Peak oil, climate change, and shadowrun., Like the awakening didn't fuck things up enough. Options

[PlatonicPimp]

OK, so I'm really into what I'll call "energy descent scenarios." Climate change, economic collapse, peak oil, mass human migration, and all those other potentially world-changing future events. So naturally, I want to explore those scenarios through the mediums of my art, and one of my arts is gaming.

Basically, I'm wondering how including these scenarios into the shadowrun timeline would effect the game world, and what kinds of stories we could tell about that. My initial thinking is "not much changes." Things in shadowrun are already kinda rough, and throwing another disaster or 3 doesn't really phase things. Here is a link to a page envisioning a gentle peak to oil and rough climate change together: http://www.futurescenarios.org/content/view/28/48/ . Seem a little familiar?

I do think that what it would mean is that in a shadowrun world going through energy descent, corporate control would be just as strong, but not as far-reaching. The truth is, outside their arcologies and their A-rated zones, the corps can only temporarily project their power. They live inside their walled-off cities and pretend they choose to be there, pretend that it's the whole world, while more and more of the real world becomes inaccessible to them. They don't even notice it happen, because it's a continual act of saying "that's no longer important, it doesn't count" so that they can reassign the resources they used to use there somewhere else. This doesn't break from canon at all, but it's a change in tone. Because outside the walled cities, people aren't just dying or fighting or eating each other. They're building new communities out of the rubble of their old lives, the wastes of the corps, and whatever nature returns in the absence of civilization. The corps are the remnants of an unsustainable system so high on their drugs of consumption they don't notice their death throes, while the important work, the work of buildign the future, is happening outside the walls. Outside, corps is pronounces "corpse" while laid-off geneticists plant the crops they designed to thrive in the polluted soil. Though if anyone gets too uppity out there, the Ares strike team takes them out. It's too early for the barbarians to sack Rome.

I'm intending to flesh this idea out into my next shadowrun campaign. Anyone else got any ideas to add?

[Cthulhudreams]

They seriously have fusion power and large scale wireless power transmission in SR4. Energy is not going to be a serious problem. There is every reason to expect that energy is actually cheaper than today. It is certainly more convenient.

(You can seriously just walk out into the Sahara and expect not only mobile phone coverage (Okay you need a sat uplink but those are cheap and can be implanted in your head) and functionally unlimited electrical power.

[CanRay]

And Solar Satelites!

...

Well, they used to.

[PlatonicPimp]

I kinda take it that most of the current setting information is written from "inside". I know I'm changing the setting with this premise. I'm not saying the shiawaise fusion plant isn't there, but I'm saying that, for this campaign, It's a heavily guarded corporate secret the the ROEI (ratio of energy invested) isn't all that high, and they've been unable to improve it significantly. Much like the much touted "hydrogen economy", in this alternate version of shadowrun, all the special new energy technologies turned out to be mostly hype, stopgap measures.

So what ways would this change the SR setting? What ways would it not?

[kzt]

All of North America north of St Louis covered by a KM thick ice sheet would have some exciting impacts. And this is the most likely severe climate change, as we are something like 12,500 years past due for an ice age...

[paws2sky]

You know, I really like this idea, PlatonicPimp.

The outside communities will need something to provide power. The source would vary from community to community, but some fairly viable options include:

• Illegal energy taps. All the power a small community might need, but probably the most dangerous. Draw too much power and the corp will know, bringing strike teams down on your head. It requires technical skill to setup and maintain.
• Wind power. Jury rigged windmills can provide a decent amount of power, but they're highly visible, meaning that you might catch the attention of the corp.
• Solar power. Collections of solar panels, stolen off cars, houses, businesses, or salvaged from the ruins of the same. Requires some minimal technical know-how and, depending on the quality of the panels, probably provides only minimal power. Big advantage is that they can be mounted anywhere than gets a modest amount of sunlight. So many are left over from the New Energy craze that clumps of solar panels probably won't draw much, if any, attention.
• People power. Kind of an oddball idea, but back in the late 80's I remember seeing a story on a family that hooked their TV up to some kind of converter that was powered by their... exercise bikes. The same principle could be used to power kitchens, refrigerator units, portable desalination units, washing machines, etc.

Clean water is another issue for the outsiders. Water purification would a top priority for a community of any size.

I guess I'm thinking on the micro-scale here - communities of maybe a couple hundred, tops.

If you wanted to go with larger, I think you pretty much need to start dealing with magic. Spirits, in particular, would probably be more helpful in this regard than spells. A fire spirit could power a thermal turbine providing a significant source of power. Earth spirits would be great for urban renewal and clearing rubble. And so on.

-paws

[nezumi]

In regards to power constraints, I generally run that there are some significant ones. Yes, they have fusion generators, but such things are HUGE and power drop off is pretty substantial as you move farther away (this is why we don't line New Mexico with solar powers to power New York). Similarly, you can't transmit significant amounts of power by beaming it down from satellites through people, sensitive devices, etc. without someone getting upset, and if you did, you wouldn't want to because you're giving people free electricity. Let 'em buy your well-priced batteries. So in the cities, power is pretty freely available via fusion power.

Once you step outside of the city, power gets harder to get a hold of. There are tons of energy taps around the edge of the barrens, and the corps don't generally care because the taps are through people paying bills, or because the cost of actively protecting wires is greater than the value of the power lost. However, again, as the distance increases, available power decreases.

There would be wind power, but windmills aren't all over the US for a reason - they don't generate a lot of power and are very expensive to maintain. Expect most people outside of the midwest to use these on a very limited basis.

Solar power doesn't work when you're surrounded by smog. You won't see a lot in Seattle because of that, nor will you see them in most northern climes. I suspect the price is also artificially high because the corps would rather have you dependant on a regular service than independent. So except in more southern climes, you're going to find these are fairly unusual - they have a relatively short lifespan, they're expensive, and very vulnerable to vandalism.

I'd expect both of the above to be common in the Tir and parts of the NAN, not in Seattle.

People power is something I use regularly for people in the barrens. The party recently broke into a host that was run on a mix of tapped power and an ork on a bicycle generator hooked up to a bunch of car batteries (not a big host).



There is also a lack of petroleum products compared to modern day. T his is important because petroleum is a good way to transport a lot of power. The lack of oil is why the NAN is largely backwards; farms must be managed by hand, there's no real good way to ship food to cities, etc. Instead, it is more economical to grow food in multi-level hydroponic factories, where all the food is in one place, powered by the city's power grid (fusion power). Little fuel is used to gather, grow and transport the food, hence the low power. No fuel in the NAN means no economy to speak of, hence a wide wilderness.


Clean water is an issue, as paws said. I don't know how Shadowrun deals with this. I'd assume some sort of device has been designed to eliminate the majority of biologicals in water, but filtering out chemicals is a very different concern. That at least helps you tap into available water in an area. Desalinization should also be more efficient than it is now. However, it doesn't help much in dry places. The midwest has used up most of its aquifers, again contributing to why the NAN is a vast wasteland, and not a place of bustle and growth. I don't know how else people would get water to communities in dry, land-locked areas.



I don't like the idea of playing a world wracked with global warming. I see enough of that during my normal day. I far prefer kzt's suggestion, which is relevant, exciting, and comments somewhat on our current world as well.

[CanRay]

For the clean water bit, I would suggest a return to drinking alcoholic beverages as preference to what comes out of a tap (If anything comes at all, as is the case in the Barrens!).

At least you know that's fairly safe.

[nezumi]

It doesn't help against chemical poisons, which will be the most common problem in Shadowrun.

[PlatonicPimp]

I'm not sure that climate change has any effect on the setting, honestly. So much of the world has weird weather as a byproduct of ghost-dance magic or the like that adding mroe fucked up weather doesn't change much. Unless we go for a full on apocalypse scenario, but that's not what I'm after.

[fistandantilus4....]

I would suggest reading Target:Awakened Lands and reading the Australian section of the book, focusing on the cities. You've got people stealing power and water, you've got mass human migration due to the mana storms, a come back of natural forces, and underground groups in the form of stuff like the Children of the Rainbow Serpent. It's also a great read in and of its self (and has Drop Bears!).

[PBTHHHHT]

For the clean water bit, I would suggest a return to drinking alcoholic beverages as preference to what comes out of a tap (If anything comes at all, as is the case in the Barrens!).

At least you know that's fairly safe.

Heh, I love watching the history channel, especially about the history of beer and why it was a necessity.
Bring back the booze!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[PlatonicPimp]

Two more possible energy solutions: steam engines and stirling engines. Neither is that tough to make, and it turns any heat source into power. The stirling engine especially can be used with ANY heat source. So we can have people burning stuff for home electricity. They'd probably be doing it for heating anyway. Since they aren't watching trid or anything, they don't need much.

Outside the city, your local shamans and community-minded mages would be the power players in the community. Those with real power often sell out, but the guy with a magic of 1 or a spirit knack can make a big difference. A lot of the people out there are going to have once been skilled labor, though, and that skill would still be useful. An unemployed plumber in the barrens could hook everyone up with running water. They will, too, because outside the city the goodwill of your neighbors is worth more than gold. Everyone will garden, however. It's not something they describe often, but the barrens will be littered with rooftop gardens, empty lots converted into vegetable plots, chickens coops and rabbits and goats everywhere. They need all the growing soil they can get. Composting toilets will be the norm, and urban farmers will literally buy other peoples shit from them every morning. This is how they used to do it in china, the cities would export their crap to the country as a resource.

Neighborhood protection gangs will be the norm. Most young men will belong to one. These gangs probably aren't criminal gangs, though, and they probably don't charge protection money because the people they're protecting are family, friends and neighbors. They simply exist to keep other, predatory gangs out. Yeah, this is only a change from regular SR in that more of the gangs will be "benevolent".

Drugs are more popular here than chips. Chips are for people who can plug their computer in. The matrix still extends out here, because of mesh networking and left over cable, but people don't use commlinks ubiquitously. They probably have at least one per family, they just don't leave it on 24/7. Really organized neighborhoods might have their own local currency. Other places it's all barter and gift economies.

Lifestyle will vary from effective middle class down to tribes of primitivist hunter-gatherers stalking game through abandoned streets. Sure, sometimes a shadowrunner might turn a squat into something high class, but the neighborhood knows and it moves. That kind of lifestyle means trouble. Living too much better than your neighbors means trouble. It means you aren't sharing, and if you aren't sharing, then you are a "corpse" (corporate drone). You might live on the outside, but deep inside, you are still a corpse.

stream of thought, needs some ordering.

[nezumi]

PP, while you bring up some good technical points, my experience with the poor is that they are rarely smart enough to set up things like you said. There probably would be a community water source (anyone's guess on how safe it would be) and there would be power taps, with some nicer neighborhoods having things like stirling engines, but the majority of people are going to have barrels of rainwater and no electricity. Gardens will be there, but they'll be pretty terrible; poorly maintained, regularly raided, and doused with bad chemicals.

[CanRay]

Not to mention planted on polluted soil to begin with. Not many cities have good soil to grow things any longer.

After all, how many folks know that it's not a good idea to try and grow things where the "Gas and Go" used to be?

[paws2sky]

An unemployed plumber in the barrens could hook everyone up with running water. They will, too, because outside the city the goodwill of your neighbors is worth more than gold.

That's brilliant.

"Hey kid, who's the guy over there. People are treating him like a king."
"He's the plumber, man. I hear he's going to be taking on an apprentice this summer. I hope he picks me!"
"What?!"

Neighborhood protection gangs will be the norm. Most young men will belong to one. These gangs probably aren't criminal gangs, though, and they probably don't charge protection money because the people they're protecting are family, friends and neighbors. They simply exist to keep other, predatory gangs out. Yeah, this is only a change from regular SR in that more of the gangs will be "benevolent".

I already imagine this to be the case in many Barrens communities, so not much of a stretch, IMO.

Drugs are more popular here than chips.

Indeed. Anything that can be grown or fermented would be popular. Beer, moonshine, weed, shrooms, etc.

Lifestyle will vary from effective middle class down to tribes of primitivist hunter-gatherers stalking game through abandoned streets. Sure, sometimes a shadowrunner might turn a squat into something high class, but the neighborhood knows and it moves. That kind of lifestyle means trouble. Living too much better than your neighbors means trouble. It means you aren't sharing, and if you aren't sharing, then you are a "corpse" (corporate drone). You might live on the outside, but deep inside, you are still a corpse.

stream of thought, needs some ordering.

Keep it coming!

[adamu]

Neighborhood protection gangs will be the norm. Most young men will belong to one. These gangs probably aren't criminal gangs, though, and they probably don't charge protection money because the people they're protecting are family, friends and neighbors. They simply exist to keep other, predatory gangs out. Yeah, this is only a change from regular SR in that more of the gangs will be "benevolent".

I envy you your optimism about the basic character of loosely organized groups of young males with lots of free time holding a monopoly of hard power in a situation of extreme poverty.

By the way, who are the "other, predatory gangs" if the "norm" is these benevolent, unpaid protection societies?

Ummm - yeah, I disagree with you on the quoted point. So I should also say that I think some of your ideas are interesting, and you have a fascinating reinterpretation of a way to approach the balance of power in the SR world.

[paws2sky]

I envy you your optimism about the basic character of loosely organized groups of young males with lots of free time holding a monopoly of hard power in a situation of extreme poverty.

By the way, who are the "other, predatory gangs" if the "norm" is these benevolent, unpaid protection societies?

I suspect that those other gangs would be the ones that refuse to integrate into the community... The ones that would seek to take what they want, rather than contributing.

-paws

[Fortune]

I don't think it would necessarily be so much 'black hat / white hat'. I think it is quite viable that a fair percentage of gangs would have a combination of both outlooks.

[PlatonicPimp]

I don't think it would necessarily be so much 'black hat / white hat'. I think it is quite viable that a fair percentage of gangs would have a combination of both outlooks.

yeah, it's grey the whole way. They still participate in all the fun gang warfare. After all, they don't want the fights to be in their home neighborhood. So oftentimes they go out and cause trouble somewhere else just so everyone knows they're bad. This is how tribal warfare works. They still roll strangers for their gear and steal what they can from the big stores, but they don't set themselves up as kings of their blocks and they don't prey on their neighbors. Because if they did their mama would come and box their ears. Composting toilets aside, you don't shit where you eat.

The darker grey end is those gangs that work with organized crime or corporations. The corps have an active interest in keeping life on the outside crappy. The one product of civilization that noone has any trouble getting is a gun. They'll sell into the barrens anything that will make life crappy, in exchange for anything of value they might have accidentally let slip out.

PP, while you bring up some good technical points, my experience with the poor is that they are rarely smart enough to set up things like you said. There probably would be a community water source (anyone's guess on how safe it would be) and there would be power taps, with some nicer neighborhoods having things like stirling engines, but the majority of people are going to have barrels of rainwater and no electricity. Gardens will be there, but they'll be pretty terrible; poorly maintained, regularly raided, and doused with bad chemicals.

Putting aside the unintentional classism, people usually go with whatever the fuck works. And it only takes one person who knows something to spread that knowledge. The missing ingredient between the nice parts of the barrens and the sucky ones is cooperation. One unemployed, homless family is going to have very little. A community of them will have vastly better conditions because of the increase in human capital. Inside the system, people use money to get others to do things for them. Outside the system, they have to fall back on trust, cooperation, barter and mutual benifit. So when things are bad (nd it will be, many places, like you describe), it's not because of people are stupid. Its because they couldn't bring themselves to trust one another, to cooperate.

[Faelan]

Great food for thought. PP is absolutely right though it just takes one leader, to get people cooperating. We are by nature social animals, shit gets ugly when we try to separate ourselves from the tribe, or more often deny it's applicability in modern society.

[nezumi]

PP, ever visited real barrens?

[PlatonicPimp]

Define real barrens. I was once homeless for a week, and I hang out occasionally in front of shelters. I like to wander through derelict parts of the city. I grew up below the poverty line from an income standpoint, but my mother knew how to get every cent's worth and how to get things for free, so we lived farther into the middle class than our income suggested. I dumpster dive for food and furniture, and until 3 months ago I didn't own a car. I'm vaguely familiar.

Actually, my family is a good example. You wouldn't even recognize the successful poor, because they don't look like what, culturally, we expect poverty to be.

Now if you are asking if I've spent time in something approximating 1960's harlem, then the answer is no. It doesn't get that bad here. But I do spend time in the worst parts of my own city.

[Wesley Street]

Define real barrens.

"Barrens" in the Shadowrun sense don't exist in modern First World Nations. You'd have to visit someplace like the City of God in Rio or a shanty town in a warring African nation to find that kind of Akira or Mad Max style post-apocalyptic landscape. You can go to the worst tenement districts in North America or Western Europe but they almost always have working conduits for water, electricity, gas and sewage.

Whether the residents can afford to pay for those utilities is another matter.

[Backgammon]

Inside the system, people use money to get others to do things for them. Outside the system, they have to fall back on trust, cooperation, barter and mutual benifit. So when things are bad (nd it will be, many places, like you describe), it's not because of people are stupid. Its because they couldn't bring themselves to trust one another, to cooperate.

Actually, the problem is that it only takes 1 bad apple to wreck everything. There have been studies (none that I can point to specifically) that show that in the majority of cases, a have-not will prefer to take away what YOU have even if there is no gain to him, rather than find a way to increase his own gain.

Translating to your example, if an ingenious little community sets up above-average conditions using electric tabs and water systems, it WILL get knocked down for no other reason than bringing them down a peg.

So really, the corporations win. The barrens outside their influence would be shit and would stay shit by the simple virtue that they are full of (meta)humans. Besides, no community would ever grow to anything above dirt poor crap because the Corps wouldn't allow it. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have third world countries right now. Why are they dirt poor? Cause the rich nations meddle in their politics and induce strife and make sure they stay that way.

It wouldn't be different in future with less resources, it would be even worse as the haves shrink and have to defend their stuff from the barbarians at the gate even more.