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Kanada Ten
Walking into the modern office is a bit like walking into a hospital or a morgue: Bodies sprawled out and drooling on rows of uncomfortable looking cots. Wires, crisscrossing their bodies and the floor, running to sterile machines that beep and whirl as solemn managers stand over, dutifully noting progress with checks and clicks.

The home is hardly better: a place where we feed our fat children and live out dull moments. Killing thought with drugs or pornography, living out false lives in chipped dreams, everyday is the same. We treat politics like a sport, rooting for teams and advantage. We have even turned war into a game, one we place bets on, and one where we cheer the death of our false enemies. The real fang of war removed, the pain of change, we become spectators of lust, greed, blood, and death.

We dare not go outside: When it doesn't rain poison from black clouds, the sky radiates cosmic death through brown haze, burning our skin and sprinkling malignant tumors. The air poisoned and constantly dark; the land lined with cars, heat, shit, litter, and the poor; the oceans toxic and violent (much like the streets). Our world, so rotten we must grow food indoors, cries out, but we have locked ourselves in steel towers, deaf to it. Our windows projecting a pleasant lie from a better time.

Ironic how we learn to fear the streets at night, a time when the blighted sun relents and the restless escape their shadow dens to hunt. Worse yet, and ironic still, that we have made guns easier to acquire and more legal to own, than knives. Are we saying, 'Better to kill yourselves than clog the hospitals already overstuffed with our elderly?' Strange how we desire to live this monotony forever, stranger still how long we breath and eat after our brains go silent.

Nature does not approve. Her tears returned that which can heal, that which can return beauty and purpose. But like all her gifts, we scorn it, lock up its children, shackle the talent and spew trinkets of plastic or trid to pacify the desire for it. More for profit, up the stocks. And into space we drag our legacy, our weak thoughtless lives exploring for a purpose we abandoned, forsaken gods, and adventures to chip.
DV8
Awesome.
Connor
Although I don't agree with everything you stated, I do agree with the premise that things never really change.

Plus ca change, plus ca meme la chose, as they used to say pre-3rd Edition.
Crimsondude 2.0
Jesus, that almost makes me want to kill myself.
Fortune
A little depressed lately, Kanada Ten?
Dogsoup
Sheeat, you don't need an especially somber mind to envision 2060 like this: I expect things to be like this when Im 40 smile.gif.

Kickass portrait of Joe Slightly-more-perceptive-than-average's fearful view of the world (UCAS) Kanada! 5/5!

I just miss a teensy bit more about awakened stuff and the like. Packs of Gabriel hounds preying on hobos; A hungry ghoul under every grating; Vampires, insect spirits and other malignant astral entities, HMHVV-aberrations and even stranger creatures risen above metahumanity in the foodchain; Pathogens running rampant amongst the population due to the cramped spaces, filth and generally poor or nonexistant healthcare.

Yes, the city's a horrible place, but at least you have a modicum of safety in your apartment/coffin behind all those maglocks: All the above things, and more, also thrive in the wild and there you'd be all alone...

P.S.
Bigups to SLA Industries: Redmond Barrens is a Cannibal Zone, and you know it!
252
I'm the only person to say other,

Well I think it sucks, as was kinda stated. I'm not sure if it will be that bad, though I know it will be pretty terrible.

I think Charles Dickens said it the best though, read tale of two cities and talk to me if you want to know the quot.

::Hopes someone actually reads it because of what I said.::
Kanada Ten
Cluttered and disarrayed, the apartment of the average male specimen (for this is what we are to the advertiser) has a distinct odor. We might pretend the smell originates from some bit of food, rotting in either the cooler or behind some stack of clothes. Or maybe the smell arises from the clothes themselves, unwashed and mildew stained. Yet, it matters little if we empty the cooler, clean the clothes, and activate the air fresheners. And even with the pleasing sent of lemon antiseptic pervading, a hint of rotten fruit is never far behind. I would propose the sent is the occupant, alive but rotting.

Watch as he walks through the door and glances to the sensor placed upon the ceiling, the sensor that turns the lights on and off in ultimate conservation of energy. The single pulse of the red LED is comforting to the occupant, as if it signifies he is still alive. Would it comfort still to know that each blink is a measurement of death's nearness?

...And what conclusion can we draw from the increased sale of these so-called "Death Sensors" to apartment landlords and arcology managers? Have we depleted community so much that only machines note our passing, just another name added to another list? Of course we have our virtual communities, complete with friends, enemies, and awkward sexual moments. A place where people congregate to converse and relieve the sense of loneliness. But when a member no longer arrives, how is their passing noted? The virtual community is a constant flux, the new and the old blend in the creative escape of ideas. Communities here are founded on ideas rather than reason, they grow and implode similar to their ancestors in the physical world, but perhaps quicker. One less, one more, hardly more than a "where are they now"...

But our occupant claws through his tube, over the pile of clothes, shedding another sweat stained shirt; he makes a mental note to wash clothes this weekend but forgets it instantly. Pulling a cup from the machine and filling it with recycled water, he dives deeper in to the ten-foot sanctuary towards the bed and the plug waiting there. He has to clear a spot for the cup, moving and stacking the empty cups, cans and miscellaneous plastic garbage crowded around the end table. A heavy sigh and he sinks into the messy sheets, careful to avoid hitting the shelf stacked with his chips from erotic to domestic - job training to one degree or another according to his tax statements.

One last look at his hole in the ground, and then the male lies back, caressing the familiar shape of the plug, a sudden smile on his lips. The world is new; reality fades into existence. His home page is a simple sphere: adorned with wallpapers of rock bands and sex icons purchased for nominal fees (though his wastebasket is filled with the favorites of last month). He has music piped in from a punk site, and he listens momentarily enjoying the newest envirosense option he bought. He'll stop at Sustanence.Com and buy some contentment before hitting the chat rooms looking for some cyber.
Kanada Ten
She's depressed again, coming home to a tidy mess and sinking into the comfy couch. The trid snaps on, it knows her mood. The vacuum bot becomes silent though two rooms away; it knows her mood as well. A flashing light on the telecom is ignored, for now. Her daughter is still at school, she thinks, but the trid is distracting and a meal arrives soon enough.

The food is gone quickly, filling her with a sullen form of contentment. Diet Delight might be the name, and despite recent and persistent warnings of cancer, she eats it everyday. She hates being fat more than cancer, or so she believes in the thoughtless way one believes such things.

Nervousness sets in from some part of her. The comfy couch is itchy or stiff; she leaves it for the kitchen. No, not water nor soda, but yes to the herbal tea. It will not calm her filled as it is with Ginseng and many derivatives or hybrids of caffeine, but it gives her courage. Rather focus, the two are often confused.

She paces to the telecom, tracing the well-worn carpet. Her mind tries to distract her: is it time to call Empire? Have the carpet replaced by simwood? She notices her fear, and steels against it with a sip of the tea. Does the tea smell of Jasmine today? Her daughter's work no doubt. The messages are from bill collectors and loan managers; she sighs in relief (but also resignation). Depression is common in her social status, so the polls say. She'll use the tea to wash down a NERP. All better, now.

The daughter is happy, high on youth and boys. The girl bounces into rooms, dropping her computer on the comfy couch, her purse on the kitchen table, and her many rings along dimple of the sink. She babbles at her mother as she moves about the house, leaving the trappings of the day behind her. Yes, all children are tornados, thinks the mother.

Sitting in the kitchen, she has waited for the daughter. Her blithering more soothing than trid, more filling than anything, soon dissipates into fighting - always about something, but usually boys. The mother wants to scream, "Oh please daughter, don't fall in love!" But no one could take such advice, and the girl is too young, too pretty to be in love. She leaves boys or they leave her, no more sorrow than seeing a tridshow go (besides, she can always have reruns - she is pretty).

Today the fight starts: "Didn't you bring your respirator?" "They mess up my hair" "Hair is fixable" "So are lungs" "Hair is at least reasonable" "I don't care" Her daughter would rather be pretty than have cancer. Both are tanned from the coffin in the living room, but perspective is a strange thing. The girl will recede to her room, and the woman will wonder back to her youth, back to the birth, and pick fond memories until the nervousness returns.

The mother remembers complaining to Create-A Child about the stubbornness. She had paid them well for a beautiful girl, but docile was among the options chosen. The soft-spoken icon that responded - obviously not alive with such calm and ease of manner - had implied that genes only account for so much. The mother had carried the child to term and delivered her, she smiles in memory.

When the chair becomes hard, she rises, chooses dinner and the machines begin whirling. Chopping, smashing, pouring out the next Diet Delight. The daughter returns for dinner, and talks again, clearly forgiving her mother - if she stays silent about the subject of lungs. She does, dinner is peaceful - as it is for most nights. They both retire to opposite rooms, after daily hygiene is complete, and they have kissed goodnight. The mother swallows her NERPS Sweet Dream, and drifts into nervous sleep. The daughter plugs into her simsense and stares into the dreams of others until her body falls limp from exhaustion.

Tomorrow is the same.

[ Spoiler ]
MrSandman666
Hey, there's someone knowing SLA Industries! I almost thought I was the only person on this planet to ever buy that book! Thumbs up, Dogsoup, thumbs up!

And Kanada, I like you're writing, yet I think you're being a bit one-sided here. I don't know whether this is the purpose of your texts but I don't think life in the 2060 will be THAT bad. Yes, it will suck but I don't believe it will suck that much. Not much more than today, anyways. Throughout all the sourcebooks I've read I have never been given reason to believe so.
Of course everyone is free to model the world and athmosphere to their pleasing and I have a tendency for dark and gritty settings too. I just don't take it THAT far and tend to describe the dark and gritty parts of the world rathar than the 'normal' parts, like the everyday life of Joe and Jane Average, which I perceive to be only remotely different from today, at least on an emotional basis. Of course they will be emotionaly bound to the corporations more than today but that will have a different impact than you are portraing.
On a completely different matter, life might very well be heading that direction, when you base your theories on the life of today. However, that would not be shadowrun then. As I said, all the source material doesn't make me believe life in the 2060s is like that. Even though it has the potential to become like that.

Then again, maybe it's the fact that I actually do have depressions that gives me a different angle at what you are writing. I find myself and my thoughts in your writings, which makes reading them a good deal less enjoyable for me. To me, depressions is just a horribly serious thing and not to be taken easily, like it seems you're doing in your posts. However, the way you describe her actions and feelings makes me think that you do know what you're talking about so I wonder what you're background and position on all this is.

Anyways, just my two (s)cents.
Kagetenshi
The thing is, currently, to sustain the average quality-of-life for an American across the population of the world would require the resources of about six earths. This tells me that QoL will almost certainly go down on average.

~J
MrSandman666
on average, yes. For some it will, for some it won't. The already great gap will become even greater. But then again, you also hae to take into account that the americans aren't exactly being careful about certain resources. I've been there and experienced it for over a year. Here in Germany it's not so common to have one car per household member, to waste gallons and gallons of water just because it's hot, to have an airconditioner running all day (an airconditioned house is pretty much unthinkable here - It's regarded a terrible waste of energy!), to have a big house with lots of land attached to it (one American girl I know who has been working as a waitress for no longer than four years has been able to afford a ranch-style house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and quite a big piece of land: a lot more than my parents could afford after working as doctors for all their fucking life since university!)

I'm not trying to bash America or the Americans here. I'm thinking about imigrating myself. I'm just pointing out that the 'average American' has much more luxury at their deposal than the average human elsewhere. I think the average QoL will drift more towards Europe or Japan, which is not as great but still bearable. And QoL is a lot more for me than just material things. Kanada is adressing mainly mental issues as a result of a broken society. I don't think the mental decay will be that bad. It will be noticeable but not as bad as he portraied (Depression being a common illness among the working class, general loss of reality, etc.)
Kanada Ten
I don't think any of my stories are that much different than today, to be honest. I agree they are one-sided. Intentional due more to keep them short, than anything. You have to remember that the /average/ person today lives in the third world...

When I first wrote the intro pundit, I had intended it for a New Century Party ad. The last line was "Vote New Century. Change the future, today." I figured I could come up with the views of the various political sides (thus the obvious slant) and post them all. But when I read what I wrote, I thought it stood alone. After tacking on the "And into space" I thought about where to post it and how to present it... I decided the SSG forum as a poll about the "modern life."

No thoughts on the Death Sensors? I really liked that idea. :shrug:

I have a few more stories in mind (literally), but we'll see what comes out.
MrSandman666
Death Sensors? Cool stuff. Absolutely viable. No lost time for the landlords with an empty appartment, no rotting, smelling corpses lowering the value of the estate... I can see that coming and don't find anything bad about it. The world is getting more anonymous every day. Scary as it is, it's true and a logical consequence of technology and 'society' evolving (more technology changing society, actually).

Yes, considering the average human (numbers-wise) is living in a third world country you are right. That also implies that all of us here on DSF are a good bit above average, which we are. It depends on what you take the average off. Western cilvilization? Whole world? People with a home and running water?
Averaged over the whole world you are certainly right. Which is mainly because there is poor birth control in those poor lands and huge populations are hard to cater for.
Crimson Jack
I love it, Kanada. You've got a talent for conveying the mood of Shadowrun. While any given gamemaster can run the world of SR any way he/she wants, I prefer your bent. A brooding, dark world full of danger and dwindling [meta]humanity. I dig it man! 10 thumbs up. cool.gif
Watchman
Ooooh, Cyberpunk angst. cyber.gif The last I saw it put that well was what, Hot Wire or something ?

Probably a bit too pessimistic, though - people tend to value the content of their life a bit too much to let it slip into that, at least in most cases. The ones who slip, though, especially in the egoistic hypermeritocratic society SR likes to portray that makes modern quarterly capitalism look nice, are going to be pretty badly off.

Or, as the CP2020 sourcebook Land of the Brave put it, "in the middle and upper management levels a nice condo or villa isn't that unusual. But then, neither is suicide at thirty, so it kind of evens out in the end." nyahnyah.gif
Kanada Ten
egoistic[al] hypermeritocratic society

I like that. IMO, everyone in SR is addicted. It is not in the soft drink's company interest to make a soda that quenches thirst. Every year the container will get larger until they invent ultra power soda. Oh wait, they did. Notice how Red Bull comes in cans half the size of regular soda and costs twice as much? Tastes like crap to slow the drinking process so at least you feel you've had something. Consumerism is the opiate of the masses. Spoon feed and plastic bed, trideo screen and favorite sex scene, anti-depressant and alcohol. Shedim watch out, we don't need the competition to inhabit our dead bodies.
Lilt
QUOTE (MrSandman666)
Hey, there's someone knowing SLA Industries! I almost thought I was the only person on this planet to ever buy that book! Thumbs up, Dogsoup, thumbs up!

Not the only person, me and my other gaming chums have copies too. We've even got the three expansions they released. A friend has a copy of the un-released, and never to be released, Shaktar sourcebook on computer which he got from the authors who live near Edinburgh.

Some useless facts about SLA/Real-Life:
[ Spoiler ]

Aside from that: Great work K10!
simonw2000
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Walking into the modern office is a bit like walking into a hospital or a morgue: Bodies sprawled out and drooling on rows of uncomfortable looking cots. Wires, crisscrossing their bodies and the floor, running to sterile machines that beep and whirl as solemn managers stand over, dutifully noting progress with checks and clicks.

The home is hardly better: a place where we feed our fat children and live out dull moments. Killing thought with drugs or pornography, living out false lives in chipped dreams, everyday is the same. We treat politics like a sport, rooting for teams and advantage. We have even turned war into a game, one we place bets on, and one where we cheer the death of our false enemies. The real fang of war removed, the pain of change, we become spectators of lust, greed, blood, and death.

We dare not go outside: When it doesn't rain poison from black clouds, the sky radiates cosmic death through brown haze, burning our skin and sprinkling malignant tumors. The air poisoned and constantly dark; the land lined with cars, heat, shit, litter, and the poor; the oceans toxic and violent (much like the streets). Our world, so rotten we must grow food indoors, cries out, but we have locked ourselves in steel towers, deaf to it. Our windows projecting a pleasant lie from a better time.

Ironic how we learn to fear the streets at night, a time when the blighted sun relents and the restless escape their shadow dens to hunt. Worse yet, and ironic still, that we have made guns easier to acquire and more legal to own, than knives. Are we saying, 'Better to kill yourselves than clog the hospitals already overstuffed with our elderly?' Strange how we desire to live this monotony forever, stranger still how long we breath and eat after our brains go silent.

Nature does not approve. Her tears returned that which can heal, that which can return beauty and purpose. But like all her gifts, we scorn it, lock up its children, shackle the talent and spew trinkets of plastic or trid to pacify the desire for it. More for profit, up the stocks. And into space we drag our legacy, our weak thoughtless lives exploring for a purpose we abandoned, forsaken gods, and adventures to chip.

How fucking accurate is that!?!?!? :applause:
MrSandman666
QUOTE
We've even got the three expansions they released


Thez released expansion? ANd three of them? And no one ever told me??? Pitty that stuff is really hard to come by. I bought my copy second-hand in a small gaming store in a small and ancient mall in Providence.

Fun facts about the game though!
Dogsoup
QUOTE (Lilt)
A friend has a copy of the un-released, and never to be released, Shaktar sourcebook on computer which he got from the authors who live near Edinburgh.

[ren-voice]
Yoooouuuuuuuu!
[/ren-voice]
Lucky bastards. smile.gif

Im somewhat fascinated by the paralells of SLA and SR. They are (aside from SLA's crude system) like cousins IMO.
Shockwave_IIc
QUOTE
Get the games designers drunk and promise you'll never tell anyone if they tell you.


The fact you all a figment of slayers imagination?
Dogsoup
[ Spoiler ]

All IMO of course.
CircuitBoyBlue
The first two editions of shadowrun were based in LARGE part on the William Gibson novel Neuromancer and a couple of Philip K. Dicke's novels (like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, or Bladerunner). Reading those, you don't get the idea that life is enjoyable at all. It's every bit as depressing as Kanada Ten makes it out to be. Third edition seems to have gone a bit more of a cartoonish route. That's fine, if they think it can get enough new players to the game. I'd rather see shadowrun survive, I guess. But it's not really my thing. I like the grittier feel of the first 2 editions. I think Machiavelli said it best when he said that it is good to be feared and loved, but if one cannot be both, then it is best to be feared. I can see how they couldn't keep up the energy it took to inspire both love for the game AND fear for the world longer than they did, but I still gotta go with the editions that inspired fear of the 6th world in me. The beauty of it was that the world was a place I truly wouldn't want to live in myself. If it was a nice place, I'd feel a compulsion to play characters that weren't low-lives, which would basically preclude me from playing shadowrunners.
MrSandman666
Well, I do share those oppinions. While Shadowrun is largely based on Gibson's work I always found it to be a bit lighter, even in the second edition. Still dark and unfriendly, but bearable.
I probably just don't like this desperate, hopeless twist that Kanada is putting into his masterful narations. I guess that's because I experience those feelings pretty much on a daily basis and absolutely don't find it a bit entertaining, nor do I think that it should be entertaining but the human soul is deep, dark and twisted. So if you enjoy it, well...

And I don't like this comic style either. It's completely opposite of what I imagine shadowrun to be.
Malokei
Hey who here thinks the music that KMFDM does seem to remind you of ya'll of Shadowrun?
Solstice
yes i agree it's quite appropriate
Pthgar
There was a picture in the 2nd Ed. Corebook of a guy in a leather jacket wearing a KMFDM tee shirt.
shadd4d
Aslo appeared as a piece of art in the Germany sourcebook.

Don
Crimsondude 2.0
I think it was a Bradsteet image, and it was badass.

I guess if you're focusing on Seattle, it might be different that the UCAS proper. One of the things that I'd like to emphasize in "mainland" UCAS (something I know I wrote, but not sure I posted in the DeeCee thread) is that there is an undercurrent of institutional anger, sadness, frustration or indifference that pervades the UCAS--especially the former U.S. states--since the fall of the United States. There are going to be people who are our age (18-30) now still around in the 2060's, and I have little doubt that they will not only carry some manner of stigma, and some personal burden on their souls (so to speak) about the fact that they (we) basically let the country die; something that will carry on for years, compounded by all of the tragedies which have befallen the UCAS over the years, and after a while it would be a rare person to think that we are still "God's favorite." And the young people in the 2060's will be faced with the burden of all of the shit that finally came due on them--the burdens of a fall of wuality of living, of less purchasing power, of less opportunity, of less national/ patriotic prestige, and less chance of living the nice suburban, exurban, lifestyle because you can't escape other people in the UCAS the way you can in the U.S. (without freezing your ass off in northern Canada). There will be no 20 year-old ranch house owners in the exurbs the way David Brooks would have us all live given half a chance. And that is also going to be something significant, because for much of American history, we've been trying to get the Hell away from strangers. Sometimes we develop little enclaves, even in the far, far suburbs, but we move out to the suburbs to get away from people not like us, and things that scare the living crap out of us (crime, killer bees, whatever); and since 2050 there have been a lot of things to be afraid of--and one of those things is magic. SoNA indicated that the UCAS is just now starting to actually warm up to the fact that magic has been around for 50 f-ing years, and it's not a tool of the devil. And one of the things that strikes me almost incredulous, is that religious beliefs decreased in the years after the Awakening. Just to interject a personal anecdote, I recently found myself on the edge of the sprawl in town (the local metroplex is growing, and there has been a continuous housing boom here for years) , and I was fascinated by the sheer number of churches, the synagogues, the Mormon tabernacle located every couple of block (and in some cases clustered in intersection, one to a corner at one such intersection), and when the world goes to Hell, UCASers/ans (whatever...) are going to go to church. In 2060, jack into your all-purpose domgatic religious text book and find solace in the house the size of your grandparents' garage (and several times more expensive) and hope the stories of the Evil AI are just stories.
Kanada Ten
The Matrix itself is a perfect supplement to a nation, even more to a nation of consumers and service industries. Matrix telecommute; Matrix vacations; Matrix mental medication; Matrix relationships, break-ups and sex; Matrix homes and pets from Gamma-X; a thousand toys we haven't thought of yet; Matrix God and Satan, too; Matrix children with eyes so blue; perfect living... The grass is green against a sky so clear - not brown and parched beneath a sky of angry rolling red. Dreams come true in my mind; share them with me. Life's just fine.

I also see the Canadian-American religious scene as large and active. At fist, many would turn to alternate religions, and these would rule for a time. Their congregations would grow and become established in deserted churches. Instead of across the street, churches would share rent on apartment buildings, and God would finally have a Hi-Rise. After the Universal Brotherhood, many would fall away from the younger religions and move back into the safety of child molestation and stipends. But not all.

Trying to find Truth in the Matrix is both easy and impossible. I can browse for the Word and get ten million hits. I can search for aid, help, and hope only to find that everyone knows. Listening in chat rooms, everyone's like me; we're all searching for what isn't on Trid feed. Watching all the sermon streams gives a sense of that's not me. I've read every Holy Book or slotted them on chip, and I've found that Truth is quite elusive despite the advertising. Going online every night is my ritual. I talk with the friends I made and argue with the fucks. We search for something funny, distracting or fulfilling. I find myself just waiting for the moment I jack-in. I know it's not Heaven, but then again, what is?

I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had.

- Mad World, Tears for Fears
Kagetenshi
Tangent: didn't Gary Jules do Mad World?

~J
Kanada Ten
Redid. And much better, yes.

[ Spoiler ]

[ Spoiler ]
Kanada Ten

1 (900) CALL-1GOD

Only 99 cents a minute! All the answers to life's tough questions!

Hurry, God's chosen servants are waiting to talk directly to you! Salvation is only a phone call away!


¥2.50 for the first minute. Confessions subject to international anti-privacy laws.

Ottergame
I've always gotten the impression from reading the SR sourcebooks that it's mostly the shadowrunners, the poor, and the otherwise disadvantaged that are the ones who's opinions you read. As bad as things might be for the homeless, the SINless, and the destitute, MOST of the UCAS's population is middle class and not of want for basic needs. While the gap between the poor and the rich has widened, and the middle class has shrunk, the middle class still make up a good majority of the population.

I also get the impression that things for the middle class and the rich are either little different or have generally improved compared to today's middle class. Many mundane manual chores are automated, people can work and get an education from their own homes, things are more convenient than ever. Medicine is much more advanced, people rarely die in hospitals, cyberware, cloned organs, and bionics can replace missing or damage tissues.

In my game, at least, it's not a hopeless, cruel, and ruined world out there. While that's certainly true in some places, most people go about their daily lives in about the same ways they do now.
Bob the Insane
Loved the writing....

I do think it is an accurate portrate of life in a certain segment of the SR world in the 60's... Think Low Lifestyle, blue collar workers... The equivilent of those on the dole (welfare?) and in very low income jobs. Yes they have SINs and basic rights as a citizen but can not afford anything... To these people a corp job with accomdation and corp perks would be a godsend and making their kids work hard to get into corp school and out of proverty is a big deal... For people on this level of lifestyle the main drive is to escape and the usual route is sim or drug abuse and depression...

I think a look at the middle lifestyle would reveal a similar life but the trappings would be cleaner to the point of being completely sterile... For people on this level of lifestyle the main drive twofold, get more and don't lose what you aready have, primarily protecting yourself and your family from crime, diesease, dirt, a drop in lifestyle, everything...
shadd4d
I think that is one element that fell by the wayside when you look at something like the UB and its success with both the people and using them as hosts. People were duped, but that ferver and religiousness would probably have been a large part of UCAS and probably CAS reations to magic. That's also another reason why I like the description of the Catholic Church in SoE.

Don

Who needs to buy SSG real soon.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Ottergame @ Jul 19 2004, 09:44 AM)
As bad as things might be for the homeless, the SINless, and the destitute, MOST of the UCAS's population is middle class and not of want for basic needs.

Only if you consider fresh, clean air, sunshine, and hope to not be basic needs.

~J
mfb
bah. that's what air-cleansing HVAC, wall-mounted trideo "windows", and simsense are for (moodbender: hope!).
Ottergame
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (Ottergame @ Jul 19 2004, 09:44 AM)
As bad as things might be for the homeless, the SINless, and the destitute, MOST of the UCAS's population is middle class and not of want for basic needs.

Only if you consider fresh, clean air, sunshine, and hope to not be basic needs.

~J

The enviroment is most places isn't going to be that bad, the megacorps are going to abide by most pollution laws, if nothing else to garner PR. In the poor areas, well... if they didn't want to breath black air, they would move. wink.gif
Kagetenshi
While the air may be clean, the implication is that a lot of wageslaves live in arcologies or arcology-like environments, and those that don't frequently see most of their outside on the walk from house to car or car to building and vice versa. That grates on one after a while.

~J
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Only if you consider fresh, clean air, sunshine, and hope to not be basic needs.

Where's hope gone?
Skeptical Clown
Shadowrun isn't supposed to be an accurate reflection of what life will really be like in the middle of the 21st century. It's a bastard mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, and cyberpunk is a dark portrait of the future we most fear might come to pass. Thus, in this future, illiteracy and unemployment are high; corporate power is unchecked; money equals virtue; all authority is corrupt, and oppression is everywhere; the environment is ruined (there ARE no environmental laws); disease is rampant; random violence and riots are common; those who can, align themselves with corporations who protect them from the unwashed masses by walling them inside sterile corporate enclaves; those who cannot or will not work are left to fend for themselves in lawless barrens; the common man is dehumanized, by poverty, by soulless wage slavery, by intrusive technology.

The only heroes in cyberpunk are the anarchists who subvert authority with the very technology that oppresses.

You can run a Shadowrun game that is a more "realistic" portrayal of life in the 21st century, but I think that misses the point. And while most of the fears are "worst-case scenarios," none of them are impossible. I mean, thirty years of environmental policy are being unwritten as we type.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
Where's hope gone?

I ask myself that every day.

~J
Austere Emancipator
And you're not dead yet because...?

Saying that there's less hope in a cyberpunk world is really fucking stupid.
Skeptical Clown
Not at all. The definition of hope is basically the belief that things will be better in the future. In a cyberpunk world, there's no reason to believe things will be better. At least, not in the overriding, humanitarian sense that everybody will be better off. There will, of course, still be the more personal belief that an individual will be able to profit in the future, but even that is limited largely to those who are already wealthy. Part of the dystopia of the future is that wealth is largely congregated at the top of the heap. The "middle class" is essentially trapped in a vassal position to corporations, and most will work the same menial office jobs for their entire lives, with little opportunity for promotion or raise. Hence the term "wage slavery." The poor don't even have those meager comforts; they're left in virtual anarchy on their own, with no chance for advancement except for what they can steal.

That's certainly a less than hopeful view of things.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
And you're not dead yet because...?

That's a fallacious line of reasoning. The logical extension of hopelessness is not suicide, not by a long shot; it's apathy and, depending on personality, catatonia. Suicide implies a hope for something better, be that an afterlife or just an end to pain.

That being said, I was being facetious.

~J
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
That being said, I was being facetious.

I expected as much, but you never know with all the angst going around.

QUOTE
The logical extension of hopelessness is not suicide, not by a long shot; it's apathy and, depending on personality, catatonia. Suicide implies a hope for something better, be that an afterlife or just an end to pain.

I do not even believe in such a lack of hope that one cannot even hope for death. Maybe in some kind of rare brain disorder.

Yes, apathy comes first. Some might even endure that for a very long time, until they die from complications arising from a common cold, when their bodies cannot be bothered to put up defenses. Should such a person see a moment of clarity during that time, they'd probably slit their wrists in 10 seconds, flat.

QUOTE (Skeptical Clown)
In a cyberpunk world, there's no reason to believe things will be better. At least, not in the overriding, humanitarian sense that everybody will be better off.

Why not? People believed in a better future (in that exact sense) during WWI and WWII, throughout the reigns of people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, they still believe in it in North Korea. Cyberpunk, not even the more dystopic varieties, come close to that kind of pain and suffering.

QUOTE
There will, of course, still be the more personal belief that an individual will be able to profit in the future, but even that is limited largely to those who are already wealthy.

What sort of sick fucker only hopes for profit and wealth? I know I don't. I don't know a single person who does. The kinds of things I hope for are just as likely to come true in a cyberpunk setting as IRL.
Skeptical Clown
I think you miss the point, which is that Cyberpunk isn't reality. It's a literary projection of fear onto the future. It's not just a period of stressful times; it's the complete breakdown of a near-futuristic society. Why is that any more difficult to accept than the fact that there are elves running around?

As for who seeks only profit and wealth, Corporations do obviously. That's their reason for being. And by quirk of law, they happen to be legal citizens. In cyberpunk (and in Shadowrun), they are more than merely citizens; they're their own nations. One of the fears of cyberpunk is that the amoral nature of corporations seeps into all aspects of life. And the hopelessness that stems from that isn't the fear of imminent violence (although that's often around;) it's the complete dehumanization that has occurred on all levels of society.
Bob the Insane
QUOTE (Skeptical Clown)
I think you miss the point, which is that Cyberpunk isn't reality. It's a literary projection of fear onto the future. It's not just a period of stressful times; it's the complete breakdown of a near-futuristic society. Why is that any more difficult to accept than the fact that there are elves running around?

The only defence I can find here is that this vision runs somewhat counter to a lot of the info in the SR source books. I just don't get that kind of imagery from them or at least they give the perception of much more variety in lifestyles than that. Though I guess it could be argued that that vision is appropriate for the average person or family...
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