I am thinking of starting up another group a Shadowrunners with my players, but in a different city/country. I’m wondering what cities/countries other people are playing in. And what do you like/dislike about those other cities/countries.

We play in Miami - modified to our taste. I like it since it's close to the Caribbean, and has strong Mafia/Houngan/Pirate themes. Also, the classic armored duster and other armor clothes tend to be less used in the heat, and stand out more.

Hong Kong's always fun, but my personal favorite will ALWAYS be Istanbul. Info on both is in Runner Havens.

Again, Baltimore. Major port city (probably the biggest in the UCAS at this point), right next to DeeCee and the CAS, but still independent of each, full of poverty and crime (it's been in the top 15 murder capitals on and off for the past 5 years) but flush with cash from DeeCee buying so much of Maryland. Lots of mafia connections, tons of corporations investing there, quite wired, but still struggling with pollution and extreme poverty.

Kind of annoyed that I live in Boston, but there are almost no details on the city in the SR fluff or rules.

Why would ou want to play in boston. Thats where the second crash happened so most likely its a ghost town.

I'm pretty sure that Boston fared no worse than any of the other major cities. Besides they rebuilt NYC, and the crash was nowhere near as bad as that (infrastructure wise). NEONet still has thier world HQ in Boston, so it can't be that bad.

Besides the ruins of an ex-major city with access to a major port would be a great place to set a campaign. I just need the time to flesh out the entire city and surrounding area and that will take close to a year.

We once tried a campaign in Omaha, our hometown, but just like in 2008(2003), Omaha is boring as crap in 2070(2056).

I was surprised (pleasantly) to see Hong Kong covered so in-depth in Runner Havens. Having been there (but never having been to Seattle) it struck me as an ideal place for this setting.

New York. Where most of us are from. we didn't bother with the whole 'pass' thing but beyond the great urban stuff there's water-lots of rivers andbays and with westchester county just to the north gives park like areas and woodlands,

Long island gives beaches, The meadowlands swamps and industrial crap.

Bookwise, I'm to understand that Target: North America, Corporate Download and another book (can't remember which one, starts with Corporate also, IIRC) cover Boston to something resembling a degree.

Myself, I'm working on sketching out Boston. There is a *ton* of good fluff around here. We have a Dragon Children creche. We had a Universal Brotherhood chapterhouse (and again, IIRC, we also had a bug hive explosion on Bug Day, but apparently that was contained). Two Echo Mirage members lived here long enough to create home cyberdecks. Patient X (Emergence) went to school here. There's a lot of great stuff.

I'm a slow worker though, so I've only got scant notes at the moment. But I've got Whitey Bulger, his gang, a loose Mafia presence, Chinatown half submerged, a Boston Underground, a couple of fixers, a few hacker groups (and a technomancer guild) faction warfare in Salem, MA...Always interested to share.

And now that I'm writing a one-shot game in Hawaii, I want to run there...

I seem to remmeber osmeone did a write up on Boston but I can't remember if it was cannonical or Kage.

I hope it wasn't the one that I found where they decided the Boston sprawl extended from the Harbor all the way to New York City.

I mean, Connecticut is bad enough...

Winnipeg is a nice border town now, and would have a lot of magical influences. (It does IRL right NOW).

Ottawa would be another border town great for Shadowrunners and Smugglers getting stuff to Quebec. Parlez Vous Francais, however, and don't even try a chip!

Vancouver would be a NAN version of Seattle. Only not surrounded by semi-hostile nations.

My group is currently loving LA. Although that might have something to do with extracting Goofy.

London, full of history and intrigue! And you still have paper money!

Berlin... Um... No. No pissing off the Golden Dragon.

The Caribean! Yeah Mon! There we are! Become a pirate!!!

I'll have to see if I can find that Target: NA book. Also MIT&T is in Boston (Cambridge really, but who's counting).

And how is Whitey still around? He an elf or something?

So far I have Dorchester, Mattapan, Chelsea and Mission Hill as the Z-class areas. Southie, Arlington, Medford are B class. Everet, Malden East Boston and Somerville are C-class. Finacial District, Becon Hill, Brookline, Newton and Winchester as the A class areas. Natick is now a shopping archology. Salem is a huge industrial magic producing area; fetishes and talismans. The 495 tech belt is where all the corps are located; NEOnet and Ares being the 2 largest.

I need to start drilling down into the details more.

I would love to find it. As is, my list of "I'd love to have that!" SR books is way too long already. Know anyone selling off a lot of them? :D


Cambridge is Boston is Cambridge, really. I see it as the hot young place to see and be seen, with a lot of backdoor stuff going on. Also the location of one of the two hacker groups (a bunch of anime otaku who hack on the side to pay for some of the more illegal stuff they like).


I was tempted to go the elf route, but thought better of it. I've got two theories for Whitey ("Pale Fatty" in my Shadowrun): one is that Whitey's legend grew until it was the name that was the most important thing, kind of like Dread Pirate Roberts in Princess Bride. The other is that a free spirit took the name and is running his criminal activities.

I was looking into the Whitey saga and found out that he got rid of a large amount of the Mafia presence in Boston back in the early 90s. I thought that that was a great idea. What remains of the Mafia now is holed up in the North End, conspiring and plotting but forever screwed by their own in-fighting. Southie is held by an elvish gang that swore fealty to Pale Fatty, and they wield a substantial amount of power in the Boston underworld. The rest of the criminal element comes from the Chinese Tongs that have set up in half-submerged Chinatown; go past the gate in Boston and you're on your own, as far as the police are concerned.


Sounds about right.


I'd probably bring the rating on Beacon Hill up. That's a high traffic zone with a lot of power floating in and about.


That's a great idea. I think that the Downtown Crossing area should compete with them for customers.


You'd think they'd mention Salem more, since it's one of the biggest "magical" areas in the Fifth World. In what I'm writing, the Cabot coven is fighting with other covens in the area to establish themselves as the "official" official witches of Salem. Not a huge fan of the "We're witches! We're witches!" stuff from the Cabot clan, personally.


Also Mangadyne. I've got an AI npc from there.


I'm a terribly lazy writer, but maybe we should collaborate? We've both got great ideas.

Depending on where in the timeline you are (or how much you're willing to abuse the cannon timeline) Bug City in Chicago is made of awesome.

Also don't at all be afraid to add your personal touch. Especially if you're more familiar with a certain place than your players. For example I've spent some time in China. So I might consider doing that with the players. Thanks to lingasofts and free language skill ranks at chargen it's pretty easy to toss runners anywhere.

You could check the sixth world wiki for SR related changes to the area, and you may also get pointed to other books with more info.

Considering that the Whitey is the Irish mob, I'd think that the elf angle is not a bad choice. Also think that there are probably a ton of Fomori in the Boston area and you can see where thier powerbase comes from; big magic resistant trolls. Helps to keep them rooted in the "I'll break your legs" type of gangster and help keep the Mafia influence down. They also probably control some of the only smuggling routes into and out of Ireland.

And sure if you want to team up send me a PM and I'll see what we can put together. Might make work a bit easier and get a netbook together.

I have a bunch of places I'd love to GM or play in. A couple that immediately come to mind:

Denver
I'm currently running the SRM Denver arc for my group. Its got a different feel to it, kind of Wild West-ish, but with a good deal of high-tech. At least, that's how I'm portraying the outlying areas of the sprawl - the closer you get to the city center, the more urban it gets.

Kingdom of Hawai'i
I dunno, I've just had Hawai'i on the brain for a while now. It just seems like a really cool setting. I'm stockpiling NPCs and plot ideas just in case I ever get the chance to run a game there.

Pueblo Corporate Council
This could be really interesting, I think. You have a Corporation that's run king of like a country, rather than a corp, plus all the NAN influences. There's plenty of intrigue to go around and lots of opportunity to hop from city to city without crossing borders.

The Smugglers
I'm itching to do something set post-Crash 2.0, where the PCs are smugglers running supplies to isolated areas in the NAN and elsewhere. Have the PCs either own or lease a used GMC Banshee, sans guns. Inspired by the Firefly thread from a while back.

-paws

Don't worry, he's in Essen, Rhine-Ruhr-Sprawl.

Berlin (the full-gonzo SR1 version) is still my favourite setting.
We also used to play in Hamburg and the Rhine-Ruhr Sprawl to some extend (the latter without stepping on Loffie's toes).
And Bug City, of course, as well as a brief trip to Tenochtitlan.
Tir na nOg can be awesome, but also potentially deadly, if you don't really keep a low profile.

Hong Kong is amazing, i can recommend it to anyone.

Right now, I'm also playing in Jakkarta, Indonesia (which works out great, as the GM is half-Indonesian and adds tons of local colour to this vibrant, insanely overcrowded city) and am looking forward to my first-ever game in Seattle after one and a half decade of SR (yes, that happens).

Settings i would really love to try in the future include London (my favourite RL city), LA, Europort and, as far as the wackier and potentially deadly settings are concerned, space (especially Evo's Mars base), the SOX, Henan and...Asamando.

I'm also looking forward to the Lagos writeup in Ferral Cities.

Oh man, Asamando. I would love to see some setting material for there.

Sudbury, Ontario. Close enough to the border with Quebec AND has the largest francophone population in Canada outside of Quebec IRL right now!

Also, chock full of metals, animals, and plantlife that are still just waiting to be mined the old fashioned way!

One of my stories revolves around this, BTW.

I’m rather new to Shadowrun. I’ve been playing for a year or so, but only have a few sessions (10-20) under my belt. I have Runner’s Haven, downloaded the preview of Corporate Enclaves, and I’m seeing several cities posted that are not in these books. Do a lot of you make up your own content, or was a lot of it in SR3 sources? Berlin and London seem intriguing, where can I find more info on those?

Like I said, I'm writing my own setting. Berlin and London's most current writeup would be in Shadows of Europe, right?

Right.
Though i'm expecting Berlin to be the next German sprawl to get an update now that there's a German license-holder again and everybody on their boards wants to see a new Berlin writeup (in spite of the fact that they all claim to hate the setting... ), followed by the Rhine-Ruhr Sprawl.
There's also German-only sourcebooks on Munich and the SOX (a radiation zone on the border to France).
Don't know wether they will be translated for the American market, but Pegasus (the new publisher) will presumably try to put out some of its own material in English, as they do with the other major RPG they licensed, Call of Cthulhu.

For the other settings mentioned, most did get some coverage in older sourcebooks (as usual, i highly recommend Bug City, the old Chicago supplement).

The Jakkarta setting one of my current GMs is running seems to be mostly homegrown, there was a writeup in Shadows of Asia, but he seems to have expanded a lot on it and to have changed some stuff as well (as i would if i'd get to run the Rhein-Ruhr Sprawl again).

LA and Europort are in Corporate Enclaves, Lagos will be one of the main locations in Feral Cities as far as i've heard, together with a Chicago update.

Asamando (Western African ghoul nation), Henan (Magocracy in former China) and Mars did not get extensive writeups until now, but this could very well change, as they would fit future publications Awakened Haunts and another sourcebook on extreme environments such as space, underwater arcologies, Antarctica and so on (for all those, there's a SR3 sourcebook, Target : Wastelands, but i'd rather wait for the new stuff to come out in that case).

My runners tend to hop around the globe like frogs on amphetamines. Goes with the job I guess. But ive run a few games in a couple neat places:

Kocki, Japan: Got some neat stuff here (again, im making up stuff as I go along, but the architectures is pretty sweet. Thank you Google earth.)

Seattle: The obvious starting point for just about anything.

Bismark: Wooooo. Smuggler haven?

Minneapolis: Had a huge debacle of a run here.

Africa: Yes, I have had runners take the grand tour of the nation. And its lightning bolt throwing residents. Its a good spot for shedim, with all the wars and countless civilian deaths.

What brought your runners to Africa? Courier job? I kind of like the magic side of shadowrun and I like your ideas about Africa JudegementLoaf.

I have an itching to do a cross-country road-trip adventure using a Buffalo RV (or whatever the equivalent is from Arsenal) as my players' base of operations. There's a bounty on their heads so they need to get out of Seattle for awhile. Putter down to California Free State and end up in NYC in the UCAS. PCs would have to outrun the NAN highway patrols, dodge Ghostwalker in the Denver area, join an armed trucker convoy, deal with toxic spirits burbling out of the toilets in nasty rest-stops...

The run that sent my runners into Africa was actually a photography mission. They had been working for a branch of the catholic church trying to verify a number of miracles, and their current mission had them trying to track down a missionary who has supposedly manifested stigmata. Unfortunately for the players, the missionary in question had died several months ago and had been infested by a shedim who was building up a small private army under the guise of being a new saint. This of course lead to a LOT of conflict with other, more local religious groups and quite a bit of additional strife (read additional bullets in the air) in the region they were operating in. The runners goals were to take pictures of the shedim's wounds (so that the church could verify their authenticity) and to then stand by for further instructions. As it turned out, the runners figured out the missionary had been "spiritually compromised" and were authorized to banish the shedim and disperse his followers, which resulted in a lot of lightning bolts being thrown at the party.

That sounds really cool! I may have to try something like that out sometime.

Is there any SR3 books you guys recommend for city info? I've heard of Bug City, and Shadows of Europe, Asia, and N.A. (I think). Are the Shadows of books like Runner's Haven in terms of information?

You know... I'm getting the idea for a Shadowrun Gumball Rally now...

I've wanted to run Sydney for a while now. I just find the idea of a temperamental magical storm that swoops in over the city and rains frogs and other wierd things totally charming.

Oddly enough, the barrier is that I live in Sydney, so converting it to Shadowrun might be difficult for me due to overfamiliarity.

I'm from Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. For some reason, I think I would have a hard time running something for here. I guess I could try to make something up, but for some reason I think it would be boring.

Ahhh... Asamando. The land of promise for ghouls worldwide. And really, so close to Lagos...

I'm just starting a campaign in Los Angeles--yummy P2.0, irradiated San Onofre, and El Infierne. Should make for a fun time.

I watched the Jackass Gumball Rally episode like, twenty times. That looks like fun.

And imagine it with Riggers!


Anything you'd like to share, oh great Shadowrun writer?

Lagos will be a fun place. Bring plenty of sun-block and critter repellent (I'm fond of assault cannons for the latter). Beyond that, Feral Cities is just around the corner...

Just that I really like Asamando... [and that previous location books have all touched on neighboring nations/cities in the main chapters... _{Obligitory warning: previous performance is no indication of future returns}]

Looks like my upcoming campaigns (I'm going to be doing one for my biweekly PnP group and a weekly IRC-based game) are going to be in Hong Kong and Caracas. I've done a campaign in Hong Kong before and I absolutely loved it. After reading the little blurb on Caracas in Runner Havens, I think that has the potential to be the grittiest, most depressing campaign I will have ever done to date. I'm really psyched, both about going back to the FEZ as well as seeing how Caracas turns out.

Care to elaborate on this "grittiest, most depressing campaign", or do you have players who read this board?

Munecas, Cartels, and a squalor that makes the Barrens look civilized. Caracas certainly has everything necessary for a dark, gritty game that leaves emotional scars. (in a good way of course...)

I just read through Caracas in Runner's Haven. Wow, not the most pleasent place to visit. I may either start a group of runners there, or find a reason to bring my Seattle runners down there for a run or two. One of the likes to dabble in drugs, so that might be a window for me as a GM.

Death Race 2000 anyone ?

I'm also surprised no one's mentioned Cleveland... Tho I am a big fan of Snake Plissken(wish they'd cover a movie based on the Cleveland adventure that they talk about in the movies)

I'm thinking of the Shadowrun version of the 1970s trucker/convoy phenomena. B.J. and the Bear: 2070. Gotta get this load of orichalcum ore from El Paso to Minneapolis in two days! I got a Mac truck and both Knight Errant and Lone Star highway patrolmen on my tail!

the "shadows of"-series is a more general description of a hole region, you won't find detailed city descriptions in them. But that doesen't mean that they're useless.

The only real citybook for SR3 is new seattle, but this is of course outdated by runners havens.

for the description of other cities you have to go back to 2nd or even 1st ed. stuff.

- Bug City (chicago during the bug attack)
- Target: UCAS (Boston, Detroit and Chicago after the bug attack)
- Target: Smuggler Havens (Vladivostok and New Orleans)
- Paradise Lost (Honululu)
- London SB (London and GB)
- Germany SB (Rhine-Ruhr, Berlin and Hamburg)
- Aztlan (Tenochtitlan)
- CalFree (LA and Frisco)
- Neo-A's Guide to North America (Frisco, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Quebec City, Washington DC, Chicago before the bug attack, NYC)

I'm not sure if I would recommend any of those, since the descriptions are pretty much outdated (nearly all of them are set in the 2050s), but however they are fun to read and you'll get some infos out of them, if you can get a hold of them

Or the new Death Race that just came out. (Good violently entertianment!).

It's much more Shadowrun, despite the lack of running people over. But you can definetly rip the vehicles off for a ganger's Barrens ride!

*Pushes Biohazard Button*

"What's that?"

"Most important part of the car."

Was I the only one who saw the trailers for that and went, "Hey, they did Twisted Metal the movie! Only they made Calypso a girl. Wait. They made Calypso a girl. [ Coop ]Niiiice.[ /Coop ]"

No, I said that too.

And you call tell that she'll be even closer to him in the sequal, too!