Accurate portrayal of barrens life ?, drawing RL comparisons Options

[Mach_Ten]

I'm not the most imaginitive of folks, so I find it hard to visualise the districts of, primarily Seattle.

Having never visited other than a google maps drive-thru,

would the link here be an accurate reflection of lfe there ? or is it much more sparsely populated and much more open spaced?

is there a Hitch-hikers guide to Seattle somewhere ? that describes or has relevant artwork depicting life outside of shadowrunners experiences etc.

**EDIT**

Just wanted to add that this quote sounds so familiar to most of my runs :

The New York Times reports that a police officer in the video can be heard saying “It looks like him, right?”

“That’s right; it looks like him,” another officer responds. After the exchange, a figure gets into a car. When it begins to move, an officer can be heard screaming "Get it!" at which point the police helicopter opens fire, striking both the car and surrounding buildings with what appears to be heavy weaponry.

[nezumi]

(NOTE: Only watch the first thirty seconds. The rest is just bla-bla.)

We're not seeing a lot in that video segment, but we know it's a favela in Brazil. The answer is that the favelas are WAY more overcrowded than the Seattle barrens. If you look at Redmond, the current population density is less than a tenth of what you get in the favelas. The fact is, Redmond is distressingly suburban with lots of open spaces (previously green, now brown, but either way not really able to provide food or shelter).

Puyallup has even fewer people. Imagine your images of post-zombie suburbia and you're probably on the right track. Everything is abandoned, scavenged, and empty.

[Kagetenshi]

From the Seattle Sourcebook:

Redmond
Population: 498k
Human: 82%
Elf: 6%
Dwarf: 1%
Ork: 10%
Troll: 1%
Other: 1%
Density: ~1,142/km^2
Per-capita income: 6.6k¥/year
Poverty rate: 79%

Education:
<12 years: 78%
High School equivalency: 18%
College equivalency: 3%
Advanced studies certificates: 1%

Hospitals and clinics: 6

Some key quotes:

Redmond is a violent place where possession of the smallest bit of food or the cheapest trinket can be reason enough to die. A weekly convoy of trucks delivering food to the district's few grocery stores always causes riots, as squatters risk death to try to stop the trucks so they can steal the food. Even at its most quiet, the district is a seething, angry mass that could explode at any moment.

Most of the Humans in the district still harbor a passionate hatred for all Metahumans. […]

The few companies with factories in Redmond had to build massive fortifications to protect their facilities against looters and vandals. Some firms have hired as guards the biggest and meanest squatters they can find. Accidental shootings in and around these fortified factories are just another fact of life in the Redmond Barrens. […]

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of thrill gangs thriving in the district. Every corner seems to have its own group of toughs claiming it as their turf. […]

I've worked in both the Redmond and the Puyallup Barrens, and I think that Redmond is definitely tougher. There are more people living here, the air is dirtier, and the racism is worse.

Police patrols never go out in less than four-man squads, for the streets are just too dangerous. That's also why the police prefer to use riot cars like the Ares Citymaster or the smaller Nissan Patrol-1, each able to carry at least four cops. […]

Despite the massive firepower the police have, I don't know anyone who likes to pull duty in the Barrens. More police die here than anywhere else in the city.

Toxin-spewing factories, high security, most industrial transportation is by air or water. Thriving organlegging trade. Melted-down nuclear power plant with still-high radioactivity hosting a large squatter population.

Puyallup
Population: 506k
Human: 48%
Elf: 21%
Dwarf: 4%
Ork: 22%
Troll: 4%
Other: 1%
Density: ~502/km^2
Per-capita income: 6.2k¥/year
Poverty rate: 81%

Education:
<12 years: 80%
High School equivalency: 16%
College equivalency: 4%
Advanced studies certificates: 0%

Hospitals and clinics: 6

Some key quotes:

From a policeman's standpoint, Puyallup is a slightly safer beat than is Redmond. With fewer people living here, a cop isn't as constantly worried about an ambush. You can even find places to sit down and collect your wits without having to be constantly worried about an ambush. The vastness of Puyallup, on the other hand, does tend to stretch the available police force dangerously thin.

I would put Puyallup just below Redmond in terms of potential for serious racial violence. In Redmon, Humans so outnumber Metahumans that both sides keep to their places in society. In Puyallup, the Human and non-Human races stand in roughly equal numbers, with neither more likely to back down from a challenge.

On average, the district experiences at least one major earthquake every five years.

Puyallup has the worst air pollution in the Metroplex. Hundreds of unregulated factories constantly churn toxins into the air, and the mountains to the south trap the filthy air directly over the district. What wind does blow through only serves to stir up the tons of ash, often screening out much of the sun and making midday look like the middle of the night.

The pollution of the Puyallup District is so bad that a Stage Red Smog Alert is declared an average of 189 times a year.

Industrial transport chiefly by air, large regions with "solidified lava flows, boiling mud fields, steam geysers, and ash dunes."

So no, your link is not an accurate portrayal of Barrens life. It's far too civilized, and the police are too restrained. Density-wise, it might be an acceptable comparison to Redmond; Rio De Janeiro's overall urban density is about four times that of the Redmond Barrens, but I don't know how dense the favelas specifically are.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

Also, in New Seattle, Sonny D heavily plagiarizes Seattle Sourcebook Shadowtalkers to write his section. Shadowrunners these days, no sense of journalistic ethics!

~J

[Mach_Ten]

that is amazing !

Thank you, makes it much easier to envisage the environment and the dangers inherent.

[Kagetenshi]

As context, New Seattle lists the metaracial composition of the city as a whole as follows:

Human: 66%
Elf: 13%
Dwarf: 2%
Ork: 16%
Troll: 2%
Other: 1%

Entertainingly, all of the demographic information in New Seattle (set in 2060) is exactly the same as it was in 2049 in the Seattle Sourcebook.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

Also note, if you're playing SR4, that those income levels are before the Great Deflation. Though now that I crack open SR4, Lifestyle costs have actually risen at the low end; anyway, at 1k¥/month for a Low lifestyle, anyone not taking in about double the average will be living in some variant on Squatter conditions, though at 100¥/month instead of 500¥/month it isn't taking up nearly all of the mean-earning resident's income.

That said, I suspect the distribution is probably highly unequal, with a modest number of corporate employees, gang leaders/lieutenants, organized crime figures, and Shadowrunners or Shadowrunner-associated businessfolk (fixers, etc.) skewing the per-capita figure well above the median figure.

~J

[Wakshaani]

Well, remember that those are the facts n figures for the SINners, not the SINless, who aren't in the population numbers or the income measures.

That'll make a dent. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

So the skew is most likely to be corporate wageslaves working and living at those toxic castles, just ticking down the days/weeks/months/years until they get airlifted out for reassignment/a recreation stint.

[Kagetenshi]

Well, remember that those are the facts n figures for the SINners, not the SINless, who aren't in the population numbers or the income measures.

Actually, SINless are included in the figures, though they're noted as being fairly rough estimates; the Seattle Sourcebook has it that the count for Redmond "could run anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000", and though I can't find a similar statement for Puyallup its sheer vast size combined with the same basic problem of "large population with no permanent residence" suggests that it probably isn't more precise.

~J

[ShadowDragon8685]

One has to wonder, what in the world were they thinking going to the SIN system instead of, you know, the standard of citizenship that had existed since the dawn of nations in the North American continent.

[Mantis]

Corporations. They don't want to provide health care or education or any of the myriad of other things a government provides to people unless those people were working for them. So they propose the SIN system to the governments and offer to manage it all for them to 'make things easier and cheaper', the same line corporations always feed the government before hamstringing a program. Then they just 'forget' to register the people they find undesirable, the government goes along with this cuz it 'saves money' and then it gets held over the heads of the newly minted wage slaves as yet another way to keep them in line. Leave the corp and there goes your SIN and all the benefits that go along with it. Why do you think they never clean up the barrens or why every major city has one? It gives the corporations something to show the workers just how crappy life would be outside of the corp. Plus an easy dumping ground for things gone wrong and a testing ground where no cares what happens, or at least no one important cares anyway. Ah dystopia. What fun.

[Dak]

I imagine the barrens as looking somewhat like Somalia as we know it.

[Daier Mune]

try to find photos about modern-day Detroit. entire neighborhoods that burned, bulldozed and abandoned. My brother tells a story of getting lost on the way to a show and having his car chased by a pack of wild dogs. I always imagined the barrens to be more like that.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Try to find photos about modern-day Detroit. entire neighborhoods that burned, bulldozed and abandoned. My brother tells a story of getting lost on the way to a show and having his car chased by a pack of wild dogs. I always imagined the barrens to be more like that.

Only in the 2070s, the dogs are the size of mastiff hounds and breathe lightning that can disable your car.

[nezumi]

Detroit sounds like a pretty good descriptor. Around the right population density, biome, and lead-up. The only difference is, in Detroit, people can still get welfare and medicare. (And yes, the lightning breath.)

[CanRay]

try to find photos about modern-day Detroit. entire neighborhoods that burned, bulldozed and abandoned. My brother tells a story of getting lost on the way to a show and having his car chased by a pack of wild dogs. I always imagined the barrens to be more like that.

Great, now I'm homesick.

[Mantis]

Don't worry. It'll pass quickly enough.

[Shemhazai]

Detroit's Ghetto: The worst Ghetto in the USA! Facts and a tour of Dying Detroit (Video)

[Critias]

The important thing to remember is that the Barrens is City X -- whatever real-life terrible run-down city we're talking about -- cranked up to 12. It's drug abuse as social ill, but also with BTL tacked on. It's prostitution, but also bunraku parlors. It's wealth and poverty influenced by racism, but also with metatypes. It's crooked cops and indifferent law enforcement, but also with the callousness of private corporations tacked on. It's unwanted babies and forgotten grandparents dying alone, but also with ghouls and organleggers complicating things.

There's kernels of real-world problems, but always with extra problems, too, and cranked way up to make it even worse.

[CanRay]

And Devil Rats. Lots of Devil Rats! Paracritters are a major problem in Barrens. Of course, they're also dinner at times.

As for BTL problems...

[Grak]

And Devil Rats. Lots of Devil Rats! Paracritters are a major problem in Barrens. Of course, they're also dinner at times.

As for BTL problems...

CanRay you endearing whore. Did you write anything else (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[braincraft]

I once met a guy who grew up in Chechnya. He said his mother would always wait for foggy days to go shopping for groceries, so she wouldn't get sniped on the road.

[CanRay]

CanRay you endearing whore. Did you write anything else (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Whores continue to get paid. I'm more of a slut that occasionally gets a gift.

However, yes, I, have!

[Grak]

Whores continue to get paid. I'm more of a slut that occasionally gets a gift.

However, yes, I, have!

I didn't know you had a hand in 2050. That's a cool book.

As for the Para-Critters in the barrens would you actually see something like a Barghest and or is it just the smaller fare like those Devil Rats that the good ol' tuskers love to chew on.