I'll take the MOAB.

Mother of All Balloons?

Nope... Quite Obviously, the Mother of all Blunderbusses...

You really think a Farmer will have one of those?

Well, my Rancher father had one, as well as the bigger matching pistol, and a Percussion Musket (.50). I have the old Navy Arms .44 and a .54 Percusasion Musket. I have always wanted a Philadelphia Derringer, though. They are a lot of fun.

Besides, if the Farmer is a Texan, and collects old guns, just maybe.

Fair 'nuff.

Just noticed Augmentation's biotech write-up specifically mentions MCT's Parashield breeding cockatrice. Zero zone chicken coops.

Another reason to stay away from MCT.

With the rise of Wuxing as "The Magic Mega", we've not really seen much from MCT in that regard. We should probably work on reversing that trend.

Hrmm, with Awakened fowl, could we see a resurgence of the Punt Gun as a piece of field artillery?

Only breech loaded.

Another source of expense which occurred to me was that of regulation. The governments of the day are intrusive, and getting more so, with the megacorps sometimes balancing them, sometimes exacerbating the problem.

A lot of perfectly legitimate industries might well be choked by bizarre rules on animal handling, food safety, pest control measures, licensing, and sheer paperwork.

It's happening today.

One of the worst I can think of for family farms is the estate tax. If a family farm has much in the way of land, it can rapidly rocket in its valuation that nobody has the stash of cash it will take to pay those taxes. Conagra or company just swoops in, buys the farm at firesale prices, and never pays estate taxes because corps don't die.

Honestly, estate taxes are a gigantic boon for corporations. All those anti-big business protesters (right or left wing) should get together on that issue if nothing else.

The time to do anything non violently has long passed. The US Government has been bought out by corporations decades ago. Blame the Baby Boomers. The self-centered fucks sold out the country to get themselves an overpaid pension and cushy retirement. Watch any media personality's opinion on a third party. It's nearly always belittling.

Careful on the RL politics, amgio-san. Tends to end badly.

Indeed.

A Guide to Unexceptionalism.

TL; DR:
Phase 1: As the supreme court, appoint the candidate of your choice as president.
Phase 1b: As president, appoint ultraconservatives to the supreme court.

Phase 2: As the refurbished Supreme Court, rule that corporations, no less than human beings, have the right under the First Amendment to express their political point of view.

Phase 3: Given corporate control of legislative bodies, enact laws to the benefit of corporate interests.

Phase 4: As the Supreme Court, decide that the police of any and all cities and towns and villages have the absolute authority to strip-search any person whom they, for whatever reason, put under arrest.

We're working on Phase 3 right now. Shadowrun's setting is definitely post-phase 4.

When do we get to Phase 5?

Neo-Anarchistic Revolution!

Eclipse Phase.

So anybody got ideas where a character would be obtaining active seeds for things like Urban Gardens?

My current character Martin Miggs gets many of his seeds for his Hydroponics from a Contact in the NAN who goes by the name of Crazy Talk. (Brother to Dances-with-focus-groups)

Any relation to Bear-That-Walks-Through-Walls?

I imagine the legal commercial option is genetically modified to maximise revenue. They do not seed, ensuring a return customer, and they require irrigation with specific nutrient solutions that the corps sell to grow to fruition.

I would look to underground movements with anarchist/environmentalist leanings. Anarchist Black Star/Crescent/Cross may have clandestine heritage seedbanks, in the interest of protecting them from being modified and monetized. Terrafirst! is another likely candidate. Try to make some contacts in the Plastic Jungles.

I suspect terrafirst would give the seeds away.

Yes, and then again maybe not. I know it's old fashioned, but when you're dealing with anything but a strictly annual crop it's far from uncommon for farmers to continually examine what they have growing, including volunteers, for useful attributes.

The saying goes that the best manure is the farmer's footprints, and there's more than a mere grain of truth to it. Quite a few serendipitous discoveries came from people who just kept their eyes open, and this includes whatever grows when a commercial crop isn't growing there. In many areas useful, even commercially desirable plants grow wild. Trying to wipe out evergreens around Seattle would be a daunting task indeed.

4. Discussion of politics, religion, and sex are prohibited, except as they directly pertain to Shadowrun or another game. Discussions on these subjects will be watched closely, and any innapropriate posts may result in warnings or suspensions.

Those are actually some very good suggestions.

Radical Eco-groups would wish to undermine some of the clout of the Corps, and of course nature would be continually throwing new curveballs with new twists on old plants out in the wild, and of course the Plastic Jungle people would probably concider selling seeds as a way of getting a little extra finance out of the thing. After all sometimes a little slush fund can come in handy when those gangers are starting to gather outside the gates.

I can see some interesting adventure *Cough* Seeds in this.

Horribly off-topic, but the Garou MUSH I used to play on had a character named Cindi-Walks-Through-Malls.

...

Uhm. That's pretty much it.

...

Hrm. Anyone know the names of some of the NAN companies that grow food? Come to think of it, have any ever *been* listed anywhere?

I should do some research...

There's a major dearth of NAN corporations, or even AA-Level and A-Level Corporations at all.

True enough.

And fixable...

And if you're not growing your own food as a AA or AAA, how the hell did you get to be a AA?

By buying food from companies/countries that do grow them and providing them goods/services that are worth far more than what you're importing?

*Looks at DocWagon and Lone Star*

Well, ok. Point.

Yeah, bad for that I fear. The megas get kinda pigeonholed at times.

"It's a food product? Aztechnology. New gun? Give it to Ares. Trendy pop culture? Horizon."

Diversification would be wise.

That's because they're the best at what they do. Their secondary concerns are usually subsidiaries that don't even have their name in them.

For example, Ares owns GMC, and makes a lot of automobiles, but so does MCT, Horizon, AZT, and Ford (A AA-Level Corp, IIRC.).

Well, that's a given.

But some diversity is also good. Take agander at the space chapter of hazard pay, for instance. On the one hand, Ares is The Space Corp, but all of them realize that there's money to be made up there, so just about all of them get a nod.

So, having Shiawase release some weapons under the old Keruba Arms label is nice to see, even if they aren't exactly bleeding edge.

Of course, that gets into branding, which is one of those Shadowbeat-like things that I thrive on. I swear, ifthey'd let me, I'd do an entire E-Book on namebrands and "In all respects, this counts as a blank, but is called this other blank" stuff. The Ares Predator IV is the industry standard in terms of the heavy pistol, for instance, but you know teh Azzies have a knockoff (It's what they DO), Saeder-Krupp likely has one, and so on. The fun of a player going, "No man, Ares killed my dad. I won't touch thei stuff with a 3 meter pole. I'm buying an Aztechnology Ocelot instead!" is nice andcanbecome a Thing for them. Not something most people would care about, but it makes me happy, so.

(Laptop has a bad spacebar, sopleaseforgive the errors in this post.)

Well, at least for Vehicles, in Arsenal, they did do that a little bit - naming "similar" (and game mechanically identical) vehicles, for each one actually listed.