...which is of course totally unheard of in Shadowrun


@hermit: I think so, yep

Shadowrun actually is mostly Gibson in influence. Cyberpunk has as much Hardwired and Blade Runner as it does Gibson. In fact, I'd say only netrunning really seems Gibson-y when it comes to Cyberpunk. Not to mention non-cyberpunk influences (The rural areas are basically Mad Max Land, which is why everyone lives in cities).

Not to mention the Tolkienian portion of Shadowrun waters down the Cyberpunk portion.

Excuse me, but it's Shadowrun that has riggers, not CP2020. So much for excessive Hardwired influence. Gibson-wise, Shadowrun is a little closer, while CP2020 has a significant Judge Dredd (fortified megacities divided by wasteland roamed by mutant raider bands) influence as well, which is the main difference (apart from Shadowrun's integration of classic fantasy and magic of course, though CP2020 later tried to integrate WoD). Neither has Hardwired's Orbitals, nor deep (or really, any) space colonies, nor significant presence of Andriods. Shadowrun does have synthetic animals, though, unlike CP2020.

1. The Hardwired bit was mostly referring to the Hardwired supplement they released for doing games in that setting.
2. Yeah, there's definitely some Judge Dredd in the mix.
3. Actually, there's a pretty well fleshed out space system, it's just mostly in supplements. Deep Space was the main space book, IIRC. And there was an adventure that involves terrorists on a Martian colony (so basically Total Recall)
4. CP2020 has MAX-TAC/C-SWAT, which is obviously inspired by Blade Runner units. What they're hunting might not be the same, but the inspiration is there.
5. Cyberpunk 2020 DOES have synthetic animals. They're clones with chipped behavior. Forget what supplement they were introduced in, though. Probably either Interface or one of the Chromebooks.

Oh. Right. I forgot they published that. Thatw as alternative world though. They had some interesting stuff there.


But no FTL travel and ... right, the adventure where you never return. Realistic, but kind of depressing for players.


Always took that as more of a Bubblegum Crisis/AD Police reference. Then again, they were inspired by the book, if not the movie, too, I guess.


... the Cromebook that had Exotics? Maybe? that would be a biodrone, though, not a T-800 Kitty.

There's also the Robohounds from Interface 1. You can cover them in skin.

while im sure there will always be those who can't stand it if their fragile, narrow-minded view of the world is altered, id be willing to bet that LGBT rights are firmly in place. as for in a shadowrun group, it has never come up.

i suppose if you wanted to, you could get some mileage out of Governor Brackhaven trying to impose some kind of anti-gay rhetoric. but i suspect that most GMs would just handwave it.

I would say there would be more tolerance, not in the sense of humanity having evolved or anything, but in the sense of there being new bigotries overshadowing the old ones - just like today, for example, you don't have many people complaining about those damn dirty Irish people moving into the flat next door and driving down property values.

I would hesitate at using the word "rights", though, because I think in the darker world of Shadowrun, all rights have been dialed back. If you are a wageslave, don't expect to get any overtime for that 60+ hours you put in, and if the boss puts the moves on you, you better think twice before saying no. If you are SINless, it is even worse - the Knight Errant rent-a-thugs can do whatever they please - beat you up for kicks, or shake you down for what little cred you have hustled that day, or haul you down to the station to have a confession beaten out of you, because that's easier than trying to track down the real criminal.

That really depends, and is in no way automatic. While White non-Evangelicals are doing better in the US now (but remember what happened to the first and so far only ethnic Irish president - in 1963), other minorities are not - in parts are even worse off than in 1900, or 1850 (women, too, by the way). So while sexual minorities may well be more accepted in Shadowrun on account of the Dating Apocalypse, I wouldn't assume everyone is. Odds are dark skin still gets you harrased by police in the CAS (and southwestern UCAS), and I bet any Indian going to a bar in either country will get this service (and not because of old prejudice, but because of a new grudge against Indians - Ghost Dance war and all).

I'm on the "things have gotten better" train. Most of the fiction and fluff seems to support the fact that, at least in sprawls, LGBT rights have progressed. With sex change becoming easily available and transformations so succesful as to be not readily visible, most people won't care about it any longer. Also, the fact that changelings, mythical races and dragons are facts of life, it seems reasonable that humanity has gotten more tolerant.

Of course, exceptions are numerous as well( especially in neo-conservative institutions unique to Shadowrun, such as Alamo 20.000 or the New Islamic Jihad), but they appear to be exceptions to a better rule than today.

I think one of the factors making prejudice less prevalent will be that cultures will be more blended, flesh more mutable. Even first edition had Sally Tsung - Caucasian woman, Asian last name, AmerIndian-influenced look. People will be harder to pidgeonhole, at least at a glance, and people are less likely to care.

That apathy cuts both ways, though. People are also less likely to care what pronoun you prefer, what your triggers are, etc. Another thing to keep in mind is that metahumanity is more balkanized into corporate citizenships, policlubs, and various other factions. People will get discriminated against for what they are not, as well as what they are. And there are also a lot of radicals who think that anyone who isn't fighting in lockstep with their cause, is part of the problem.

It also had Ghost-who-walks-inside, a hardcore anti-non-Indian racist. In some sprawls, like the dedicated melting pots of Seattle, Berlin, London, New York/New Jersey, this will be the case. In Neo Tokyo? Dallas/Ft. Worth? Cheyenne? Probably not.

The new Seattle Sprawl book has the following on the Leather Devils, which basically are a go-gang full of Rob Halford clones:

For whatever reason male homosexuality continues to be a taboo in some corporate circles, which allows the Leather Devils to blackmail their many clients. The gang keeps a datastore full of recorded images of their most influential customers.

Know your corp/corp drone though before trying this out.

One job had us take some compromising pics of one personal assistant for a particular VP in R&D and a couple of ork joyboys with the plan to use this to leverage some access codes for the actual run on their R&D lab.

Upon meeting up with the target later and presenting the images to show we had the goods on him, he looked them over and complimented us on their fine quality before asking if he could purchase some hard copy prints.

Fortunately we were able to haggle the codes out of him in trade for the pics, a photo job revolving around getting back at his ex down in Marketing and undermining the Accounting VP who was trying to put the financial kabosh on some of their R&D projects by planting some incriminating embezzling data.

That should vary widely depending on which corp and the corp's origin culture. It's probably most effective with Ares and Aztechnology (machismo galore both) and Wuxing (post-mao chinese prudishness). To a lesser but varying degree with the Japanocorps. Ineffective with Evo (despite being Russian), Horizon, NeoNET and Saeder-Krupp. With 2A corps, I'd go with their origin countries' attitudes - Lone Star would make such a tactic's success far more likely than AG Chemie or Telestrian.