I'm trying to run a campaign in Austin, which is a border town according to the back of the book map (I played Shadowrun on the SNES, and that was my total exposure until the Not-so-Shadowrunnish 360 game). I don't really understand how I should run corps in town. Do they have branch managers? The idea I have is that AzTech is trying to take over Austin through various (and devious!) means. There's only one corp who hasn't jumped ship, and that's Renraku. So the runners, HOPEFULLY, will take Renraku's side and try to win back the city.

Does this work for the cannon of the established fluff?

1) This forum is for Shadowrun Missions, a series set in New York. You probably want the main forum.

Austin quick notes:
1) Lone Star was founded there.
2) It is ON the border between the C.A.S. and Aztlan.

There's a paragraph in it on 6th world, that (paraphrasing) describes it as two police states, one half held by Aztlan and the other by Lone Star.

moved to the correct section!

Firstly, it's your game, so do what you want! But, with respect to the fluff, you could probably put just about any of the megas up against the Big A in Austin if you wanted to, but Aztechnology and Horizon are known to be having a bit of a kerfuffle at the moment, so that would be another option other than Renraku. Ares would likely be another good one.

For really good fluff on the Confederation of American States you'd have to reach all the way back to Shadows of North America. There might be some information in the Sixth World Almanac that was more recently released, but I've not gone all the way through that.

Nnnnnot a ton, actually. A good deal of North America was glossed over in favor of Africa and Europe, IMO.

What do you plan on doing if the runners take aztechs side? ^^

Have Renraku offer them more money?

That's crazy enough for it to maybe even work . .

It's pretty rare to me for a team of Shadowrunners to pass up the moral choice and the mercenary choice. You might get some goodie-two-shoes that don't want more money if the employers are obvious dicks, and you might get a few stone cold professionals that don't care about the ethics of a job if the money's right...but if you offer 'em both you pretty much get the team by the nose.

*shrugs* never once in my time of playing shadowrun did any GM i played with manage to think of this simple solution to simply offer me more money, when i did not do what he expected / wanted my character to do . .

It usually works rather well, too. Alternatively, just run the game working for the Big A and see what happens. Back when Year of the Comet came out I decided that, in my version of the world, the Azzies were obviously behind the Shedim somehow. Wrote a whole story about that, then tossed the players into the mix to see how it all turned out. They worked with the Azzies for about a year of real-time play and released the Shedim on the world. When they realized what they'd done, their faces were priceless. Made it all totally worth it.

Side note:

IIRC: Renraku is not a big player in Austin. Lone Star is. Ares and KE are not. The CAS is in. Hey they hate the Azzies. THere are also smaller groups who want to liberate the conquered portions of texas (and are willing to start a war to do so).

The way corporations divvy up geographical areas depends on the corporation in question. Renraku, for instance, divides the world up into regions, and each regions has subregions and so forth. Mitsuhama, meanwhile, divides it up by area of study, so there's a Matrix division, a Cyberware division and so on. Many organizations, like Ares, do both. S-K does whatever the hell they want, because they're run by a dragon who does weird things only dragons understand. So Renraku should have some sort of local manager in charge of that area, and through him the different lines of industry coordinate. I don't recall how Aztechnology works, but they may have a special division specifically for expanding strategically important markets, and in this case that would be in charge.

Most corporations will have representation in the area, but not corporate offices. Instead, they'll be represented primarily by subsidiaries. So you might not see Ares anywhere, but you do see Weapons World, Ford, Coleman and Creyon.

The Aztlan/Texas border is heavily militarized. a war will do that for you. I think as much as the azzie's would like a foot hold it would have to be through a lot of back door ownership. They have a lot of bad press in Texas and it is not all undeserved. Think of people in west Berlin druing the cold war hearing the Soviets are trying to move in behind the scenes.

A good run might be exposing/hiding such activity.

Treat it like East/West Berlin. And it's an "armed camp" mentality. Lots of "just head out there, then swing on back, and take a look-see. Run if you git lit up, and don't die too much".

Or in our current adventure, "Ok, now, these d1#kholes have gone and screwed us fer the last time. I want you good folk to go git yer murder on out there and we'll pretend we didn't see nothin', okay? Don't care how it's done, but I want you back here with a big honkin' bag of gen-u-ine Azz-i-tec-nology ears in a week. Hell yes, I'll pay fer yer ammo too. Now git!"

-Tir (you know it's bad when go-gangers have a Ferrari Appoloosa.)