Home Brewed City Critique, Ottawa's Darkstreets Options

[kindalas]

Visit My Shadowrun Website I am new to playing SR and more importantly new to running a SR game, but my friends like the concept for cyborg elves and corporate mages so they have voted me into the position of boss man. The problem I have is that due to my inexperience and my players complete lack of experience with the system and the universe I need a critique of my setting city of choice. (coincidentally our home town) Follow the Link above or the one here and let me know what you all think. The page is very much a work in process with large gaps that are due to me not having fleshed them out. Also for reference I am using FrankTrollman's character generation rules as well as his Matrix rules (the players of the awakened characters have invested some time in finding a way to protect themselves from Frank's skull hacking, some which might even work)

I am looking for critique on the feel of my setting, glaring flaws that ignore the history of the canon setting, and ideas for which areas I should expand next.

Thanks,

[Pyritefoolsgold]

Try calling the Ares Barrens something besides the barrens. Something to reflect the near total lack of sunlight. perhaps "Ares' Cellar" or "shadowtown" or "The Undercity" make your city unique, don't reference Seattle too much.

Also a note, Vampires would love a place like this, and might be major players in the shadow community here.

Also: BTLs will be huge here.

On gangs, the Yakuza should have at least a token presence, due to Mitsuhama's involvement.

I like the idea of the tatoo artist rising to local importance. This is a good idea. play this up. Make a point of the slash shop being neutral ground, and if you're there, no one will touch you so long as you can keep buying drinks/food/whatever.

the feel I get off of it is almost, but not quite, street level, and I think that's a good place to be.

I would expect the atmosphere in the shadow community here to be a lot more rough and chromed than in Seattle. I would expect a lot of outdated cyberware. In the corporate environment, I would expect a very blue collar feeling, even among the white collar jobs.

There's not a whole lot else to comment on. It all seems more or less in line with cannon. good job. It seems like an interesting city.

[Drogos]

I would change a few things.

First, with the extremely overbearing Ares presence it is EXTREMELY unlikely Lone Star would hold any contracts in the city. If you still go this way, you may have a few very good storylines about Knight Errant trying to gain the contract (or maybe there is infighting between Ares North and Knight Errant). But if you don't want to play up that angle, I suggest switching over Lone Star to Knight Errant.

Next, Saeder-Krupp is extremely secretive and is very unlikely to have any facilities directly associated with S-K. It would most likely be a subsidiary set up by the dragon, because his machinations usually have him being extremely secretive, almost paranoid. Also, considering his skirting of Dunklezahn's domain witht he facility in the UCAS, I'm sure Lofwyr would have gone through multiple measures to ensure it was hidden (though dunklezahn would have likely known about it anyways). But that's just some flavor and you can do it however you want.

Third, I completely agree with everything Pyrite said. Chrome it to the max. Make it feel like it is blue collar. And Vampires are cool and would love it, as would ghouls and other sunlight sensitive creatures.

Don't forget to add in some magical talent, maybe an inordinate ammount. Being that close to an active mana nexus will likely make for an ABUNDANCE of magically active individuals (and free spirits...if you haven't yet, get Street Magic, it looks like you have it though). Mana fluctuations aren't that common, and they draw the magically active.

I may have more general advice later. Good Luck!!!

[kindalas]

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely add vampires to the darkzone under the ares towers, as well as flesh out the police and the other extraterritorial zones.

I actually plan on having some strong competition between Lone Star, Knight Errant and a couple of smaller security teams. In part to help my players out to explain why they survived the SR learning curve and in part to give them something to exploit in their favor.

I am also working on making a larger map of the entire city. Using google maps and inkscape which is an awesome program.

[fatal2ty]

great idea, I've considered doing something like this for Edmonton but i'm not sure how to start, rather than derail this thread though i'll start my own about it

[Backgammon]

Honestly? It makes 0 sense. No one in their right mind would build a structure the size of a downtown core in a dead city with no strategic importance, especially not under the auspices of a solar power plant in he freaking north. You see a lot of sun in winter?

As far as I can tell, Ottawa would be a dead town with a few struggling blue collar industrie. Tons of gangs, but no corporate presence of importance and no skyscrapers. Without the politicians, Ottawa serves no purpose.

[Jaid]

Honestly? It makes 0 sense. No one in their right mind would build a structure the size of a downtown core in a dead city with no strategic importance, especially not under the auspices of a solar power plant in he freaking north. You see a lot of sun in winter?

you did read the real reason they built it, right?

in any case, Ottawa also happens to have a lot of high-tech corporations now also. several post-secondary education institutions. and in the shadowrun-verse, it's a gateway into quebec, making it a border town (it even has the canal leading into the St. Lawrence Seaway)

[kindalas]

Honestly? It makes 0 sense. No one in their right mind would build a structure the size of a downtown core in a dead city with no strategic importance, especially not under the auspices of a solar power plant in he freaking north. You see a lot of sun in winter?

As far as I can tell, Ottawa would be a dead town with a few struggling blue collar industrie. Tons of gangs, but no corporate presence of importance and no skyscrapers. Without the politicians, Ottawa serves no purpose.

Well I made the poloticians stay in Ottawa, I decided that when the UCAS formed part of the deal was that the Canadian Provinces and some of the northern states would fall under Ottawa's bureaucratic structures (because they all ready existed) and the remainder of the UCAS would fall under the DC structures. I justified this using a couple reasons one the bureaucracy was still present at the time of unification, the people who negotiated the unification would work to protect their jobs because that is in their best interests and finally the UCAS government would not want all of its top bureaucratic workers to be in the same geographical region for fear of a repeat of the ghost dance just targeting a volcano under the District of Columbia.

I choose the solar array as an excuse for a very specific reason. First Ares would not tell the whole world that it was building a massive mana channelling structure but they would be blatantly dishonest about somethings purpose. Second I needed something that would make my players go "wtf what kind of idiot would build a solar array here?" They are all new players and I wanted to make them very quickly realize that the corps are manipulative.

And I made Ottawa into a magically important location. So I'll admit to waving my hands for the sake of the setting but at least my magical handwavium fits withing the ShadowRun world.