What is your Seattle like?, city feel and description Options

[furst]

I call upon your collected wisdom.

I am about to start a SR game – the first in many, many years. I was wondering how people described *their* Seattle (or whatever other city you are using). Is it like Curuscant (the planet-city from Star Wars) or more like Neo-Tokyo (Akira) or even LA (Blade Runner)? Is your city super dark and polluted or are there patches of green thanks to local shamans or Amerinds..? I am toying with a number of ideas but I am very curious as to what people are doing. And yes, I am fishing for ideas....

[Ancient History]

It's kinda obligatory that someone says this, but have you picked up Runner Havens, omae?

[Backgammon]

Seattle has a really, really low population density actually (for a city). So it ain't no tokyo. Plenty of breathing room. If you want a huge cyberpunk landscape of skyscrapers and shadows, play in Hog Kong.

[Kagetenshi]

You're subtracting out the Barrens when calculating density? And adding SINless?

~J

[cristomeyers]

Depends on how much you want to play up the dark atmosphere. There's plenty of wiggle room between the not so harsh areas like Bellevue and the Road Warrior like Barrens.

[Hagarzen]

Ever see Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome? The very end part where the lady is telling the story to the children. The city scene where the buildings are damaged and wind blown with dust? That's was our Seattle since the GM constantly put our missions in "Downtown" but there never was any other people! Right Mike?

Edit so I'm not made fun of, and yes english is my native language :)

[Backgammon]

[stevebugge]

Sunny, warm, I'm probably going to grill tonight.

[cristomeyers]

[eidolon]

[Kagetenshi]

Indeed. I was enjoying the mid-70s weather for the past month, and this morning it was snowing :dead:

~J

[Kyoto Kid]

...I lived in Seattle for a few years in RL, & have seen the density increase dramatically since I first arrived there over two decades ago. For one, the downtown has exploded with skyscrapers. Heck I remember when you could still see the old Smith Tower from out on Puget sound and count the number of tall buildings (25+ floors) on one hand. Back then Bellevue was literally "out in the sticks". Now it is the third largest city in Washington State behind Tacoma and has a skyline that almost rivals Portland to the south. Between Tacoma and Seattle there is very little "open" land left (save maybe SeaTac Airport and a landfill south of Federal Way). There is also now regular commuter rail between Seattle and Tacoma and you can take transit busses from Olympia all the way to Everett.

The Metroplex, it's already here.

I see Seattle pretty much as the old Seattle Sourcebook outlined it save for some of the events such as the Renraku shutdown and Crash 2.0. I still use a lot of the old SS for setting colour as well as locations of my own design to further flesh things out.

With the fall of the Tir Council and the Wall, I will be embarking on a new work-up of Portland as well.

[2bit]

the last 20 years have been hugely prosperous for most of america, including seattle. Some think the american empire peaked in the 90s; if so, who knows what it will look like in 60 years.

[Kyoto Kid]

...I see the Seattle Metroplex in SR being sort of a UCAS "enclave" or colony akin to how Hong Kong once was to the UK, The sun has since set on British Empire, but Hong Kong is still one of the most important cities in Asia, both today, and as written up in SoA and Runner Havens (though more space was given in RH to HK than Seattle)

Another example - West Berlin during the Cold War. It was a vibrant city even though it was in the midst of the D.D.R. (which wasn't very democratic by a long shot). The only way to get there from the west at the time was by air and one rail corridor (if your papers were in absolute order).

[Backgammon]

There is very little corelation between present-day Seattle and SR Seattle.

SR Seattle was affected by VITAS, the destruction of the US, the Crash, migration due to the NAN, isolation from the rest of the UCAS, UGE, etc.

[imperialus]

when I GM I tend to up the population density conciderably. My logic behind it is a flood of refugees that came into the city after the treaty of Denver. I like my urban sprawls to be well... urban. It's really that simple. To that end I doubled the permanent population to 8 million. Still not as crowded as hong kong but even the wealthy are far more likely to have a high end condo than a sprawling estate. The further away from the downtown core you get the more things spread out but real estate is still a premium.

As for the atmosphere of the city itself I based a lot of my assumptions off a visit to Rio-De Janero a few years back. Seattle is one of those cities where the line between high end shopping disctricts and neighborhoods that no one in their right mind would enter is very faint.

The atmosphere of the city itself tends to be quite dark. It's almost always raining and each morning the local trid stations give an "air quality index", it usually sits at around a 7 which means that resperators and acid rain treated outerwear is strongly recommended. 10 is basically a semi-voluntary curfew because the air is just that bad. Seattle has never gone below a 4 on the index since it was introduced. Long time residents have what they call the "Seattle cough" a chronic nagging cough that never seems to go away. Emphezima, and lung cancer are the most common causes of death among even the wealthy.

Kane probably put it best in Runner Havens "Gah, what a depressing, drizzly, toxic hellhole. Kiss the sun goodbye when your sub-orbital drops in, because you won’t see it again until you get out."

[Kyoto Kid]

[Kagetenshi]

[Kyoto Kid]

...didn't they lose out pretty much after crash 2.0 though?

[Kagetenshi]

I might know the answer if a second crash had ever happened.

~J

[Serial_Peacemake...]

I personally run it that, aside from the city still being rainy the Seattlite of today would have a tough time recognizing it. First I jack the population up to 30 million, and heap on the complete and utter anarchy. The way I see it is that the police couldn't stop all the crime happening even if they cared. The gangs have carved the city into little kingdoms, the syndicates into bigger kingdoms. With the megacorps being like small self contained mechanized fortresses. Any manufacturing jobs are fighting against automation and losing. Heck every job is fighting automation and losing. With the UCAS itself being half way to being a occupying force. Thats before the endemic toxic spirits and various spirits that have basically set themselves up as demon princes of parts of the city.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Wounded Ronin]

Mine is a slapdash of 80s movie cliches.

[nezumi]

I think the better question is, what is a given neighborhood like? I consider 2060 Seattle a lot like modern day Caracas. There's a rich 'zone' and poor people are basically there for the $15 a week jobs like maids and what not. If a poor person there isn't dressed like a manual laborer of some sort, he's going to be harassed. The rich people don't depend on the police, they have their own armed guards. Ultimately, if a rich person does wrong, he has the money and political flout to make it alright.

The outer city is where the poor people live. In the case of Seattle, they have the benefit of pre-existing buildings to live in. But water service is rare, or there's one pipe for a neighborhood. Electricity is stolen, and only extends so far. People travel an hour to the local market. There is bus service, however (it's cheap and there's nothing worth stealing. The bus service is the lifeline of the neighborhood for most people). Police support is non-existant. Security is enforced by families, gangs or neighborhoods. Rich people there without an armed escort are going to be harassed, but if the poor neighborhood ever gets it into their head to revolt against their terrible living conditions, they don't go trash the good neighborhoods, they trash the closest grocery store.

I remember while I was there hearing about some rich kid in his dad's SUV. For fun, he side swiped about a dozen cars, trashing a few of them. He thought it was all fun and games, figured insurance or his dad would take care of it. He didn't care that a Tio Rico (an ice cream company) driver he hit was fired.

[sunnyside]

Well first the weather. Even GMs who joke about the rain in seatlle tend to forget it in their games and everyday the skies are clear. You could make up some kind of roll but I typically ad lib the weather adding in fog, heavy rain, sprinkles, heavy wind. It all adds another element the runners have to deal with.

As for the city itself I play it highly varied (somewhat in accordance with the old sourcebooks which had maps and more detail).

Downtown is pretty much all skyscrapers with a tight population density, as you go out the building hieght drops noticably and you start getting abandoned buildings. Note that some areas have farms!

I play the redmond barrens with lots of tall abandoned buildings. It was a corporate boom town before the crash (microsofts HQ and all that).

Pullayup is mostly lower and of course hells kitchen is something else entirely.

Much of Bellvue is actually low crime and a nice place. I enjoy contrasting it against the stark lifestyles of the millions of sinless across the lake.

Lone star focuses on their AAA areas which generally tend to be nice. Any people looking out of place will be harrassed by the cops and at least have their SINs run against a better system. Of course their presence there means that stuff gets rougher fast as you go down the security ratings.