No, but then you (the GM) are compensating for a lack of information from the written material.

I see everyone saying, one way or another, "Horizon is not evil as written" and "but it probably will be later".

Considering Corp Enclave was Horizon's big debut and the sole write-up for it, I think it missed a notch. Obviously, any half competent GM can compensate and make them evil to their liking in their game. But that a) contradicts what's written and b) shouldn't be necessary.

"Is Horizon evil enough?" No. Not yet.

Horizon is not evil? Their workplace etiquette alone gives me the creeps.

"Viral memes" is just a fancy new term for something very old. So is "one-on-one-marketing" (and I don´t make that up, guess what it means. Yep, it mostly takes place in "brick-and-mortar-shops".) Marketing gives fancy names to everything it does. In this case, the new term is justified, because you don´t rely on word-of-mouth. You inject your phrases into neutral communication, if need be influencing both sides, not only the people talking to satisfied customers. Have you seen the market value of internet personal networks nowadays? A few decades ago you had to support professional sports to get your name mentioned.


Horzion treats people as part of society. They treat ideas as ideas of society. Who are you? A part of society. Certainly a part of society has no value if it can´t connect in the right way? Personal problems are no more, there are only group problems. And the group... cares. Cares to get rid of the problem, that is.

"Make one mistake... no more mistakes"

...welcome to the New and Improved Sixth World^®

Sure, but nuclear weapons are scarier. Any weapon is scarier. In the end, PR is only worth anything if you can broadcast it. So long as Horizon has nothing to defend it's sattelites with (and no, the dawkins Loons don't count as 'something', because every mega has it's Black Ops branch, as does any dcenmt government), Horizon is extremly easy to break. Blow up tsome of their sattelires, insert some worm code into their news feeds, and bam, they're silent. Which, for a media company, means 'dead'.


As Angier said: QFT.

the point I was making is, they have the ability to spin anything they do
anything
we dont know every power they have. I am sure more will come out. The point is, they are in a prime position to shape public opinion. Let's say they have a rivala nd want to destroy something of theirs, they can start a campaign against it, even attack it themslves or a subsidiary and "oh wow look that was justified"

Until the AAA-corp backing up the subsidiary that is being thrown dirt from Horizon starts throwing dirt back, which means basically every other megacorp, as they all have their own media company, and are doing "spin-doctoring" far longer than Horizon.
Horizon needs their own army division. And tanks. You can never do wrong with tanks.
Tanks with Pepsi-ads.

...we had to buy out [insert company name] in order to protect it from [insert megacproprate name]'s hostile takeover bid.

Witness the recent RL acquisition of Midwest Airlines by TPG Capital (which includes Northwest Airlines as one of the key investors) as a ploy to fend off a hostile takeover bid for the Milwaukee based carrier by AirTran. Northwest is also the #2 carrier in terms of flight operations at Midwest's main hub in Milwaukee.

Now for the spin game...

During the aborted buyout attempt, AirTran (a low fare no frills carrier) was cast as the unwanted outsider trying to out muscle Midwest (a carrier that prided itself on a high quality level of service and had thus built up an incredibly loyal clientèle, I know I am one of their customers). Things got downright ugly, and Midwest even even launched a special "Save the Cookie" page on it's website (the airline became somewhat famous in the region for the "home baked" cookies is offers on all flights). So here we had the "beloved" local home-grown company in one corner, and the opportunistic growth at all costs minded Interloper in the other. A good part of the spin included numerous "horror stories" of people who had bad experiences with AirTran and promises of improved service that were broken, yet there was little if any discussion that cast Midwest in a bad light.

Another angle was the threat that AirTran would gut Midwest's hallmark "Signature Service" - 2 x 2 seating with generous legroom (instead of the cramped 2 x 3 or 3 x 3 seating common on all other airlines), complementary wine & beer, & gourmet quality meals - and replacing it with the "cattle car" class seating and not even so much as a bag of peanuts. The ploy worked and public opinion (not just locally), sided with the Milwaukee based airline.

Just when Air Tran was about to take its final shot (they had already managed to get several of their people on the Midwest Board again a move that was highly publicised in an unfavourable light) along comes the white knight in TPG Capital (who actually was courted by Midwest) which beat the would be suitor's offer and the matter was closed. Nobody seemed to mind that Northwest was also Midwest's chief competitor at Midwest's primary hub. In the end, "The "Little Airline that Could" was saved at the last moment from the clutches of the evil bottom line/corner cutting minded Atlanta based airline.

Currently Northwest is in merger talks with Delta....

Will be interesting to see what happens...

Bubble. The next dotcom. Nothing more. Sooner or later people will realise these sites deliver nothing more than the last dotcoms. So far, those sites don't make much money. Interest woken there is rather short-lived, and advertising 'virally' there has yet to produce better results than classic marketring. it can surely augment a classic campaign, and kind of hold it's own in nerd-oriented products (like Cloverfield), but that's all it can possibly do. And campaigns can tank in such an environment very fast and thoroughly.

No, really, it's mostly hype. Those sites, like those before them, will soon enough find themselves grounded in reality.


In North America, yes. So is Saeder-Krupp in central and eastern Europe, Sol in the spanish-speaking parts of the world (along with their Aztech allies), MCT and Wuxing in Asia. Since Horizon is ONLY that and to date AS WRITTEN has nothing mundane or magical to back that up, how exactlyis it scarier than any of the other megas?

All assets Horizon has seem to be protected by threat of an omega order. They have money, so they can afford both runners and mercenaries. Plus, I find a weapon that will be/is deployed in reality more scary than one that could theoretically be used.

Woah, what? Is that literally? Is that written somewhere?

You mean like Black Ops Squads dragging pompous Horizon CEOs from their flats? Unless Horizon has something better to offer than marketing, that's what will happen if they become too much of a nuisance.

Not literally, and quite old. Certain strategic assets of any corp are not kosher target. Assassinate a CEO, you get an omega order. Kill a comsat, dito. Firebomb the HQ, dito. An omega order is a free-for-all against the corp in question. Anything, even those things usually forbidden, are fair play against the corp. Noone would profit if the corps went to war... thats what nations are for.

Horizon owns not that much more than comsats and strategic assets. Hard to kill their core, and the price of trying is high. As for noone having dirt: I think the dirt is there for all to see, it just was painted golden.

Yup, that TOTALLY beats experimenting on humans in terms of nastyness.


Including assets protected by threat of an omega order ... that's the beauty of the omega order, y'know ...

Accendental post- Pls delete.

...basically it was a RL illustration of how the right amount of spin can adversely manipulate what appears to be a sure bet and possibly make the situation far worse in the long run. True, life & limb was not at stake, but the basic principles were still the same. You say the right things at the right time glossing over (or ignoring) any faults to make yourself look all pure & good, while deftly casting the other guy as the scum of the earth.

By all rights AirTran had the entire acquisition "in the bag" and did everything by the book. There wasn't even an issue of anti trust involved (as there is with TPG).

Horizon is a corporation, which puts on a good face to the public. People buy it because, like with Midwest, they make themselves out to be the "good guys" among the other "evil" megas. Whatever the underlying agenda, be it secret blood magic rituals at Groom Lake, or simply just wanting to be a dominant force in the communications industry, they are still deliberately manipulating the public's viewpoint to suit their needs.

I'm not so sure. I haven't read Corporate Enclaves yet, but from everybody's description I'd say Horizon doesn't need to pull the same crooked power structure BS as everybody else. The company is concerned about performance, period. A CEO riding his workers is bad for productivity, so the CEO goes. I'd image the whole system is set up to weed out people who would use the same kind of underhanded maneuvers they pull at other corps.

As for Horizon having some dark, hidden secret--I don't think they need that either. They way they've been described, they're like one of those bad relationships you hear about: They treat you good, making you think they care--as long as you're of use to them. As soon as you're not, they throw you away without a second thought--leaving you to pine hopelessly, wishing you could make it right but knowing it's too late and it's all your fault and you know you'll never find another corp as good as them...

...now that's evil. They actually make you feel bad about failing them. The CEO would brobably feel guilty--like a boy who got scolded by his mommy for picking on his younger brother when he knows he shouldn't. The point is that you come away feeling like the heel, instead of hating the corp that shafted you. I'd hate to see what the suicide rate is amoung former horizon employees.

I don't think HIP really qualifies as evil. Oh noes! They want me to do my job well and not be a jackass! So unfair!

Ok, admittedly, basing a full third of the metric on your social proximity to the CEO is patently bullshit. But the other two-thirds are based on job performance and sociability - two things that actually do have a impact on your worth as an employee. If you're incompetent, you hurt the bottom line. If you're alienating everyone else, you're probably hurting their performance, which affects the bottom line. And by having it quantified, you can see where you're messing up and have some idea of how to fix it. Other than the fact they only manage this through constant surveillance, it doesn't really sound all that bad - especially compared to the other corps where you can get demoted to lab rat simply because your supervisor doesn't like your face. More importantly, if you don't like it and the brainwashing didn't take, they'll actually let you leave. The only way to get out of most other AA and AAA corps is feet-first.

Now P2.0, on the other hand, is pretty nasty (if not utterly brilliant). Basically, they want you to pay them for the privilege of becoming a Horizon product, tagged and tracked in their database 24/7. And they're sure to spin it so opting out is as socially handicapping as being SINless or not owning a commlink.

If the system were based on any metric that mattered in any real sense, that would be one thing. But network standing is based solely on your connection to Clime, number of myspace friends, and how many people are looking over your shoulder at any given moment. All of which only measures your worth to Horizon as a P2.0 subscriber. Of course, your value is likely pretty high - by conning large numbers of people into joining, they've get a system in place that make their job infinitely easier. Instead of having to send cadres of trendspotters and coolhunters out into the wild, they can spot the tastemakers from the comfort of the home office. Why spend millions of nuyen on your next ad campaign for NERPS when you can get the same result by directly influencing five people? And with the reams of marketing data you've gathered on them, you know how to craft the perfect pitch for each one.

They calculate your value as a metahuman being by social standing and peer evaluation. Sounds fair, but isn´t. One player in our group is currently mobbed out of her job. And I´m not talking of a person that can´t stand the stress, there are methods against which you can´t do anything without legal protection. And Horizon is Triple-A.

Point is: in such a nasty business environment as the Sixth World (which is, if you want a real-world example, best compared with Russia at the end of the Yeltsin era) they either fight as dirty as everyone or will go down. That's a lesson many western companies (who like to operate like Horizon, wholly without employing underworld gangster mercenaries - as was usual with russian businessmen and oligarchs in those times) have had to learn in Russia. Most, however, cut their losses and withdrew.

Of course, that wouldn't be an option for Horizon.


PiTa is a dumb idea, especially for Runners. I have dire problems with suspending my disbelief thouroughly enough to accept that, despite a runner leaving such an enormous trail of evidence, they're not sacked by whomever they ran against immediatly after the run.

Yeah right, smart runners use a false face nanosuit and remove logos from the broadcast. Too bad you can identify people by movement pattern, and even with blacked out logos, both corporate goon uniform design and interior design of whatver facility was attacked will betray the runner's deeds. I bet half the users watching the live feeds from PiTa runners are in fact law enforcement agents of some kind. With SR4's enormous computing power available everywhere in cities, such identification should be available in five minutes, the runner be located in another ten, and the Strike Team deploed to take back whatever the Runners took and pay them in lead should arrive just when they meet with Johnson to hand over their heist.

P2.0 running just doesn't make sense, unless every run is staged, beginning to end, by Horizon, in which case it's just a slightly modernised variation of a reality soap.

Then again, that would not make much sense for runners to get into, if they don't want to retire from the real business ... and it certainly would filter into the shadows (and, more importantly, the vieers of these broadcasts) that all these runs are fakes.

Yep, some runners in my group would start a little "meme hunting" on their own if someone integrated them into the network. Nothing against a few pink-mohawk elements, but that is taking it too far for our style. Running in LA without such a rating - that might be fitting. Imagine police trying to find you via the network and being surprised you are not there (They would be surprised not because they are stupid but because you pulled out all the style stuff - but for distraction instead of the points value).

Granted, that might be useful. Then again, it would only confuse the Powers That Be for so long. If your team gets rid of the Style elements fast, of course - by using fakeskin nanosuits and stuff, or something - it might indeed work.

The problem is that the Japanacorps mastered this IRL decades ago, and used to have this played up a lot in Shadowrun. A lot. So what makes Horizon so special?


I just realized something.

Horizon is the United States government from Snow Crash.

It's so obsessed with efficiency and order that in the end it has built a massive overseer system that is inherently inefficient and mainly comprised of deadwood that wouldn't need to be hired or operated if they just left their employees the Hell alone.

I would guess, A: They're better at it, and B: As described, they do it without the infighting and pointless crooked territorial BS of the other corps.

Other AAA's may pretend to work on that kind of system, but ultimately you have spoiled CEO's and inept middle managers mucking things up with their petty abuses of power--which ultimately hurts the corp's bottom line. Success becomes about pleasing the guy above you, not about serving the corp's best interests. The differance is that Horizon talks the talk and walks it too. The differance is that, while you may get brainwashed into feeling like the bad guy when you get fired from Mitsuhama for not kissing the boss' ass tenderly enough, you are the heel when you get fired from Horizon--and no amount of anything can change that.

It's not getting kicked out of a snooty country club that pretends to be heaven that really hurts--it's getting kicked out of the real heaven because you weren't good enough. It's that kind of grace-filled, faultless implaccability that really kills you inside.

To put it simply, the sixth world is hell, and in hell there's no greater villian than God.

Also, sombody brought up the issue of military defenses...

...I'd say a Corp like Horizon doesn't need a strong millitary capability. People (and organizations) that specialize in manipulation do better by appearing to be weak, and getting other people to attack their enemies for them. Ares might attack with a force of well-armed shadowrunners, but Horizon would attack with an anonymous ad campaign. In the long run, no team of armed goons is going to do as much damage as being the social pariah of the AAA scene, and holding a wiz gun isn't going to influence the corporate court. If worse comes to worse, Horizon could probably paint a AAA as enough of a villain to get an omega order issued against them.

They're better at it? When the word for working oneself to death in loyal service to the company was coined in Japan, they won that game for good.

No organization that large exists without deadwood and internecine politics. It also would be one monolith and not broken into subsidiaries. Once you add management layers, waste can only be managed. There are reasons why the largest corporations in overall size (as opposed to Google) that operate this way have been the likes of Mars/M&M, and even they could not sustain the management style.

It's impossible. At the very least because the politics can and does come into play with the best and the brightest. The way its described sounds functionally impossible. Quite frankly, everything I know about Horizon leads me to believe that it exists a) because it's supposed to, and b) It's MAGIC!

So it fits right in, then, is what you're saying.

I guess I look at things differently...everyone seems to focus on the open "nice guy" ness of Horizon. Me, I look at one thing, and that tells me they are not nice guys: They are a AAA Corp. To me, not matter what, that tells me that they are NOT nice guys. You do not get to be one of the 10 biggest corps in the world, wielding that much power, by being "nice guys."

P2.0 is an example. As someone pointed out, it is a great marketing tool. However, how much non-market info do they get through it? How invasive is P2.0 into the people who are on its PAN? Think about that a moment.

Now, think about this: they have managed to convince Runners to broadcast their Runs. Complete to the point where they even do image consulting when hiring a Runner! Why is this possible? because, when all is said and done, what happens on Corp property...is only under Corp Jurisdiction. Even police can watch it, and not feel bad about not rushing right out t stop the runners..because if the Corps dn't ask for local law enforcement help, and the runners aren't geeking people in the streets after they escape the extra-territorial corp enclaves, the local law can't d anything(because, no crime has been reported.) Also, well, it is better to just negotiate the contract then to not, and have them broadcast your run without a delay.("What? You say we used your footage without your consent and it nearly got you killed? Well..why don't you just give us your SIN, and our lawyer will talk with your lawyer. Oh..you don't have a SIN? Well, you know..undocumented immigrants really don't have the same rights in this regard...Now, if you would prefer to negotiate a contract, I am sure we can make sure arrangements, such as, say, time delays....")

The other thing is, really..we really do NOT know much about them. We know they have the capability to be cruel and vicious..they are a AAA, after all, we know they have access to information, conceivably, a lot of information.And we knw the biggest names in the Shadows don't know much about them. Which, is another good point: The people at Jackpoint seem to not know much about Horizon. Is it that Horizon is just very good at keeping its secrets? Could it be that its system, thanks to p2.0, is actually spread around much like jackpoint is? Is it that they are just too new to have their stuff showing up yet? Or is it just that no-body has felt much urge yet to investigate? Or, maybe, it is that the stuff is actually hidden in plane sight, in the corp lingo and buzz words they use, and even their internal memos get spun t the point where they could be talking about roasting babies at a corporate dinner, and it comes out as something like "Orphans dinner: Join us as we help the needy and fight the scourge of hunger! Every 10 minutes, a child dies of hunger in the Barrens. We seek to help lessen this burden, so come, join us for our Orphans Dinner at the Horizon Group Grand Ballroom!" In a company where everything is image, I wonder how many internal memos might have that degree(or more) of spin to them?

I'd say the Kiss-Cline's-Minions-Asses-Factor of a full third of your Horizon score accounts for one hell of a tender asskiss.

Besides, if Horizon is supposed to be heaven (as the books claim), why the turnover rate? Stuff contradicts itself again, like with Renraku, the Arcology Shutdown and whether or not this is public knowledge.

Why does this thread have such a focus on military power? Why is it that just because Horizon is a media focused Megacorp, it is assumed they have nothing else? One of the canon definitions of A Triple AAA is that they have everything. They don't just "dabble". They have capital invested in all areas of the market. Horizon don't pop their satcoms into the sky and go "good thing we have good PR to defend against missiles." Attack a Horizon sattelite, and prepare to be blown out of the sky, because they are triple A. They don't set up a data-processing facility and then put a 24-hour revolving door on. They have security guards with full body armour and mil-spec weaponry, because they are an extraterritorial Triple A. And just like any other corp, they have the decker power to track you down after the run if they chooze, and blow you up or fry your brain. Yes, if you're good enough, you can bypass this security, but if you're good enough, you can probably break your way into a Aztechnology or Saeder-Krupp operation, too.

So more accurately, the Azzies and whoever the other mega's your touting as exponentially nastier due to a monopoly on military might can not just invade them. They may have nastier guns, but it doesn't mean the Horizon don't have nasty guns as well. Also, there's a thing called the Corporate Court that isn't exactly thrilled if Marketplace action is using strong-arm nuclear weapons and Thor Shots on other corps. Yes, all the corps have black ops teams and shadowrunners on call, and I'm willing to bet that with Horizon's personnel focus, just like Azzies have 'more' tanks, Horizon probably has ''more" shadowrunners on call and on the ground.

Because that's what the available background says


Do you have any canon background sources? Unless there's something on this, all Horizon can defend their sattelites with is pointed speeches.


I'd rather suppose they have drones ... in any way, the offensive qualities of guard battaillons are minimal.


I'm not talking about runs here, mind you. Neither are others when we are discussing Horizon's military capabilities. Sure, they can fuck up runners all right. The question is what they'd do tio defend themselves against a larger foe, like a government or a rival corp.


Only if they're concerned about PR. If anyone really means it, Horizon is dead.


Possible. And just how far those runners will get them has been mentioned above.

That's a mistake a lot of people (including writers) seem to do: seeing megacorps as just big companies. Megacorporations are... well megacorporations. They deal in everything. Sure some megacorps are better known for a specific area or invest more in some areas but I'm pretty sure that Horizon has a subsidiary selling armaments and at least a security agency.

And even if they didn't have a corporate army, they'd still have enough money to hire one if necessary...

They do hold the security contract for LA, so they're not entirely sans sec forces.

Let's not forget that LA was home to a number of major military contractors; I doubt all those assets completely left when the major aerospace companies made the ill-fated trek to Chicago. Those would be ripe for buyouts by a cash-rich company like Horizon, flush from getting in on the ground floor of the Matrix 2.0 and worried about a major, aggressive military power just south of them.

Not I wouldn't expect them to advertise any of this. In fact I'd expect them to play down their military might as much as possible. The CalFree story is already chock-full of stories about armies appearing from nowhere (Tir Tarngire, Japan, the PCC) rolling in unopposed, and armies who heavily telegraph their presence (Aztlan) facing severe guerrilla and international resistance. So I'd be very surprised if Horizon had a huge military-industrial complex thing going, at least on paper; they're better off trying to make an army materialize out of nowhere, as seems to happen all the time in the CFS, and use it to roll over everyone and everything.

If you have the cash in 2070 (and Horizon has the cash) you can hire your own army. Horizon might have some units on retainers, both Mercs (directly) and nationals (through agreements with politicians).

Not necessarily. Either there's something missing that I haven't seen, or then it's just Google. But Google is massive in wealth and income, not in the size needed to become a AAA (or even AA) megacorp.

Or maybe you're right, because very little of this makes any sense.

Funny you should mention that. What you say is totally true. The always excellent Corporate Download / Shadowfiles has always painted an excellent portrait of the megas - they all have their specialties, but they always have significant interest in other fields. The books always drive this point home.

Now, let's look at Horizon. Major Divisions: Horizon Americas, Horizon Transglobal, The Horizon Project, Pathfinder Multimedia, Charisma Associates and Singularity.

You see a lot of diversity in that? I don't.

Horizon is a barely-A corp that happens to have a corporate court seat, which makes it defacto AAA. It has nowhere near the resources of a AAA. It can't even match a AA.

And Aztechnology, the second biggest corporation in the world and arguably the most brutal, lethal and dirty, hates their gut.

Yeah - BULLSHIT they play nice. And the Corp Enclave write-up does not point in that direction. No hints about just how desperate their situation is, and how they are fighting tooth and nail, doing whatever it takes to stay in power. In fact, the second the PCC stop meat-shielding them from the Azzis, Horizon will cease to exist the second Aztlan invades LA. A supposedly AAA Corporation stronger than a governement owes it's entire existance to the fact a governement is protecting it. Weak.

Yeah, Horizon really is lacking relative to its ominous neighbor. I think, though, that Horizon is the future. Their methodology is almost more scary to me than Lowfy or Aztech. With the big boys, you know what you are dealing with. Horizon is still very much an unknown quantity. No one can advance towards power without stepping on the heads of those below them, and Im sure Horizon has plenty of skeletons in the closet. I also want to see how their "soft-hand" approach to business fares against the much bigger fish in the AAA waters.

As the kids say, Backgammon for the win.

Whatever. I'm going to wait and see what the upcoming Corporate Shadowfiles/Corporate Downloads mash-up book I've seen mentioned before I make a final decision on the evilness of Horizon. But any corporation that specializes in what are essentially public PsyOps is an extremely powerful one. Who affects your world more: Time-Warner or Lockheed-Martin? I'll reiterate the already-made point that they had to become a AAA-corp somehow so I'm sure they have the cash to adequately protect their physical and Matrix resources. Plus, jackbooted Nazi-esque corporate stormtroopers are so late '80s. It's time to start thinking post-cyberpunk, people.

But the problem is, every megacorp also has a network division or owns one as a subsidiary. Some megacorps are just more proficient in its use than the others/more publicly known. Horizon being only a media corp and nothing else would make it too small for being a tripple-A-corporation. I'm pretty sure the writers and developers will add some more things about horizon in later books. Corporate Enclaves was in the end rather meant to showcase Los Angeles and Neo Tokyo.

In the interest of fairness, those are only Horizon's major operations in Los Angeles. Horizon has a lot more divisions and subdivisions that those (just check Neo-Tokyo where they possess the biggest media player in the JIS Hisato-Turner) and they are far more diversified than a simple "media corp" (though the fact that they want you to think they aren't is telling)

Lockheed Martin.


Oh, wait. Were you trying to make some kind of point?

Yeah, and noone has caught up on this because ... what? Sol and other Mega-Related media companies aren't Horizon-controlled, and dirt on Horizon would surely be very valuable for it's competitors, so they cannot simply black the Media out.

Also, maybe they do have some goon platoon. Still, they lack substance compared to the other Megas. Will this be adressed, and if, where?

Also, I just don't buy that the shadows, this very paranoid subculture, buy into Horizon's nicety, and nocthing has filtered through to there if there indeed is dirt on Cline's feet. This looks an awful lot like "Horizon is great because the authros will it", and that ... isn't exactly good style.

Military is useless without the capability to galvanize the public opinion. Do you think Germany would have been as successful without it's propaganda machine and strong figurehead during the war?

This is all nonsense anyway. Triple-As don't go to war.

Yes, exactly my feeling. This is why Horizon is disappointing to me.

I do have faith that Horizon will receive more material to make it useable, but I just want to make sure everyone (especially the writers) understands it really needs more material to patch up the Corp Enclave offering. There is a BIG disjunction between what it should be (big scary AAA that treats culture as a commodity) vs what it is (innocent child corporation)

Horizon as portrayed in Corporate Enclaves is Horizon as it is seen in Los Angeles (and to a minimal extent Japan). Some hints are provided as to what their background is, and some notable accomplishments (the Tir rebranding, the Pueblo invasion, Cline, P2.0) but most of the content is specific to Los Angeles and its activities in Los Angeles.

Furthermore, most of the recent material on Horizon - from Emergence to Corporate Enclaves - has shown that they don't shy from playing dirty and they have the resources to do so. What seems weird, to some people at least, is that they're often presented as playing dirty for the right reasons or at least for the right causes (as opposed to other corps that when they get caught playing dirty it is normally for obvious "personal" gain).

For more on what Horizon is all about you will have to wait for the Corporate Guide sourcebook, though more tantalizing tidbits will be appearing in other location and sourcebooks before that. And yes, we do have other plans for Horizon.

I can pretty much confirm right now that Horizon does not possess a sizeable standing military force as other Triple As do. That doesn't mean it is a pushover or without teeth though... There's more than one way to fight (and win) wars.

Earlydawn, stop feeding the troll.

Maybe for you. For the rest of us? Not so much.

No attempt at a point was made. You can go back to yelling at strangers on the subway platform now.

I flat out don't like the "we treat employees" well attitude. Obviously this, in reality, is the best way to treat your employees, but in a distopia I expect things to be sucky and inneficient. I guess I can sort of let it slide. The way you say the above sentence makes it sound pretty tentalizing. I'm guessing this has more to do with The Consensus. So for that, ok, I'll wait and see where you are going with this.



Yeah, that's not really one of my beefs. I don't know who brought it up, but I don't think it's important for them to have an actual standing army (they have the PCC for that anyway).

The only thing left that really bother me then is their size and (lack of) diversity vs their AAA rating. It very well may be that Horizon is more diversified than what Corp Enclave suggests as perhaps they have no other asset in LA (which admitedly IS the real focus of the section), but a mention of Horizon's real size would have been nice in that case. A couple of words in the Major Divisions section would have been helpful.

Yup. That's what annoys me most. They're the 'good guys', presented so forcefully as such (including shadowtalkers saying how fair Horizon Johnsons are) that this looks, to me, like Cult of Torm, inc. And sorry, Lawful/Good and dystopian don't mix.

And there is no hint that this might not be the case. Maybe something like an AI Hivemind is behind this. Maybe Hestaby. But will that change and Horizon be another Mega who's neither totally evil nor totally good? I just don't see that. It reeks too much of 'kewlness', of "We change a central paradigm of the world, because we SR4 authors feel wild, creative and want to do something terribly original".


Sure. But only media presence won't save you. Ultimatly, it's guns that form power. Not words.

That is highly debatable.

True, it's also the willingness to use those guns. As far as I've seen it, the megacorps are all willing to do it when it means to get more power.