London Dome and Big O, maybe I get the image at last Options

[Snow_Fox]

Ok I just might finally get it. Way back they said the city of london was covered by the ruins of a great dome that was sabotaged by eco terrorists. I don't know how many of you incorporated this into your games but it seems to have been pretty much ignored. just the physics of a dome big enough to encirlce a city as huge as London was too much.

now, on the Cartoon Network I was watching "Big O" which has a city (New York but they don't want to say it) where there are several domes around/over the eleit parts of the city and the poorer people live outside the domes in cities that look like osmething out of the 1940's. This is one of those cartoons where giant robnots beat the snot out of each other in a city with really lousy insurance rates.

Towards the end of the serries the domes get pretty cut up and it occurred to me that could be the London "dome" really several domes over just key partso f the city. what do you think?

[Dogsoup]

Coo'. Im not at home with SR Britain but it sounds plausible:
The central hub of London could have been domed and surrounded by several smaller domes linked to, or even built into, this central structure.

[crazyivans]

Sure, whatever floats your boat. BTW Big O rules, huh? To bad there aren't Memory theives in SR...

[FlakJacket]

I just quietly ignored the things since they seemed a little out of sync with what I considered Shadowrun.

[RangerJoe]

Back in the day, R Buckminster Fuller suggested doming Manhattan Island over (the dome edges would rest on the Palisades on one side, a little bit of Brooklyn, a bunch of Queens, and a snippet of the Bronx. Using tech then available, he projected the dome would pay for itself in 10-20 years in snow removal costs from downtown alone. In general, such large doming projects are technically feasible, just rarely politically popular.

If I ever run in the remains of NYC, I may make it such that such a dome will be the only major building left over from the quake-- damaged and slowly strangling the city-- a testiment to man's folly at attempting to control nature.

In general, giant domes are very cyberpunk-- especially those designed to keep the rabble out, the corpers in, and the slowly poisoned environment at bay. They make everyone miserable, as the once shining monuments to modern technology quickly become dingy, have failing circulation systems, collapse on slum sections of town, and become another sickly part of a drab and sickly skyline. Actually, I guess a lot of modern architecture does that, but anyhow. Go domes. Go domes in London.

[arcanus]

[Dillinger]

[Synner]

London was not destroyed. The Dome was a mid-2020's project which failed because of terrorist intervention. This and much more was originally covered in the now-Out of Print London sourcebook (SR1) and may be revisited in the upcoming Shadows of Europe.

[Dogsoup]

[FlakJacket]

[Synner]

Which is why I used the conditional... :P

[FlakJacket]

Watch it you, or it might not be JongWK that's getting conked on the head. Lisbon is a lot closer to the Birmingham than Montevideo you know. :P

[Fortune]

Personally, I hope they, and a lot of the other things from the London Sourcebook are covered in SoE.

[FlakJacket]

Oh I agree that the old London book did have a lot of good stuff to build upon. But at the same time I also hated a lot of what Sargent and Gascoigne did since even though they were local, a lot of it just didn't make sense, even with the way the Shadowrun world went. And they did seem to be a little too much into writing off whole swathes of countryside as toxic zones, which I still insist was just to lower the wordcount, and Immortal Elves/Mysterious Magic™. But that's just personal taste. Hell, there were even some people that like the bloody Tir Tairngire sourcebook. ;)

[JongWK]

[Snow_Fox]

I love the London SB. I think Sargent and Gascone's later work was really weak, but the early stuff, London and the book Streets of Blood I thought were really good and gave a feeling that they were looking at a forign country. All too much of the more recnt stuff just doesn't. I can't explain it but it was the turn of phrase or osmething you don't get with NAN1 or 2(I think I just dated myself terribly by referencing those works.

[John Campbell]

[PuyallupSquatter]

One thing I always liked about the old SR books was the amount of local flavor that went into them. The old seattle sourcebook had some stuff in it that was great if you were from this area, including mentioning one of the gaming shops I used to frequent... cept instead of selling RPG stuff and computer parts, it was decker ware and talismans. Its also nice to know that the Red Robin across the street from there was mentioned as a runner haunt. Used to work there, and threw up in their bathroom once :)

Even tho running about in a giant robot isnt very cyberpunk, Roger Smiths character would work quite well as a runner. I like the idea of negotaters as runners... a bit different than the usual "guys who steal stuff from corps" type.

I havnt checked out the new seattle book yet... my gaming budget is stretched kind of thin, but I think if you live in the area your playing the game in, you have less of a need to buy a book that tells you whats going on there.

The bit with condensation on the dome from breathing is a bit odd, tho. Of course, Im picturing a three foot thick lungbutter buildup on the dome walls if some sort of respritory disease broke out. Eeeew. Then again, the squatters outside could use it as a sort of soylent green sort of protien source... but again, eeew.

[Hot Wheels]

Roger Smith is clearly a face,
Angel I'd say, is a street sam.

[Winter]

Whether you like the idea of a giant dome over London or not, keep in mind it is symbolic of the class distinction inherent in cyberpunk-- those that Have, get to live in the dome, and those that Have Not have to live outside it. Even though the dome is in shambles, it's an interesting comment on the society (class based as it is).

And Big O is cool, but I think I like Norman the most 8)

[Siege]

[Req]

Hell, we got Giant Ruined Domes in Johnny Mnemonic, and if that ain't cyberpunk for ya I don't know what is.

The short story, not the movie-with-Keanu. Jeezus.

[Snow_Fox]

Roger never carry's a gun. He has Angel for that.

[sable twilight]

The thing to remember is that the official City of London is only 1 square mile in size. A quote from Frequently asked questions and answers about the City of London Police give you an idea of where that is:

[Snow_Fox]

ok I forgot "the City." The dome is supposed to be over Metropolitan London, which my point was if you consider that today reachs as far south as Croydon, would be ridicuolously large.