Shadowrun's Setting

[Sir_Mopalot]

So I have been roped into running a cyberpunk game, and to make things a little easier on myself, I'm taking the non-fantasy things from Shadowrun. The problem I'm running into though is that as none of my players will understand "Shadowrun, but without metahumans" and what that entails, I have to explain the way that world works for them. So the real question I have for you all is this: Do any of you know a fairly concise summary of how that world works that I could edit appropriately?

[kjones]

Megacorps run everything.

/thread

[JaronK]

1980's vision of the future. Tell them to watch Bladerunner and Johnny Mnemonic, and maybe Ghost in the Shell. Done.

JaronK

[BobVosh]

Removing magic and metahumans? The back story might be hard to redo. However basically this: highly advanced technology, corporate controls on everything, and crime is high the further you get from the corporate sections in cities.

Highly advance criminal types have evolved into this society, you are one of these crooks. Hired by anyone who can pay you, and your crew, can steal anything, assassinate anyone, or anything else the johnson wants. Rock stars of the criminal world.

[Riffington]

But they roped you into "cyberpunk". Presumably they already know what cyberpunk is? Once you remove the metahumans, the Shadowun system can be used for the vision they already have... which is it? Diamond Age? Neuromancer? Brazil?

[Psyx]

Great idea. Often pondered it myself, after having bought everything for cp2020 and then seeing the flaws. I too quite like the SR systrm, but not the fantasy elements.

1980's vision of the future. Tell them to watch Bladerunner and Johnny Mnemonic, and maybe Ghost in the Shell. Done.

JaronK

This. And ask them to read some William Gibson.

Other good films could include Outland, I, Robot, All of tomorrow's parties and even Minority Report. Even the Aliens series of films.

[Ormagoden]

::Stammers looking shocked and slightly pissed::

It's...it....it's a little more than that!

Spoiler

Show

The year is 2060. The world is changed, some say Awakened.
A long lull in the mystical energies of the universe has subsided and magic has returned to the world. Elves, dwarfs, orks and trolls have assumed their true forms, throwing off their human guises. Creatures of the wild have changed as well, transforming into beasts of myth and legend. The many traditions of magic have come back to life, and shamans and mages have carved out a place in the new world for themselves and their powers. Many aspects of the Awakening remain mysteries, but modern society fights on to assimilate the
ways of magic into a technological world.

The decades that followed the Awakening were years of panic and turmoil, as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seemed to race across the Earth. Cultures that had never lost touch with their mystical pasts began to use magic against the great nations that had suppressed
them for so long. The vast global telecommunications network collapsed under an assault by a mysterious computer virus. Dragons soared into the skies. Epidemics and famine ravaged the world’s population. Clashes between newly Awakened races and the rest of humanity became common. All central authority crumbled, and the world began to spiral
downward into the abyss.

But man and his kin are hearty animals. Out of the devastation and chaos, a fragile new social order slowly emerged. Advanced simulated sensorium (simsense) technology helped eradicate the last vestiges of the computer virus and replaced the old telecommunications network
with the new virtual-reality world of the Matrix. Amerindians, elves, orks and dwarfs formed new nations. Where environmental degradation and pollution have made many areas uninhabitable, eco-groups wage war on polluters, and Awakened powers use incredible magics to heal the earth. Central governments have balkanized into smaller nations and city-states, as fear of the world’s changes drives wedges between people of different backgrounds.

Vast metropolitan sprawls known as metroplexes cover the landscape; these urban jungles swallow whole regions. Police departments unable to contain crime waves and civil unrest have been privatized or their work contracted out to corporations

Megacorporations have become the new world superpowers, a law unto themselves. The entire planet speaks their language, as the nuyen has become the global monetary standard. The megacorps play a deadly game, paying pawns in the shadows to help them get an edge on the competition. Meanwhile, corporate executives and wage slaves hole up in
their own enclaves, safe behind layers of security and indoctrination.
Outside the walls of these arcologies and gated communities, whole stretches of the sprawls have become ungovernable. Gangs rule the streets; the forgotten masses grow, lacking even a System Identification Number (SIN) to give them any rights. These outcasts, dissidents and rebels live as the dregs of society, squatting in long-abandoned buildings,
surviving through crime and predatory instincts. Many of them attempt to rise above their miserable existences by slotting addictive BTL (Better-Than-Life) chips, living vicariously through someone else’s senses. Others band together, some for survival and some to gain their own twisted forms of power.

Technology, too, has changed people. No longer merely flesh, many have turned to the artificial enhancements of cyberware to make themselves more than human. Some acquire implants that allow them to directly interface with machines, like deckers who run the Matrix with a cyberdeck and programs or riggers who jack into vehicles or security systems and become one with them. Others seek to push the envelope of
their physical capabilities, testing themselves on the streets against other street samurai. The human of 2060 is stronger, smarter, faster than his predecessors.

In the world of 2060, the metroplexes are monsters that cast long shadows. And in the cracks between the giant corporate structures, shadowrunners find their homes. Entire societies live and die in a black-market underworld, exploited and abused, yet powerful in their own way. The Mafia, Yakuza and other crime syndicates have grown explosively as their networks provide anything that people will buy. Shadowrunners
are the professionals of this culture where self-sufficiency is vital. When the megacorps want a job done but don’t want to dirty their hands, they need a shadowrun, and they turn to the only people who can pull it off: the shadowrunners. Though only the blackest of governmental or corporate databases even registers a shadowrunner’s existence, the demand for his or her services is high. Deckers can slide like a whisper through the databases of giant corporations, spiriting away the only thing of real value—information. Street samurai are enforcers for hire whose combat skills and reflexes make them the ultimate urban predators. Riggers can manipulate vehicles and drones for a variety of purposes. Magicians, those rare folk who possess the gift of wielding and shaping the magical energies that now surround the Earth, are sought after to spy on the competition, sling spells against an enemy, commit magical sabotage, and for any other purpose that their employers can dream up.
All these individuals sell their skills to survive, taking on the
tasks too illegal or dangerous for others to dare.

::Twitch, Twitch::

[Aroka]

::Stammers looking shocked and slightly pissed::

It's...it....it's a little more than that!

I think you missed something.

So I have been roped into running a cyberpunk game, and to make things a little easier on myself, I'm taking the non-fantasy things from Shadowrun. The problem I'm running into though is that as none of my players will understand "Shadowrun, but without metahumans"

[Ormagoden]

I think you missed something.

No, actually I didn't! Thanks though!

[Aroka]

No, actually I didn't! Thanks though!

So why did you describe the Awakened world when that's specifically what he's not going to run? Remove the Sixth World stuff, and it's just standard cyberpunk (subtype depending on edition), which is what everyone's been saying.

[Ormagoden]

So why did you describe the Awakened world when that's specifically what he's not going to run? Remove the Sixth World stuff, and it's just standard cyberpunk (subtype depending on edition), which is what everyone's been saying.

If you're going to quote the OP please quote the relevant parts not just what supports your side, the rest goes on to say...

So the real question I have for you all is this: Do any of you know a fairly concise summary of how that world works that I could edit appropriately?

Because the summary I posted is a direct quote from one of the books. Its REALLY easy to tear out the description of things the OP doesn't want. (IE elves, magic, ect)

What remains then? Shadowrun without magic but its plot mainly intact.
Which is what the OP wanted.


Cyberpunk isn't just Shadowrun without magic, sorry.

SR101 class concluded.

[JeenLeen]

I haven't played Shadowrun but I've read a good bit, and almost all of the history-plot, so I can see this version:

1. Based on Supreme Court decisions, megacorporations are essentially given a national identity. Meaning that any locations owned by them are their territory, subject to their own laws and jurisdiction. (Started off as a corporation used force to prevent starving people from stealing what they thought was food.)

2. Over time, the police become private companies, outsourcing their forces to the megacorps.

3. Based on <insert some calamity caused by supertech>, much of the existing world infrastructure is damaged. The megacorps come into power as the new ruling authority. The internet and such is destroyed, but a new Net is invented in which <describe Shadowrun's virtual systems here>.
Also, by some after-effect, some people are able more than ever to interact with the Net (those with the trait Resonance, if that's not too fantasy-esque for you).

4. During this time, Shadowrunners develop. These criminals are hired by the megacorps to do the dirty work they cannot legally or overtly do.

[Pechvarry]

We're currently running a Shadowrun version magic-free, in full gear of the Gibson vision. It's easy and it works, and the plot still makes perfect sense. So Sader-Krup(sp?) is ran by a dude instead of a dragon. How companies rise can be individually modified as they become setting-appropriate. The overall story is simple enough.

JeenLeen's bit, above, is pretty simple and straightforward. If your players still can't grasp that magic and metahumans simply don't exist, I'd consider asking if it's because they actually want magic and trolls.

[Oracle_Hunter]

We're currently running a Shadowrun version magic-free, in full gear of the Gibson vision. It's easy and it works, and the plot still makes perfect sense. So Sader-Krup(sp?) is ran by a dude instead of a dragon. How companies rise can be individually modified as they become setting-appropriate. The overall story is simple enough.

How do you handle the Great Ghost Dance?

[JeenLeen]

How do you handle the Great Ghost Dance?

I think a lot of the setting, namely those that only worked because of ghosts or spirits or magic, have to be undone. Many of the nations never formed because the Native Americans didn't have their spirit allies, or the elves didn't exist to form elf-only nations, etc.

However, you could have that someone invented some super-machine and used it to liberate the desired group and form a protected nation. It's more re-working, but it could fit.
Maybe there are anti-technology zones because of strange magnetic fields or some such. It has a fantastical ring to it, but it can be explained by cyperpunk. Just not somewhere anyone who uses cyperpunk-esque equipment or powers wants to go. (Would probably kill most cyborgs.)

[subject42]

How do you handle the Great Ghost Dance?

You could turn the historical tables and say that large portions of the US are contaminated with a deadly and highly infectious disease to which Native Americans possess an innate genetic immunity.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Um, a lot of that just sounds like clothing the "fantasy" in "soft sci-fi" garb.

IMHO, there's no particular reason to use the SR setting if you get rid of magic. It's literally integral to the Sixth World mythos; trying to justify even a "core only" world without it is more trouble than it's worth.

By all means use the SR rules, just don't bother using the setting. Build directly off the Gibsonian Universe and you'll get what you want without having to deal with odd things like the destruction of the United States and Seattle as a Treaty City.

[Lord Vampyre]

You know, I've read alot of fantasy and scifi, and personally it's all the same.

IMO, scifi is fantasy wearing different garb. Anything that can be explained with magic, can also be explained using technology, and vice versa. The main difference is that with technology everything is theoretically available to the common individual.

So, if it makes it easier to run cyberpunk with a modified Shadowrun history, more power to you. I liked playing Shadowrun, eventhough I never cared for the mix of technology and magic. My main problem was determining which way to go, technology or magic.

[Tiki Snakes]

By all means use the SR rules, just don't bother using the setting. Build directly off the Gibsonian Universe and you'll get what you want without having to deal with odd things like the destruction of the United States and Seattle as a Treaty City.

I thought that was the idea. He's just cribbing what he can use from the setting as written to cut down on work needed?

That's how I see it, anyway.

Being the type to prefer to homebrew settings and who prefers the cyberpunk bits of SR to the Fantasy-punk bits, I can't help but approve.

[Oracle_Hunter]

IMO, scifi is fantasy wearing different garb. Anything that can be explained with magic, can also be explained using technology, and vice versa. The main difference is that with technology everything is theoretically available to the common individual.

Sir, TvTropes called - a few gentlemen would like to have some words with you.

[Pechvarry]

I don't understand what's so difficult about it. Granted, I really don't remember half the details of the world of Shadowrun, but here's how you boil it down without magic: nations splintered, corps got a lot of power. Not necessarily in that order. Why do you even need a Great Ghost Dance? I have a Seattle, I have a New York, I have a SIN system, I have a Matrix, I have human augmentation. Not to get political, but real-life corporations are continuing to gain power all the time. It's very easy to see a shadowrun-esque future, and you don't need magical powers as a catalyst.

[LibraryOgre]

So I have been roped into running a cyberpunk game, and to make things a little easier on myself, I'm taking the non-fantasy things from Shadowrun. The problem I'm running into though is that as none of my players will understand "Shadowrun, but without metahumans" and what that entails, I have to explain the way that world works for them. So the real question I have for you all is this: Do any of you know a fairly concise summary of how that world works that I could edit appropriately?

The big thing in Shadowrun, aside from the Awakening, is the Shiawase Seretech decision. That's what sets up the domination of the corporations

A lot of questions start getting weird about 2011. You can keep with the SAIM's Lone Eagle event, but you need an alternate explanation as to why the NAN were so difficult to defeat... my bet would be that the received backing from the Middle East, and perhaps some corporate money, as well (read Richard K. Morgan's "Market Forces"; the corporation he works for does this sort of thing). Terrorists would be most likely sources for the nuclear weapons they used to blow open the volcanos. This allows you to have the fragmented North America that we know and love.

Most of the other problems can be waved away by talking about factions in the world. Things like Dunklezahn becoming president and his subsequent assassination can be replaced with a corporate big-shot... someone with big money, probably old money, and a number of connections throughout the world.

[BobVosh]

Use shadowrun's crunch, and cyber punks fluff? Quick and easy.

[Autolykos]

Use shadowrun's crunch, and cyber punks fluff? Quick and easy.

Exactly that. Trying to peel parts of the storyline away is a severe pain in the behind if you don't want to leave obvious gaps (I tried it with Earthdawn-crossovers, mainly because I hate crossovers and because I hate Immortal Elves, and even that required lots of corrections in different places).
Parts of the Shadowrun storyline tend to be connected where one would least expect it, especially if you consider all available source material (even if you ignore the novels).

[QuantumSteve]

Magic is integral to the Shadowrun Setting. What you should try to do instead is write your own setting borrowing from Shadowrun (or other material) as much or as little as needed. It would be quite easy to adapt the Shadowrun rules to whatever setting you devise.

For a little differnt crunch, also check out GURPS Cyberpunk, or Cyberpunk 2020 from RTalsorian Games. As far as Shadowrun goes, I prefer 3E to 4E, but that's just me.