'Ello forum. I'm new here and relatively new to Shadowrun. I had done a bit of freeform rp with it in the past for funsies, but last night was my group's official combat test run. I managed to get in the way of a grenade blast, shoot my pistol twice, and get shanked and fall down all in the first initiative pass. It's different from the D&D I'm used to, let me tell you, but I like it quite a bit - and know now that standing in the middle of combat is not a good thing for my character to do. Heh...

Anyway, my group REALLY gets in to the whole rp and character development aspect of gaming. We always have. There was a lot more wiggle room with this in D&D because we were typically thrown into a DM/player-created world. We could make it all up, create our own backstories and hometowns and home histories and local customs and so on... not so with Shadowrun since we're working with a pre-existing world. The information is out there, I gather that... but there are just so many books. Sure, I'd like to learn a lot more of it eventually. For now, however, I'd just like to know where I can find detailed information/history about Chicago (for character development).

I found a basic outline here:
http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Timeline
There are some good tidbits about important events in Chicago, but I was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of the details? Is there a setting book in any edition? Are there fiction books? Information online? I'm especially interested in Chicago from 2040 onward, but any information/direction is much appreciated.

Thanks.

(And no, I didn't join just to ask about Chicago. I plan on staying.)

Chicago is one of the primary locations addressed in the newly-released Feral Cities book.

*looks at watch* Then I may have time to jump in the car and pick that up before the store closes. Awesome! Thank you!

Welcome to Dumpshock!
If you got Feral Cities then you have an excellent write up on it (I think it's the best setting books so far). I also recomend if you can find them Neo Anarchs Guide to North America (pre Bug City Info), and Target UCAS (Post Bug City info). And you can always get Bug City as well!

Echo the data TeOdio just dumped there, although most of these sourcebooks are out of print and hard to find these days.

Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America [1st Edition/circa 2050]
Bug City [2nd Edition/circa 2055]
Target: UCAS [2nd Edition/circa 2057-8]
Shadows of North America [3rd Edition/circa 2061-2]
Feral Cities [4th Edition/circa 2071]

As for other sources, there's a lot of character and useful atmosphere in the novel Changeling by Chris Kubasik as that's set in Chicago and although set around 2052 it covers a character who grew up there. Another novel to try out is Burning Bright and that one ties directly in with the Bug Cty sourcebook.

While it's true that Shadowrun has a large canon of locations, many GMs choose to alter or even wholecloth the locations, histories, corporations, etc. The setting isn't meant to stifle your creativity, the game police won't come after you for using the L as tranist rather than the wall seperating the towering homes of the city's ultrarich from the rest, for example... That said, Bug City is a great book - more as a survival horror setting than a history. The Neo-Anarchist Guide to North America had a chapter on Chicago, though I found it dull. If you're using 3rd edition, one of the SotA books (was it SoNA?) has a page or two on Chicago in the 2060s. And, as mentioned Feral Cities brings Chicago up to date in SR4. I'd skip NAG2NA and T:UCAS, personally.

If there's some specific question regarding the setting you have, Dumpshock users are usually glad to pontificate on the subject.

I thought T:UCAS was the book that resolved Bug City as Bug City with Operation Extermination. I might be wrong.

I wouldn't say that Bug City was survival horror; personally I'd describe it as Black Hawk Down meets Aliens meets Sarajevo in the 1990s. Not all of the horror came from the bugs, after all. If you get really into the bugs, there's some good stuff in Threats too that describes how the bugs started to change gameplans between Bug City and Target:UCAS and some more on the FAB III virus.

It helps that I was just reading this stuff the other day. Yay lorenerds!

You guys are great. The information is great, and my next several afternoons and evenings are now officially shot. I don't have Feral Cities yet because the store didn't have it in, but the 14th street store with the used books just so happened to have Bug City. It's a good read and definitely full of information useful to me specifically. As for the other books, Feral Cities likely (sadly) excluded for now, I'm making the hour drive to the bigger used book store in Omaha tomorrow I believe... or this weekend depending.

I don't feel stifled, Kanada, though I could see how it might get that way sometimes in this sort of system. Nah, I just want to know about what I'm working with. In D&D terminology, it would be rolling Knowledge (Local) and actually knowing instead of just rolling well enough to know. My entire group is new to this; and we decided to stick with the (alternate) history as written. As for the whole Chicago thing, that's my own doing. The campaign isn't even based there; my character recently fled ... er.... "migrated" out despite her love and attraction to her home city to our current location, which I believe is Pueblo, Colorado. The in-character obsession has spread OOC thanks to Bug City. And recommendation of it here of course. I've jotted down all the others too and will be looking for them. Thanks a lot, guys!

That's it.

I have read the Chicago chapter of Feral Cities. I have to say I am impressed.

- J.