As GMs, it's our job to create and describe to players the Shadowrun universe. Very often, that entails making maps for buildings and describing the layout to the players. Map making is a challenge - it calls on the GM to suddenly become an architect. We start our maps, knowing the important rooms we will need - the labs, the server rooms, etc. Then we start thinking about restrooms, cafeterais, etc - all the little details that re not necessary to the adventure, but that any building, in reality, must have.

What we end up, most of the time, is a highly utilitarian building. A place for everything and everything having its place. When designing our buildings, most of us will have in mind the security of the building, and its function. "If this were a real building", we think, "then it would make sense tht this room have quick access to that room" and etc.

This is our curse! Our analytical minds. What of style over substance?! Think about Blade Runner, and your assorted other Cyberpunk movies. Cyberpunk, this vision of a future of ours, is actually strongly characterised by certain architectural movements, namely Futurism, Art Deco and Construtivism.

Let's look at some pictures (yay!). Frst, some shot from Blade Runner:Pic 1, Pic 2

Next, some images from one of the leading Futurists (of his tme), Sant'Elia: Pic 3, Pic 4, Pic 5, Pic 6, Pic 7, Pic 8

Finally, Art Deco is that cool 1920s look. If you've played the game Bioshock, then that whole style is Art Deco. Here's a little extract from Wikipedia describing some key elements of Art Deco:

The same wikipedia page has some great picture examples.

Finally, this excellent little site shows of a half dozen excellent pictures of future city architecture. From the site:


So what is my point? Shadowrun should allow us to imagine and inhabit the world we create with structures that are imaginative as well as functionnal. While everything may have it's place, there does not need to be a place for everything. The can be MORE place than is strictly required. There can be rooms that make no sense, corridors that are not efficient. I look at these picture and I think "How cool it would be to be there". How cool it would be to be the street samurai ninja hiding behind a spire or grating, running from security on those hanging walkways, etc.

Hopefully these images can inspire you to inject a little superfluous style into your games. Not everything has to make perfect sense and be the most efficient solution. I encourage you to Google yourself some Art Deco, Futurism, Contructivism and etc inspiration.

Architecture is probably the single biggest inspiration when I write Shadowrun material. Which is probably why I enjoy working on the sprawl books most. I had a blast writing Hong Kong, and I really enjoyed imagining the extremes of architecture, from the miles-long Splendid Dragon Path to the Ikon Tower to the Kowloon Walled City.

It shows, DSE. Mostly because you did things exactly in line with what I'd done in HK in a game two years prior, and we were working from what appears to be a similar style basis.

I know as a GM, I love to design maps of buildings. It can take a lot of time and planning and effort, but in the end it's all worth it. Even if your team only explored 10% of the map space.

So,I had something incredibly insightful and witty to post here. However I got side tracked and ended up reading Backgammon's short story"Mind Benders".

Now I have not idea what I was going to write. I am in a state of awe...

The story's descriptive backdrop is incredible and, as a writer,leaves me humbled and driven to improve my own work.

Thank you.

which kind of proves the whole point of your post...

I'll second that it shows. When you wrote, for Manhattan,
(bold mine)
I thought that was amazing. That was exactly what I wanted to hear. A simple little line, but it said so much. It said "yes, manhattan looks as cool as you can dream it is". Roaring 20s meets high tech crime. That's why you are my favourite SR author. I'm your little fanboy if you can't tell




Thanks!

Hah, thanks!

There is a lot more on that topic that I want to cover for Manhattan, and will cover, but I didn't have room there. The modernist and art deco architecture in Manhattan is what gives the city so much of its flavor and I did not want the Quake of '05 to erase that. Instead, when the corps rebuilt, they embraced it. After all, modernism and art deco were celebrations of industry and innovation, it makes sense for the megacorporations to champion that.

Retro-futurism is pretty much the coolest -- plus it's making me think about the flavor of game in a different way, maybe moving past the 1980s Japan-rules-the-world neon and chrome sort of thing, which always makes me think of Nagel prints at shopping malls.

Now how do you describe that in a text-only game? Or if you're just a terrible artist?

...I particularly have a love of the Art Deco era (did some prelim work for a highly stylised comic idea that was set in an alternate present where Deco is back). Also very enamoured with the "modern" industrial look of the late 30s through mid 50s (use of glass block, "streamlined" corners & accents, etc). I particularly liked the architecture in the first Batman film. This had a combination of several favourite elements including very good dark neo-retro industrial look to it with Art Deco accents. Another architectural "look" that I thought was pretty good was from The Shadow.

Demonseed Elite: Please say that Carnegie Hall, the Chrysler Building, and St Pat's are still there (along with St John/Riverside cathedrals, Penn Station, Brownstones...).

Many of those are still around, yes. The Chrysler Building was heavily damaged in the Quake, but was rebuilt/restored. Many brownstones in Harlem were destroyed (the epicenter of the Quake was in Harlem), but there are still many that remain in Manhattan.

Thank you for bringing up the topic of style! As a graphic designer I love making maps, logos, doctoring photos in Photoshop and have even designed a tattoo for a player's runner (the character is an ork who was at one point in his past a member of the Sons of Sauron... that was a fun one). Along with visual style, there's also auditory. With my game sessions, when a group of runners enters an entertainment spot like a bar or nightclub I put on an appropriate music CD to add a bit of audio ambiance. For example, Barry Adamson's Oedipus Schmoedipus album for Matchsticks in Seattle or the Hacker's soundtrack for The Cathode Glow. During the intro Food Fight encounter at the Stuffer Shack I threw on an instrumental version of Girl From Ipanema and had it run on a constant loop just to add that bit of surreal to the gunfight-in-a-convenience-store. Typically I stay away from well-known music artists and go for the oddball indie musicians or the jazz/punk/hip-hop/industrial/fusion artists (Deltron 3030, RL Burnside, etc.) so my players don't get pulled out of the game. I don't want anything too familiar and I want it to be appropriately "future-y" but not unrecognizable.

...for decker and techno junkie hangouts I used to use music by Larry Fast (his Synergy series). Particularly from his Sequencer, Metropolitan Suite, Chords, and Audion albums.

I like functionality and thats what I see the SR world as implementing, AR can depict style and asthetics, which can change regularly, but the actual floorplan would be designed with efficiency in mind and I try to make my floorplans as realistic as possible. I would rather design the whole building and have the runners stick to 1 area, than only design a portion and the runners need more space.

with the advances in AR technology, and the fact that the majority of the population uses it on a daily basis, I would see unpainted drywall being quite standard in office buildings as the AR system would be able to represent it however the user wants.

of course, older buildings that predate AR would be styled physically and would have a more retro look and feel because of that, which may be updated through AR.

Sorry, backing up here a bit. Take a look at DC Comic's Starman book from the late 90s/early 00s. The setting, Opal City, is pretty close, visually, to what's been described. Dean Motter's Mister X and Terminal City are both good sources as well. Here's a link: deanmotter.com. It's a toned down 1920s Buck Rogers/German Expressionism retro-future look. Which I think is pretty darned cool. Not every Shadowrun city has to look like Blade Runner or Black Rain.