Shadowrun: Cyberpunk and what's next? Options

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[DarusGrey]

Yes, but my point is given the oppurtunity(via at least in SR, several major rulings and circumstances), it *is* profitable to a corporation to control people's lives, *especially* thier employees, who they get an immense ROI on in that situation.
Same reason most companies include health benefits and such to employees, it isn't directly profitable, but in the big picture it benefits the beast.

Fictional example:

you pay joe wage-slave $100,000 a year, we'll assume he maintains a standard 1-1.7 rate of return a fairly standard figure by today's standards at least(aka, for the $100,000 a year you pay joe, his work generates on average $170,000 for the company, gross, not net).

He lives in corp housing, eats corp food, shops at the corporate store, etc.

Lets assume he spends 100% of his income and relies on some corporate 401k for his retirement.

$80,000(80% I previously stated, probly lowball) a year he spends on corp produced goods/services.

Most retail products/services maintian a 4:1 profit to cost ratio for retail, and the same for manufacturering (it costs $5 to make, you sell it to walmart for $20, who in turn sells is to you, the consumer, for $80).

Since hes spending his 80% on corp goods/services from the corp, they get the very good 16:1 return, maybe %10 off for some employee discount plan or something, but won't confuse the math at this point for that.

So, if the $100,000 a year they pay joe , he returns $70,000 to the company in productivity, *and* 75,000 a year in profits off sales.

Meaning the company is in reality paying him absolutley nothing to do his job.

Services like garbage pickup ($15 per week), water ($30/w), administrative($100 annual), security ($3,000 annual) even if the corporation paid for his housing a bills ($1200/m)(though this is unlikley..plus sourcebooks mention they give the housing at discounted rates in the few examples).

These costs are far over-exceeded by the money joe brings back into the fold by being under the corp's thumb.

If joe was "outside the fold" then its likley only about 30% or less of his income might see its way back to the corporation.

Again, if given the option, it is *very* much in the corporations interest to basically run people's lives, like many things, theres no direct profit, but any aspiring accountant can easily figure out this would be a huge profit getter as standard policy ;>.

(I'm pretty sure my costs are mostly accurate based on current RL costs, though I can't account for the vast volume and such a AAA corp could in theory use to affect the numbers, chances are they're very over-stated in this scenario, as well as the fact that said corp only has to pay cost(+oppurtunity) for services/goods it creates in the application of living condition maintenance).

[Paul]

[Paul]

Okay I ca't figure out why my post is fuxxored.

[mfb]

you have to note who's being quoted. {quote=mfb}blah blah.{/quote} replace the {} with [], obviously.

[Nath]

Nah, you don't need to specify a name. I think it's only because he mispelled on that one, at the beginning:

"[QOUTE]And yeah, I agree that SR is growing up and that it's a good thing, and that the players should struggle less with Shadowrun's moving away from cyberpunk ideals and focus more on what Shadowrun should be from here. [/QUOTE] "

[Demonseed Elite]

Paul, you're interpreting some of my opinions too far. I don't have anyone in my games interact with Damien Knight or Lofwyr or anything. They never get that close. But in the game world, when a megacorporation does something now, it's usually attributed to a personality. Damien Knight is going for this, or Lofwyr wants that. It's not very faceless. The corporations seem to have distinct faces more than just "Ares."

And the relationship between man and technology is still immensely important, just different. In the game world of Shadowrun, people seem less alienated and dehumanized by technology and more adept at working technology into humanity or adapting humanity to technology in a synergystic fashion. Which reflects our current real life views about technology and how they have changed since the 80s. In the 80s, America was losing jobs to Japanese zaibatsus and was worried about acid rain and greenhouse effect from industrial pollution. That went to American dot-commers living it up and a cellphone, iPod, and hybrid car for every man, woman, and child. We've come to accept, even shape, our relationship with technology. If there's an underlying anxiety now, it's in extremist and fundamentalist groups utilizing our technological society against us in terrorism. Which has crept into Shadowrun in interesting ways (what is the Renraku Arcology situation if not an originally-optimistic technological infrastructure being usurped by fanatics?).

Personal views about religion aside, Shadowrun has never stressed a dehumanizing factor in magic. Pretty much the opposite, with its focus on neo-tribalism or the integration of mages into society through corporations. There's a whole lotta communal activity in Shadowrun magic, from an economy of traded foci and formulae, to magical initiatory groups, to a shaman communing with their totem.

[hahnsoo]

[Demonseed Elite]

[hahnsoo]

[Garland]

I think magic can be a little dehumanising, on the shamanic side of things. You've got people striving to emulate their totem, be it Snake, Crab, Fenrir, etc. Some of these totems can lead to some pretty bizarre people, especially if things get played up. And then there are toxic shamans...

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

They strive to live up to the principles of their totems, not emulate them.

[Rev]

Company towns have existed, and do exist now. Places where the corporation owns the land, the houses, the furniture, everyone works for the corporation, etc. Throw in a company controlled pension you loose if you quit and the corporation might as well own the person after a couple decades.

I actually find the snow crash style of things more plausible than the company town model, and very compatible with the old feeling of shadowrun. People living prepackaged lifestyles in corporate owned neighborhoods. This is actually a reasonably large business for disney today. They have at least a few such "towns" where people are living their whole lives in the disney bubble. The big trend in malls today is supposedly the "town center" which is physically modeled after a real small downtown, but without the civil rights and with a bunch of huge parking lots next-door. Throw in a bunch of cross promotion, incentives, etc then transfer the tribalism many americans today feel about thier government to their corporation and it is very easy to see a large swath of people interacting primarily with one corporation. I knew quite a few people who were ridiculously loving of thier corporations during the 90's when they all expected to get rich from them. Sheesh talk to somebody who works at microsoft for years (not somebody who leaves, somebody who stays), it can get extreemly creepy.

[Paul]

[mfb]

[Garland]

[Wireknight]

I wrote a section for SOTA:2063 on health spells' applications into genetic engineering and bioware, as well as the engineering of certain Awakened traits, under the catch-all term "Magenics". This was stated as a push toward the more biotech(rather than cybertech, though not in exclusion of) friendly idea of post-Cyberpunk, which I think Shadowrun has a unique path towards, vis-a-vis its integration of magic and technology. I am a fan of certain cyberpunk authors' works, and the genre itself, but having read a few post-Cyberpunk novels, such as The Diamond Age and Transmetropolitan, and been very impressed, I am of the mind that Shadowrun has the means (see above) and the drive to evolve a bit into the post-Cyberpunk genre/era.

Cyberpunk was a product of the 1980's, a time when the Japanese were producing the absolute cutting edge of technology, Japanese corporations were overtaking markets where American interests had prior flourished, glass and chrome corporate culture was at an alltime peak, computer technology for the home user was a new and innovative concept, and biotechnology was a futuristic bogeyman that rarely made the headlines. Greed was good and the idea of genetically engineered or nanotech-augmented humanity had by and large not been considered. It turns out that the Japanese didn't take over the global economy, information systems integrated with, rather than mutating, culture and society, and cocaine-snorting men in five thousand dollar suits with cellphones the size of small cars ceased to be the apex of corporate haute couture. It was a different time, and a different mindset. Some of its predictions were true, others proved as vacuous as the idea that we'd all be in flying cars and living on the moon by the year 2000.

Post-cyberpunk is a more organic, yet equally fantastic and high-tech, vision of the future. There's still cyberware, because in the end metal just plain outperforms meat in certain fields. There is more emphasis on bioware, on genetech, and on nanotech. That this evolution, in Shadowrun, occurs simultaneous to the presence of magic, grants Shadowrun the opportunity that no other game has, insofar as evolving into a unique and intriguing Awakened post-Cyberpunk world. When I'm not attempting to get certain existing rules ratified for sanity's sake, I'm working on ideas along this thread. I'll probably continue attempting to submit my ideas for Magenics as opportunity arises. I think Shadowrun, like all other things, should be an evolving work-in-progress. Fantasy is eternal, based on cultural myth more than current culture, so D&D, while stable, is also less capable of any form of novel evolution. Shadowrun, on the other hand, has great evolutionary opportunity.

But that's just my opinion. I think it's a pretty solid one, but in the end it's most important that a game evolve in tune with the beliefs of its players, more than the beliefs of one crackpot writer, or one freelancer, or one production line manager.

[3278]

[Paul]

[Demonseed Elite]

[mfb]

[Wireknight]

Heh, it's the post-Cyberpunk theme and ideas, not the actual world, that I found inspiring in Transmet. I don't think anyone capable of making an RPG that simulated the world of Transmetropolitan would also be capable of being allowed to wander about unmedicated and unrestrained.

[mfb]

they let neal stephenson roam the streets...

[Cynic project]

Tell ya what you get bioware that you can make in a day,and then have it be stable,I will then say cyberware is gone.

But the facts simple, that once you get the resources to build cyberware, you can do so at speed and in numbers. Bioware on the other hand well.

Now as for a little trick, we live in a world with less care about other people. We live in areas where we do not know who lives next to us, or care what happens down the street. We live in a world where tens of people are killed each day. We do not blink. Yet we spend months of our times when a rich black guy, or some random white guy kills his wife? We live in a world that will have you pay for the honor of being a walking add and have you think it is cool.