Where are the absolute worst places in the Sixth World to be, like on the level of modern day Liberia? I mean the most violent, f'ed up, poorest, most chaotic areas of the Sixth World?

I believe Feral Cities describes them in detail.

Bubba the Love Troll's cell.

Asamundo !!


Hough!
Medicineman

Desert Wars.

Asamando is in fact one of the best nations in Africa.
That said, the continent is generally still a hellhole. Then, there are South America nations with their civil strife, the Middle East after the nuclear exchange, Poland after a civil war, and that.
Then again, even relatively well-off nations like UCAS have slums in their sprawls, so you don't have to travel aboard.

Mostly I just don't want to get eaten. That's not somewhere I want to go without back up. Yes they're civilized, but they still need flesh. . .

That doesn't mean that they eat tourists.

Yeah, I figure most intelligent Ghouls wouldn't want to eat runners. You never know where they might have been...

Wait, do you want just a bit of civil war or the truly most screwed up places of the planet?

For the latter I'd like to nominate the SOX, a fun place full of radiation, mana warps, paracritters, ghouls, Invae...the corps residing there are a bit inhospitable and hide behind concrete and gun emplacements, probably because they want all their precious cabin fever for themselves.
But the locals always welcome strangers, like the glow punks who will gladly invite you to be their guest of honor in a traditional ritual of (in no particular order) bludgeoning, looting, raping, and cannibalizing - you might even be able to witness the election of a new chief in the time-honored ritual of "me done in boss, I is boss now!". Toxics, looters and other assorted nutjobs are equally welcoming and will gladly discuss their world view with you.

London, England. It's a damned police state that's only gotten worse. Sure it's civilized, but that only makes you want to let your guard down that much more...

San Angelo, TX.
I can't imagine it's gotten better.

Is there a sourcebook that describes SOX in any detail?

Don't forget the added security of a MET2000 perimeter guard. To keep undesirables out, of course.

There is the "SOX" sourcebook, but AFAIK it's only available in french and german.

Yes, a quaint example of traditional German wall-building crafts


There is a SOX sourcebook for 4th Ed, but only in French and German. Don't know about the French, but our version is only available on paper and out of print (and it was written by Fanpro, so maybe some licensing trouble to boot), happy hunting on Ebay.

French nor German is problematic. Just having dead tree editions and being out of print is. :/

Edit: actually found it. Thanks.

It's a 3rd edition sourcebook.

Parts of China, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East...

Africa is always fun as a hellhole.

Aztlan, at least in the rural areas. Although even the urban areas are hellish.

The Northern part of California is probably still a hodge-podge of hellholes full of whatever nutbar group is in charge of the area currently and fighting over water rights...

The deepest, darkest parts of the Seattle Barrens...

Yeah, I wouldn't sell Glow City short. Glow City is fucking scary.

It's 4th edition actually. That is, it's copyrighted 2007, while the introductury page dates it october 2070.

Right on the back: Voll kompatibel zu Shadowrun 4.01D

its a "Pre-Pegasus" SR4 Sourcebook. IIRC Eismmann,SirDoom and Nyx (the ole Fanpro freelancer) were responsible of it.Thats why ist fully compatible to 4.01D
All Pegasus Books are compatible to SR4A
I've seen it often at Conventions (RPG Mechants Booth's )
But Back to Topic
Metropole should be a "Hellhole" too
Al the Sites from Feral Cities

with a feral Dance
Medicineman

Russia? Don't remember anything that bad in Shadows of Asia.
Sure, if you take my draft when I finish it, it will have some fun places...

Also, China is basically Lung's playground. It's not that bad.

You'd think it's no more a hellhole than Seattle. Sure, it has favellas; but Seattle has barrens.

I suppose it matters whether you're there for business or pleasure, and what kind of business.
Actually, I'd like to read more about Asamando, is there more info than just SWA?

No, it's compatible to 4.01D because the ".01D" suffix was merely used to distinguish the German core book from its English counterpart. Therefore the Pegasus books released before 4A are also fully compatible to 4.01D and accordingly, references in these books are written as "SR4.01D, S.xxx".

I mean, how should the Arsenal 2070 and Bodytech on my shelf be compatible to a book released long after they were written?


Not at greengrocers' booths?

...the Balkans.

This was the primary battlefield between Euro and Islamic forces which was laid waste to during the last Euro war. As mentioned in SoE, it is pretty much Merc territory, and since crash 2.0 not much has apparently changed. This is for all purposes, still a war zone where runners can easily find themselves outclassed by well equipped mercenary or local military units. Next there are the guerrilla forces: the private armies of local warlords, local resistance movements, and terrorist cells, all who have a mistrust of outsiders. This is their home ground, their "turf".

In a sense, the Balkans are Europe's Barrens.

Actually, even parts of the UCAS/CAS/NAN borders are pretty bad when it comes to constant, low-level skirmishes. Not really high body count, but it certainly makes it not a nice place to live.

Also, I'm not sure how much of a hell it is, but Sudbury, Ontario is certainly a damned hole!

Australia - head inland inutil the first mana storm, then turn left to go to hell.
Tasmania - Yeah, just don't go there.
Madagascar - All it needs is for some fallout to make it worse.
SOX - but that's been mentioned, as has Glow City (Awesome place for a run though. "What do you mean, "who brought the giger-counters, dosimeters and exposure badges?" What the hell would we need...ohshit."
The StinkFens as well - I remember reading about some baaaaad environmental crap there.

Enjoy the travel !

Not to mention the iodine tablets.

He didn't say they were. Just the Pegasus ones, not the Pre-Pegasus ones.

its the 150 Mio People living there that make it a Hellhole
150 Millions !!

with...No ! I could never ever Dance 150 Million times
Medicineman

But he is right
I must correct myself.
Pegasus translated Arsenal and Bodytech before SR4A so these are SR4.01D compatible
Its just...well for Me Pegasus is equal to SR4A and Fanpro represents the older SR4(and SR3)
and for my simple Mind SR4A is good,SR4 is worse and SR3 is worser (and SR2 is worst)

with a simple Dance
Medicineman

I'm pretty sure there is a SR4 rulebook in my shelf. See, a german one. Released way before SR4A. And before Arsenal and Bodytech too iirc. Anyway. I stand corrected for SOX, though.

Page reference?

Making an entire continent a hellhole, especially one as large as Africa, was probably the laziest writing Shadowrun has ever produced.

South Africa is not SO bad IRL. And my Uncle was able to get in and out of Africa with only an acid scar from some kind of weird insect. (Yes, folks, Xenomorphs exist on Earth!).

It's not like it is mostly hellholes in real life.

Lord of War, anyone?

A LOT of Africa really is, especially places like West Africa.

You won't need them - iodine 131 is a nasty bugger, but it has a very short half-life (8 days only) - which means it has decayed to negligible levels since the accident. But there's no lack of an unhealthy dose of longer-lasting crap hanging around - eating dust is even more of a losing proposition there...

Ah yes, sorry. Cold War misinformation coming to me again... They suggested Iodine Tablets in case of "a nuclear event" to bond with the radiation and flush it out of your system, not mentioning that it only worked with one type of radiation.

Don't get me started on air raid sirens, either. I suffer from migraines, and they always chose the worst time to test the damned things...

Well, iodine is low-tier - the medkits found in Russian bomb shelters have tranq tabs in them (which turned quite a number of junkies into diggers)

The original 4th Ed rulebook was released in Germany as "Shadowrun 4.01D" by Fanpro*, and the Anniversary Edition as simply "4. Edition" by Pegasus. All other books, whether by Fanpro or Pegasus, refer to the most recent version of the BBB. So quite a few Pegasus books actually refer to 4.01D, but there should be no reference to a German "SR4" book before the translated Anniversary edition came out.

*: AFAIK there's also a re-realase of the 4.01D book by Pegasus...at least there is a version of the book with a TOC, which the original version did not have.

Do you happen to know how much of that's spilled over into Poland, specifically Warsaw? I recall that Poland is pretty fucked up due to being a major stomping ground and having a revolution, but I'm not sure what level of infrastructure exists in Warsaw. I assume it's still a major city...?

It's not toaly useless : iodine 131 is a major byproduct of uranium and plutonium fission, and one of those who can easily pass into the metabolism - the idea is to saturate the organism with iodine to make sure as much as possible of the 131 isotope justes passes trhough whithout being snateched by the metabolism. But it's only need for a relatively short period after the main event.

Of course if you have some plutonium dust stuck in your lungs, it's mostly a moral comfort...

Free Poland won the Civil War; Russian forces fell back without much of a fight during the Crash, and then were pulled out altogether.
SK played a major role in that; and now Poland is its playground and favorite battleground fighting EVO influence from the East.
That said, I don't believe much is known about the current state of Warsaw - it was in deep when the rybokrats were still in; with slums, electricity and water limits and food shortages; but quite a time has passed since then.

Sweet, my assumption about it being a corporate warzone between Evo and others is correct! Woo! Seems like prime turf for a three-way tug of war between Evo, SK and Renraku Europa.

Considering that I lived in the "Die a guaranteed slow, horrible, painful death" nuclear zone ring during the cold war, a very small comfort.

For the 150 Millions ?
Almanach !
Page 211 German Version
oh...It says Half of the 250 Million Inhabitants live in Metropole...
So its just ca 125 Mio.
I Thought it was even more...

@Sengir
*: AFAIK there's also a re-realase of the 4.01D book by Pegasus...at least there is a version of the book with a TOC, which the original version did not have.
Noooooh.... the only BBB by Pegasus is the Anniversary edition.
Whats the Meaning of TOC ?

with a slightly smaller Dance
Medicineman

I consider Metrópole as formed by the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The last census (2010) says there is 76.8 million people living there right now (with the cities of Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo having 17.6 millions of the total).