I don't remember what I dreamed last night, but when I woke up-- in those first few moments of lucidity-- I thought, "I should run a Bug City game." Run it soup-to-nuts, starting it out with beginning characters pretty much on the eve of the hives erupting and going until the containment zone is lifted. I've heard Bug City described as "Mad Max combined with Alien in early 1990's Sarajevo," and to that I'd add a little Dark Knight Rises, the post-apoc parts of the Terminator franchise (with insect spirits standing in for killer robots), and a dash of Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead. Since most of my players have played SR for awhile and are familiar with the Bug City metaplot (even though I don't think anyone in my current group has run, played or owned it), some of the tension in the early part of the campaign would be introducing threats that their characters would be unaware of.

I've ordered Bug City and am awaiting it's arrival, but I'd like to hear from anyone that's played or ran it. What worked, what didn't? Does it go into detail about the early days of the containment zone? I'd want the first leg of the campaign to focus on Aug-Sept 2055; a few inklings of things being not quite right and the chaos following the "outbreak" up the nuke and the realization that those inside the walls are well and truly screwed. I'm also interested in a setting where a modern city devolves into anarchy, and the ways the "civilized" world falls back into a form of tribalism when everything goes to shit.

The first decision is whether you'll tell your players.

It would be pretty simple to move Bug City somewhere else - you could even make Seattle Bug City.

The second decision is whether you'll be concentrating on the Bugs as threats in the foreground or the background - are Our Heroes more threatened by the bugs, or by those bastards who are trying to take the working algae vat/artesian water well/ammo factory off them ?

I thought briefly about using a city I'm more familiar with to mix things up, but I think the old-school vibe of the classic Bug City outweighs that.

I think the big, overarching threat is the bugs, but as every zombie ever has theorized, (meta)humanity is its own worst enemy. As the game progressed, I would want to play up the various factions competing for the very limited resources. You'd have the corporate arcologies that would be sealed off and where life would continue (almost) as normal-- until the bugs start getting in. You'd have law enforcement, which I think would essentially become another gang, although one defending the nominal civilian authorities (at least until social order completely breaks down). You'd have the criminal element, which already operates on a more atavistic system-- a code of honor among thieves where the only thing a man or woman really owns is a patch of ground the size of their shoes-- and who will be better prepared for society's collapse. And you'd have everybody else, the regular folks-type folks, who are just trying to live their lives.

The more I turn it over in my mind, the more facets I find that appeal to me.

One thing to think about is just how enthusiastic people other than the UCAS military would be in dropping in weapons, food, ammo and so on.

Its a containment zone, and nothing gets out ... but they presumably dont want the bugs to win, either.

Are we talking 2057-era Bug City, or post-FABIII, 2070 Bug City?

Because either / or are amazing experiences (even if my players won't agree with me).

2057 Bug City is definitely Sarajevo meets Mad Max for lunch at the Weyland-Yutani Diner, and Bug City (the book) does a perfect job for presenting it (along with the bug update from the first Threats, if you're using Shadowrun 2e / 3e). It's like that scene in 28 Days Later - the end is very fskin' nigh. It's got a great Resident Evil / Blackhawk Down vibe to it too, if you want to go that route.

2070 Bug City is just the slightest bit different, in that the bugs are "gone" (riiiight) and the city is once again open to the public - but no one wants to go in for fear of what's left. We're talking 28 Weeks Later vibe-y stuff; bad things went down, and now the place don't feel right. In the Core - what used to be the CZ - it's everyone for themselves, and that pervades the closer you are to it. Outside of the Core though, you find corporations and governments frothing at the bit to get at what could be in there too. Lots of room for opportunity there too. Think Fallout 3 meets bits and pieces of your favorite pieces of zombie movies (and Escape from New York and whatever that Mad Max in England movie it was that came out a few years back) and you're all good. Feral Cities is what you want here.

I'd love to run my players through Chicago again, but it will never happen with my current group.

Sounds good, at least for me the film instantly evoked thoughts Bug City.


The in-universe background of the book is a compilation of logfiles from the Chicago matrix, starting just before things went south ("did you hear the thing about giant bugs at XYZ street?"). Most information and fluff however is about the time when things have somewhat settled, i.e. the city is 99% sealed off and the various parties in the city have staked off their claims.

I'd want to run it as an SR3, 2055, old-school classic throwback to the Shadowrun games I used to play and run in those glorious college/post-college-pre-real-life days. That's just my druthers though. Characters would be starting shadowrunners or near-starting shadowrunners. (The idea being that those that operate at the edges of society have an advantage when society itself collapses.)

I'm still waiting on my hardcopy of BC to arrive, so that'll (hopefully) answer a lot of my questions. One thing I'd love is for the runners to participate in building their own faction in the CZ and fortifying against the other factions and insects.

At the risk of thread bumping...

Tonight at work I was thinking about how the game would break up into three main stages, and while I'd be setting them in Bug City, it'd be the same for any relatively stable area that becomes a failed state. The first would be Business as (Pretty Much) Usual. Motivations would change a little, but the jobs would stay the same. This is period of time when civilization is crumbling but people are still in denial, so they're trying to live their regular lives hoping that things will return to "normal". For the runners, that means they'd still be getting hired by one party to rip off another party-- this time perhaps for food or supplies instead of paydata, but the end result would be the same.

Then I would assume there would be a period of rapid inflation. Money by itself isn't all that useful in the Zone, and the necessities of life are, you know, necessary. At some point, a certified credstick is just another thing you can jam in someone's eye. People might be paying 50,000 for a crate of fresh apples, 300 for a roll of toilet paper (or just using the script). There'd be a lot of looting and hoarding going on, and runners might be paid exorbitant sums for fairly mundane things that are now "luxury" items, or for just general necessities (food, water, fuel, etc).

Now that I think about it, the UCAS government probably aren't worried about the insect spirits transferring money out of the CZ, so there might be "millionaires" who are trapped in the Zone but if they ever get out will be fabulously wealthy. Who knows, there might be a "toilet paper baron" who sells it for 300 bucks a roll, uses the profits to have more toilet paper airdropped into his compound and continues the cycle. Humanitarian supplies might be coming in, but I imagine there are a lot of other companies who are profiting from the situation. Sitting on a block of cash worth millions would be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel-- I'll never have to worry about anything again if I can just survive long enough to escape the Zone.

Lastly, there would be the total break down of society. The only economy would be bartering, with the closest thing to currency the small, useful things. Ammunition would be the obvious choice. A roll of toilet paper might be ten pistol cartridges or something. (I'm not really fixated on bath tissue, it just seems like a good example of a post-apoc luxury item.)

As long as your players are experienced, it might help to keep them on their toes if you started with a different (non-bug) enemy. Being in Chicago is just incidental, or just another stop while huntin whoever down. Maybe have them go on a run or two taking the big bad's henchmen down, and leave them expecting more of the same up until the bugs show up.

Everyone like surprises, right? Especially when the surprise involves suddenly not being able to leave the city.