Cloned Meat in the Sixth World, Why bother with all the soy and krill? Options

[JanessaVR]

I know it’s a staple conceit of the “dark cyberpunk future” that real food (and especially meat) is all but unavailable save for the rich, and Shadowrun embraces that to a considerable degree (though not as much as some settings). That said, I have increasing difficulty buying this one.

It was a few years ago that I read about the first successful cow muscle cloning. The researchers grew it in their lab, then decanted it, tossed it on the stove, grilled it and ate it. They said the flavor was rather bland, but otherwise it wasn’t bad; they speculated it was likely the total lack of any fatty tissue and the lab-nutrient “diet” the tissue was fed.

That said, it works. This is no longer speculative science fiction as of now. Now fast-forward 60 years to the current Sixth World, where they have a lot of highly-advanced biotechnology that’s used every day. There’s no way that factory meat-cloning isn’t a fully-mature technology at this point. And as a matter fact, it’s probably replaced traditional farming almost completely, at least in first world nations. Think about it. You can either:

A) Buy up lots and lots of land for your cows, feed and water them, give them veterinary care, watch over them, drive them to the slaughterhouse when mature, chop them up, package them, and then ship them to market.

Or…

B) Grow just the tissue you want in controlled conditions, decant it when mature, then chop it up, package it, and ship it to market.

Option B is not only easier and way cheaper, it can also all be done in single location. Heck, you could probably fully automate the factory (I refuse to believe in a lot of dumb manual labor in the Sixth World – drones would be doing all that). So why would anyone bother with anything else in the 2070’s? Cheap meat of all varieties should be readily available unless you live the Barrens or something.

And while we’re at it, this really ought to change the picture for ghouls. Nothing says you can’t grow human muscle tissue in these factories while you’re at it. Yeah, I know, I know, they supposedly need that “residual Essence” or whatnot that just has to come from real metahuman flesh, but that strikes me as a cop-out rule. When vampires drain Essence, they need a live donor, not a corpse. The dead have an Essence score of 0, so I don’t really see the difference between a dead real metahuman and dead cloned metahuman tissue.

And keep in mind, I’m saying this as someone who thinks the Infected should be strictly NPCs and used for target practice. I’m not all bleeding-heart-liberal-let’s-hug-the-poor-misunderstood-Infected, but even I think this approach should be viable.

[Stahlseele]

'cause it's fucking expenaive and still kinda morally/ethically icky of a topic to deal with, even with the fucked up world of SR.
You either go for naturally grown from an animal that you than gruesomely slaughter expensive real meat, or you eat the vegetarian, maybe even vegan soy stuff.

And for ghouls, it does not work either!
That is actually one of the big rewards still up for grabs from Dunkelzahns Will. Make synthetic meat that ghouls can and will eat without problem.

[JanessaVR]

'cause it's fucking expenaive and still kinda morally/ethically icky of a topic to deal with, even with the fucked up world of SR.
You either go for naturally grown from an animal that you than gruesomely slaughter expensive real meat, or you eat the vegetarian, maybe even vegan soy stuff.

And for ghouls, it does not work either!
That is actually one of the big rewards still up for grabs from Dunkelzahns Will. Make synthetic meat that ghouls can and will eat without problem.

You're missing my points completely.

After another 60 years of R&D, it won't be expensive anymore. And why the hell would cloned meat be an "icky" topic to deal with? Heck, the animal-rights people are very in favor of this idea right now in the real world - no more animals get killed to provide meat for humans! They think this is an awesome idea. So do the environmentalists - no more cow farms producing tons of methane every year. And lots of money is even now going into learning how to grow organs for transplants. It's not icky, it's big business. And with everything else that's legally available in either SR4 Augmentation or SR5 Chrome Flesh, this is nothing.

As for ghouls, my whole point is that this rule doesn't make any sense. That either shouldn't have even come up in Big D's will, or that particular X-Prize (D-Prize?) should have been won years ago as of the current campaign timeline.

[Stahlseele]

It's
a) there in the fluff
b) there in the crunch
It is simply how the shadowrun world works.
If it makes sense to you or not, is of no consequence.
Why are you complaining about this stuff, but not about magic?

[Sendaz]

Remember a lot of your food isn't just soy, it's krill, soy or algae based. With krill they can aquafarm these babies by the megaton and harvest for the protein, similar for the algae stuff.
The advantage here over cloned stuff is its fairly low maintenance so while costings are probably similar, the added ease and minimal staff required made it a better deal than cloned meat, though the latter would still appeal to the market that could afford it.

'Islands in the Net' by Bruce Sterling had good examples of this where whole tanker ships were converted over into farms growing algae and other stuff to food and .. ahem.... various pharmaceuticals to the various islands in the Caribbean.

Alternatively you can have some fun by messing with things.
Edit: In Spacetime by BTRC, the heads of certain branches of the hindu faith which still did not normally eat beef, who some suspected had been co-opted by certain fast food megacorps, declared that a particular strain of heavily Gene modified cows were no longer the same as their original predecessors and thus could be eaten without violating their particular religious taboo against eating beef.
Which caused a massive market shift among those regions as you can imagine.

[JanessaVR]

It's
a) there in the fluff
b) there in the crunch
It is simply how the shadowrun world works.
If it makes sense to you or not, is of no consequence.
Why are you complaining about this stuff, but not about magic?

I don't care if it's there in the fluff and the crunch. Gaming rule books are not holy writ, and I'm not required to mindlessly accept everything written in them, especially when it's doesn't make sense.

The physical is not magical, and the magical is not physical. I treat them as strictly separate. Magic can be part of a campaign setting, as long as its rules are internally consistent. But its presence or absence has no affect on my opinion of purely physical technology.

[Stahlseele]

So . . you have no problem with magic . . Ghouls being victims of a magical virus that were changed into carrion eaters that hunt by actually looking into the astral world because they have become blind to the material world . . but you have a problem with accepting that they have been changed in such a way that they can not eat meat that does not come from a (meta)human being . .

[JanessaVR]

Remember a lot of your food isn't just soy, it's krill, soy or algae based. With krill they can aquafarm these babies by the megaton and harvest for the protein, similar for the algae stuff.
The advantage here over cloned stuff is its fairly low maintenance so while costings are probably similar, the added ease and minimal staff required made it a better deal than cloned meat, though the latter would still appeal to the market that could afford it.

'Islands in the Net' by Bruce Sterling had good examples of this where whole tanker ships were converted over into farms growing algae and other stuff to food and .. ahem.... various pharmaceuticals to the various islands in the Caribbean.

Alternatively you can have some fun by messing with things.
Edit: In Spacetime by BTRC, the heads of certain branches of the hindu faith which still did not normally eat beef, who some suspected had been co-opted by certain fast food megacorps, declared that a particular strain of heavily Gene modified cows were no longer the same as their original predecessors and thus could be eaten without violating their particular religious taboo against eating beef.
Which caused a massive market shift among those regions as you can imagine.

Indeed, this is just strengthening my resolve to continue work on a new campaign setting - the Sixth World rebooted. It's 2016, the Awakening was December 21st, 2012. Up until that point, the world was exactly the world you see out your window. But on that day, magic came back and things changed. Now, it's 4 years later. There are no sovereign megacorporations, there is no matrix, and cybernetics are still very primitive. But there is magic, and a rapidly-changing world. What are you doing in that world?

That's what I'm working on now. A chance to start over, and wipe the slate clean of a lot of Shadowrun's dead wood.

[JanessaVR]

So . . you have no problem with magic . . Ghouls being victims of a magical virus that were changed into carrion eaters that hunt by actually looking into the astral world because they have become blind to the material world . . but you have a problem with accepting that they have been changed in such a way that they can not eat meat that does not come from a (meta)human being . .

I'm saying that rule makes no sense. A dead metahuman has an Essence score of 0. Dead cloned metahuman flesh also has an Essence score of 0. Ghouls aren't getting any Essence from either source. Why, because it's dead. The living have Essence scores, the dead do not. If the rules say otherwise (without bothering to explain how and why), then I call BS.

As I happen to be on the "House Rules Committee" for our gaming group, I'm going to see this is corrected for our campaigns.

[hermit]

Tank meat and vat-grown meats have been a staple of Shadowrun for some time. However, producing them still is more expensive than producing soy products - and highly processed foods generally turn a better profit. It's not about viability - vertical farming is possible but it lacks the idiotic, emotional aspects of "real", blood and soil farming. Organic farming, while producing in no way healthier products (in fact, you could well raise plant according to organic principles in vertical factory farms), serves these emotional matters well, and therefore thrives despite being inefficient, polluting, land-intensive and expensive. It's not about viability, it's about marketing.

I mean, just look at the killing the real food industry makes off vegans and people who beileve special anti-allergenic food is somehow better! It gets even more amusing when you realize the same vegan hipsters who cheerfully accept "vegan cheese" and try to shove it down the throat of everyone they know are the same people who vehemently protested the "fake cheese" the food industry produced only a few years ago. It's literally the same product. Kudos to the lobyists, marketing and social media people who pulled this off.

For ideas on how futuristic tank meat could be used, see this excellent book.

[Sendaz]

Indeed, this is just strengthening my resolve to continue work on a new campaign setting - the Sixth World rebooted. It's 2016, the Awakening was December 21st, 2012. Up until that point, the world was exactly the world you see out your window. But on that day, magic came back and things changed. Now, it's 4 years later. There are no sovereign megacorporations, there is no matrix, and cybernetics are still very primitive. But there is magic, and a rapidly-changing world. What are you doing in that world?

That's what I'm working on now. A chance to start over, and wipe the slate clean of a lot of Shadowrun's dead wood.

A reboot may be interesting, but without some jumps in cyber isn't it basically just going to became Earthdawn 2016?

I mean magic will trump a hell of a lot of things, especially if the big ability boosts are only available through magic since there is no realistic cyber to compete with it, though their rarity will still serve as a bit of a limit on the global scale of things.

[Stahlseele]

*sigh*
Ghouls are Ghouls.
Ghouls eat CARRION/are CANNIBALS.
If you change that, they are NOT GHOULS anymore.
They are BLIND MAGICALLY ACTIVE HUMANS.

Seriously . . i have SUCH a raging Hateboner for people calling stuff UNREALISTIC! CHANGE PLOX! And then turning around and taking FRAGGING MAGIC the most unrealistic thing in the entire fragging setting and simply accepting it as a given fact!
If you want to play a REALISTIC SHADOWRUN . . . go play something else. Because shadowrun. IS. NOT. REALISTIC!
And it should not be!
I have made it a point to take character sheets of people away that complain about stuff being unrealistic and give them a normal human wageslave with all 2's in useless office skills and tell them to play their realistic character because of such whining.
A:"Realistically, there is NO WAY he should have done that!"
Me:"Don't care, rules say i can, and so i can. End of discussion!"
A:"But seriously, i don't think he should be able to do that."
Me:"Because breaking the fucking laws of physics with bullshit MAGIC is fine, but me doing something cool using cyber/bio etc. is suddenly unrealistic . . riight . ."
A:"MAGIC IS DIFFERENT! MAGIC SPECIFICALLY ALLOWS BREAKING PHYSICS! BIO AND CYBER HAVE TO BE REALISTIC!"
Me:"Cyber and Bio are STILL MORE REALISTIC THAN MAGIC! You want to play more realistic? Fine! Here is your useless wageslave, i will be playing a game where Gandalf has shootouts with Robocop and the Terminator in the mean time!"

[Sendaz]

For ideas on how futuristic tank meat could be used, see this excellent book.

No link?

They are BLIND MAGICALLY ACTIVE HUMANS.

So.... Umpires and Refs? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Stahlseele]

No link?


So.... Umpires and Refs? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

que?

[Sendaz]

Some say being able to actually see the ball is NOT a requirement to be an umpire in baseball or other sports. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Stahlseele]

Some say being able to actually see the ball is NOT a requirement to be an umpire in baseball or other sports. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

i don't know what an umpire is . . i guess ref is short for referee now that you mentioned sports?
the only not seeing the ball and still hitting it i remember is from star wars when luke is training . .

[JanessaVR]

A reboot may be interesting, but without some jumps in cyber isn't it basically just going to became Earthdawn 2016?

I mean magic will trump a hell of a lot of things, especially if the big ability boosts are only available through magic since there is no realistic cyber to compete with it, though their rarity will still serve as a bit of a limit on the global scale of things.

Well, in Earthdawn, the Scourge just happened. In Shadowrun, it hasn't happened yet. But it will, and some people are crazy enough to try to get an early start on things...

But yes, it will be primarily a "MagicRun" campaign. Probably more like Call of Cthulhu modern day meets the early Sixth World.

[hermit]

Indeed, this is just strengthening my resolve to continue work on a new campaign setting - the Sixth World rebooted. It's 2016, the Awakening was December 21st, 2012. Up until that point, the world was exactly the world you see out your window. But on that day, magic came back and things changed. Now, it's 4 years later. There are no sovereign megacorporations, there is no matrix, and cybernetics are still very primitive. But there is magic, and a rapidly-changing world. What are you doing in that world?

That sounds like Night's Black Agents of some stripe. It has neither Fantasy nor Cyberpunk. Hence, it is not
Shadowrun in the least. If you want the setting with more "realism", at least go a few decades forward and put all the Fantasy stuff in, and advance technology a bit. Otherwise, play a variation of Cthulhu Modern or Night's Black. No need to convert the Shadowrun system for such a setting (though it can be done, of course; I am playing a the Division themed game based on SR4).

i don't know what an umpire is

A Schiedsrichter in Cricket and the rules-lighter Cricket: Anarchy, commonly known as Baseball.

[JanessaVR]

*sigh*
Ghouls are Ghouls.
Ghouls eat CARRION/are CANNIBALS.
If you change that, they are NOT GHOULS anymore.
They are BLIND MAGICALLY ACTIVE HUMANS.

Seriously . . i have SUCH a raging Hateboner for people calling stuff UNREALISTIC! CHANGE PLOX! And then turning around and taking FRAGGING MAGIC the most unrealistic thing in the entire fragging setting and simply accepting it as a given fact!
If you want to play a REALISTIC SHADOWRUN . . . go play something else. Because shadowrun. IS. NOT. REALISTIC!
And it should not be!
I have made it a point to take character sheets of people away that complain about stuff being unrealistic and give them a normal human wageslave with all 2's in useless office skills and tell them to play their realistic character because of such whining.
A:"Realistically, there is NO WAY he should have done that!"
Me:"Don't care, rules say i can, and so i can. End of discussion!"
A:"But seriously, i don't think he should be able to do that."
Me:"Because breaking the fucking laws of physics with bullshit MAGIC is fine, but me doing something cool using cyber/bio etc. is suddenly unrealistic . . riight . ."
A:"MAGIC IS DIFFERENT! MAGIC SPECIFICALLY ALLOWS BREAKING PHYSICS! BIO AND CYBER HAVE TO BE REALISTIC!"
Me:"Cyber and Bio are STILL MORE REALISTIC THAN MAGIC! You want to play more realistic? Fine! Here is your useless wageslave, i will be playing a game where Gandalf has shootouts with Robocop and the Terminator in the mean time!"

Well, dump some ice water on your raging hateboner and chill out.

I personally like my games to make some degree of sense. And where they don’t – Snip! Scribble! Paste! – that’s what house rules are for. And if that’s how you treat your players, I can only be thankful I don’t game at your table.

You seem to be screaming a lot here lately. It’s Friday. Go have a drink. Chill a bit.

[Stahlseele]

That sounds like Night's Black Agents of some stripe. It has neither Fantasy nor Cyberpunk. Hence, it is not
Shadowrun in the least. If you want the setting with more "realism", at least go a few decades forward and put all the Fantasy stuff in, and advance technology a bit. Otherwise, play a variation of Cthulhu Modern or Night's Black. No need to convert the Shadowrun system for such a setting (though it can be done, of course; I am playing a the Division themed game based on SR4).


A Schiedsrichter in Cricket and the rules-lighter Cricket: Anarchy, commonly known as Baseball.

*blank stare* ah . .

[JanessaVR]

Tank meat and vat-grown meats have been a staple of Shadowrun for some time. However, producing them still is more expensive than producing soy products - and highly processed foods generally turn a better profit. It's not about viability - vertical farming is possible but it lacks the idiotic, emotional aspects of "real", blood and soil farming. Organic farming, while producing in no way healthier products (in fact, you could well raise plant according to organic principles in vertical factory farms), serves these emotional matters well, and therefore thrives despite being inefficient, polluting, land-intensive and expensive. It's not about viability, it's about marketing.

I mean, just look at the killing the real food industry makes off vegans and people who beileve special anti-allergenic food is somehow better! It gets even more amusing when you realize the same vegan hipsters who cheerfully accept "vegan cheese" and try to shove it down the throat of everyone they know are the same people who vehemently protested the "fake cheese" the food industry produced only a few years ago. It's literally the same product. Kudos to the lobyists, marketing and social media people who pulled this off.

For ideas on how futuristic tank meat could be used, see this excellent book.

You may have a very valid point. I could be vastly overestimating the intelligence of Joe and Jane Consumer, as yes, those RL examples have me banging my head on the wall.

[Beta]

You're missing my points completely.

After another 60 years of R&D, it won't be expensive anymore.

You don't know that. It could be that the engineering and bio-engineering has still failed to make it cheap -- or at least comparatively cheap to soy or krill, at any better quality/tastiness. Especially given that there have been various economic and humanitarian disasters in the SR universe which has its scientific and technological progress generally well behind the curve that we are seeing. (losing a fair chunk of the population, losing your computer infrastructures twice, goblinization, the disruption of things like the creation of the NAN, lack of funding for purely academic research .... )

If you want it to be a bigger part of your particular version of the world, then go for it -- it won't break anything. The poor eat 'vat food' in general including vat meat.

But of all the technologies to get upset about, that is an odd one.

[Sendaz]

i don't know what an umpire is . . i guess ref is short for referee now that you mentioned sports?
the only not seeing the ball and still hitting it i remember is from star wars when luke is training . .

Ah sorry, an umpire is what they call a referee in baseball, but even in basketball/football/soccer if the referee makes a bad call one of the common insults is that he must be blind.

So a whole race of actually blind individuals would be a perfect source for refs according to some. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[hermit]

You may have a very valid point. I could be vastly overestimating the intelligence of Joe and Jane Consumer, as yes, those RL examples have me banging my head on the wall.

That's how I rationalize it, at least. But thanks! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Plus, with a massive loss of arable land (Africa gone, the Midwest gone, Siberia gone, all the forests turning into magical nightmare monster factories) and a much more concentrated populace in general, and a loss of much of formerly arable land in Europe to global warming (East Anglia, half of Belgium and the Netherlands and much of Northern Germany are gone too), traditional farming just isn't as viable anymore. I do think there should be more light shed on the alternatives. Plus, processed food can be (and, in-setting, frequently is) considered cleaner (100% controlled conditions, as opposed to pollutand-laden free-range farming, also 100% pesticide-free), more efficient, and optimized for (meta)human consumtion (both it probably actually is), as opposed to natural produce. And processed component food (be it Soy, Krill, Mycoprotein, Bacteria, or Lupinus-based) is fully moddable and customizable to the user's desires, leading to impossibilities such as convincingly textured false meat with strawberry taste, in pink! And all that genetics and pesticide free (and optimized to whatever crazy diet fad is making the rounds - maybe capsacaines become the new sugar?). Try that with your farm potatos!

Even just with in vitro meat, you could do all kinds of crazy things (to the setting'S credits, most of these have been mentioned somewhere, but the setting's huge fluff background has never been properly colllected and thus is lost on new authors and gamers alike).

In all honesty, have a look at that book I linked if you can. It's full of really crazy ideas about in vitro meat. I'm particularly partial to the roast that grows whenever you excercise.

[JanessaVR]

That sounds like Night's Black Agents of some stripe. It has neither Fantasy nor Cyberpunk. Hence, it is not Shadowrun in the least. If you want the setting with more "realism", at least go a few decades forward and put all the Fantasy stuff in, and advance technology a bit. Otherwise, play a variation of Cthulhu Modern or Night's Black. No need to convert the Shadowrun system for such a setting (though it can be done, of course; I am playing a the Division themed game based on SR4).

Ok, I looked this up at DriveThruRPG. Seems to be focused on vampires in the shadows, pulling the strings of power; sounds kinda WoD actually. I might pick up a copy, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I'm not sure I'll need to do that much conversion of the existing rules. It's more like leaving out quite a bit of the future tech. But it's also a chance to explore a glossed-over period in the Sixth World's history. Big D's alive, and can still run for president. Do I include VITAS and then fast-forward past that, or have the players (maybe) live through it? Many ways to go with this idea...