Hey folks.
I've been out for a while, but I'm back, and I'm about to run a campaign set in New York. I've already got the Manhattan PDF and about half of the 3rd SRM series. Don't really want to spend the money on the rest of those PDFs unless the quality jumps up. Do you guys know of any resources that detail the city, or the five boroughs?

I came by to check it out on the wiki, but apparently it's fragged.

Any help would be much appreciated.

You can always pick up a copy of The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America for $7-10 on eBay. CGL hasn't converted it to PDF yet. It's 20 years out of date but other than corporate shake-ups, there aren't that many changes between it and The Rotten Apple. There's no reason to think the boroughs information isn't still the same.

I wrote the Criminal Syndicates section for the never released vol. 2 of The Rotten Apple and if I'm not stepping on any contractual toes I'll probably release my final draft at some point.

Basically the 5 boroughs have been turned into a Barrens of sorts, that never really recovered from the earthquakes.

Manhattan Island is the pen-ultimate Black Trenchcoat, Mirrored Sun Glasses setting.

Not really. The Bronx is poor and lower-middle class but it isn't an insane and lawless free-for-all like Redmond. It's never been revealed if the Villiers Arcology was completed. Brooklyn and Queens are like Bellevue, a mixture of suburb and sprawl, and Brooklyn has a large UCAS Navy presence as well. Staten Island is a bizarre hodge-podge of dirt poor and ultra-rich and even more sailors.

It's entirely possible that I'm really wrong, but I was under the impression that it was corp towns everywhere. I am likely really wrong because I've never read any of the New York stuff, but I'd always been under the impression that it was similar to Hong Kong's ruled by the corp set-up. I guess I was wrong.

New York is pretty much the opposite of Hong Kong. They're the two opposing faces of the coin of megacorporate power. Both are ruled by the corporations, but New York is ruled by corporate employees willing to step on anyone to advance within their company, while Hong Kong is ruled by corporate employees willing to step on anyone to advance within the Triads. New York is squeaky clean and creepy. Hong Kong is seedy and corrupt.

Oh, and Manhattan is the first of the 5 Boroughs.

Ah that's a key distinction I never realized. More Big Brother than hellhole, I take it?

It's a little like a prison where people willingly go to live. Checkpoints everywhere, police just minutes away from everywhere except a couple of zones, 30 cameras for every person there.

Shadowruns there are considerably more difficult than many other places.



-k

Due to a court battle between the State of New York and the Manhattan Development Consortium, Manhattan island is the only part of old NYC that can legally be called New York City. The remaining boroughs have become their own independent bodies. Manhattan is the largest extraterritorial zone in the world and is the home to the ZOG bank and Corporate Court's ground-side offices. There's a mayor and city councilors but they're puppets for the MDC body. With the exception of a couple of Z-Zones, the entire island is one giant Panopticon; you're tagged and required to display proper ID literally everywhere you go. It's great if you're a corporate citizen but it sucks for anyone else.

Think of Manhattan as an island sized corporate United Nations. You have multiple bodies sharing one highly-secured area to keep the riff-raff and other dangers out but they all engage in their own internal political shenanigans.

When Manhattan was being bandied about as a location for Missions, the original concept was to keep the majority of the adventures in the outside boroughs and leave the island itself as an impregnable fortress and the ultimate goal. I liked that idea but it was shot down and since vols. 2 and 3 of The Rotten Apple never made it past the draft stage, there was nothing for Missions writers to base their adventures off of, other than the 20-year old NAGNA. So the island became a bit more porous than I would have liked.

For anyone interested, you can use my Google Map with each Manhattan neighbourhood identified on it (plus some icon junk from my old game)

Almost makes me want to finish writing the New York City setting I have half-written!

Here's a map I created for a proposed re-design of The Rotten Apple. I hope people can get some use out of it.

Nice Wesley. its a real shame that Manhattan never got fleshed out better. There were a lot of things I'd have liked to seen explored, and had the decision to shift to Seattle not been made (before I took over, I'll note), I would have pushed hard to see it happen. I had a lot of questions about New York.

Ahh well.

Bull

If you're looking for a campaign set in New York, look no further.

New York's Hottest Club is DREK. Opened by Orkish Club Promoter Dong King, this club finally answers the question: "BUH?!".

This place has everything. Thunderbirds, cybernetic ravers, the Spirit of Bruce Willis, My Little Pony BTLs, chairs made from dwarven contortionists, soykaf showers, Jewhouls... (Jewish Ghouls).

And just when you thought it couldn't get any better? Knock knock, who's there? It's Troll Obama!


...Otherwise, I'd say just do what you think is cool. As long as you capture the right feel, you can fudge the details a bit with your own game, I think.

Everything else, I can get behind, but, MY LITTLE PONY BTLS?

They're 20% cooler than other BTLs.

And people will watch -anything-.

Having worked tech support for a cable company, I can't argue with that. Also proof of the lack of intelligence and taste that people have.

Hahahaha, Stefon is really a spike baby elf.

Awesome! Thanks for the replies, everyone. And especially for the maps!

I plan on running a modified version of Season 3... the adventures don't quite mesh with the tone of the Rotten Apple, from what I can see. TRA paints a picture of Manhattan as a monolithic corporate fortress, all but suicide to run in except for the most well connected teams. The Seasons seem to have people going to the island willy-nilly, however, so I'll change some things around, and make more use of the other boroughs.

I'm putting an Obsidian Portal site together for the campaign now, I'll share it with you guys once it has some decent content on it.

I've never used any of the Missions, mostly because part of the draw for my group is that the game is set in Seattle and we're all reasonably near it. Plus, Space Needle, what more could you want?

The Ork Underground. Tarislar. Hells Kitchen. Glow City. The Rat's Nest. The Crime Mall.

That's one big advantage of the shift to Seattle in Season 4. Like I said above, I really liked Manhattan, and I think exploring it would have been fun, and it was open enough that we could develop it as we pleased...

But going back to Seattle gives us this very well defined playground with some very familiar haunts and locations to play in. So that's been fun.

Bull

There's a reason my stories take place in it.

The shopping trip at the Crime Mall is one of my favorite scenes to have written.

I'm just waiting for the runs to shift to LA, and all the Missions players that haven't read the LA stuff go "whaa?" and their head explodes

My group hates LA now. The 'Runs I set up there are... Well, they're the stuff of legend.

Manhattan is a fortress of surveillance, which is only a problem for unprepared runners.

Runners can
a) get fake Passes from forgers or easily supplied by the hiring corp
b) Organized crime connections can smuggle people in and out, and wherever they like in the city, through their organize means
c) the Neo-Anarchists maintain sensor-down routes to get around the city, so being friends with them can get you pretty much anywhere
d) for the brave, there is the Undergroud, which will get you anywhere in the city. Assuming you survive the killbots, rogue spirits and various miscreants down there. But hey, it's free.