With the revisionist bend of later third edition, the Indian population was brought more in line with today's. However, you do not see the same multinational influence and none of the runners have any of the native languages. Possessing a known increase in average magical power per person, one would expect a larger impact from this nation.
While not trying to inject any romanticism, the various Indian cultures and foods have already, today, impacted the globe. What impact will they have the world of 4th Ed Shadowrun? One would also have to consider the considerable needs generated by such a population.
BlueMax
Full Version: NAAN Fading
While there magical support might eb above average, I also suspect there tech support will be some of the best in the world.
QUOTE (Shinobi Killfist @ Jul 20 2009, 10:06 PM) 
While there magical support might eb above average, I also suspect there tech support will be some of the best in the world.
why?
I believe he's talking about Indian's from India as opposed to North American variety 
QUOTE (nylanfs @ Jul 20 2009, 09:30 PM)
I believe he's talking about Indian's from India as opposed to North American variety
Dang, and here I was going to post this to keep the joke alive.
Due to the high costs of maintaining tech centers in area like silicon valley many companies have outsourced departments to more affordable regions and have picked up a large number of local workers.
It might have been a bit more obvious or if people still didn't get the joke it would have sounded really, really dumb.
You mean like the 710 knob?
QUOTE (nylanfs @ Jul 20 2009, 10:30 PM)
I believe he's talking about Indian's from India as opposed to North American variety
ahh, man i'm slow sometimes
On a serious note, India is a very powerful nuclear capable country. Already possessing corporate power Steel Magnate and with a higher than normal amount of mages(1), India should have at least one of the big 10. With the bend towards making the game more like today, shouldn't some of the base characters speak Hindi? (or another language from the sub continent )
Old school Shadowrun was filled with Soy and asian influences upon North America. Revisionist Shadowrun restores the rest of the world. If I cannot get Naan within a quick walk from my flat, the fiction should certainly be interesting.
BlueMax
1 Shadows of Asia
Old school Shadowrun was filled with Soy and asian influences upon North America. Revisionist Shadowrun restores the rest of the world. If I cannot get Naan within a quick walk from my flat, the fiction should certainly be interesting.
BlueMax
1 Shadows of Asia
India is also graduating tons of students from top-flight schools with degrees in things like the hard sciences and engineering. I believe they're educating more graduate students than anyone else. If you're going to make the Shadowrun reality more accurately reflect today instead of the 80's, India should at least have a good sized AA corp.
India lost nearly half its population (450 millions) to VITAS in 2010.
They do have one AA corp: KITT (Kolkota Integrated Talent and Technologies) which does... tech support (no, I'm not kidding) and software engineering. There are also a few sizeable A corps.
They do have one AA corp: KITT (Kolkota Integrated Talent and Technologies) which does... tech support (no, I'm not kidding) and software engineering. There are also a few sizeable A corps.
AFAIK, India and Pakistan never got around to trading nukes (probably due to the same phenomenon that prevented the Lone Eagle ICBMs from detonating in Russia), but India would be, by the time of VITAS, the most populous nation on Earth. Assuming that Blade's death toll is correct, that would cause quite a bit of fallout, such as riots, religious movements, terrorist agendas, and outright war in the streets as people struggle for food, medicine, clean water, and more bullets.
Not to mention that it's also possible (although unmentioned in any Shadowrun text I can recall; forgive me, I'm old and my memory ain't what it used to be) that climate change gave India another kick in the nuts.
Either way, I think that the Asian influences in the early years of Shadowrun are akin to American/Western influences in other countries today- you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a McDonalds or a Coke machine in most places now. It makes sense that as Asian countries projected their influence into North America and other places that Micky D's would get replaced with Ramen Hut and various knock-offs.
But I don't think that this would extinguish Middle-Asian cultures entirely. Even where I live, in White Bread, USA, there's a thriving community of Pakistani folks and you don't have to jander too far from your flop to get a Curry in a Hurry. Hell, the guy who just took my engagement photos was born in Northern India and moved out here to work in computer animation. I'd say Indians (dots, not feathers, as Raji would say) are still pretty plentiful...but not a major player on the cultural movement front.
Not to mention that it's also possible (although unmentioned in any Shadowrun text I can recall; forgive me, I'm old and my memory ain't what it used to be) that climate change gave India another kick in the nuts.
Either way, I think that the Asian influences in the early years of Shadowrun are akin to American/Western influences in other countries today- you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a McDonalds or a Coke machine in most places now. It makes sense that as Asian countries projected their influence into North America and other places that Micky D's would get replaced with Ramen Hut and various knock-offs.
But I don't think that this would extinguish Middle-Asian cultures entirely. Even where I live, in White Bread, USA, there's a thriving community of Pakistani folks and you don't have to jander too far from your flop to get a Curry in a Hurry. Hell, the guy who just took my engagement photos was born in Northern India and moved out here to work in computer animation. I'd say Indians (dots, not feathers, as Raji would say) are still pretty plentiful...but not a major player on the cultural movement front.
Actually I think Nukes did get exchanged between Pakistan & India in SR.
I don't remember when exactly, but somewhere in Shadows of Asia is a section on a country along the borders of the two that's all poluted and toxic becuase I think pakistan fired off some nukes that didn't quite work right and hit the wrong area.
Or something like that. Don't have Shadows of Asia handy atm.
But yeah I have similar experiences with immigrants and curry, etc. One of my fav places to eat locally is pakistani. mmmm Mutton Karahi
I don't remember when exactly, but somewhere in Shadows of Asia is a section on a country along the borders of the two that's all poluted and toxic becuase I think pakistan fired off some nukes that didn't quite work right and hit the wrong area.
Or something like that. Don't have Shadows of Asia handy atm.
But yeah I have similar experiences with immigrants and curry, etc. One of my fav places to eat locally is pakistani. mmmm Mutton Karahi
That's an interesting question, but there are several things to keep in mind:
First, India has a THRIVING technical production capability, and the production of NAND memory chips from that country is starting to seriously rival places like Korea (Samsung).
Second, the gulf between rich and poor in India is vast and deep. I would expect that VITAS would have stuck the poor, with negligable access to advanced medecine and poor standards of health and living, to have been most adversely affected. The corolary to that would be that the wealthier, generally better educated, portions of India would have made out much better and the likelyhood of them losing their position would be correspondingly lower than if you took pure population and casualty rates into account.
Third, India already has incredible environmental damage to much of its coastline (where the majority of people are). That is ALSO going to more adversely affect the poor. Between numbers two and three, that means that from the perspective of AVERAGE educational levels, India probably saw a general INCREASE in the first to middle parts of the 21st century.
That being said, the humanitarian crisis would probably have kept the government stymied as a whole, and it is far more likely that any corporate presence would be in the form of wholly owned subsidiaries; That computer-related manufacturing probably wound up under Renraku's or Fuchi's umbrella early on as the AAAs came on the scene with a vengeance.
As to cultural influences, I agree that there should be more reference to certain (non-Japanese) cultural influences over things like style and food and so forth. But as the total number of live bodies DID implode in India AND in China, their net effect on the rest of the world that is assumed in much SciFi to be from a process of cultural diffusion, would be GREATLY diminished. On the other hand, the other side of cultural propagation is glamor and direct influence; Japan rose to huge prominence in the early 6th World, and despite a great deal of revisionism of late, their AAA megacorporations are still disproportionately represented in the Big 10 given the actual national population of Japan. So while Japanese may not be the REQUIRED language it was in the earliest editions of the game, it is still a wise choice for a savvy 'runner. That means their culture and food and manerisms would be the ones coppied and aped by the rest of the world the same way that American jeans and tennis shoes are such a hit today around the world.
On the Native American Nations and their influence, the old books (which I have been going back and re-reading of late) explained that many of the nation's leading research universities remained within their purview, especially within the borders of the Souix nation. As such, while they aren't exactly tackling the AAA Megas, they HAD successfully (though 2055 or so) stood off attempts by many of the AAAs to muscle into their territory and usurp their valuable software development firms. It's things like that which I believe are contributing to the behind-the-scenes growth of some of the members of the NAN. Lest we forget, the Great Plains, long the world's bread basket, lie withing NAN borders, and the NAN have shown a genius for applying modern technology in ecologically friendly ways to succeed. For example, they probably would have put a great deal of effort and resources into finding better cultivation, fertilization and pest control sollutions for their farms. I would not be surprised to find CAREFULLY genengineered crops sprouting in clean fields. Are they Super-Powers to rival the CAS/UCAS on the 6th World economic field? Of course not. But neither should we simply write them off as a bunch of savage primitives disdainful of the benefits of modern technology, trade and economics. They control resources the rest of the 6th World needs, and that means they have a certain amount of clout. They also have decent population numbers, and overall compare quite favorably to even much of the so-called 2nd world nations, because of their starting point as a part of the former USA and because they would continue to reap the benefits of the ultimate geographical and resource blessing on the planet that had previously catapulted a backwater democracy from obscurity to Super-Power status in less than a century.
That's MY take on reality in the 6th World. But as Ralph Nader is always warning us: "Your actual mileage may vary".
First, India has a THRIVING technical production capability, and the production of NAND memory chips from that country is starting to seriously rival places like Korea (Samsung).
Second, the gulf between rich and poor in India is vast and deep. I would expect that VITAS would have stuck the poor, with negligable access to advanced medecine and poor standards of health and living, to have been most adversely affected. The corolary to that would be that the wealthier, generally better educated, portions of India would have made out much better and the likelyhood of them losing their position would be correspondingly lower than if you took pure population and casualty rates into account.
Third, India already has incredible environmental damage to much of its coastline (where the majority of people are). That is ALSO going to more adversely affect the poor. Between numbers two and three, that means that from the perspective of AVERAGE educational levels, India probably saw a general INCREASE in the first to middle parts of the 21st century.
That being said, the humanitarian crisis would probably have kept the government stymied as a whole, and it is far more likely that any corporate presence would be in the form of wholly owned subsidiaries; That computer-related manufacturing probably wound up under Renraku's or Fuchi's umbrella early on as the AAAs came on the scene with a vengeance.
As to cultural influences, I agree that there should be more reference to certain (non-Japanese) cultural influences over things like style and food and so forth. But as the total number of live bodies DID implode in India AND in China, their net effect on the rest of the world that is assumed in much SciFi to be from a process of cultural diffusion, would be GREATLY diminished. On the other hand, the other side of cultural propagation is glamor and direct influence; Japan rose to huge prominence in the early 6th World, and despite a great deal of revisionism of late, their AAA megacorporations are still disproportionately represented in the Big 10 given the actual national population of Japan. So while Japanese may not be the REQUIRED language it was in the earliest editions of the game, it is still a wise choice for a savvy 'runner. That means their culture and food and manerisms would be the ones coppied and aped by the rest of the world the same way that American jeans and tennis shoes are such a hit today around the world.
On the Native American Nations and their influence, the old books (which I have been going back and re-reading of late) explained that many of the nation's leading research universities remained within their purview, especially within the borders of the Souix nation. As such, while they aren't exactly tackling the AAA Megas, they HAD successfully (though 2055 or so) stood off attempts by many of the AAAs to muscle into their territory and usurp their valuable software development firms. It's things like that which I believe are contributing to the behind-the-scenes growth of some of the members of the NAN. Lest we forget, the Great Plains, long the world's bread basket, lie withing NAN borders, and the NAN have shown a genius for applying modern technology in ecologically friendly ways to succeed. For example, they probably would have put a great deal of effort and resources into finding better cultivation, fertilization and pest control sollutions for their farms. I would not be surprised to find CAREFULLY genengineered crops sprouting in clean fields. Are they Super-Powers to rival the CAS/UCAS on the 6th World economic field? Of course not. But neither should we simply write them off as a bunch of savage primitives disdainful of the benefits of modern technology, trade and economics. They control resources the rest of the 6th World needs, and that means they have a certain amount of clout. They also have decent population numbers, and overall compare quite favorably to even much of the so-called 2nd world nations, because of their starting point as a part of the former USA and because they would continue to reap the benefits of the ultimate geographical and resource blessing on the planet that had previously catapulted a backwater democracy from obscurity to Super-Power status in less than a century.
That's MY take on reality in the 6th World. But as Ralph Nader is always warning us: "Your actual mileage may vary".
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