Metropole, The world's biggest and less-known city Options

[Synner]

[Frag-o Delux]

About all this on Metrople, I don't think I have the talent or patients to try writing a sourcebook. All the stuff I wrote about Metrople was stuff I was thinking of to answer backgammon. I had no intention of it being for a real book. But thanks Synner for the info, I may even think about learning to write. :D

[Fortune]

[JongWK]

Synner's right: the LASB is not an officialy sanctioned effort, we do it knowing that FanPro might perfectly reject the entire proposal. Everybody should know that before thinking in joining (better to avoid nasty shocks down the road).

[Frag-o Delux]

[moosegod]

No, that I probably won't get paid.

IGNORE THE IDIOT BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

[Phaeton]

But the curtain is on fire!

[moosegod]

That's probably for the best.

[sirdoom]

BTW, I thought the world biggest Megasprawl is the Rhein Ruhr Megaplex with 25.000.000+ inhabitants...

[crazyivans]

Let's get back to productive imagination, shall we?

Frag, you have some cool Ideas, I must say... I like the Houseboat/Waterworld community thing. With all the refugees from the rest of Amazonia, I am sure that is a real possibility. Then you would have real threats like Dragon and other Awakened creature raids, along with those pesky Cyberpirates.

As far as the Airport Idea, I am unsure. I think that the Amazonian Gov is pretty xenephobic, so I would imagine they would try to restrict air travel as much as possible. If there were air travel, it would have to be away from restricted airspace, which means (I imagine), only from the direction of the Ocean. Backgammon had mentioned an Idea about doming the city, like London was, so that would complicate air traffic patterns, and I think, would rule out Semi-ballistics, yeah? Anyway, Air travel would be at a premium, which gives us Shadow-Riggers an interesting Legal employment opportunity...

I love Kelp! Kidding. Yeah, that is feasable, heck, people eat it now. I dont think aquatic soy is too far fetched though. I dont know too much about marine horticulture, but Why not? We have Lasers, Dragons, and Bioware, come on...

Any-hoo, got to go, please keep venting Ideas everyone. Obviously we wont get any credit, but who cares! Do gamers get credit for anything? Think of how honoured we would all be if the LASB has some of the Ideas WE have presented, in its canon? That sounds pretty cool to me...

[Backgammon]

[Backgammon]

[crazyivans]

Is there anything, mentioned anywhere, about the Falkland Islands? I am just curious if there is anything said about them in Sourcebook canon, I've never seen anything...

[FlakJacket]

Nope, so far they've been unmentioned. I can't really see the British giving them up because a) they've already faught a war over them and so far the Islanders still want to remain with the UK, and b) it'd make a nice piece of sovereign real-estate to keep an eye on South America from. I suggested a quick mention of it still being British in the UK chapter of SoE, but since I wasn't involved in the final writing we'll have to wait and see. :)

[Synner]

[FlakJacket]

Whoa, six million trolls in the place. That rivals even Hawai'i or the Troll Kingdom of the Black Forrest. That's an awful lot of troll. :)

[Synner]

Note I went with global averages not Seattle.

[Backgammon]

200 million... yikes!

But in my numbers I tried to reflect the fact that many would chose to emigrate to surrounding countries or Portugal rather than live in the new conditions (I think SOTA mentions one of the cities in Portugal receiving many brazilian refugees, or something like that)

But yeah, 200 million is still reasonnable.
You can see why I find this place interesting...!

[JongWK]

Synner, are you including SURGE changelings in the "Other" category, or in their metatypes?

[Synner]

[Perssek]

Guys (and girls, by the way), as I´m joining this thread as a natural-born brazilian, I´d like to point out some things about Brazil that I saw from previous posts...

1. Yes, economy here is more of a metaphysical problem than anything else. Our current economist made it into a form of art, that any a few initiates can understand, much less act. Although, as we have a higher inflation rate and (comparatively) low risk rate, there are lots of foreign investors putting their money in, because unlike anywhere in the world, it comes back in less the half the predicted time. It weird but true. If you understand the local economy laws, you can aplly for magical theory as well - it should be as easy as learning your A-B-C´s. So, I guess that, unless POWERFUL and DRASTIC changes are made, economy will be as chaotic and unpredictable as usual. But the rest of your arguments is valid: services, tourism and domestic needs are the most powerful force around here. Small and informal economy (like micro-entrepreuners) pay more than 80% of the salaries in the country, leaving to the big companies and State (that employs a GREAT part of the economically active population) the rest. Biotechnology, Mystical Goods and military technology are also strong (well, at least right now even if the mystical jewlery STILL doesn´t work).

2. While hate crimes (directed against homossexuals and the poor) aren´t unusual, they are not the norm. But there is a lot of violence in the big cities, and I doubt that even Hualpa herself can change that with ease, even after 50 years! ALthough we are a VERY mixed race (indians - native brazilians -, blacks and europeans (portuguese, spanish and dutch)) , something that made for us to be easier to accept the different, the unusual. Also, there is a strong sense of spirituality, and we´re not talking about two or three main religions. Although most of us are Christians, there are THOUSANDS os christian sects, of mixed african-christian religions (whose antropolical term scapes me now - oh, wait - it´s sincretism), buddhists, "followers of the light", jews... It´s a crazy mix, but works (for most of us). Indian and african "prmitive" sympathetic magic made the basis for almost all our superstitions, and I guess we´ll need a whole new chapter on magic when Shadow of South America comes out.

3. Cidade de Deus (while it´s a GREAT movie) doesn´t show the complexity and efficiency of organized crime. The Comand Vermelho (Red Commando) is one of the typical crime syndicates that basically rule Rio d Janeiro. The guys are organized, better equiped than the army, and know their tactics. Also, they count with the locals help, because they DO assist them, unlike the government. Anyone who lives in the favelas (only one "L") may not like where they live, but where else would they go? Yes, there are small fish in there, but they are not the top bosses, the proverbial sharks in the pound. These guys can go to jail at no problem - they run their business from there, by messengers or cell phone, easily. As for "rebels", we don´t see people like these since the military dictatorship of the sixties and seventies. Maybe. The local Yakuza and Triad are doing well, thank you, in the big cities (mostly São Paulo).

4. The is a very small number of drugs made locally. Mostly, marijuana. Anything else is bought from Colombia and the likes, where the drug cartels RUN the country.

5. Decker paradise? Maybe. The government only and solely fiscalizes big companies for copyright infringement. Almost all domestic users, small-time companies and - yes, even the State uses pirate software. We had big hackers here, who attacked banks and corps, but in the end where caught. Most of them don ´t go to jail, because they are in their early teens. Guess it´s just like America, hum? The only place where there isn´t pirate software ads it´s in the TV.

6. Drugs, hookers, (hidden) gambling, everything is OK. We once had legal gambling, but that was before the war. And there´s a strong lobby for some years to bring it back. Even the bicheiros (the leaders of a quasi-legal gambling syndicate, called "jogo do bicho" (the animal game)) are putting money and influence into it. Put the average joe morals are against, so it´s like legalizing pot: profitable but a problem.

7. Can´t say anything about the average metahuman population. When I ran a SR game in Amazonia (and having NO info about, making everything from scratch), I came to similar numbers, but the Ork and Duende (translates as Goblin, but no the official one, a local metahuman we created) population were bigger. As I said we are a VERY mixed race. What could it account to new metahumans race and matahuman variants? Indeed, there could be SEVERAL metahuman variants derived from our indian and african heritage. Who knows?

8. Dragon dictatorship? I´ve seen that movie, and unfortunately, that works.

Hey, guys, I don´t know about you, but I like the way it´s going.

And by the way, it´s Metrópole. :D

[Panzergeist]

Amazonia is militantly environmnetalist, and with such a humungous sprawl already, I imagine there would be some very draconian (pun intended) pollution and population control laws. Mandatory sterilizations, one child per family limit, a garbage tax, and no fossil fuel cars for private use.

[Birdy]

A lot of people get a lot of wrong ideas on mining/refining from looking either at China/Pennsilvania or 1930s-1970s films.

I am actually sitting in the Ruhrgebiet, the rusting industrial heart of germany and it is - green. I am looking straight at a hill (around 50-100m tall) made from the residues of coal mining. It has been covered by (from practicall experience with a similar hill) 30-100cm of good solid earth & humus and planted over. Today it is a "Landschafts-Schutzgebiet" (Protected Natural area - lot's of wild animals including deer)

Same with open-pit mining. Sure, while it is open, it looks ugly. But once the pit moves, it get's re-naturated and often ends up another Biotope. And ore-mining can be done with classical mines (and has been done / is being done in Europe, i.e Rammelsberg/Harz until the 1970s)

As for power producing or refining, it is a question of the investment in clean air technologies. With multi-tier filters you get better than 99 percent of the pollutants (and a lot of plaster)


So I actually can see Amazonia having a classical mining/refining industrie and most of the refining being done around the Metropole. After all a city that size already needs massive waste treatment systems and power facillities and you can actually use some of the waste for power production or via recycling. And if you concentrate the polluting stuff and build the pipes huge enough you get a "clean sky over Amazonia" and additional pollution over Aztlan.

Birdy

[Birdy]

[Backgammon]

Muito Obrigado Perssek for taking a look at this thread and posting your thoughts!

I think I'll rehash some more thoughts later when I'm not at work, but it's very interesting to note Yakuza and Triads have power.

And could you explain jogo do bicho? I've come across it in my brazilian portuguese lessons, but aside from being a form of gambling, I don't know what it is. How does it work?