S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Options

[Radical-B]

I've been playing this pc game for a while and was wondering how I could weave it into the shadowrun world, since most technology is vastly superior to what most people have in the zone. If anything I could prolly just use what was done for chicago, but add the physical anomalies and mutants from the game as well.

[Blade]

If you read French or German, you could get something very close to that with the SOX book.

[Sengir]

The Sixth World is filled with places where the environment and/or astral space are severely tainted, reasons to go there could be anything from a corp arcology to hunting for some rare telesma. Or do what Blade told you, the SOX book is essentially STALKER in Shadowrun

PS: There's also the standing bounty on toxic mages by the Draco Foundation...

[FlakJacket]

Yeah the SOX, Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone to give it its full name, is pretty much exactly what you want. Basic history is that the Cattenom nuclear power station suffered a massive failure back in 2008 and polluted a large amount of the surrounding land - I think it actually took out most of Luxembourg. The French and German governments built a 5-meter high wall around the area, placed automated defences to guard it every so often along it and hired MET2000 to guard it. Since the place was already completely wrecked ecologically and no-one was allowed inside the corps used it as a secret dumping ground and built a number of underground min-arcologies/research stations to do hideously illegal work in a deniable fashion. In 2053 the place got turned over to the Kontrollrat/Conseil de Contrôle (Administrative Council), a joint-corporate partnership including AG Chemie Europa, Ares Macrotechnology, Eastern Star Pharmaceuticals, IFMU, Proteus AG, Renraku, Saeder-Krupp and others. Most of the information we have comes from the Third Edition sourcebook Target: Wastelands so shouldn't be too hard to track down.

[Mordinvan]

Are there english translations of this material? or is is limited to french and german?

[GreyBrother]

The up to date SOX Book is german and french only afaik.

Something else which should be mentioned, most of the Glowpunks who live in the SOX have no clue that magic returned, so most metahumans and paracritters are "mutations"

[Sengir]

What you are talking about are the Radpunks, who have lived in isolation since before the awakening and thus have little knowledge of what happened to the world around them (and have other worries than acquiring that knowledge).

The Glowpunks are kinda like the Orks from Warhammer 40k. Their social structure is limited to "He's the boss because he did in the previous boss who backstabbed the guy before him who..." and their overall mannerisms can be summed up in this sentence from the book: "Should the Glowpunks manage to surprise you, they will loot, rape, kill and eat you, not neccessarily in this order"...

[GreyBrother]

While i admit my mistake, i am sure that the Rad- and Glowpunks both don't have much of a clue about magic.

[Sengir]

Sure, the difference is just that the Radpunks' lack of magic knowledge is similar to my father's extremely limited PC skills, while the Glowpunks have no clue about magic for the same reason a devil rat doesn't (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)



woot, finally got to post my reply ^^

[Ikirouta]

And if you happen to read Finnish you can buy an official STALKER (PnP) RPG (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[crash2029]

Alas, I never crossed the Finnish line.

[Da9iel]

That caused physical pain. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dead.gif)

[FlakJacket]

Random thought but if all of Luxembourg has been irradiated and walled off does this mean that we've got the worlds first virtual country? This could have a number of interesting ramifications.

[Ikirouta]

Alas, I never crossed the Finnish line.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Blade]

Random thought but if all of Luxembourg has been irradiated and walled off does this mean that we've got the worlds first virtual country? This could have a number of interesting ramifications.

Yes, it's detailed in S.O.X. I don't recall the exact situation and I don't have the book with me so I'd rather not post about it now, but if you're interested I could take a look at it once I can access my book.

[kjones]

Alas, I never crossed the Finnish line.

This made me groan out loud. I'm not sure whether to congratulate you or hunt you down and kill you - which is usually the sign of a successful pun.

[FlakJacket]

Yes, it's detailed in S.O.X. I don't recall the exact situation and I don't have the book with me so I'd rather not post about it now, but if you're interested I could take a look at it once I can access my book.

Please do, I find the idea of a country without access to its physical land to be quite intriguing. Even if the population is evacuated and decamps to the surrounding countries under some kind of limited joint citizenship or residency agreement they're still going to be citizens of an internationally recognised country. Which means every 5 years they get to vote for a government and there'll still be a Grand Duke as head of state. Just because they can't go back there, possibly resulting in the first matrix based country, the government can still enter into agreements, levy taxes, license corporations and organisations etc.

[Sengir]

Yes, Luxembourg still has a Duke (Adolphe III) and on paper is a souvereign state, which allows it to sell SINs or tax excemptions to the highest bidder. Officially however, control over the whole territory was given to the Corp-controlled Control Council...by France and Germany, nobody asked Luxembourg. So the whole ownership issue is far from settled.

The book also mentions that many people originally from the area (or their descendants) still want to acquire ownership records and other official files they left behind during the evacuation.

[Blade]

Duke Adolphe III, a dwarf, has built the Western Rhenanie Grand Duchy. Meanwhile, some members of the Luxembourg Diaspora created a company called LuxIA: rich people who lost valuable things in Luxembourg (such as deeds of property) had to get some money before they could get their hands back on these, so they used their power of a Nation State (which they still were, even if no European government officially accept it (probably because the corps don't want them to)) to sell real-fake SINs or tax exemption.
The Duke considered that the land still belonged to him and that he could sell it to the corps. This led to a mostly mediatic war between him and LuxIA. After France stopped paying the compensation money to the Duke, the Grand Duchy was in bad financial health and LuxIA bought the Duke's debts to the Frankfurter Brankverein (FBV) (despite SK trying to get the bank not to sell them) so now they have the upper hand in the virtual country of Luxembourg.

[Matsci]

Not begruge the SOX, but the Haparanda Anomaly Zone might be a better fit for STALKER.

According to SoE, Halley's Comet basically fused an Awakened Forest and a Toxic Swampland into one weird marshland, all the life there somehow turned into a bizzare symbiosis.

While there, researchers have reported Winged Vampire Cats and blue-spotted flesh eating gardenias.

[crash2029]

Not begruge the SOX, but the Haparanda Anomaly Zone might be a better fit for STALKER.

According to SoE, Halley's Comet basically fused an Awakened Forest and a Toxic Swampland into one weird marshland, all the life there somehow turned into a bizzare symbiosis.

While there, researchers have reported Winged Vampire Cats and blue-spotted flesh eating gardenias.

Sounds like my Dad's D&D world.