have been doing.
Also, the AAA are "too big to fail". The complete financial collapse of a AAA corporation would probably mean a lot of trouble for the other AAA. So they're likely to find ways to get the corporation to carry on a few more years.

Anyway, the way I see it, the AAA can't be ruthless competitors that keep growing more and more. That's only possible when you have many small corporations fighting over the whole market. With a handful of AAA ruling the world, you have an oligopoly, where behemoths use their massive weight to crush their smaller rivals before they get dangerous, and just live off their fat and own territory. They're all better off if they agree to keep the status quo. Of course, individuals inside a AAA might try to get an edge over their rivals in the other AAA and might compete fiercely, but in the end they just fight over 0.1%, and the rest stays the same.

You forget that AAA-level companies basically ARE nations unto themselves, in terms of economies.

Also, the AAAs outright own large chunks of the AA, A, and lower corporate tiers. Sometimes, it's publicly known. Sometimes, it's not. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

So are Texas and California.

Any of the Big 8 could buy CalFree with petty cash, if they were willing to get all up in Hestaby's business to do it.

It just isn't a profitable asset, so they leave it to the lower tiers.

And how do you get from that to Ares going bankrupt?

Just look at the real world Boeing and the Dreamliner. Disaster? Certainly. Does it endanger Boeing? No, but it does hurt.

Since when? He got in by stock market trickery with the Millisecond Buyout.

That why the trouble with Aurelius.

People see a badly divided board and immediately think "Fuchi!"

Personally, I think NeoNet is doomed to go next. Villiers has all the published traits of a sociopath, and has been poison to every enterprise he's gotten his fingers in. He personally keeps floating to the top everytime because he personally owns 100% of JRJ, and therefore can't lose his AAA seat when he loots his next mega.