ok so i got some dialogue i'd like to open up. hope it can be a little fun, a curious question on my part.

i live in pittsburgh, which would be in the UCAS in our SR. it's still on the map, hasn't disappeared. very little has been said other then it has sports team. the recent digital book spells & chrome had a run in it though where they summon a demon from the meta planes. pretty cool. but for the most part, it's off the map like many many major cities. and not surprisingly it's easily forgotten. but i know a lil folk lore about pittsburgh that would tie in great w/ SR. and i hope that my lil dream of trying to publish some stories about it come true. but here it is

go ahead and googley pittsburgh 2012 maya. plenty of links will come up explaining the connection. i'm not endorsing the idea please don't bash me. i'm just pointing out that if it pertained to maya, it probably would pertain to the SR awakening.
the jist of the idea is that pittsburgh has 3 rivers that meet, with a 4th river that ends in the Pittsburgh valley called the Wisconsin Glacial Flow that is a fresh water spring run off from the arctic north. the maya believed pittsburgh was a holy place of healing etc etc aligning with the stars yada yada.

so my question is, what kind of city would that make it? a giant mana line, perhaps a higher amount of awakened or more, goblinization?. i would say from my personal experience that shadow running wouldn't be a big deal in pittsburgh. it's downtown is relatively small, with many many universities, hospitals, and sports. that's it, all the industry's and military complexes are located far outside of it. chicago is 8 hrs away, nyc 7, DC 5, atlanta 9, and toronto and detroit about 6 (half that time in SR traveling times). so it's alive i'd bet, but not for shadow work, more like work in the daytime. maybe a gathering place meta-sapient creatures?

There are a lot of places that are touched on minorly in previous editions. I suggest looking into previous editions info, seeing if you can find anything. One of the great things about the way Shadowrun has been handled is that they have avoided retconning old Fluff (for the most part) so while the rules have changed much of the Fluff has not.

yea i've dug, i'm more into the fiction then the tabletop game, although i think both are super neat. but yea there isn't much at all. i was hoping to get some help making something up. or did i think of it all already?

well, due to its "low visibility" nature, & proximity to some major cities I could actually see Pittsburgh being a haven for some low life types, maybe a sprawling black market subculture

Or part of the t-bird smuggling routes that criss-cross NA. Seems just about every city that has some sort of mega corp presence also has some sort of Shadowrunning community. The SINless need something they can strive towards and they can't all be gangers.

Two possible things leap to mind:

Centrally located so probably a smuggler's hub of sorts. Not that they drive right downtown, but probably several older sections are used.


Reagents, with the convergence of the rivers and such bet the area is probably a decent source for reagents.

Pittsburgh is where all the awakened animals go for a yearly meet-n-greet.
And have lunch at Furnando's.

I had a similar issue with Sacramento, Ca (my hometown). SR3 Cal-Free sourcebook claims Sac to be unfit for running (aside from the bravest of deckers being willing to navigate the labyrinthine mess of a matrix there), with similar reasoning to yours. Look, if there's an industrial center there, there are corps, and where there are corps, there are megacorps, and where there are either version of the corp, there are opportunities to run. I honestly don't know Pittsburgh (at all, I've been through it once and didn't stop), but let me share with you what I did for my campaign.

I started by thinking about the government at the time. CalFree's gov't at that time is a paranoid, spoiled, corrupt lot. I also noticed (already knew, really) that the way the freeways are situated, there's a perfect opportunity to wall off downtown (the cap city freeway is elevated about 50 or so feet off the ground, creating an existing frame, as well as extra opportunities to attempt penetration). So I walled off downtown. Bingo, Sac now has a perfect arena for political runs. I then took into account the various industrial areas, one of which is a former Army Depot. Bingo, we now have corporate hotspots, one of which already has military infrastructure (think stealing ares' R&D). I then took into account the TWO decommissioned Air Force bases. Bingo, extensions of the industrial runs, as well as a great place to handle corp smuggling operations. Then I looked at the metro airport (a tiny thing, for sure, not suited for large international flights, but great for private corp trips). Bingo, a great spot to host extractions. I noticed the town is split in half by the American River. I decided this would be a great way to introduce the Lone Star/Knight Errant rivalry by giving the north half to KE and the south half to LS, but keeping a small SAC PD force, ensuring that LS and KE have to periodically run in to each other, even if just at the police station. I then deemed Stockton to be a place so corrupt and poor that it's pretty much run by runners, a veritable urban runner's haven completely surrounded by rural territory, but a mere half hour (probably half that with SR tech) from Sacramento. Then I decided Roseville would be a veritable extension of COGMA, the NAN corps having satellites of their corporate offices in the Sac sprawl without actually putting offices in Sac proper. All of this also opens up secondary opportunities, such as employment for metas in a country run by humanis, via the NAN offices in Roseville.

If you just take what you know, you can come up with TONS of stuff that would make a great SR game.

I do have one question. How did a Mesoamerican civilization, contained almost entirely in modern Mexico, revere a place in Pennsylvania? I know people claim this, but seriously, it's like claiming Egyptian connections in India. It simply doesn't make sense.

holy crap chum you nailed it hahahaha indeed they do.

ehhhh something along the lines of a story speaking of 4 rivers converging on a fountain of youth... plus a stretch that there's a cave southwest of pa in york county i believe that have traces of the oldest known in-habitation by homo-sapiens something like 14-19K years ago. descendents of asia too. blah. the 3 rivers thing is special and the run-off clean stream is special too i guess. but in the terms of bad ass ness, it's far from it. perhaps a corp wants to steal that goodness away heh or idk. it's triangle formed downtown with 2 rivers forming on both sides i thought was always a good zombie lockdown, by blasting the dozens of bridges and tunnels connecting it.

You can even get your meal in a dog bowl.

I've never actually eaten there: I'm not really a fan of hoagies in general. I can, however, appreciate the story behind why the restaurant is still in business. Basically 90% of their customers show up on a single weekend in July. 2000....nine? they were in a bad spot and said that they were closing their doors and had done the best they could to eek out one more Anthrocon--as in, weren't even making enough money to pay the electric bill, much less wages and supplies. I think this was March. Instantaneous influx of cash ah la Kickstarter before it was cool, from several hundred people. The restaurant renamed itself and started the dog-dish thing (which you can keep) as a thank you.

Check into some major recent ecological events, as well as any of the oldest depictions of the area you can. Sounds like Pittsburg suffers the same water Nashville does. Nashville in SR is Hollywood for rednecks, with whores.

Back in 2010, the Cumberland had a masssive flood (not that any news outlets talked about the damned thing), complete with building floating down I-40. I used it as a spike event, which turned Nashville into a water city, similar to Venice. Not all of it, Davidson County covers a fair bit of ground, but enough to create a unique downtown environment. (And Mud Bogs, awakened mud bugs tha are four feet long).

My point (self promotion aside), is that you have plenty of options. Remember. most of the Indian Wars were about resources, and Pittsburgh is a steel town, so maybe it took a beating? I am rambling now, stupid sinuses.