I've always liked the idea that in shadowrun, real food (as opposed to soy/krill/soylent green/nerps based multi-flavour, multi-texture, questionable nutrition goo food) is hard to come by, and very expensive. I rationalize this by saying that agriculture as we know it is being attacked on two fronts. The sixth world is rampantly polluted, and it's only mana and suspension of disbelief that keeps growing things growing at all. So on that hand, agriculture is tainted and made much less viable by pollution in it's various forms, such as some that we experience here in australia (due to overfarming, pollution and the drought), like rising salinity, starved riverbeds turning to sulphuric acid etc.

On the other hand, magic is back, and it's pissed. Of course, there's been some amazing renewals of rainforests and various threatened ecosystems, but it's a joke if that means that Joe farmer sees it as a boon. Stripping thousands of acres of land of trees to create grazing land isn't economically viable, and I'm betting mother awakening has picked up on that, and various nasty magical plagues and suspiciously inconvenient magical reforestation has created trouble for the ag-tech industry and it's daddy corporations. Not to mention that mother awakening probably doesn't really like GM foods and giant monocultures, and if she can't frag it up enough, the eco-terrorists have a problem with it too.

So in my games, if you live in the barrens, you've never eaten real food (and if you did, I doubt you lived to tell the tale [eg. plastic jungles]), and the lower classes don't get much better. The middle class (if one exists any more - let's just say for sake of argument this is the poor wageslaves who haven't fallen all the way to the barrens' societal trash heaps) - may go out for a wildly overpriced steak once a year. Even the higher classes don't eat it that regularly. Maybe a proper meal with meat and vegetables every month or week, depending on affluence. Of course, you get up here and nobody really minds, because they soy gloop has some decent textures and flavours, and I'm sure there's a Jamie Oliver style Orcish cook who stirs his soya-gloop with panache and a quaint accent. Once you get to the real tops of the socio-economic strata (Luxury lifestyle, anyone?) then you can eat real food every night.

Where is this rant going, I hear you ask (precognitive hearing), well I'll tell you, and stop being impatient. Real food is valuable. Just like there is many nebulous goods and services, favours and activities in our world that can be used to co-erce and exchange for other goods and services (Girlfriend, anyone?), organic produce (well, that's a stretch, but natural grown in the ground or in a cage/paddock) is a valuable thing, just like sex and to a lesser extent, legal tender.

So let's say you're a runner team with an average of low/middle lifestyles. You're haggling with a Johnson, and he won't budge past 50k. He played his money card too early, and the astute face knows he/she can get more, but this human resources executive slime/Resources adjuster has overstepped his boundary already. Your rep is solid and he needs the job done pronto, so he says "Look, my hands are tied, and 50k is all I can get you." and as the faces turn sour and the predators stir under coats, he says "However, as a gesture of good faith, I'm willing to part with enough organic pasture fed beef that you and your team will be eating steaks for the rest of the week". If this was the modern world, the real world, then a team of cut-throat criminals for hire would just laugh in his face. 50k could buy you a lot of good steak in today's market. However, this is shadowrun where we still use fossil fuels, and people take jets and helicopters from work to their favourite restaurant. This is Shadowrun, where mother earth is back, awake from her slumber, and she's kicking your arse and taking your name because she doesn't like you feeding herbivore livestock other livestock, and she doesn't like battery chickens and mcdonalds and genetically modified fish tomatoes. So a slab of steak could easily take up a whole chunk of that nuyen that you'd rather be spending on ammo and hookers, not to mention the resale value on a fine shank of meat like that. You take the steak.

But what do you do with steak once you're done? If your runners are opulent hedonists, then they can eat it and the GM can spend a game session telling them how goddamn tasty that juicy, tender steak is. Or they can sell it, and probably net at least a few thousand nuyen on resale. Or they can trade it for other goods and services. You want the access codes to the building? Sure, mr. scientist, we know you are an ethical proffesional and you can't be bought. But how about this juicy steak?" The local Don wants you wearing concrete slippers and taking a dip in the Sound? Offer him the shank as a token of good-will. "Fuhgeddaboudit, Jimmy, they bought you this beautiful piece'o'meat."

So take the steak, chummers. Take the steak.











You're still here? Anyway, what are some of the non-monetary payments you have given and received and traded, or would give and receive and trade, in the course of Shadowrunning in the 70's.

Guns, Ammo, Hookers, Drugs, Booze, Firetrucks...you know, the usual

Firetrucks?

If you can guess where I pulled it from, I got this nice shiny hunk o' karma for you

P.S. The order is not the same, and there is a bit more than necessary, but I think I got the spirit of the quote spot on

Of course, for streetlife that spend most of their life eating people-safe kibble or soy-food...
...Having real food would probably give them the squits, headaches, etc as their bodies have to deal with proper food.

And similar fun [well, fun for the Ref] for high-lifers living it rough, or having lost their high life.


In fact, I imagine that most trade might be done by barter away from the Corp Zones...
...So many services might be paid for with training, medical aid [Bear Shaman,anyone ??], bodyguard work, repairs, cooked meals, writing letters [assuming streetlifers are often illiterate, as many poor people are].

My current campaign has the runners working for the mob in Miami. They are up to their necks in debt, but while they never really get ahead much in paying their debts back, their high lifestyles are paid by the mob (which, of course, gets all kind of deals and so hasn't to spend the real costs the runners would have, but charges them anyway ).

Well, in a different Cyberpunk game, we once paid our "Landlord" in their Z-Zone equivilant, with a stolen reefer cube van filled with Soymilk.

In the Hardwired supplement, it explains that the original Panzerboys were named after butter smugglers who ran armoured cars across the Dutch-Belgian border in the face of Belgian tariffs on Dutch dairy products...
...Wow - I can see many, many adventure options [strange I never thought of things like this before]

Vintage hardcopy pornography... which quadruples in sale value in theocratic nation-states.