This is something my group talks about a bit. Seeing as how the SR continuity diverges sharply from our own timeline around the 1990's, are there certain things that have happened in our timeline that you still keep in your game, even if it flies in the face of canon. Did the Two Towers fall in your SR world? If so, were they ever replaced (Christ, imagine the horrible background count that area would generate)? Did the U.S. still invade Afghanistan and Baghdad, and if so, did their presence have any longterm ramifications on the SR Middle East? Is Keith Richards still alive (logic dictates that he must have been the world's first cyberzombie)? Does a leonized Dick Clark still preside over the NYC New Years Bash?

I've been turning over this idea in my head for awhile now, mostly cause I thought of a nifty plot hook involving the Baghdad museum's raiding during the war tying into a surge of magical artifacts flooding the world market and having an effect on the Awakening (maybe certain cuneiform tablets contain information relating to the Horrors and ED). Its just interesting to consider all the potential what ifs. If the PCs went to Kabul, would the Taliban still be kicking around? Would the giant mountain-face Buddhas still be around, or would they have been blown up like in our own timeline? Is "The Scream" painting still at large? How closely does your SR world match up with our own near future?

WTC fell in the 2005 Quake. The three 250-story Fuchi Black Towers stand in their place.

And SR diverged in 1986 or earlier (no Japanese bubble bursting in 1989, no Herbet Walker Administration from '89-93, Xavier Institute was around before then, and the Supreme Court that decided Shiawase was quite different from this one IRL), assuming that you don't count the whole ED link.

And Dick Clark's not alive, but Keith Richards and Barbara Streisand performed at the NERPS Inagural Ball at Union Station in 2057.

Dammit. There are several threads dedicated to this topic already.

Well, me and my lack of anything better to do strike again.

The background count wouldn't possibly be higher than that of Verdun, Hanoi, Pyongyang or every major German city (those bombing runs killed 3000 people daily, on average). While it was bad by US standards, in the great order of things, it was hardly anything. Compared to Auschwitz, Verdun, or the killing fields in Cambodia, 9-11 looks very, very mild.

My personal theory is that Keith Richards (and his colleagues) largely funded the first research into longevity treatments, which led to 2065's Leonisation programs.

Fact is that Shadowrun is a child of the 80s, when 2000 was still very far away, Japan still was the new economic superpower, and the US was still reeling from the Vietnam war and felt weak and intimidated (unlike today, where it looks mrore like Shadowrun's Japanm by the day - the one before the new Emperor took the throne, mind you). Note how cellphones still weigh a healthy kilogram, and noone has invented wireless internet/matrix access. It's timeline and the real world split around 1989. We cannot alter that in hindsight.

Sorry, I didn't mean to post a redundant thread. I just started perusing Dump Shock 3 days ago and haven't exhausted the entire archive yet (luckily, with Spring Break around the corner, it'll give me something to do inbetween drinks).

Most frightening thought of the new millenium: Barbara Streisand is still alive (shudders). I'm hoping VITAS took care of Phil Collins and Sting (aka the world's first and only tantric adept).

Cannon never says those things didn't happen. It just doesn't say anything about any of those events. If it ever came up, I'd use the real world timeline as much as possible, just for simiplicity if nothing else. Then I don't have to remember what I made up all the time.

Sort of tied to this, I was wondering what people's views on Social Security are in Shadowrun. I mean, is it or something like it still around, what with the UCAS and the CAS (or is the True American Coalition reviving it?) and everything? Could be cool either way. It probably got dropped as just one more expense that the gv't couldn't afford, especially after the Crash of '29. But if its still around, Orks and Trolls have got to be angry about it, whereas elves and dwarves are going to eventually force some major changes on it. Who wants elves that collect their checks for hundreds of years? Just some random thoughts.

Social Security probably still exists in one form or another, but that would be limited to UCAS and maybe CAS. The real kicker was the 14th Amendment to the UCAS constitution that made metahumans "probationary citizens" without a SIN, and between that time and the time in which that amendment was re-amended, only a fraction of the metahuman population gained back their SIN, marginalizing whole segments of the population. The idea of a SIN is definitely a Canadian terminology, although it is analogous to SSNs in the current US. YMMV and all that.

I'm not sure if the New York World Trade Center towers were destroyed in 2001 in my timeline, but what I do know is that if they were it has been long forgotten. The entire skyline mostly falling in 2005 trumps it just a tad.

~J

Not to mention the Sears Tower being destroyed completely several years later in 2029, three days after the Night of Rage. Oh, then 2055, Bug City. Disaster after disaster...

Even in New York City itself, the scar on the community consciousness will have been long replaced.

~J

These things might be interesting to ponder, but for me it seems more interesting to focus on the fictive happenings of the game, and possibly what you can say about todays issues using them.

Social Security and Medicare were one of the reasons the CAS left the UCAS. The latter was luring the Canadians with keeping it, while the South felt it was too much. One still needs a SIN to get either, though, and most SINners can afford at least some of their own insurance.

I'm also pretty sure they retro-inserted the September Eleventh attack in Deutschland in den Schatten 2 (Germany in the Shadows), under the GroB-Frankfurt entry according to Skarn Ka, here.

An interesting study of the reasons why it would cause the CAS to think it was too much would be to compare the results of TennCare, Tennessee's Health Care plan (which now takes up over 25% of their state budget, and is increasingly becoming too expensive to afford) and those of the UCAS states and provinces (especially Canada). The South currently has the highest population of uninsured and underinsured (with the exception of Florida until recently), and Health Care is increasingly becoming expensive to implement.

What a waste of hate. I can see getting mad over Totems, they really brushed it off. I can see all the hubub over California - though I think it's excessive, I try to let it go. And so on. But a retro mention of an event that doesn't really affect canon other than to explain why Germany choose to not populate with skyrakers? And, hell, it even justifies America doing the oppisite and going insane with them, as was once mentioned so long ago.

Because it's a stupid reactionary retroactive inclusion of something that should barely make the history books of the Sixth World. Seriously, the preexisting quake of '05 works much better for that.

Edit: woah. First time I've noticed the clock screwing up on me.

~J

Yeah, my first double post!

No, it couldn't. No one is going to refer to the destruction of most of the city's skyscrapers as "the destruction of the World Trade Centers in NY". That would be as absurd as my calling the bombing of Hiroshima "the destruction of City Hall in Hiroshima".

~J

Back to the original topic, it's not difficult too ignore all events prior to 2011 and still arrive at the same point. Shiawase decision? Who needs it when you got the FTAA and WTO. All mighty Japan? Who's to say they won't return to "glory". The extreme right is on the rise already, might lead to a new Imperial Japan.
Re-education camps? SAIM would certainly qualify as terrorists, won't they?

As for WTC, Afghanistan and Baghdad it's simply history by 2050 anyway.

Well, I'd argue that for a 'healthy' Cyberbunk universe, you need a good dose of punk.

In the late 80s, the US were in recesession and crime was ludicrously high. You remember these movies about suburban couples getting lost in Bronx or some such place? It reflects the anxiety of the era. I think NYC had 1600 murder a year in those days. Nowadays it is less than 600 and Bill Clinton lives in Bronx. Things have changed, and not in a SR/Cyberpunk direction.

The Cyberpunk genre was built in the 80s and assumed that this situation continued to deteriorate. So in 2002, instead of 545 murder, NYC could have had over 2000, for example. The 2005 GDP of the US in the SR universe could easily represent a mere 75% or less of what it is currently. Unemployment would be at least 3 points higher. In that context, going to war in Iraq wouldn't be economically feasible. Well, not in the high-tech low-casualty kind of war that the US like anyway. Two decades of neglect would have left the US military with pretty much the same army it had in Vietnam except by that time the equipment is starting to fail. But then again, it is unlikely the muslim extremists would have such a hardon for the US if it had been in recession/stagnation (and most likely more isolationist) for decades.

What I'm saying is, it's probably best to just ignore most of what happened in the 90s and early 00s and replace it with what was covered in the SR books. The way things are going, we are not headed toward a dystopian future the way we were in the bleaker 80s.

I personally hardly have a problem to include RL facts as long as they don't contradict canon or are not essential to the 2064 setting (such as the name of the US president).

In my game the 2001 attacks occured, Bush was president in 2005 when the NYC quakes leveled the city, and Israel and Libya blasted each other the year before just before Arafat died and a political change was sparked in the Israeli policy.

Regarding the 9/11 attacks, this might just be a milestone date that pushed the German government to avoid building scrapers.

To the best of my knowledge nothing is contradictory there.

I don't think including current trends or events in SR is a good idea - not unless someone decides to make a 4th edition, and take the way the world has changed into account from the ground up.

Although it really is too late anyway - SR has huge consistency problems, especially when it comes to technology but also in the geopolitical area...

Tough shit.

It's not like SR hasn't revised its own history before (note the conspicuous change of the words from "Soviet Union" in SR1 to "Russia" in the SR2/3 books), changing the government structure of CFS from NAGNA to CFS, or suddenly changing the name of the CAS from Confederated American States to Confederation of American States in books even published in the same year.

But when they decided to keep the plot elements of the 1990s in SR2, and again in SR3 they made a conscious decision to make SR alternate history instead of dark future. The fact that SR's history ties into ED history, which AFAIK has no basis in fact, also helps to create a setting where if someone is so annoyed by it that they won't play the game, then to Hell with them. Why would you want to even associate with someone like that?