I live in Fresno, California, and I always thought it would be fun to run a game here in my hometown. To that end, I started writing a setting document for it, available for view here. Information on CalFree State in 5th edition is pretty sparse, so I'm essentially just making it from whole cloth. To that end, any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated. I just started it earlier tonight, I'm still planning on adding gangs and criminal players. The idea I have for Fresno is that in terms of the Shadow community, there's a lot of work to do, but mostly runners end up there because they've fucked up so badly they've been effectively banished from bigger cities, or their skills just aren't up to snuff to hack it somewhere like Seattle.

Riggers are gonna loooooveee the steep bendy roads.... should make any chases interesting.

There's a lot o older inormation in books like Caliornia Free State, Shadows of North America, System Failure and corporate Enclaves (Los Angeles part). It could be useful, though somehwat dated. But the general setup of the land shouldn't have changed too much, especially from CE, in the six in-game years that have passed.

But really, read CFS at least. A lot of bad things happened to Caliornia. Now it's more like weird cave-ins, toxic beaches and walled enclaves than sunny beaches and high tech.

Also, by canon, Shiawase, not Ares, controls large parts of the Central Valley region of the CFS (which stretches from Butte to Fresno Counties, basically). Aztechnology is banned from California ever since they took San Diego, but has a totally not Aztechnology shell called Pyramid Operations, which operates more or less openly as Aztech California.

Awesome. I have SoNA, but the information there is pretty thin, and also dated because it deals mostly with General Saito and his presence. And I thought all the bad shit that happened was mostly in SoCal, which is PCC territory now.

Northern Caliornia (Yosemite and up) was invaded by Tir Tairngire and is effectively lawless warlord country. Redding and the surrounring area used to be Hestaby's domain, but with Hestaby gone by SR5, it probably has fallen into low-level civil war.

The San Francisco Bay Area continues to be caught in a Japanacorp (City of SanFran, Northern Bay Area) and Ares (The Valley down to San Jose), with Oakland, Richmond and remont (to my knowledge and according to my personal notes) being various shades of slum and metahuman anarchist zones.

The Big Sur has been polluted and irradiated, and is effectively abandoned and run by pirate warlords and rogue (former US or Californian National Guard) military units of varying shades of insanity.

The Central Valley is a curious mix of human bigotry, Shiawase Envirotech and Biofoods, some Aztech Proxies (the California Agrarian and Water Society? CAWS, anyways) and some local farmers' unions. Fresno itself isn't that well developed, so there's a lot of breathing room for your own setting. Sacramento is a small, effectively powerless government that relies on the more or less loyal California rangers - the mad max-like sorry remains of the Californian National Guard and Highway Patrol combined - to enforce what power it has left, and is in bed with all megas at once.

And yeah, the South. From LA and it's Twins-induced Alchera sinkholes to the Mojave and it's hostile spirits, to Aztlan's grabbing of San Diego, the South fared even worse.

Re: Gangs and syndicates: I'd imagine a Hmong pseudo-Triad might be highly appropriate in Fresno. I've been using a highly Awakened Hmong Mafia family for a homebrew in Minneapolis with some success. I'd also imagine the Koshari might be around.

Also, don't forget the PCC's take over of LA and the parts of CA in between. Azzies are not happy, CA doesn't care too much since LA was a "Free city state", and the rest of it was mostly desert waste.