Read the Regional Bias thread. Remember, I said, "feel," not "bias."

I like to point out that the reason I don't have the PDF is I plan on getting the hardcopy when it is released. I'm in the camp that does not want to pay twice for the same book. Since I don't have the book I don't have a opinion yet. My only question is if I happen to like the book when I get it, does that put me in the rabid fanboy group?

My primary issue, and I'm speaking only of the Agitators section, is that the book does not agree with itself. While trying to be all-inclusive and extreme at the same time there are a number of very strange quirks that developed.

The greens were presented as being grounded in the middle class and conducting their more extreme activities under a shroud of research and monitoring. The green game, as presented, is the undertaking of the rich world.

Following this are the anti-corpers. The anti-corp section is really more of a lead-in for the anarchist section as these two categories of groups are presented in such a way that they are nearly identical. Stand-alone, the anti-corp section is alright, however it insists there is not much of a middle class to speak of. This is problematic as it A: conflicts with the Green section and B: make it extremely hard to claim there is a rampant consumer culture.

The corporations are often equated to the robber-barons of the twenties, and this may have been what this section meant to do. The price of gear, however, is distributed like a 21st century consumer culture, not an idle-rich vs wage-slave masses exploitation. I use wage-slave in the original sense; an actual slave.

Part of the anti-corp section states that some groups attack corporate interests. The other part states the anti-corpers try to clue the masses into the state of affairs and that it could be better.

The insidious aspect of a 21st century consumer culture is that the middle class toils, strains, and consumes. They never, however, generate wealth. Capital goes out as quickly as it comes in. They may work their way up to lower management, have a nicer car, a bigger TV, but they are working at their third ulcer and if they wanted to quit tomorrow; they could not.

Having society be composed of actual wage-slaves in a feudal hierarchy really drives home the rich vs poor point, but you do not need to tell the poor they are. They know. There may well be resistance, terrorism, and violence against their masters, but forget about the consumer frivolities that define cyberpunk dystopianism. There would be no cyberware except for the rich, no high technology, no infrastructure of impressive dataflow. If everyone is poverty-stricken we have a serious problem with having Shadowrun at all. The high-tech crumbs of the rich simply cease to exist if the market for them is so small very few are produced to begin with. A consumer culture pumps out a gigantic volume of such things. Planned obsolescence, the latest-and-greatest, buy now or you're a loser. The detris of such a culture is massive, as can be seen today.

Anarchists: The problem with anarchy is that it can turn into fascism overnight. The anarchy section notes that there are anarchist populations and areas and then details a few groups that would be useful to runners. Essentially it lays out the organization of the anti-corp movement. I will not go into my objections with the outlay of the anarchist paradise example cities as that is not the function of the chapter. It is perfectly reasonable to assume a lot of directionless rage finds its way into the anti-corp movement along with an equal portion of blind idealism. Whether you agree with what they think is the "win condition" or even if it can exist, the outlay of the resistance seems reasonable. The groups and lingo are potentially useful to many games.

This is getting long, I will break this up and give time for comment on what I have so far. The point I would like to stress is that much of the chapter laments the evaporation of the middle class. Many of these agitators rely on the middle class to have any issue, much less a following. Never-the-less continued reference to this is made.

On subject of the venom so far in this thread. Although I have objections to the material, noted above and later, I think saying it is a bad book is going too far. I find I am having to ignore parts of the book to have it make sense, however, and this is not a sign of good health. Perhaps I am missing an obvious socio-economic model that would resolve these contradictions but I can not think of one. Comments?

Possibly because you're thinking of the middle class in terms of todays' standards and wage slaves as exploited poorer lower classes, neither is the case. What some of the groups in LA are mourning is the passing of the traditional middle class and its replacement with a new middle class - corporate wageslaves (the slave bit has nothing to do with socio-economic class but rather to the fact that many of these are locked into the socio-economics of a particular corp serving as both its work force and its client base).

Corporate wage slaves aka sararimen (which is what LA refers to) are the "middle classes" of the 60s. They live well by 60's standards and would probably qualify as middle classes today, but are "indentured" to the corporate system nonetheless, and so the traditional middleclass of blue collar workers, mid-level entrepreneurs, independent professionals, family businesses, etc has been gutted as many people sign away their lives (rather than just their livilihoods) to the megas - or at least that's how the anti-corpers would put it.

The Greens on the other hand are grounded, at least partially, in that very same corporate middle class (the voice in that section doesn't care to make a distinction between middle class/corporate wageslave because its not a reference that really matters from their point of view).

Apparent inconsistencies sometimes are not. Try Greenpeace today. Most of their money (okay, something like 60%) comes from private (rich) individuals, foundations, preservationist societies and even corporations rather than from the rank and file activists who are often middle-class Joes. Same with PETA.

Just one possibility for your consideration.

Hmm. Which corps fund PETA?

If PeTA wasn't funded in large part by the idle and naive rich, then I'd be shocked.

I was reading Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism last night, and I wonder how many of the criteria your average runner meets. My guess is more than a few.

re: disappearance of the middle class v. necessity of a middle class for SR to be possible. i think there may be confusion (in both the text and the readers) about what "middle class" means, largely because there are multiple definitions for the term. in the first world, "middle class" refers to people who own a modest home, drive two cars, have cable TV, own a computer and high-speed internet service, etcetera. on a larger scale, though--a global scale--this cannot be considered "middle class", because to most of the world, the first world's "middle class" is unfathomably rich.

on a global scale, you can easily maintain that there is no middle class. you've got the unbelievably poor on one hand, who make up the majority of the global population; on the other, you've got the unbelievably rich--who striate themselves according to deviations so minute as to be invisible to the rest of the world.

so, yes, you can very easily say that the middle class has disappeared by 2064. on a global scale, it has. but if you limit your definitions to the first world (which is entirely fair, since the first world by definition controls the bulk of the world economy), the middle class still exists, and is larger than ever.

I can see what you are trying to say Syn, but it is well established that there is a gigantic lower class, in most large cities. The barrens, the slums, whatever they are called, there are obviously large populations of those just at or below the poverty line.

But there has to be stratification in the middle class. The gap between the middle and the rich can be huge. It is huge today. The middle class, however, needs to be large to fuel a consumer culture. Look to the social evolution of any country that is trying to make the transition from second tier to first tier today. The most marked indicator of this change is an increase in the size and purchasing power of the middle class. Those at poverty buy food, tools to do their jobs, but they do not buy a new car every two years. They do not buy a new cybercomm because their old one does not look as cool.

If it is a terminology problem, then I consider it a massive one. As I said, and then you said, the middle class holds a lot of debt. What I would like to stress however is why. Wage-slaves of the early 20th century were in debt because they had to accumulate that debt to buy food and tools to work their jobs. Those that carry massive debt today most often do so not because they have to but because societal pressures encourage them to.

Extrapolating on conventional economics, those that are corp-tied for life are mid-level+ managers, specialists, and those who have skills that are relatively expensive to train. There is no point to tying down your unskilled labor, and indeed the transitory nature of unskilled labor positions and the laborers themselves would make trying to do so undesireably expensive. Better to just tap the pool of the poor unaffiliated to clean toilets, server burgers, push a button, etc.

Secondly, there has to exist a large, unaffiliated market or there is no competition economicly. If there is not, then corporations are simply new states and compete over population, resources, and land. Without competition there is no continually evolving product line of the latest features and styles. The only time Ares needs a run against Renraku is if it will physically make a portion of the Renraku-tied workers switch totally over to the Ares enclaves. Share prices would mean nothing. It would be a stable, tepid market and those in poverty would not represent a large enough purchasing power to provide this unaffiliated market.

If your a manager for Ares, living in an Ares enclave, then you damned-well better buy an Ares car (you probably get a discount anyway). Not only do I not dispute this view of wage-slaves you put forth but I actively support it. However I maintain there is a much larger unaffiliated market than what the book implies, there has to be.

Being a mid-level manager for a hungry start-up or even an A corp may not make you as much money as the same position in Renraku. You may not have access to the best in Renraku schools, products, or living. There is definitaly a reason for the newly-graduated skilled specialist with a new family to sign up for the Renraku life, but if he does not make the cut for the position he wants, is he going to accept something below his skill level? Would it not be more tempting to accept slightly less pay than the job that was his first choice, in order to take a position with better, if more risky, upward movement options rather than settle for whatever job Renraku needed filled at the time for less money than the independant position and a signficantly lower rank in the corporate hierarchy?

This is not counter to corporate interests by the way. Independant firms can take risks the megas may see as unreasonable, they can get around restrictions and competition their bigger cousins can not. If they succeed and get their killer product on the market? You better believe someone buys them or the product line because the hard part is over and aquisition costs to bring it in-house in a mega are likely cheaper than developing a similar product and it saves time. This is especially true if the shadow game takes a hand in this whole process.

Competion over unproven but skilled specialists (ie college kids) is not a bad thing either. By opening themselves to outside recruitment (although discouraged, especially with the most gifted students) the corps gain access to the possibility of recruiting talented individuals who have skillsets the corp may be lacking. Independant schools (and prior books have said most of the big names are) are also important. While the corporate culture and indoctrination is helpful in creating a stable skilled base, uniformity breeds in weakness. They corps need outside talent with different perspectives than the in-house students. Recruitment competion, I envision, in the large colleges is rather cut-throat and fierce. Once they are finally signed onto a mega, I do not doubt that many of the kids find the reality less than what they expected from the spiel of their individually assigned recruiter, but that just feeds more into shadow extractions.

Unaffiliated industry provides a large market for the heavy-industry aspect of megacorporate production. If you want to build planes you need some serious machines and you will likely need to go to SK or Ares to get it in the western world. Operations to explicitly assist these unaffiliated enterprises are not only non-harmful to the megas, but likely quite profitable.

Free trade is known to generate more wealth than restricted markets. The megas may definitally try to tip the local market in their favor, but it is in their interests for the overall market culture to be competitive and a large unaffiliated workforce and industry is key to this.

I agree with you about the unaffiliated market and the fact that there has to be a consumer base beyond the corps for the corps to make money (they have to sell to someone). Note that by megas I don't mean the Big Ten, I was using the interpretation given by Corp Download (and the one we use when coming up with the Corporate Affiliation stat in the country stats) which includes the 100+ AAs. Even an A-corp wageslave is going to have a "middle class" lifestyle.

While As and AAs probably sign valuable employees to contracts of tenure, they don't have the production power to provide every good for their employees nor, for reasons above, do the necassarily want to. The image of a wageslave's total purchasing power going straight back into the corp is flawed. This may be almost true of places like the Renraku Archology, or more isolated cities, but even there I maintain you would see economic competition.

If you do not, you quickly run into a situation where a grand plan determines market subdivisions, resource use, and prices instead of the pressures of the market. While this is fine for the authoritarian image of the corp, it is not the best way to generate wealth, nor is it how corporations (especially the american and japanese conglomerates the megas are based on) operate or are organized. I do not speak from a purely speculative point here either. The organization, business practices, and esprit de corps or the megas as stated in the books backs up that while they are monolithic, sinister, souless juggernaughts, they are not run according to a Stalin-esque progrom. Such a thing is inefficient, unable to take advantage of rapidly developing oppertunities, and most importantly to the cyberpunk culture of the game, unable to encourage, enforce, and sustain a rampant consumer culture.

Like I said, I agree with most of what you said, but the middle class is not only alive and well, but fairly large. What has probably disappeared are the upper-middle class, lower upper-crust types as the gap between the insanely rich and the rest of society has widened while at the same time the gap between the middle class and the impoverished as done so as well.

Then I would say our mutual viewpoint was not conveyed as strongly as it could have been. Though this may be due to my background and how I read the subject matter. References through the anti-meta and anti-corper sections (primarily) suggested a lower overall standard of living (in an economic sense) and a much smaller middle class.

While it could be said two middle classes exist in SR, the smaller-corp affiliates and the mega-affiliated, it economic terms the defining difference between them would be migrancy and targeted marketing rather than raw purchasing power.

On my reading of the chapter, primarily the anti-corper and anti-meta sections, seemed to suggest a dwindling middle class, a lower standard of living, and a fairly well-felt sense of this amoungst the populace if not outright knowledge. Like I said, this may be due to my background in the subject matter, but I have the impression that on a more topical read it would suggest these things even more strongly.

The issue is probably the fact that its highly likely that the voice in the anti-corper section is referring only to the non-megacorp affiliated middle-class and what's left of blue collar workers, independent professionals and better-off mom&pop and micro-corporation employees (and not to those who've already sold their souls to the enemy as it were).

The anti-meta voice could be referring to either "middle class" you've mentioned above, since more than a couple of megas harbor anti-meta biases.

The discussion has thus boiled down my comment to "the nature of the social structure these groups operate within is somewhat unclear."

Aside from that, on the sections I've covered so far; I like the greens, the anti-corps and anarchists are things we've seen before though it is useful to have new names to drop and groups to use with them, and I'll skip the facists when I continue with the rest because I've mentioned them above in the thread.

Could the Deus Ex references have been any more blatantly ripped-off?

Clarify?

Yeah, I'm-a gonna need some help with that one SL.

The references to UNATCO and J.C. denton, specifically.

<shrug> Never played it. Can't be any worse than the various Battletech references down through the years.

Yes, but FASA owned the copyrights on BattleTech.

Ooh that. If you think that's a rip-off, look up possible references to the Abbey of Melk mentioned in the Vigilia Evangelica.

C'mon, Syn. It was bad enough when you told me the joke.

Well, I'd have thought more people would have caught it by now. It's a pretty blatant tip of the hat.

It's not like I mind rip-offs, personally. I'll always prefer a great fun thing that the author rather blatantly stole somewhere than some crap the author made up.

The Vigilia Evangelica is the part of LA that I like the most. That's probably because it links so well with the Black Lodge and makes that shapeless/lame group from Threats, when combined with SoE, into a really cool organization. Kudos Peter!

Mike

It's funny but I was one of the group of people that all independently suggested something like this and the whole Vatican libraries/Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but the Vigilia section is one of the parts of this that I ended up not really liking very much. The main problem for me was that it was much too overdeveloped. By that I mean its been there for too long and knows too much, I'd have much prefered something where they only realised what they had after the awakening and are currently groping around and sifting through the archives to try and figure things out as best they can. Not really sure if I'm being all that clear so I'll try and be a bit more coherant after I've got some sleep.

Finally went through it. Some comments:

a) Shoot the artists. FanPro can do much better (As seen in recent BT stuff i.e)

b) General:

The book is more useful as a "universe roundout" for the GM and / or those Players (yes, they do exists. no, I don't have one currently) that flesh out their characters histories. It's a solid product in that regard with a nice "message board" feeling to it.

c) Some chapters

I won't comment on all of them here, just some bits:

+ The "Greenie" and "AntiFa" chapters reminded me why I have a "I don't break for Greenies" sticker on my car and why I totally agree with the elder Union members when it comes to calling AntiFa and 68ers "Useless, lazy loudmouthes with too much time and money on their hands".

Conclusion: The chapter is really hitting the mark. Great work, let's go shoot some ÖkoTerries. Will use this for an anti-Greenie scenario or two

+ The UN chapter has some nice twists and references. About the only thing I was missing is the United Nations Council for Law Enforcement. After all UNA(T)CO is already there. Still, I like the idea of the UN struggeling to get away from the Megas.

Conclusion: Metaplot stuff but good stuff, may use it for a scenario or two

+ The "female" policlubs are nice. Again the authors hit the nails describing the world view of Alice Schwarzer and her ilk very nicely. Reminds me why my grandmother and mother detest those "stuffed shirts"

Conclusion: Not very useful except as a background / hate group

+ The Policlub chapter was relatively disappointing. Humanis forever. Sorry but unless you spend the last ten years under a rock, the new face of the right wing movement / KKK isn't anything new IRL.... Okay, the teenies that SR aims it did spend the last 10 years under MTV rock so maybe it's not that bad.

Material is well presented but I would have liked some more Policlubs besides Humanis/KKK. Maybe "Church of Nobilis Superior" or other "evil Elven" Policlubs with hidden links to the Tirs etc. Some new views on the old stuff. The half-humans can / should have their hate-groups too

+ The church chapter has been skipped. We will have a Christopher Street Day (the Pope comes to a visit) nearby soon so I have a church allergy already


Birdy

But speaking of the Game Information, let me express my utter contempt for whoever wrote this:

Read the previous nine pages of this thread. It's been discussed to Hell and back, and I don't think anyone even cares to bring that one back.

Aww come on, Angie isn't quite the looker, but that's not what she's supposed to do. churchill wasn't particularily attractive either, and that didn'T stop him from being a great leader. Not saying that Angie will make the cut, though.

Read through the chapter on DIY crime and the Tamanous stuff.

+ The Brocker for Runners thing is too over the top for my liking. As some ShadowTalk says: Why isn't anyone big gunning for them? The FaceBank is an old idea (As old as Hardwired from Walter Jon Williams, IIRC a should read for Riggers as in introduced them) and totally acceptable as a money storage / laundry. But a full brokerage firm that works on "runners" blabbing about a run just done? Too unrealistic IMHO

+ Tamanous is "ugly". In a "this looks realistic and fitting" kind of "ugly". Sure I would like to cast "Compel Truth" on the author wether he read CyberWorld or not but the adaption to SR and the general presentation and reasoning why it exists are great.

They would also make a good source for "moral dillema" for the magic and non-cyber types in a group...


+ The Church chapter

"Spiess voran, drauf und dran! Setzt auf's Klosterdach den roten Hahn" ( http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/Lieder/wirsindg.html from the Peasants Riots time ) lit.: Level the spear and charge. Put fire to the monastys roof

Just to make clear what's my position on churches.

The Order looks nicely done and quite resonable. Granted, the Jesuits have a big enough ego not to put a "New" in front of their name but in general it's a good description of the Popes "Dogs of War", the rather worldly "Soldiers of Jesus" as they are sometimes called. Same goes for the library, a great transfer of common "Conspiration Theories" to SR.

The chapter in itself is useful if you want to play a "robes" campaign where everybody is an evil Roman Catholic monk/priest or if you need well-organised, secretiv blackhats with old magic and some artifacts. I won't rule out blood-magic from that group either.

Birdy

I guess most people can draw a line between facism presented in a game and real-life-facism.

Or do i miss a point here?

Yes. Our overly zealous prosecutors.