Hi again!
First, if you read this, I want to thank the three of you who helped me with my rules questions – I didn’t want to bump the thread just to do that.
Now, for something new. My group has played D&D for a rather long time. Most of the players like having a setting that is as realistic as possible whithout changing the core precepts too much. (That lead, for example, to the conclusion that probably most D&D states would be ruled by mages or clerics, directly or indirectly). Now I looked at the Shadowrun setting and its core ideas. I tried to make the setting more similar to the real world while still keeping its main characteristics – cyberpunk, magic and megacorps. I would like to know what you think. Have I gone too far in any of the aspects I mention? Do you run a similar setting and have any proposals for things I didn’t think of? Or do you spot any mistakes in the changes I made, anything that isn’t realistic or no real improvement?

1. Extraterritoriality
It would take an exceedingly high amount of lobbying or force to convince a state to accept such a ruling – especially in an authoritarian nation like Russia. However, the catastrophes of the first decades of the 21st century opened up the possibility for the biggest of the biggest: through a joint effort, these companies achieved this extraordinary right. But soon after, they began to fight each other. In the following decades, only few corporations managed to become powerful enough to benefit one of the factions so much as to get their help in achieving the same right. Besides the big ten, there aren’t any corporations who were granted extraterritoriality – they simply don’t have the means to “convince� the nations they are working in, and the AAAs don’t trust them enough to support them.
2. Megaconglomerates
All of the AAA players are Conglomerates with interests in almost every industry – even some where absolutely no synergy exists: Why should an arms producer like Ares also try to enter the entertainment market, when other corporations are far better positioned there? In reality, on the Forbes 2000 list, there are only 2 conglomerates in the top 200: One of them (General Electric) on place 2, the second (didn’t bother to memorize the name) on place 186. I don’t think making more focused corps out of the cons would change the gaming experience too much: Yes, it would be harder to construct a viable adventure where an Ares exec orders you to B&E in a Horizon facility. On the other hand, lasting alliances between the AAAs would be more likely, in turn making extraterritoriality more sensible. An example from today: The US could deal with the Citigroup (huge financial assets, but few employees) easily, but dealing with the Citigroup and General Electric (huge financial assets + employees + real estate) at the same time would be twice as hard already.
3. Finances
If you look at the most influential firms of today, an awful lot of them have to do with finances etc. – and exert a lot of influence on other corporations. They work with investments… So we need an explanation why they allow Corporate Wars, which are not profitable if you have invested in both sides of the war. Take the Züricher Gemeinschaftsbank: When it lends money equivalent to the domestic product of some nations to Horizon and Aztech at the same time, it probably expects that this money is not wasted on a war against each other.
My solution: From the alliances that result from the proposed corporation structure, a new “political� structure is derived. Corporations fight against each other, and no one bank has enough available resources to force all of them to quit the fights. The solution: Only investing in one or two of the alliances – thus furthering the incentive for the megacorps to fight each other and/or to attack the investments of those banks that finance their opponents to weaken their position. This gives the smaller corporations a reason to enter the corporate wars, too: if I’m already attacked just because I go to the same moneylender as somebody else, I might as well enter the fray.
4. Why do they fight at all?
As they aren’t conglomerates, the corps wouldn’t share as many interests as the firms in the standard SR world. Fights could still occur, though: let’s say, SaederKrupp and Mitsuhama dominate the heavy industries. Fighting against 9 other huge corporations who share an oligolopoly with you isn’t very tempting. On the other hand, if there is only one single corp to defeat… Why wait till the market decides who’s better? And if you can ally with another giant who’s not in your core business, but left in a duopoly with your enemy in another area, all the better!
6. Why don’t the corporations own whole nations?
Well, in parts of the world, they do: Many African, Asian, eastern European and South American states are totally dependant on one of the factions. In the more industrialized nations, however, the statesmen worked hard to prevent this: Ironically, today only those nations who granted the members of more than one faction extraterritoriality have a shred of souvereignity left. They actually do benefit from the corporate wars, because it isn’t only bloody murder in their countries, but also real business competition, making life a little better for their citizens.
5. SINs
I think there would be very few people without one: Governments like control, even weak ones. The effect on the players would be minimal, it’s just a slightly different flavour.
6. Less public known faces
I realize it’s just a game, and we like things easy. But that’s not how the majority of corporations work: control of the Megacorps is in far too little hands. Take a look at the largest corporations of today: they are not controlled by few individuals, as most shadowrun megacorps are. This is unrealistic. Either a firm becomes a public corporation – then it wants to sell its stocks to get money. Or it doesn’t – then, in all likelihood, it will stay a small fish compared to the big players, but has the benefit of being under the control of its owner/s. Compare the size of Koch Industries, the US’ largest private owned corporation, with General electric: It’s a lot smaller. My idea: keep SaederKrupp and perhaps one of the others as a private corporation – a dragon with his genius level intelligence might be able to pull of this astounding feat, and the turbulent first decades of the century might explain the success of another. The others are owned by a multitude of investors. All the influential people still can have a lot of influence in their respective corporations, but not as directly as it’s the case right now. There should be far more uncertainty – CEO and maybe main 2 or 3 banks or investment funds with stakes as high as 5 to 10 % known, the rest of the facts unknown. People could still think that Buttercup has a whole lot of influence on what Evo does, but they wouldn’t know exactly how high this influence is: Can she change the CEO on a whim, or is it already hard for her to prevent the sale of important subdivisions?
7. Why does the war stay in the shadows?
Following VITAS and the Crash, even most industrialized states were in very weak positions. Since then, their strength partly has returned. They are in binding contracts with the AAAs, so they can’t really do anything against extraterritoriality, as much as they would want to – if they tried, the different corporate factions would have a reason to unite and to defend their right. On the other hand, if the megacorps started to do something outrageous, like openly attacking their opponents in the free countries, the nations of the worlds could unite to overthrow these parasites. No corporation wants to risk that, so the appearance of benevolence and usefulness must be kept – and war can only be fought in the shadows at most times.
8. Why is poverty abundant?
Of course, the above only applies to souvereign nations. In many parts of the world, real wars are fought between nations controlled by the different corporate factions. One result of these proxy wars is a severe lack of resources that is felt everywhere: the cost of living is high, leading to an outrageous level of poverty (and crime) despite the advances that have been made in all fields of science since the 2000s.

So, what do you think?

Best Regards,
Aharon

(Side note: It should be "Zürcher Gemeinschaftsbank". No native here says "Züricher" as an adjective.)

For some bizarre reason the corporations are totally incompetent and contract all their security to the Acme-Coyote company.

You can get away with gunning people down in the street and come back to do it tomorrow.

People in areas who are universally criminals and cannot actually get money live somehow.

Aharon... I have come to the point with Shadowrun fluff that I just push the "I Believe!!!!" button when it comes to every point you just made. Even then, I have to hold my nose when I try to accept concepts like the Aztec culture coming back, and the fact that Native Americans rebounded enough to take over large parts of the US.

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Edit: I meant to say I push the "I Believe!!!!" button with regards to Shadowrun fluff (DocTaotsu knew what I was meaning). You Aharon bring up a LOT of good points, but fitting it in might be a little tough.

My party has a troll that throws almost as many dice on damage resistance as a moderately armored vehicle. I have a person who can "subtly adjust his body language" such that people will give him their first born children. I have an Ork who can comfortably kill tanks with magic bullets and I've got a sociopathic mage who kills people with his mind.

Oh and Japan evidently took over the world at some point because everyone wears shitty japanese suits, speak japanese, and kowtows to the almighty Yen (which is actually kinda kicking our ass at the moment).

I fall in with KCKitsune: I BELIEVE!!! (As an aside I can deal with Aztec culture coming back much more readily than I can deal with the shattered remenants of the Native American Nations being able to comfortably occupy 1/3 of America. I'd have to pull statistics but jesus, there'd be like 4 people per former state. Maybe they were cloning themselves in vats?)

Due to my play style and the play style of my players it just wouldn't be as fun to run the game "realistically". If I can enjoy action flicks I can enjoy Shadowrun in all it's pink mohawk/Matrix Neo/20 dice troll glory . When I want to play some hard sci-fi I still have all my Blue Planet source books.

However, to your last point, we've had very rapid advances in technology over last 100 years and yet we still have glaring disparities between the rich and the poor. Disparities that are even more pronounced in developing nations with historically weak government. Since it sounds like virtually every government in 2070 is weak... I'm not at all suprised that there are scads of poor people who live slightly under the radar providing a cheap expendable labor force and filter feeder consumers. *points at Brazil* Seems to work for them... if you can say that.

Very valid points there, and I agree with the "believers" - alot of it is so out there that you just have to try to believe. If you and your players like to change some points to make the game more believable, feel free.

However I do think the game makes sense in some areas, and others I can accept without too much eye rolling.

NAN: Ok, this is by far the most silly, but it's a major aspect of the geography of the game and UCAS becomes too powerful without it. So yeah, it exist, but is mainly populated by caucasian, hispanics and blacks. Also note that pure blood NA are rear even among the leaders, but alot of people WANT to be NA and has registered themselves as such.

Aztlan: Well magic goes a long way, and it's not like pure blood Aztec suddenly rose up, these people are hispanics and partly Native Americans. The rebirth of Aztec blood magic seems natural with the rebirth of Magic.

Megas: I have no problems with Ares owning fishing companies and whatnot. Although the main companies and brances within the Mega are focused on arms and militairy equipment the smaller companies and subsidies are still specialized. It's not like the employees have no experience with the job they do, and at the higher levels in the corp it's all about finances anyway. It probably helps not to have a good education in corporate ecconomics to accept this at face value though.

Corporate War: In my book, it doesen't exist. What does exist is "healthy" competition and black ops. The Megas know that war is unprofitable, but corporate espionage must be profitable as long as they have enough deniable assets.. aha...! Shadowrunners! Since the Megas are at no risk being caught, it's a sin NOT to use espionage against competitors. And the way I see it it's seldom the top of megas that hires Shadowrunners, but rather minor execs in some branches that hires them in missions against rivals. Thus a small fishing company owned by ares could concievable hit an Aztec owned Seafood company if their interests collide. And probably without the board at Ares ever knowing about it.

SINs: Yeah everyone has it - that is a valuable member of society. The rest are issued criminal SINs when possible, but the cost at going around registering everyone after losing all data a few times just aint worth it. Human resources are cheap in SR, and the work 1000 SINless uneducated people can do pales in comparison to modern machinery, robotics etc. Educated and talented people, however, are highly prized sometimes enough to spend millions of nuyen abducting them from rivals.

Poverty etc.: It's a mad word - governments are weak, some have fallen completely. There has been war and chaos, crashes and plagues. Is it such a wonder that abject poverty and rampant crime exists? And no criminals don't die out as they are able to provide services and commodities just like other business entrepeneurs. Organized crime is alive and well and get their money from the general populace. Ok the Barrens is a hard place with little trade, but the gangs do prey upon normal society as well as eachother, and there do exist food producing facilities in the Barrens as well. Alot of people die there, but many are born as well and some are forced to live there. Some companies must sell food to the people in the Barrens, either to gangs directly or to elements of organized crime.

I think the Matrix Crash gives a plausible excuse for there being lots of SINless these days. I'm sure that most Sheeple are being reprocessed to convert their temporary emergency SIN into a fully registered corporate or Government SIN, but equally a lot of people who wanted to get out of the "system" will have the chance to do so.

Uh, yeah, well whenever you notice something like that … a shaman did it.

Shaman!

Actually, if you follow this link..

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/20...adioscript.html

You can see that, as noted in the above census document, native Americans are a huge presence in the US..
..Owning a large percentage of the building industry - who better to rebuild ??


If I remem right, most of the people joining the native American tribes in SR weren't native Americans..
..But people who wanted the native American life they imagined and had read about [like wanting to be a cowboy because you'd watched lots of Westerns].

The same for the Tir [I think]

Unless I read that wrong is says there are about 200,000 native Americans.

Last I checked there are close to 300 million Americans.

But you guys are right, I'm sure that they had a very effective marketing campaign to convince people to pick up NAN SINs. Plus there's that whole "We just got done blowing up every volcano in America" that tends to let people know who's in charge.

Well it's really more like four million self-reported American Indians and Alaska Natives, actually, according to census figures:

http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t18/tab001.pdf

(That includes Alaska but not Canada, which is globviously not part of the US).


Heh. I think also the NA who were in internment camps managed to escape the worst of VITAS, which killed off like a quarter of the world's population (I figure around 75 million in the US then, assuming it was sort of evenly distributed). So instead of 5 million out of 300 million, they became 5 million out of 225 million, roughly. Okay, still not a huge portion of the population I guess. Add in the fact that they were able to do magic years before everyone else, and that they have the power to make white people feel guilty just by shedding a tear at some stray garbage, and you got yourself a power grab on a huge scale.

EDIT: I think that was 200,000 Native American-owned businesses maybe?

Ah yeah, missed a key word in there.

Considering that prisons (and my extension internment camps) have high concentrations of people in less than ideal conditions I'd think they got hit by VITAS just like everyone else. Did the US government round up the Alaskan tribes though?

At any rate that's enough people to mostly fill up Los Angeles and therefore not a figure to sneeze at. You could also point out that they didn't exactly take over the most populated and desirable area in America. They sure did get a lot of mountains, plains, deserts, and not a whole lot of city.

I think the importance of lighting off the Ring of Fire can't be overstated Plus you could argue that the US was ready to balkanize at that point anyways and all it took was a couple of major events to push things over the edge.

Anyways there's enough wiggle room here that I am more than capable of punching my "I Believe!" button if only so I can chase down runners with Cmdr Susy Whupyoass. Which reminds of a guy I worked with named Bravebull who might very well by Chief Bravebull, USN by now.

I'd think diseases in general, but those that are already endemic in the population. VITAS was something new, and maybe it didn't spread into the relatively isolated camps. Or maybe that all that medicine (as in magic) worked against it. A couple of sources have lines like "ironically, the internment spared them the worst of the VITAS plague".

I'm sure the Alaskan tribes would be rounded up in the same way; also Canada had their own similar law. Very, very dark stuff, that.

Ah well if it's in the fluff than I'd run with it. To wit:

Shaman!

b1ffov3rfl0w, those are my opinions (remember the "I Believe!!!!" button). To myself, a lot of the fluff in Shadowrun doesn't make sense. Still is a fun game, just not "real enough". Also if a Nuke didn't work on those NA's then drop a MOAB or a FAE... cook them real well.

Um, since SR actively ignore most of the large tribes (ever hear of the Navajo? Not in SR I bet) in all the population figures there are not anywhere near to 4 million. Look up the Ute population on that doc, and laugh. And that is hardly the same as people on the tribal rolls, which is the most important element. If you are not on the tribal rolls you are not a member of the tribe, you are someone who says they are an Indian. You can't hold office, you can't own land on the res, you don't get money from the government or the tribes gambling concession etc. That's why that census doc has over a million people who cannot identify their tribe, because they are really not.

Shadowrun's key concept: Everyone's a fucker.

No seriously. Kind grandma down the street? She' a humanis member, and whenever she sees a Meta she calls the local boys to rough it up, then supplies their alibi by saying they were having milk and cookies with her. The guy in front of you at the stuffer shack? At night he cuts prostitutes at bunraku parlors and pays extra for it.

Human life is cheap, to the point where you sometimes question if it's economical to shoot people given the cost of a bullet. NO one gives a rats ass. You can sacrifice living people's hearts to extradimensional horrors, it can get out on live TV, and your stock will remain unaffected.

what this means is that, when a problem needs a solution, choose the one that has the least regard for human life, even if it's not the optimal one. For example, a recent thread talked about military investment in it's troops. Now several people who should know pointed out that theres a far greater return on investment to giving soldiers top level gear. Each person is valuable (if only because training can be expensive) and the cost of force multipliers like wired reflexes or sleep regulators is far lower than the cost of more people. It makes a lot of sense. But this is shadowrun, where hospitals decide on arrival if it's more profitable to bill you for service or cut you up for parts. Fuck that. The military recruits the urban poor with promises of SINs, slaps a gun in their hand, and throws them into the meat grinder.

Basically, image a society consisting completely of sociopaths, as if a virus spread across the planet and killed
everyone's empathy, and you'll have it about right.


Also, on the Native thing, some of those million are probably like my wife, who knows her father was a native american, but since He left before she was born and her Mother has withheld any kind of useful information, she can't find him to learn what tribe.

Without wanting to cause the usual war-of-words that most of my comments cause..
..The above is the sort of comment from someone who hasn't really read much about SR or cyberpunk, or many of the novels, or many of the scenarios.

The above is the attitude that many people have, because it fits into what THEY want the SR world to be..
..SR fiction, and cyberpunk fiction in general, rarely [if ever] paints the cyberpunk future this way.

Films like Bladerunner [generally taken as inspiration for cyberpunk] has violence, rain, poverty, ..
..But also has compassion, love and honour.

Neuromancer [also generally taken as the inspiration for cyberpunk] has violence, very dangerous characters, drugs, punishment..
..But also has friendship and morality

In fact, most cyberpunk fiction [which is the inspiration for SR, and CP] is full of people behaving in ways that aren't dependent on money and negative behaviour, and don't show the sort of world that many people appear to want SR to be.

Sure, the SR future a dark world, where corporations and other groups treat people and the environment badly, where millions of people are poor, where people indulge in quasi-legal activity [shadowruns]..
..But the fiction and [at least] some of the scenarios show people who do things for no reward or real benefit to themselves, people who have and maintain their ideals, bad people who do good things.

In fact, if anything, I feel the whole 'everyone in the world is bad' is being lazy - because it means not having to make people more realistic - they stay 2-dimensional and therefore easy targets.


50 years ago, people believed we'd have personal helicopters, eat food pills, wear shiny overalls and have fully automated houses..
..But that's not how it turned out [though, if you want to wear shiny suits in the comfort of your own home, that fine by me ]

SR is our world, and it's not much different to the one you read about in papers, watch on tv or walk through - people are people, corporations push the law where they can, people steal things, people kill other people, governments lie and abuse their power, people go to work, people get mugged, there are nice areas and there are areas to avoid, there are people who'd give you the shirt off their backs and there are people who'd kill you as soon as look at you

Most of what's in the comment above relates to the realworld, so isn't really anything special about SR.
But people do things differently, and the above is my view - not necessarily yours.

It also has humor. Either in the form of a well parsed one liner before getting blown up by a troll rocket bow or the subtle pleasures of a biodrone monkey knife fight.

Shadowrun is very much a work of fiction and as such it does and should be warped by what you bring to the table.

For myself I try run a combination of Snow Crash/Transmetropolitan + Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and just a dash of neo noir Neuromancer/Blade Runner to keep players from getting too big in their britches. I've offered players Baby Seal Eyes, harassed them with paint bomb wielding street kids, and burned down their precious ork underground in an epic act of Humanis funded terror.

So it's whatever, some people like to play and nihilist thriller and that's cool. It's just not my kink.