The old Shadows of North America had a lot of great Fluff about the various nations that make up the North American continent. We've now seen full workups on Seattle and Denver, Manhattan and New York (Not the same thing, kids), and that seems to be about it. Chicago's still a bug-hunt. *snore* But how about some closer looks at the cultures, industries, governments and prominent corporations of places like the CAS or Sioux Nation? Popular music? Comparative prices (ye gods and kittens, how I miss that particular bit of Fluff from older editions)? Attitude did a respectable job of updating us on the general culture of the Shadows in the 2070s, but it was general. Is there anything in the works that might address some of this?

If I missed something, please let me know. Does anybody else share a hunger for the older flavor-books (Shadows of [Whatever], State of the Art, etc.)? What kinds of things would others most like to see?

My top picks:

• Details on the governments of the various polities
• List of special prohibitions and/or leniencies or special licenses (think guns and 'ware)
• Local socio-economic details (like Seattle 2072 and the older book in the intro sidebars)
• Comparative pricing of classes of goods (weapons, food, electronics, software, etc)
• Lists of major universities, military bases, industrial zones and other sites of interest
• Local prevailing "threads" like independence movements or growing anti-meta sentiment

The Sixth World Almanac turned out to be surprisingly (disapointingly) thin on all of that, so I'm curious if it's just me or if other people would shell out the Nuyen for such a product...

*pssst... the Devs are reported to luck around these parts, so maybe we'll give them new ideas and/or get them to leak a bit about an upcoming un-announced product*

-Kerenshara

>>EDIT: You know, I'd be willing to shell out for a single PDF product per area (Like the Rotten Apple) if that's how it went, thus saving the need to commit to a huge print run... I wonder if that idea would have any traction...

I love the old flavor books.

A few cities have goodly sized writeups, if you know where to look. Not Seattle big, but big-ish.

Off the top of my head, Los Angeles and San Fransisco, Portland, Salem (Oregon), Denver, San Antonio, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, and Boston.

If you have a request, however, feel free to toss out a suggestion.

(And, yes, while I tend to think of Shadows of North America as a new book, it's actually 11 years old, so, not too long until a new one is due, truth be told.)

Denver got a pretty extensive write-up in Spy Games, where I was able to also dedicate a (very) few pages to Austin (though mostly on the espionage angle for that one). Future products will also feature a similar mixture of setting info in with the more specifically themed stuff, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what cities in what books (I'm paranoid about the NDA issue, probably more than I have to be, but I'll leave it to Bull, Patrick, or even Jason himself to comment, they're older hands at how to steer clear of violations). I do know that at least Conspiracy Theories will contain information on a major North American city (and that doesn't seem terribly spoileriffic).

I'd like to see a good, current write up of Tir. With it being so close to Seattle and the Elf hacker being FROM there it would be pretty useful to me. NAN could use a book too. And I second what the OP said (once the font stopped making my eyes bleed) about comparative prices. Hell, PC's taking one look at that could start a whole smuggling campaign.

Well, I, for one, would be thrilled to drop some input into a new Tir book.

The NAN is going to need to have some eyeballing as well.

...

I'm suddenly curious about how Spy Games handles Denver. The council *was* Aztlan, the Souix, the PCC, the Ute, UCAS, and the CAS.

We know Aztlan got kicked out.

Did the Ute get folded into the PCC, since they're now one nation?

Grf.

Need to pick up the printbook.

To clarify:

I am ok with most of the cities we got and are getting. I'm more interested in the territories themselves. A dozen or twenty pages of, say, the CAS or PCC or whatever. Cities are places of note... I want the broader areas in MUCH more detail than Sixth World Almanac gave us.

-Kerenshara

I'm wanting very badly to submit an e-book proposal for Land of Promise, trust me. I've just been swamped with other stuff lately, and grad school shows no signs of letting up. You're not alone in wanting a Tir update, let's just say; there are some of us doing a bit of writing now that want to roll up our sleeves and get to work on it, too.

If so, I'd like to see a nod to Spes, in an article, or by/as a shadowposter, or if he's still alive, as a figure in the Tir after the Revolution.

Modern setting books have become quite sparse and streamlined of late. Broadly, a section on people, and a section on places, and shadowpostings and articles linking the two into a setting. There's often a few introductory pages that sometimes address the feel of the locale but unfortunately, the characters doing the describing, and at least half the shadowposters, are often foreign to the area or talking about something irrelevant. Tir Na Nog is not my favourite book, to me it's pretty dense, and I don't care for the Immortal Elves or their Triumph of the Will style genetically isolated, stratified society with an emphasis on athleticism, competition, as well as nationalist/racial oaths and lifestyles. but the feel of the location is well illustrated through Spes, an expat whose bitter desire to tell-all overpowers his secretive existence, and it all works towards flavouring the location. Traveler Jones is an interesting character, and his posts can illustrate some areas with specificity and character, such as travel, places to stay and eat, maybe smuggling or security - but he's not a local, and he seems to work low key and high class.

Locales need to be illustrated by characters who live and die by the whims of their dynamic environment, warped by the sixth world. Places to stay, meet, find work, buy some gear, that's all well and good, and I'm happy for Traveler Jones to tell me, but I can think up a bar, warehouse, park, corporate arcology anywhere, I need a location book to tell me how much the drink in my hand costs compared to back home, what's on trid, what's waiting out on the street, and how that arcology got permission to obscure this neighborhood in near-darkness for more than half the day, so they sleep in and miss work, how some areas have suffered health problems from the vented carbon dioxide. Then I find myself in a sleepy, dying suburb where the people wear oxygen tanks and seal their homes and gardens.The best way to do that, in that example is to have a presence on Jackpoint from both the neighborhood and the arcology.

Separate from setting books covering geographic locations, I wouldn't mind a 4th gen interpretation of Sprawl Sites. That book detailed archetypal locations, various sizes and classes of restaurant, hotel room, public place, seedy bars, and more, with maps, suggested matrix statistics, security, descriptions and staff. Some of the maps in SR4 products have been incredible. They are my favourite thing about Ghost Cartels, to be honest. I would certainly buy a product that had maps of the same caliber (or by the same artist) with map scales, along with casts of NPCs, matrix statistics, security, hooks/reasons to go there/encounters. some sort of modular system for constructing maps would be ambitious, but incredibly helpful.

To be honest, when I read a lot of modern Shadowrun products, I often find it's primarily hooks for GM's, and things for NPCs to talk about, which for me comes fairly naturally from the setting. The thing that I can't do, and has been improving exponentially of late, is the production. I'm looking at Gun Heaven right now, the Sig Sauer 574. Sure, it's basically an assault rifle that fires a bigger bullet and therefore does 7P rather than 6P, I could have conceived of that, house ruled it. But it mentions it saw action in the Eurowars, which fits my expat Israeli mercenary character perfectly, and there's the picture - suddenly, I can see it, the scarred, sun blistered Troll, peering down the scope with a steady cyber-eye, stock rammed into his shoulder. That's not something I necessarily do or can do for myself, especially not looking for pictures of guns on the internet, as that can lead to morbid and gory results.


-Agree.
-I agree on the economy lists. The percentage costs of equipment groups were awesome, and made you consider asking your fixer to get you a sub-orbital for surgery overseas.
-Good point, some locales may have widespread shitty commlinks but a lot of guns, whereas others may have strict gun control but electronics and entertainment stores everywhere.
-I'm actually having a problem right now conceiving a university integral to my setting. I'm not too familiar with North American geography, I hear Harvard is near Boston from one of my players, and I assume MIT&T is in Massachusetts as well, but I don't really want to base my game in and around Boston. I'm also coming up with corporate presence at whatever University myself, scholarship, prominent courses and flavour. Also, that sort of broad location section would benefit from the aforementioned maps or even satellite photos.
-Location threads are best illustrated via Shadowposters, differing views with equal conviction do wonders.

Um, a lot of universities changed character a bit after the Awakening and breakup of the old USA. MIT is now MIT&T, Texas A&M is now Texas A&M&M. One of the universities in the Sioux Nation was bleeding edge software and the companys around the university were the Google of their day.

One of the predominant threads in SR for characters is things like "ex-merc" or "former-military" or "retired beat cop" and so on. How about a Decker who went to university for Comp-Sci and either dropped out or graduated Magna and decided the life of a Suit was not for them (or ran afoul of a neat plot device, let's say). Or the Magician who went to MIT&T... I'd like to be able to work a little more fluff into the back story and RP. How many people do YOU know that can't go twenty four hours without a reference of SOME kind to their alma-mater? And ex-roommates and former-professors and old college romances make great plot material for a creative GM...

Just sayin'

-Kerenshara

A good way to specify what you want to see, by the by, is to list old books that were good, some that were bad, and why. That helps focus on what kinds of things that you enjoyed without being forced to try and encapsulate it, which can be tricky.

Mind you, as an ENglish/History major and a sociology minor (among other things!), the cultural aspects are always huge for me. How does society X differ from Z and why? What sort of taboos are there, accepted behaviors, linguistic traditions, and so forth?

As an example, the corporate cultures of the Megacorps is set up in a loose framework that allows me to hang more on there than they can really come out and say, but can hint towards easily. Shiawase is growing more influenced by Shinto, for example, and a Kami-friendly structure is taking place, which is in clear contrast to Ares' All-American American gung-ho style or S-K's top-down micromanagement style. Heck, Renraku's focus on societal networking, arcologies, and 'company town' design gives you *miles* of stuff to work with.

But, I'm weird, so.

The character I am currently playing has a Thaumaturgical Degree from Oxford... He is a fun character.

Part of that issue comes from the decision made (years ago) to move away from the bloated Shadowtalker lists of SR2-SR3, and into a comparatively streamlined list of Jackpointers who are (in theory) all super-awesome professionals in their respective fields. Instead of every writer tossing their old PC into the Shadowtalk for kicks, as I understand it, the decision was made to make it a smaller, manageable, number of regular posters that players and GMs could get to know on a more personal level (see 10 Jackpointers, for instance).

Whether that succeeded in any appreciable way or not, two things: (1) it's what we've got to work with, which really cuts down on our number of potential "locals" when describing a new city, and (2) we're taking baby steps away with it, such as with the inclusion of a few new Jackpointers to kind of test the waters, and see what we can do to expand the IC posting pool a bit, which could theoretically ameliorate the situation.

As far as reams and reams of text going towards the minutiae of a setting? I'd love to be able to do it, but it doesn't seem to be the direction the company, or perhaps even the industry, wants to go in right now. That's a lot of word count for a relatively little amount of generally useful to every gamer type information, which (I suppose) means a bad investment for a game company. Some folks like the detail, but many don't, and that means throwing word count at a freelancer for something that won't be universally purchased and read. I guess. *shrugs* All I know is it doesn't seem to be in the cards, at the moment. Despite the relative success of Way of the Adept, I'll count myself lucky to get a 20 or 30 page e-book for Land of Promise, never mind the tome of awesome knowledge and detail that was the old Tir book.

1. Is this really that popular? I don't mean that describing the government (visible and shadow) isn't useful - as it puts any political shadowruns into necessary context - but it never seemed that people were really clamoring for more than rather broad-brush strokes as to how the government runs and important movers and shakers who can drive runs.

2. Probably useful, but "Shadowrunners and the Law" is a LONNNGGGGGGG neglected topic that was (IMO) bungled rather badly in the old Lone Star sourcebook and never recovered.

3. Sure. Digging too deep into Shadowrun economics is unwise though - the entire setting falls apart as bad as Rifts does when you look at commodity chains and resource sourcing.

4. Eh. In older books these looked picked out of a hat and never age well when metaplot adds new wrinkles.

5. Aye. Grounds any characters from that area ("I was a Peace Force officer serving at Fort XXX during the Great California Protection Campaign!") and are plot seeds for runs.

6. Every Shadowrun book tends to focus on this, almost to the exclusion of all else.

Manhattan got a writeup in Corporate Enclaves.

I guess I don't like detail beyond some flavor text and a colorful area with a bit of unusual local flavor for the 'runners to romp in. Mainly because I can't take the metaplot or setting too seriously - at all. It is more like Frank Miller's Martha Washington series, or Rifts - with stuff like the NAN and Ghostwalker invading Denver, it is too goofy to take seriously.

Wow. For the first time I think I actually understand the Pink mindset... and why I never understood it. And I more clearly than ever see why I don't subscribe it it. I guess I take the "setting" very seriously, no matter the game I'm playing. Heck, I even take the Forgotten Realms pretty seriously... until Dragonkin and Drow became core player races, anyhow... But I take the GAME WORLD seriously, so that bleeds through to my character IN that world. Not to say I don't appreciate a little humor and so forth, because I do, but I try to keep in mind what my character would find important.

For example, let's look at food. Everybody's got to eat. But we largely relegate that to a single monthly payment for our "lifestyle" and leave it at that. Even at my most picky, I'm not watching and counting the centinuyen for every single meal and minor purchase my character makes. But what we get to eat or where we get to sleep (or just watch the Trid) constitutes the basic overriding daily motivation in most people's lives. Even troops in combat have their version: will I be alive tonight? Will I be warm/cold? Will I be able to sleep? Will I have a warm meal, be it ever so humble, or still be on rations? History tells us that throughout time great military commanders and effective officers have paid great attention to making sure their people are well fed, especially before a major offensive. It's key to morale and motivation and even loyalty. Why should my fictional persona in the Sixth World be any different? If I'm making a medium lifestyle day-to-day, with what that entails, I'm still going to be impressed by a wide spread of real food prepared by hand if Johnson wines and dines my team in a High Lifestyle level restaurant. I'm going to be somewhat favorably disposed to Johnson, because they made an important gesture towards ME. Same toon, but we're on stakeout and on day three on stuffers my teammate packed along for their idea of what passes for "food"- soy chips and kril "burgers" washed down with soy "beer". If we're "role playing", I should at least make some mention of the food being below my standard. And they will look at me funny - again - and inform me that the Marachino-Curry chips are aweome and WAY better than last month's new flavor. And I will shudder. Why? Because my character would. Not only at my teammate's lower tastes but of their ACCEPTANCE. And in that small way a little role-playing happens, because it's the small things that make characters more than two-dimensional collections of numbers on a page, repetitive voracious killing machines or digital skeleton-keys of the puzzle the GM gave us that night. I find that sort of detail vital to immersion in any post-modern setting. I can personally RELATE to eating stale chips and Kraft^TM Mac-n-Cheese, ramen noodles and cardboard pizzas, drinking corn-syrup colas and equine-piss beer.

And when alone with my real-world friends we discuss movies, and politics, and the virtues of a new gadget, or whatever little thing caught our interest. If 'runners work together for any amount of time, they share those little bits because it makes each other more "real". So things like political movements or prevalent universities or whatever all help lock my character into a "real" place and time, making me a part of the story rather than just waiting for the box text to end so I can kill something. It also explains to me why I build characters the way I do: nobody who's at all interesting or fun to be around spends 100% of their upbringing and free time working on their "core skill groups". THOSE people are the "special" NPC-only kind of people who are legendary ninjas or invincible Shaolin monks or what have you. Or the really hopeless live-in-mom's-basement-geek, which is believable because I've known enough, but that doesn't mean I want to play with a VIRTUAL one!

So, yes, I see your point of view, and I think I finally get why Pink doesn't take it seriously enough for me. And maybe that makes me obsessive. But my favorite authors always make me immersed enough in the universe they are portraying I stop thinking about work or chores I'm skipping or the unpleasant whatever I need to do, or even the fight I had earlier; I'm on a virtual vacation in THEIR world for a while. Whether I'm a slumming high-class person or a gutter punk trying to make it large, the things I mention are important to me achieving MY goal of leaving this world and my own life behind, even if just for a little while.

-Kerenshara

I'm not really so interested in the city, or country, so much as I am the setting. I like Chicago because it has a very clear setting (post-apocalyptic bug-hunt), Seattle (major international trade hub) and LA (Pink Mohawk reality-shows). I don't usually play in those places but it's great to stylize a single session around, or even a whole campaign. I want setting places where that narrows the focus of SR down to a single interesting bit so we can explore it in more depth while also clearly communicating what the focus is. One of the things I'm really frustrated by are cities, like Hong Kong, which have a lot of depth but don't really feel different from Seattle. Some things I'd like explored:

- A Barrens city. An entire city defined primarily by the barren, sometothing more dystopian in which to craft a darker storyline. New York kind of works but it feels too corporate focused, Lagos also kind of works but very low tech. I feel it'd be hard to run a very "Blade Runner" game in Seattle, it's just too high tech and bright.
- A drone city. This doesn't have to be drones, it could be a city of skill-wired workers like a KITT run city, say Mumbai. It could be pure drones, like high-tech MCT Japanese city. I'm really looking for a place to explore the dehumanization aspects of SR, a city where the PCs feel like everyone else is literal or metaphysical drones and they're the only ones who are really "alive".
-An awakened city where the PCs don't feel like second-class citizens. I love the idea of the PCs exploring a developed Awakened culture, and the concept of what such a society would look like, but right now whether they go to Amazonia, Tir, or NAN they're second-class citizens because they're non-natives/non-elves/non-Awakened. That shuts down PC interest (including mine) pretty fast. Maybe a town like College Station, based around Texas A&M&M where most of the people are Awakened but it's not completely different, you can see the culture in transition.

As for nations, I think the PCC and China are both really interesting concepts that haven't been explored in depth.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I love the small details for my characters. But parts of the metaplot are so stupid that I don't think about them too much. The formation of the NAN, and subsequent acceptance of it, is stupid. A great dragon being able to successfully invade and occupy a modern city is stupid. Japan regressing to the JIS is stupid (not to mention evoking a lot of early 80's racist paranoia).

Sure, those events will color the perceptions of my characters. Someone from Redmond might resent the hell out of the NAN - they mass-murdered all of those people with those volcanos, and I still need to wear a respirator most days, and my folks were stuck here in the first place because they were in that huge train of refugees. People forced out of the homes they had lived in for generations, because a bunch of racist, genocidal murdering pricks wanted to have half the country as their own private resort. So they could frolic around in the woods, while the people they kicked out have to huddle in squats in the barrens. And I watch the trid, and half the shows romanticize those bastards!

So yeah, the big events are things my characters have an opinion on, at least. But I don't get bogged down in the nuts and bolts of how the world works, because the big things are so messed up. I have to suspend my belief right from the get-go already, so I don't worry about verisimilitude on the macro level, just on the character level. I don't spend a lot of thought on how the economy of the NAN works. Because the NAN existing at all is stupid.

It's like if I were playing a D&D style game set in the same setting as the Xena and Hercules shows. Would I go into detail on my character's dress, speach, background, and so on? Yes. But would I worry about any "game timeline" that much? Hell no. This is a show that had the siege of Troy, Julius Caesar, and David and Goliath all happening in the same time period. So in such a game, I would pick a sword that looked "cool", and not worry about the metallurgy of Hellenistic Greece. Unless I just wanted to add a bit of flavor text to it.