Things you don't use in your campaigns Options

[Randian Hero]

Now, I realize that I'm in the minority in that unlike most people, I like my sci-fi to be realistic, where very little suspension of disbelief is required. As such, I've always thought certain things in Shadowrun canon were kinda hokey or tacked on for those people who couldn't get out of the fantasy rut. In a lot of ways, it seems like many elements were added simply to bridge the gap between D&D players and fans of the sci-fi genre. In others, it seems like somebody read a few chapters of history textbook about the Civil War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and decided to run with it in the most ridiculous way possible. This is all personal taste, mind you, but here are some things that I try to omit as much as possible with my Shadowrun games:

1. Magic -- I realize it's kinda the whole impetus behind most of Shadowrun, but things like the NAN, street mages, and all that just make me sigh. I realize, of course, that a small degree of it can be useful (even cool if done right), but for the most part I avoid it like the plague.

2. Awakened monsters -- It's easier for me to deal with this concept if I think of them all as mutants, not "re-awakened" creatures from some mythical time, dragons being the exception (since I'm a Godzilla fan). I tend to put metahumans in this category as well, especially elves, with their pretentious "ancient" cultures (I still use them, but I make numerous references to how everyone regards elven nations as a giant farce).

3. Native Americans as a superpower -- This was about where I put down the book, let out a lingering sigh, and promptly skimmed a good chunk of the history until I got to the non-ridiculous part. The whole thing kinda reminded me of the "Cherohonkees" that permeate the US: people who are ghost white but clutter their houses with turkey feathers and hand-woven dreamcatchers because it's "cool to be a native". Now having been to an actual reservation, I can safely say that there is no way in hell that something like the NAN is even remotely plausible. Still, since it's Shadowrun canon and essentially very difficult to get rid of, I just treat that whole section of the map as a giant irradiated zone that nobody bothers to go into.

4. CAS -- Maybe someone can explain this one to me, but from what I gathered, the CAS secedes virtually without incident and the UCAS is kinda like, "All right, I guess. We just grabbed Canada so no big loss. Oh yeah, and we're tired of dealing with California so we'll let them walk too." You've got some congressmen and senators who secretly plot to secede from the union, and yet nobody seems really bothered in the southern states that this happened. With the UCAS reeling from the crash (*groan* and the NAN), I strongly doubt that they'd be willing to casually ditch some of their biggest contributors to their GDP without a fight. I guess the parable here was the collapse of the USSR, but it's kinda difficult to draw the same conclusions with a completely different system of government.

Anyone else have issues with these things, or even issues of their own that they like to omit from canon to suit their games?

[MatrixJargon]

Shadowrun is largely built around many of it's magical concepts, and the entire setting and timeline of the game is sort of based around the awakenings in 2012 and the like. Omitting magic is a MASSIVE change to the Shadowrun cannon, which is meant to be a mix of fantasy and Sci-fi. It really isn't tacked on at all, when you stop thinking of it like a sci-fi tabletop with extras. I believe there are, in fact, other cyberpunk tabletops out there you would likely be more interested in then Shadowrun.

From what I've gathered from your post, however, SR really isn't the game for you.

[Machiavelli]

From what I've gathered from your post, however, SR really isn't the game for you.

That is exactly the same what i was going to say. ^^

@Randian Hero: let me guess: you are one of the guys that go to McDonalds and order Cheeseburgers without Cheese, Onions and the spicy little cucumber, eh?^^ As much as i know, there is a Star Wars RPG too, maybe you want to try this?

[The Jake]

I don't have anything I don't use really. But I tell the PCs I won't use sniper rifles if they don't. Or more specifically, whatever they use I'll use.

- J.

[The Jake]

Sorry. Double post.

- J.

[Randian Hero]

Actually, aside from the aforementioned gripes, I dig Shadowrun a lot. I mean, there really is no perfect system out there for everyone, and every game I've ever played or run had some kind of house ruling (you should see what we did to D&D's Ravenloft setting). This was in no way an indictment of Shadowrun as a whole, merely a few key parts that I personally feel add an unnecessary smudge on an otherwise solid setting. Again, it's all a question of personal taste. I was just curious if other people had similar things that they intentionally modified in their games.

[Machiavelli]

I am wondering that nobody said "we don´t use hackers in our setting", in good old SR3-times, this is probably THE part of the game that was neglected the most. We still don´t have hackers in SR4 because they still suck, but the rules and the really heavy focus on the matrix (everything is wifi) makes them ways more attractive and playable.

[AngelisStorm]

The concept of magic isn't "silly" in the context of SR. Science is continually making new discoveries. It happened, apparently it's a natural force, so it was treated as a new discovery and people moved on.

The South was close to winning last time. Add modern military, and is it really something that (with the NAN also happening) you want to get involved fighting in? (I agree that it was to easy though; they let the areas like Hawaii/the South/the Pac Northwest/etc go way to easily.)

While the NAN is of course somewhat silly, I'm always kinda suprised that people are -so- against the idea. There are aproximately 5,000 pure blood Hawaiians left; yet Hawaii has over a million residents and many of them (a majority I would say) consider themselves "Hawaiian." A hell of a lot of people are either part Native American, but they identify with that part of thier heritage (just like people with some small percentage of Irish or Scottish identify with that background). While it's "crazy" from our perspective that they would organize and rebel, I think there are situations where it could possibly happen.

Anyway, to each their own game wise. However, I am curious: why did you choose Shadowrun as a system?

Anyway, I use the system mostly as is. Some things I downplay, some I emphasize. The major difference I made was the Catholic church having extraterritoriality on major Cathedrals. It's a powerful international organization (on par with AAs I would say), and it actually is it's own country now. Made a certain amount of sense, and it's fun. (And now people really can "take sanctuary" in the church.)

[MatrixJargon]

Actually, aside from the aforementioned gripes, I dig Shadowrun a lot. I mean, there really is no perfect system out there for everyone, and every game I've ever played or run had some kind of house ruling (you should see what we did to D&D's Ravenloft setting). This was in no way an indictment of Shadowrun as a whole, merely a few key parts that I personally feel add an unnecessary smudge on an otherwise solid setting. Again, it's all a question of personal taste. I was just curious if other people had similar things that they intentionally modified in their games.

The problem is this handful of key points you've picked at it roughly half of the games lore and canon, upwards of 60% if the timeline and such is important to you. I also don't understand how these things could be a "smudge" on the setting, when they make up a massive portion of the game's setting.

[MatrixJargon]

I am wondering that nobody said "we don´t use hackers in our setting", in good old SR3-times, this is probably THE part of the game that was neglected the most. We still don´t have hackers in SR4 because they still suck, but the rules and the really heavy focus on the matrix (everything is wifi) makes them ways more attractive and playable.

I have played a decker in every SR3 campaign I have been a player in (thought my Combat decker was much more combat than decking) and I have played a hacker in every single SR4 game i've been in. The only temptation that nearly lead me astray was Technomancer.

Ultimately though, this is not comparable to the OPs exclusion. If you don't have a hacker in your team, you likely wont resort to claiming that hacking doesn't exist. Where as he wants to avoid a major story element, most GMs just would rather not have hacking be a part of their run; which is very feesible given the variety of different jobs SR teams would be offered. Also, hacking can be resolved by having an NPC handle that hacking with his success/failure being scripted instead of rolled.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post o.o; I meant to edit this in to my last post.

[Randian Hero]

The concept of magic isn't "silly" in the context of SR. Science is continually making new discoveries. It happened, apparently it's a natural force, so it was treated as a new discovery and people moved on.

And this is exactly how I treat magic in my games. It would be a little ridiculous to play Shadowrun completely without it, but I try to downplay it as much as possible, and only use it in very specific instances (i.e. when I'm trying to add a horror element). Maybe I'm just jaded from years of playing D&D, but in my decade and a half of gaming, magic has almost always made tabletop RPGs worse. Either the players get out of control with it and completely derail a plot, or the GM gets out of control with it and sets up a situation that's not fun for the players. This is not to say that it's completely bad, but once again, I feel that it needs to be kept in check.

The South was close to winning last time. Add modern military, and is it really something that (with the NAN also happening) you want to get involved fighting in? (I agree that it was to easy though; they let the areas like Hawaii/the South/the Pac Northwest/etc go way to easily.)

Exactly. It's never really come up in one of my games, but if it did, I would make mention of *some* kind of battle.

While the NAN is of course somewhat silly, I'm always kinda suprised that people are -so- against the idea. There are aproximately 5,000 pure blood Hawaiians left; yet Hawaii has over a million residents and many of them (a majority I would say) consider themselves "Hawaiian." A hell of a lot of people are either part Native American, but they identify with that part of thier heritage (just like people with some small percentage of Irish or Scottish identify with that background). While it's "crazy" from our perspective that they would organize and rebel, I think there are situations where it could possibly happen.

I guess, but really, no matter how I try to rationalize it, it comes out sounding cheezy.

Anyway, to each their own game wise. However, I am curious: why did you choose Shadowrun as a system?

Honestly, Shadowrun is really cool. I love the dark cyberpunk themes, and the world is very well fleshed out despite the few things I consider flaws. I use a good chunk of the canon stuff because it's really well done. The good aspects of the game well outweigh the bad.

[Wesley Street]

It's impossible for science-fiction to be realistic. It requires suspension-of-disbelief as it deals with themes/locales/ideas that haven't happened yet or will never happen (in the case of alternative history). However, you can have science-fiction that doesn't insult the intelligence of its audience.

Cyberpunk was the "It Girl" of science-fiction when Shadowrun was released. Cyberpunk, now, is dead as a doornail. We're already living in the future the cyberpunk authors wrote about (mostly). That's why authors like Gibson and Sterling have moved to the techno-thriller, exploring the weird and wild of the technology of now instead of trying to be a predictor of what's to come.

[tete]

I've used Shadowrun to play Cyberpunk Horror before (ie shadowrun with no magic but still paranormal animals). I don't think its really Shadowrun but its still fun

[Wesley Street]

Talsorian published a paranormal/horror line with Cyberpunk 2.0, didn't they? Any opinions?

[Method]

The NAN may seem silly, but there is a growing movement by various Native groups to declare their sovereignty (which is technically guaranteed by the treaties they signed to become part of the U.S.) and they are lead by some very determined (read "radical") individuals like Russell Means (who lead an initiative to declare the Lakota nation was succeeding from the US back in late 2007; he was denounced by many other Native leaders).

So the social/political movement is as real as it gets. Now imagine if these people could tap into an immensely powerful force like, oh say *magic* and take control of... well the *weather* for example...

See the problem here is not that the setting doesn't work. Its that you are trying to downplay a crucial component of the setting and then concluding that the setting doesn't work.

[Cray74]

In others, it seems like somebody read a few chapters of history textbook about the Civil War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and decided to run with it in the most ridiculous way possible.

Shadowrun actually predates the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have found some of BattleTech's 1980s prognistications about the collapse of the Soviet Union very prophetic, though BT suggested there'd be a civil war in the 2011s rather than Perestroika in the 1990s.

The history of SR is actually inspired by a lot of 1980s science fiction memes rather than a casual perusal of history. It was also written for coolness factor and to avoid conventional or jingoistic futures. This involved dystopia, balkanization, pollution, overturn of existing orders, etc. Injuns and the CAS/UCAS split were means to an end - if they hadn't done it, some other new factor would've.

This is all personal taste, mind you, but here are some things that I try to omit as much as possible with my Shadowrun games:

I'll keep that in mind, though it looks like some posters didn't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

1. Magic -- I realize it's kinda the whole impetus behind most of Shadowrun, but things like the NAN, street mages, and all that just make me sigh. I realize, of course, that a small degree of it can be useful (even cool if done right), but for the most part I avoid it like the plague.

After so many hard-SF games in the 1980s, I really jumped on Shadowrun for its magic. The preview cover of SR1 in a FASA catalog, with magic and technology splashed on the panel, caught my eye and imagination. I bought that as soon as it was available.

But there are certain lines I like in SR, and technomancers cross one of them. In my current game, I've pretty much plugged my ears and gone "lalalalalala" about technomancers. Magic and technology mix too poorly in SR, IMO, for technomancers to work. So, they aren't in my campaign. Most other magic is present.

3. Native Americans as a superpower --

I bought it hook, line, and sinker in the 1980s, and it was cool for me then to look at a US balkanized into so many little pieces. Then I got through college where I found some demographic data and got a course or two of economics, and the whole thing started looking a bit silly. Native Americans (including those of noticeable fractional Indian blood) are under 1% of the US population. For the NAN uprising to work, tens of millions of Americans had to be displaced; tens of millions of Native Americans had to be invented; and the required military setbacks were ludicrous.

Rather than try to fix the existing setting (which did have a lot of alternate history - food riots, different laws, different technologies in the US in the 1990s, so maybe the canon timeline had a much larger Native American population resulting from their ancestors being resistant to European plagues), I called my current campaign a variant timeline. Real history (and demographics) was, for the most part, in place through 2010 - no Seretech, no food riots in New York, just the stuff you've seen on CNN for the past 20 years. Native Americans did have an uprising, but what they achieved was a reversal of the reservation system: they nominally run much of the former federal land in the US and Canadian West, while "Anglo" government is constrained to smaller municipalities. In practice, the poverty and small numbers of Native Americans means they have little authority, and are heavily dependent on federal taxes to fund their governments (which cannot interfere with interstate trade, movement, communication, etc.) If it wasn't for memes engendered by all the maps with huge "NAN"s splashed across North America, the NANs would be largely ignored.

Since the NAN "secession" really involved nothing of the sort, Tir Tairngire was all but stillborne. Tir tried to secede from California when California made a power play for more federal tax support by nominally seceding, but California's secession went so badly (Japanese invasion, Aztlan invasion, Elf secession) that it promptly re-applied for admittance to the US. The US took CalFree back as a commonwealth (to avoid its huge, disruptive House of Representatives bloc reforming in Congress), kicked the Japanese and Aztlaners out, and arrested most of the elf secessionists (certain ring leaders ran off to Ireland/Tir na Nog).

4. CAS -- Maybe someone can explain this one to me, but from what I gathered, the CAS secedes virtually without incident and the UCAS is kinda like, "All right, I guess. We just grabbed Canada so no big loss. Oh yeah, and we're tired of dealing with California so we'll let them walk too." You've got some congressmen and senators who secretly plot to secede from the union, and yet nobody seems really bothered in the southern states that this happened. With the UCAS reeling from the crash (*groan* and the NAN), I strongly doubt that they'd be willing to casually ditch some of their biggest contributors to their GDP without a fight. I guess the parable here was the collapse of the USSR, but it's kinda difficult to draw the same conclusions with a completely different system of government.

Nitpick: The CAS secession was written before the Berlin Wall came down, let alone the USSR's collapse.

You've summarized the canon CAS secession fairly well, but my "between the lines" pet interpretation was that it was a result of still-young megacorps attempting to break up the large governments that could threaten their newly-found sovereignty, an immature gesture of corporate power they later regretted (a huge free trade market further fragmented and impoverished; they got power, but not money).

From that basis, in my timeline, I kept the secession, but it went differently. Virginia stayed in the Union this time, since the whole state basically lived on US federal jobs and the new CSA offered about 1/4 the population, and thus taxes, and thus federal (confederal?) work of the UCAS. With so many northerners settling it, most of Florida stayed in the Union, too, though it lost Northern Florida (panhandle and points east) to the CSA and Miami to the Caribbean League. When Aztlan invaded Texas, the UCAS and CSA restored their friendship by successfully driving out Aztlan (because nothing makes Americans smile more than a good beat down of a 3rd World Nation). In the following years, the CSA and UCAS have knitted back together somewhat - they share a common currency, open borders, highly integrated defense institutions, and cooperative tax agencies (resulting megacorps trying to undo earlier damage), but the CSA (now with about 1/5th the population of the UCAS, which grew faster) is definitely the junior partner everywhere but in the minds of Atlanta's politicians.

Anyone else have issues with these things, or even issues of their own that they like to omit from canon to suit their games?

A few, noted above. A couple of others:

One of the others in my setting is that nuclear reactors include a crazy advanced architectural feature known as a "containment dome," so even though a number of additional reactors melted down after 2010 (usually when ecoterrorists attempted to cause melt downs to illustrate the dangers of nuclear power) the problem was entirely restricted to the containment dome. As a result, the setting is deficient of the dime-a-dozen nuclear fallout zones found in the canon setting.

Another change is that I follow the pollution-fighting trends of today's world, even though it detracts from the Bladerunner-esque pollution-choked cities and dark, smoggy skies. Fusion power (both electrical and industrial heating) has cut out a lot of industrial sources of pollution, while fuel cells and advanced batteries make ground transportation very clean. I use the "clean future" to highlight social rot to the players: Their PCs wander through greener-than-ever city parks with crystal blue metropolitan skies overhead on their way to do something horrific, illegal, and immoral for their megacorp employers.

[Randian Hero]

The NAN may seem silly, but there is a growing movement by various Native groups to declare their sovereignty (which is technically guaranteed by the treaties they signed to become part of the U.S.) and they are lead by some very determined (read "radical") individuals like Russell Means (who lead an initiative to declare the Lakota nation was succeeding from the US back in late 2007; he was denounced by many other Native leaders).

So the social/political movement is as real as it gets. Now imagine if these people could tap into an immensely powerful force like, oh say *magic* and take control of... well the *weather* for example...

See the problem here is not that the setting doesn't work. Its that you are trying to downplay a crucial component of the setting and then concluding that the setting doesn't work.

Well, again, I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm saying it's generally better without it. I mean, even if someone like Means could unite every reservation and get control over the crippling corruption and meth addiction, you'd still have more tribes than not trying to work out a deal with the government, dissenters in the radical scheme, overwhelming homogenization of their younger generations, and the entirety of the U.S. military to deal with.

But let's assume that it *did* work. How long would a landlocked nation like that last, assuming the U.S. (and allied Canada), set up an embargo on all their imports, as they realistically would. What about the fact that the water table in that area is finite and takes 2.3 million years to refill, or that it's already been severely depleted by deep irrigation farming for over a century? What about the younger generations that invariably want contact with the outside world? Age-old tribal infighting?

You'd probably see that nation collapsing within twenty years.

But, you make a better point than most. With a magical arsenal behind them, it's entirely possible that a radical group could seize portions of the U.S. I sincerely doubt they could keep it, but hey.

[Draco18s]

So the social/political movement is as real as it gets. Now imagine if these people could tap into an immensely powerful force like, oh say *magic* and take control of... well the *weather* for example...

I already believe that they can, to a(n extremely) limited degree. Unless you've experienced it (which odds are,* you haven't), sitting outside eating lunch, listening to the rain dance on a hot summer day and looking up as all goes quiet as the first pitter patter of rain falls down in the dust before the clouds have even obscured the sun.

I have seen it happen.

*The odds are extremely remote. You have to be outside the "We're doing a raindance, get out White Man" restricted zone, yet still near enough that you can hear the music. This ring, I suspect, is quite narrow, and you'd probably need permission to be on the reservation in the first place. I got lucky because I was doing a mission project (through Sierra Service Project) fixing up a house (we were actually building a floor, most people were re-shingling roofs). Several groups couldn't go out the first few days because their houses were inside the restricted zone, ours wasn't, but must have been damn close. Wednesday we stopped for lunch and listening to the dance when all of a sudden it went quiet, we looked up to the mesa and saw all the dancers lined up at the edge, and it started to rain.

[Randian Hero]

Shadowrun actually predates the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have found some of BattleTech's 1980s prognistications about the collapse of the Soviet Union very prophetic, though BT suggested there'd be a civil war in the 2011s rather than Perestroika in the 1990s.

The history of SR is actually inspired by a lot of 1980s science fiction memes rather than a casual perusal of history. It was also written for coolness factor and to avoid conventional or jingoistic futures. This involved dystopia, balkanization, pollution, overturn of existing orders, etc. Injuns and the CAS/UCAS split were means to an end - if they hadn't done it, some other new factor would've.

You got me there. I retract my earlier comment.

I'll keep that in mind, though it looks like some posters didn't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I appreciate it. Honestly, I'm not trying to start any flame wars or anything. I really do like Shadowrun.

After so many hard-SF games in the 1980s, I really jumped on Shadowrun for its magic. The preview cover of SR1 in a FASA catalog, with magic and technology splashed on the panel, caught my eye and imagination. I bought that as soon as it was available.

But there are certain lines I like in SR, and technomancers cross one of them. In my current game, I've pretty much plugged my ears and gone "lalalalalala" about technomancers. Magic and technology mix too poorly in SR, IMO, for technomancers to work. So, they aren't in my campaign. Most other magic is present.

I think you and I had opposite overexposure, what with my years of D&D thoroughly stuffing magic into the category of "do not touch". I do agree that magic and tech don't mix well in Shadowrun.

I bought it hook, line, and sinker in the 1980s, and it was cool for me then to look at a US balkanized into so many little pieces. Then I got through college where I found some demographic data and got a course or two of economics, and the whole thing started looking a bit silly. Native Americans (including those of noticeable fractional Indian blood) are under 1% of the US population. For the NAN uprising to work, tens of millions of Americans had to be displaced; tens of millions of Native Americans had to be invented; and the required military setbacks were ludicrous.

Thank you.

Rather than try to fix the existing setting (which did have a lot of alternate history - food riots, different laws, different technologies in the US in the 1990s, so maybe the canon timeline had a much larger Native American population resulting from their ancestors being resistant to European plagues), I called my current campaign a variant timeline. Real history (and demographics) was, for the most part, in place through 2010 - no Seretech, no food riots in New York, just the stuff you've seen on CNN for the past 20 years. Native Americans did have an uprising, but what they achieved was a reversal of the reservation system: they nominally run much of the former federal land in the US and Canadian West, while "Anglo" government is constrained to smaller municipalities. In practice, the poverty and small numbers of Native Americans means they have little authority, and are heavily dependent on federal taxes to fund their governments (which cannot interfere with interstate trade, movement, communication, etc.) If it wasn't for memes engendered by all the maps with huge "NAN"s splashed across North America, the NANs would be largely ignored.

Since the NAN "secession" really involved nothing of the sort, Tir Tairngire was all but stillborne. Tir tried to secede from California when California made a power play for more federal tax support by nominally seceding, but California's secession went so badly (Japanese invasion, Aztlan invasion, Elf secession) that it promptly re-applied for admittance to the US. The US took CalFree back as a commonwealth (to avoid its huge, disruptive House of Representatives bloc reforming in Congress), kicked the Japanese and Aztlaners out, and arrested most of the elf secessionists (certain ring leaders ran off to Ireland/Tir na Nog).

See, that makes far more sense to me, and has a much darker quality about it than the canon stuff. What more fitting for a gritty dystopian world than a puppet government that thinks it's in control, but in reality is working for the same people they fought and died to free themselves from? You, sir, might have saved Shadowrun Indians for me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Nitpick: The CAS secession was written before the Berlin Wall came down, let alone the USSR's collapse.

Noted and withdrawn.

You've summarized the canon CAS secession fairly well, but my "between the lines" pet interpretation was that it was a result of still-young megacorps attempting to break up the large governments that could threaten their newly-found sovereignty, an immature gesture of corporate power they later regretted (a huge free trade market further fragmented and impoverished; they got power, but not money).

From that basis, in my timeline, I kept the secession, but it went differently. Virginia stayed in the Union this time, since the whole state basically lived on US federal jobs and the new CSA offered about 1/4 the population, and thus taxes, and thus federal (confederal?) work of the UCAS. With so many northerners settling it, most of Florida stayed in the Union, too, though it lost Northern Florida (panhandle and points east) to the CSA and Miami to the Caribbean League. When Aztlan invaded Texas, the UCAS and CSA restored their friendship by successfully driving out Aztlan (because nothing makes Americans smile more than a good beat down of a 3rd World Nation). In the following years, the CSA and UCAS have knitted back together somewhat - they share a common currency, open borders, highly integrated defense institutions, and cooperative tax agencies (resulting megacorps trying to undo earlier damage), but the CSA (now with about 1/5th the population of the UCAS, which grew faster) is definitely the junior partner everywhere but in the minds of Atlanta's politicians.

See, that to me paints a much better background for the complete corporate takeover that I envisioned for the world of Shadowrun. I love the idea of impotent governments in the face of overwhelming corporate clout, throwing regulations around but ultimately being helpless to control the entities that they helped create.

A few, noted above. A couple of others:

One of the others in my setting is that nuclear reactors include a crazy advanced architectural feature known as a "containment dome," so even though a number of additional reactors melted down after 2010 (usually when ecoterrorists attempted to cause melt downs to illustrate the dangers of nuclear power) the problem was entirely restricted to the containment dome. As a result, the setting is deficient of the dime-a-dozen nuclear fallout zones found in the canon setting.

Another change is that I follow the pollution-fighting trends of today's world, even though it detracts from the Bladerunner-esque pollution-choked cities and dark, smoggy skies. Fusion power (both electrical and industrial heating) has cut out a lot of industrial sources of pollution, while fuel cells and advanced batteries make ground transportation very clean. I use the "clean future" to highlight social rot to the players: Their PCs wander through greener-than-ever city parks with crystal blue metropolitan skies overhead on their way to do something horrific, illegal, and immoral for their megacorp employers.

I actually do something similar, with endless networks of wind turbines and solar panels that litter the countryside while fusion reactors power the cities. I love that "Mirror's Edge/Minority Report" style of beneath-the-surface rot. Naturally, though, I keep that kinda centralized in western nations. The dirty, gritty Bladerunner-esque stuff is pretty much everywhere else.

[Cray74]

See, that to me paints a much better background for the complete corporate takeover that I envisioned for the world of Shadowrun. I love the idea of impotent governments in the face of overwhelming corporate clout, throwing regulations around but ultimately being helpless to control the entities that they helped create.

The story arc I'm just now winding down involved a struggle based around that. The campaign has been set in an alternate Manhattan, where there was a struggle between the municiple government (which is run almost like the private corporation of the in-for-life metroplex governor), the "pro-government" megacorps, and the "pro-megacorp" megacorps.

The governor runs the Manhattan metroplex to be corp-friendly and generate plentiful wealth for them so long as they tow the party line, and has a variety of sticks to go with this big carrot. The 21 counties of the metroplex constitute a dense, wealthy cluster of 40 million consumers (alternate New York has been an island of stability since 2005 Earthquake and thus has grown quite a bit), and thus some of the AAA megacorps play along. Some megacorps (the "conservatives") were, however, affronted by the high-handedness of the municiple government (nevermind its megacorp-like features) and ran a series of escalating efforts to break off more and more counties into megacorp governance, like a handful of the slum-counties dotting the metropolitan area: instigated crime sprees, riots, assassinations, and finally a nuke destined for Mid Town Manhattan.

The fallout is superficially a national victory over megacorps. When Aztlan was implicated in the nuke, the UCAS and CSA didn't wait for final confirmation before they liberated Mexico from its bloodthirsty Aztlaner regime. Aztechnology survived, but it was subject to all but a Corporate Court Omega Order (as the Corporate Court was appalled that Aztech would so blatantly ignore its bottom line to wreck a major market, but Aztech's executives had gotten a bit full of themselves). Oppressed dissident groups in Mexico were propped up into an interim government, and many media commentators spoke of the unusually successful government persecution of a megacorp.

The key term being "A megacorp." In fact, the conflict was nothing more than business as usual. One megacorp had annoyed many, so the many acted. Megacorps manipulated UCAS/CSA governments into launching the war; Ares (and smaller milicorps) provided the logistical sinews and leased muscle to make the victory possible for the atrophied UCAS/CSA militaries, earning huge windfalls from taxpayers; any megacorp with a sizable consumer goods branch got to rapidly encroach on Aztech markets around the world; the sheltered Aztlan market was opened to foreign businesses; and any evidence needed to justify the war was dug up by megacorp-hired Shadowrunners.

The national governments were simply tools for the megacorps, and the public was delightfully deluded to the contrary.

[Adarael]

Talsorian published a paranormal/horror line with Cyberpunk 2.0, didn't they? Any opinions?

Shit, I thought I was the only one to know those existed!

Actually, these were third party add-ons that mutated the base CP2020 setting into something similar, but subtly different. They were published by Dream Pod 9, and filled the same kind of niche the original Jovian Chronicles book did for Mekton: a setting re-fit. Except JC was popular enough to be it's own setting, while the Night's Edge/Dark Metropolis suppliments never got the momentum behind it.

There were actually a plethora of books for the Night's Edge "ARU" (alternate reality universe) setting: several setting books, about 5-6 adventures, a book of fiction, etc. They really are peas in a pod with Shadowrun - voodoo, psychic powers, ghosts invading people when they recreationally die via black ICE (for fun, for the rush of it), mind control techology, an underwater arcology prison (Sub-Attica)...

[Yogo Ted]

an underwater arcology prison (Sub-Attica)...

Huh-whut? I demand more information. Tell me where I can hear of Sub-Attica.

[Adarael]

Huh-whut? I demand more information. Tell me where I can hear of Sub-Attica.

Here you go. Sub-Attica, for Cyberpunk 2020

[Daylen]

I like to avoid big scary monster fights. they end up with boring results.

[MadDogMike]

But there are certain lines I like in SR, and technomancers cross one of them. In my current game, I've pretty much plugged my ears and gone "lalalalalala" about technomancers. Magic and technology mix too poorly in SR, IMO, for technomancers to work. So, they aren't in my campaign. Most other magic is present.

I dunno, they work better than their previous counterparts, otaku. The whole "Matrix kids" schtick got pretty silly, and the "you eventually age out of it" thing made them a pain for actual PC use. I do note the whole frenzy over technomancers seems to be partly to tap into the current zeitgeist of terrorist security/civil rights; swap "crappy technomancer accidently nearly downed plane" for a certain idiot setting his pants on fire recently and note the similarities you could find.

I bought it hook, line, and sinker in the 1980s, and it was cool for me then to look at a US balkanized into so many little pieces. Then I got through college where I found some demographic data and got a course or two of economics, and the whole thing started looking a bit silly. Native Americans (including those of noticeable fractional Indian blood) are under 1% of the US population. For the NAN uprising to work, tens of millions of Americans had to be displaced; tens of millions of Native Americans had to be invented; and the required military setbacks were ludicrous.

Rather than try to fix the existing setting (which did have a lot of alternate history - food riots, different laws, different technologies in the US in the 1990s, so maybe the canon timeline had a much larger Native American population resulting from their ancestors being resistant to European plagues), I called my current campaign a variant timeline

Given the SR background, there is some possibility that more survived the original European contacts considering there were apparently some of the good ol' immortal elves running around there (and Tir Taingire's existence suggests they might have steered things towards NAN for their own ends; wasn't there canon indication they might have taught them what they used to make the Great Ghost Dance in one of the novels too?). Even with the basic timeline in place, I seem to recall the Native Americans missed VITAS because they got stuck in camps right as it was hitting. If at least 25% of the rest of the world is dying while much much fewer of you are, your population ratio tends to grow quite a bit. Then there's of course all the other casualties from the Awakening (riots, people getting chomped by new paracritters, things like New York's earthquake, etc.), and the people the NAN killed themselves during the civil war. The number of people displaced to form the NAN might have been far fewer thanks to all that, especially if you look at the SR map. Compared to current demographics the NAN is perched in the areas of the US with the smallest population already. With the exception of Las Vegas there aren't too many major US cities that wind up in the NAN. The situation gets a little weirder with the former Canadian parts though since they do get lots of cities there, though given Canada IIRC has something like 10-15% the total US population it might not have taken much VITAS depopulation to make the handwave workable. Come to think of it, if the NAN was willing to be nice enough (I do recall a recent retcon in Seattle 2072 that non-Native Americans were allowed to stay as "minority citizens"; NAN SINless maybe?), I can see Canadians irked at the whole Canada-US merging thing going NAN in protest. Better Red than Red, White, and Blue? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) In any event, just reading between the lines on some of the Shadowrun stuff gives an interesting look at how much the population fell from all the events. Seattle in 2072 has 3 million (SINned) people in 4,000 square km, vs. modern day NYC's 8.3 million in 350 square km. Given it's almost 50 years later from the NAN succession, and Seattle apparently received a lot of the US refugees displaced by said succession, that says a LOT about the kind of casualties involved. If anything, it becomes kind of questionable how you get huge clogged cities in SR after that much death.

From that basis, in my timeline, I kept the secession, but it went differently. Virginia stayed in the Union this time, since the whole state basically lived on US federal jobs and the new CSA offered about 1/4 the population, and thus taxes, and thus federal (confederal?) work of the UCAS. With so many northerners settling it, most of Florida stayed in the Union, too, though it lost Northern Florida (panhandle and points east) to the CSA and Miami to the Caribbean League. When Aztlan invaded Texas, the UCAS and CSA restored their friendship by successfully driving out Aztlan (because nothing makes Americans smile more than a good beat down of a 3rd World Nation). In the following years, the CSA and UCAS have knitted back together somewhat - they share a common currency, open borders, highly integrated defense institutions, and cooperative tax agencies (resulting megacorps trying to undo earlier damage), but the CSA (now with about 1/5th the population of the UCAS, which grew faster) is definitely the junior partner everywhere but in the minds of Atlanta's politicians.

Eh, given the current political climate practically seperating the would-be CAS states from UCAS, I can buy a CAS succession easiest of all the SR changes. The UCAS just letting them go is slightly suspect, but given it occured during history when one could excuse people for believing THE APOCALYPSE WAS HERE!! I suppose being too damn tired to deal with that crap and saying "fine, go off and die on your own" is a possible political response. Which could explain California too I suppose, though I'm suspicious a little mind control might have been in play there, especially by certain folks in the Tir who probably would have appreciated a relatively vulnerable rich state south of them to expand to. The UCAS and CAS don't seem too hostile to each other at this point anyway. I do like your idea of northern Virginia at least staying with the UCAS since they'd be part of the likely DC metroplex anyway, though there could be some real interesting stories to tell if lots of the people working in DC were technically residents of a foreign power commuting across the borders. Frequently crossed borders is the sort of thing that can make for good shadowruns after all.

One of the others in my setting is that nuclear reactors include a crazy advanced architectural feature known as a "containment dome," so even though a number of additional reactors melted down after 2010 (usually when ecoterrorists attempted to cause melt downs to illustrate the dangers of nuclear power) the problem was entirely restricted to the containment dome. As a result, the setting is deficient of the dime-a-dozen nuclear fallout zones found in the canon setting.

Another change is that I follow the pollution-fighting trends of today's world, even though it detracts from the Bladerunner-esque pollution-choked cities and dark, smoggy skies. Fusion power (both electrical and industrial heating) has cut out a lot of industrial sources of pollution, while fuel cells and advanced batteries make ground transportation very clean. I use the "clean future" to highlight social rot to the players: Their PCs wander through greener-than-ever city parks with crystal blue metropolitan skies overhead on their way to do something horrific, illegal, and immoral for their megacorp employers.

Well, the setting does assume very little regulation to begin with, and pollution control and nuclear safety are soooo non-profitable. Nukes also apparently didn't react well to the Awakening in general, but really given how many "meltdown" areas are just briefly tossed off in a few lines, I'd say ignoring that aspect of canon could work with scarcely a difference. Pollution in general does have somewhat more relevance to the setting, and given how much kicking and screaming fighting it gets in real life I can buy it being an issue in SR, especially with new countries and corporations as sovereign territory letting everyone effectively dump the stuff in someone else's backyard. Hell, in the case of some backyards (like the UCAS and NAN) I can see it deliberately being dumped with a smile. The idea of everyone suddenly getting serious about fighting pollution does present serious possibilities for SR stories though, and pretty dystopias are more attractive to their residents.