Help me get my grim back!, A a moredescriptive title would be a spoiler Options

[WeaverMount]

I have to put this whole post in a spoiler tag cuz my players be all up in this piece. If thats you buzz off I'll see you Wednesday.

[ Spoiler ]

Ok so I my campaign is currently located on the edge of The Eastern Garbage Patch, slightly relocated for game play. Basically it's a fairly stock floating city with a carrier as the city center, tons of hydroponics and renewable energy. It is almost self-suffient and makes the cred it needs being a shadow haven. It has amazing safe houses, easy access to really illegal stuff, no corporate oversight, etc. The permenant runner population is fairly low because there aren't that many jobs. Really only globe trotting pros and make it basic out there, but non of them want to live next to the largest trash heap in the world.

Now the issue is I in inadvertently painted this place as a functional neo-anarchist paradise. Even knee deep in trash, and unwashed unfeed, unloved South Sea orc children, it's too .... hopeful. It's to much freedom, too much self-determination, too happy. This is what the runners should dream might exists somewhere some day if they can just get through one more job. The though that they're selling themselves this lie one more time should be as depressing as the fact that there pipe dream is a flotilla with rolling brown outs and and epic beach stench.

So what I came up with to fix all this rampant hope and happiness (because thats a problem you know!) Is that Horizon is pulling all the strings. Horizon is keeping the other megs from bitchslapping this place. Horizon wrote and bugging the networks they use for the Energy Exchange Market, and the Protean Exchange. Anyone with any power has been made Horizon bitch one way or another and reports everything. Horizon uses this place as an ad hoc intel-network, social networking code farm, cultural data mine for trends, field test for emergent behavior in varrius next works. There little own Dark City in the pacific. All you got to do is tell these people they are free and you get all the lab rats you can pile up on floating trash heaps.

Now I don't know a lot about Horizon, but this seems to me like the kind of thing they would do. What I would like are ideas to make this as black hat and nasty as possible, as well as anything on Horizon that is relevant. Hope to hear from you.

[Leofski]

[ Spoiler ]

Horizon's schtick is memetic and as such their black ops, the Dawkins group, includes a large number of social specialists, including adepts. Their modus operandi include infiltrating groups and destroying them from the inside, so a nice strategy might be to have an NPC get into the group, acting as a mole up until their sudden and inevitable betrayal. The problem with this strategy is that, they may be capable of infiltrating your group so fully as to give no chance for detedtion, at which point things can be unfun and deathtrappy. While this is blackhat, I'm not sure if its quite what your looking for.

One of Horizon's other big strengths, at least in LA is their reputation for treating runners fairly well and being fairly well close to the runner scene. If they can use this against the team and start rumours about the team, it may suddenly get a lot harder for the team to get jobs if they have an undeserved reputation for incompetence and unreliability. This can be as deadly to a runner as a bullet, if they can't earn enough money to support their lifestyle and other costs without leaving insufficient downtime. Again not so good in actual game, as you don't want to run 30 courirer runs for a month game time

The ongoing issue with much Horizon material is that a lot of it is hard to stick players on the recieving end of. Their prison system for instance, seems to be full of room 101 mindwashing and similar, but players may feel cheated if forced into such a situation.

[Ryu]

[ Spoiler ]

Your beacon of hope is a swimming mass of free steel that could be towed to the next harbour and be dismantled. If one wants to get rid of the current infestation of undesireables, some medical testing would stop the population from going to waste.

Now the players could make a difference and divert the attack, but the damage to the community would be deep. You could for example flood a segment of the carrier and make it stand at an angle to the sea.

[hyzmarca]

[ Spoiler ]

If you want grim then you do grim. Horizon being secret backers ain't it. That just makes it even cooler. If you want real grim then it do it with hard life, hard men, and hard rules. If one of the poor ork kids takes more than his share of gruel then the law of the flotilla demands that he be tied to a mast and whipped until he looks like he's wearing a flannel shirt. That's how you do it. Rolling brown out don't make a dystopia. Cruelty as a way of life to compensate for the harsh nature of the existence does. Hell, have them do some piracy to supplement their income. Have it be Harlequin Romance Piracy where dainty and proper Victorian women get sold are given the chance to explore their sexual desires without violating the taboos of their conventional morality by being sold into sex slavery against their protests. Only don't treat it is being as fun as Harlequin Romances do.

[Faelan]

Because we all know how much of a joker Harlequin is...right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Anyway how do you do the spoiler tag? Please forgive my ignorance.

[Fortune]

Spoilers are done thus ...

CODE

[spoiler]Things that spoil[/spoiler]

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[Faelan]

Thank you yet again most ancient dude.

[D Minor]

You have no idea how ancient (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[masterofm]

[ Spoiler ]

I'm one of his players, but I thought I might trick him by posting this. Don't worry though I didn't actually read anything as it would spoil the fun. = )

[annachie]

[ Spoiler ]

Could always be more like the godfather (part 1) era New York, with each family running a different section, or function, of the city.
Lots of protection type stuff, lots of organised prostitution/gambling etc. Could then have each family trying to run or take over their own little runner haven without crossing the line and having the other families gang up on them.

Of course, being Orcs things would be a lot cruder and nastier.