Joel, om det är du därute; bäst att du slutar läsa här//

This post will be edited continuely as I get new ideas.

My idea for this campaign is to provide my players with a setting that is more small time than Seattle, so that they can be allowed to make mistakes without risking pissing off any of the big boys. I also want to explore the countryside more than I normaly do. I feel that a lot of central concepts of the game usualy get left out most of the time. I want to develop a setting were the native american influences and the fantasy elements are more accentuated than they usualy are in my Seattle based campaigns.

When I say I want to accentuate fantasy elements, I don't mean I want to increase them. In fact, I don't intend this to be a high fantasy campaign at all. The characters will be small-time gangers. Even though some of them will be magicly active, none of them will be "trinked out" in any fasion. I've encouraged well rounded characters. As a result they will be next to chanceless against most awakened beasts, so this will not be a monster-killing campaign. The idea is that the threat of the awakened nature should be looming over them. In addition to corporate and syndicate threats off course.

I chose Spokane by chance. I wanted to set this in Salish-Shidhe, because that makes it natural to move on to Seattle when they're ready. It's also been the mysterious neighbor for a long time, and I'm curious to explore their perspective.


What is known from SoNA
Only that Spokane is home to Kyuusei Medical. The Red Lotus smuggle drugs made by Kyuusei to Vancouver, which means the triad propably has a strong presence in Spokane.


What little I have gathered from the net
The town is in a beutiful mountainous woodland area, by the banks of Spokane river. It is by the looks of it a pretty neat place in present day. It used to be the site of an indian city before the settlers came. The Spokane tribe was part of the Salish tribal group, or whatever. So I'm thinking the Salish tribe would have layed claims to the city in Shadowrun.

I've gathered a lot of information about city districts and viewed a lot of maps. It's all very sugar sweet and promotional off course, but what could one expect? The city could be devided into three parts; North Hill, Downtown and South Hill. South Hill is easier to get info on for some reason, and the districts there has cool names like Rockwood, Moran Prairie and Latah Creek, so I will focus on that part of town.


What I've come up with for Shadows of Spokane (lol)
When Salish-Shidhe was formed, the city lost most of it's population. This left most of the outlying areas empty. The only parts of the town that was still populated was the downtown areas along the river and Route 90. South Hill's prosperous inhabitants were all deported after the treaty was signed, and the new tribal citizens of Spokane prefered to stay together rather than spread out in suburbal areas—no matter how nice the housing was. As a result, the suburbal idyll with it's many beutiful parks was reclaimed by nature.

In time, Salish-Shidhe's liberal immigration laws made the population rise again. But the new citizens would not be allowed the same privilages as the core native inhabitants. Lot's of people fell through the cracks of sociaty. These people would flock to bigger cities like Vancouver and Spokane, and lay claim to the areas left to decay in the days of depopulation. But in Spokane at least, these areas had largely converted into wilderness. Letah Creek had turned into a swamp-like river bed, poluted and thick with roaming barghests and devil rats. What little buildings there used to be in the Moran Prairie-area had been over grown by hemrocks and tall grass, or trampled to the ground by flocks of buffalo. Brownes Mountain had become home to many sasquatch and a tribe of pinkskins, thought there were rumors of darker things.

Never the less, before long the most urban parts of Rockwood, Lincoln Hights and Comstock was turned into the South Hill Barrens. A society ruled, governed and protected by gangs. Surrounded by the vigorous and unforgiving awakened nature to the west, south and east, and the stern and unwelcoming mainstream society to the north. In a wide belt on both sides of Spokane river, all the way from Peaceful Valley, through Downtown Spokane and Spokane Valley, and ending with Coeur D'Alene—there was now the gleaming outline of a modern metroplex. In the confines of it's steel and glass structures, corporate employees, tribal elders, their families and other fortunates lived their lives in safety and abundance. Further north lay the Northside Barrens. Not much of it was populated at all anymore. Some corporate facilities had popped up here and there, and a large, scavengous go-gang would plague the stretch of highway running through the wasteland. The flat valley floor of Spokane Valley had become the site of a huge modern residential area for the city's blue collar work force—and also held a lot of factories. Coeur D'Alene would draw a lot of tourists to it's well planned, luxurious seaside hotells, resturants and entertainment districts. As well as provide some of the most exclusive homes in Salish-Shidhe for the richest of the rich.

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The downtown areas will be very modern and safe, and so the characters will almost never get to go there at first. The biggest players in town are: Kyuusei Medical, who off course are up to no good. And the Red Lotus triad, who all the gangs give percentage. None of the gangs in town have any real connections worth a damn eccept for the Red Lotus. The gangs are mostly focused on survival, and killing eachother for turf. They run a few local rackets, but the people they shake down genuinly needs their protection, so it's actually kind of fair.

The setting will have a feel of American suburbia. Everyone lives in a house with a garden (though extremely run down), in spread out residential areas with woodland areas in between. As a result everyone has a car. The parks have all been turned into wilderness off course, so you have to look out for hell hounds on your walk home.


In the past, my players have messed up alot. They're good roleplayers, but they're not good criminals. With this setting, they will be the small fish they really are. I'm sure that they will eventually outgrow this pond, tough.

Hi, I live really close to Spokane and have vistited it numerous times. I will read your post in more detail and post about it in a little bit when I have some time.

Cool. Though I have a feeling I wont want it to be too much like in the real world, it'd be nice to have the most glaring inconsistancies pointed out.

Having grown up in spokane also, I can try and make some points as well.

It would not be a far fetched idea to create a Spokane-SpokaneValley-Cour D'Alene Sprawl.

The "rundown suburbia" is frighteningly close to real life. Especially on the north side and in the Spokane Valley.

The south hill tends to be the richer area of town, the largest and nicest houses are on that area. You can expect the execs to be living up there for the most part.

Spokane currently has a lot of industry (it got most of its start in logging), and because it sits in the end of a valley, it has a smoggy haze over it almost all the time (especially in summer).

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to help as much as I can.

The Sasquatch Festival
I was browsing for things to inspire me about this setting when I hit a real gold nugget: They actually have something called The Sasquatch Festival in a small town called George close to Spokane. It's a fairly large rock festival, and there's a few great things about it: It's in a place called "The Gorge in George", and there's a stage called "The Wookie Stage". This is great, and I will have to base a scenario on it. The characters will be just the kind of people to attend a rock festival. It's perfect for a NAN country to have this kind of event. The sasquatch of Shadowrun are perfect for this kind of event. Setting a roleplaying adventure in a rock festival, in Shadowrun, with real sasquatch on scene, and gang rivalry in the crowd, is perfect.

the Gorge amphitheatre is about half way between seattle and spokane, just to let you know. But that does sound like an awesome scenario!

I'll second what Mr. Rabbit said.

The sprawl idea between COEUR D'ALENE and Spokane is extremely probable in 2070, likely even.

In all seriousness, Spokane or Spokompton as we refer to it, really is a slumlord town. There are some nice places on the South Hill but even those places aren't all that nice compared to someplace like Seattle. Likely it will have a sort of "outpost" mentality or "boom and bust" type atmosphere where the lows are very low and most of the sprawl is barely making it and can't get out, while the few that are high on the hog are corrupt corp officials.

As far as nieghborhoods go the richer people would probably live downtown where they can stay in controlled arcologys or corp communities where they can be safe in a relatively nice downtown but stil with high crime and a high homeless/SINless population.

Overall though it is a slummy, dirty city I would never live there personally.

Spokane Valley would be slums and industry I recon. Coeur D'Alene is like no7 on the list of areas were prices are going up the most in the US, while Spokane is on no54 (in 2005). Does that mean Coeur D'Alene is nicer?

I think I will hold on to the ideas about South Hill. I think rich people will want to keep close to their corporate masters, and the blue collar folks will want newly built, conform housing areas. In accordence with the model other cities have changed after; Spokane will become a metroplex, were the city central grows to accomodate more people, separating corporately affiliated and influential people from the trash that lives around them. The outlying areas on the other hand, will become more sparsely populated and less cared for.

I've been as far as cour'd alane (can't ver write that correctly) and I've never thought of it in Shadowrun terms....this is going to be weird...

Could someone write with english phonetics approximately how 'Coeur D'Alene' should be pronounced?

Thanks. Now all I have to do is make up the details about different gangs and NPC's.

Though I didn't mention it, I'd already planned for northside to be barrens too. Though the gangs there would be more of the go-gang type, ruling over highway 291.

I'm wondering were the triad should have their base. If they rule all the crime they need more than experience. They need lots of chinamen to run their operation. So there should be a chinatown. Now were would that be?

When I get on my home PC I'll point it out to you on a street map. There isn't a chinatown per se but I know an area that is as close as you will probably get.

Oh, thanks! I'd appreciate that.

If you live on the Seattle side of the mountains (as I do), the shift over to Spokanistan (Spokies can call it Spokompton as much as they want, it's Spokanistan over here ) is pretty severe. Seattle gets maybe one day of snow a year, if we're lucky, and that's rarely more than an inch deep. It will often be near freezing or slightly below it for weeks at a time in the winter, but no snow. We have 270 days a year of clouds, drizzle (which most places wouldn't recognize as being "rain" per se, it's just a soft misting of little drops off and on, all day), and occasionally some actual heavy rain, and then the summer is usually about 3 months straight of sunlight with the occasional cloudy/stormy day, your average temperature running 75-85 degrees for the bulk of the summer.

Spokane, on the other hand, is east of the mountains and therefore in a totally different climate zone. The height of the mountains forces a lot of rain to fall west of the mountains before the jetstream pushes that part of the atmosphere over into eastern Washington, and so once you're past the mountains it's *much* drier, and has a much larger range of temperatures (it reminds me a lot more of the east coast, except drier). Winter out there has an awful lot of snow, which sticks because of the cold and can be there for weeks at a time. Spring and fall seem really short, and have some rain, but the summers are long and dry, too. Most of the surrounding terrain is rolling hills and some rocky outcroppings, and there's really not a lot of trees... mostly open farmland or the occasional small scrub forest (skinny, brittle looking trees maybe 30 feet tall, nothing like the temperate rainforests you get on the west side of the mountains).

Whenever I go out there, I get a scratchy throat and I dehydrate (right to the "irritable and headaches" stage) if I'm not careful about it. If there's a windstorm after a long dry spell, or if I'm downwind of the industrial parts of Spokane, I'll occasionally cough up the red dusty crap (a mix of earth dust and industrial exhaust) that seems to perpetually be on everything in the area, building up over time. If you head south of Spokane into Oregon, it's worth noting that the terrain doesn't change much beyond the dirt getting a lot drier and lighter, but they consider it to be "high desert" there. The drive out there takes about 5 hours (4 if you do the speed everyone else is doing, rather than the 70 MPH speed limit) and while it's gorgeous, it's also monotonous... only time I've ever nearly fallen asleep at the wheel was driving out there.

If your runners are born and bred in Seattle, they're going to be somewhat unpleasantly surprised by Spokane. If they're from there, well, they're used to it.

Such an awesomely gritty post. I r impressed.

Shrike30: Much appreciated! That post helps a ton, thanks! (I'm going to have the awakened version of the natural environment be a bit more imposing than the rural, rolling hills you discribe though )

SL James: I'm honored to be on the receiving end of one of your few non-evil posts . Thanks mate.

I've been out to Spokane more than a few times, so here's my two bits:

North and the Valley are only a few steps away from being Barrens in real life. They mostly consist of low-rent shops and cheap apartments. Sprague, for example, is mostly cheap strip malls and payday loan shops. It's not as densely packed as most cities are-- definitely less dense than LA, for example. With no natural borders, the town and outlying areas just tend to spread.

South Hill isn't home to a lot of million-dollar mansions. Sure, the rich live in that area, but rich in Spokane terms isn't anything near rich in Microsoft terms. What you see is equivalent to upper-middle class anywhere else. The really wealthy don't even live in town, they live in nice little resort areas-- I know a few wealthy people who live out by Liberty Lake, for example. If you want to make everything short of downtown Barrens, that would work out; but in all honesty, South Hill would probably have been claimed by the Salish as corporate housing.