Unnamed Shadowrun Homebrew

Thoughts about an as-of-yet unnamed shadowrun homebrew which removes the MAJIK and strives to move more towards a GitS-style cyberpunk (though still with a focus on a crapsack, corp-run world)

in b4 "Play Cyberpunk2020" or "The point of Shadowrun is to have magic and cyberpunk XD"

Stradleyism: The act of dismissing an element of canon altogether on grounds of it being "stupid", without taking the effort to do something interesting with it.

Fuck that noise. I've decided instead of just throwing out the magic wholesale, to instead do something interesting with it: namely, integrate it with the rest of the cyberpunk more closely. Cyberzombies are amazingly cool because they are the synthesis of tech and magic but, except for this one point, for everything else in the game there is an insurmountable wall between tech and magic._{We're going to ignore degenerate cyber-adept builds}

Okay, so what to do, what to do...

My usual deal is to start working on the crunch before the fluff, but let's take an alternate approach this time.

Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk

Yes, it may be true that anything you can do to a lab rat you can do to a human being, and we can do almost anything to lab rats, but that doesn't mean we ought to, simply because we might discover some truth thereby, you know.

Races

Quite frankly, the idea of just wholesale transplanting Orcs, Elves, and Dwarves into cyberpunk is pretty dorky. Spelljammer-level dorkiness.

I keep trying to think of a way to make them interesting, but all I keep coming up with is crap. Every possibility in my head is just "Orcs, Elves, and Dwarves IN CYBERPUUUUUUUUNNNNK!"

Fluff-wise, they're easy to get rid of. After all, they were technically human anyways and you can do a lot of replacement stuff. Elves of Tir'Olgne (or however it goes)? Now they're just a bunch of humans who favor magic far over technology and have a superiority-complex coupled with a chip on their shoulders!

That being said, in a world where genetic engineering (enhanced by magic, of course) is common, then a certain group of traits become common. These form the semi-races and, left to their own devices, would eventually result in new species. So, we have loose genetic archetypes. Fish-people, super-intelligent, magic-resistant, magic-prone, big and strong, quick and agile, a little bit of all the above, etc. Walking through a more cosmopolitan city would be like walking through an uncaged menagerie. Racism, of course, we start to pop up as these archetypes start to develop: "The only thing worse than a fishies' smell is it's look." "How many brutes does it take to screw-in a lightbulb? Who knows. None of them have ever been able to figure it out." And of course, there would always be pro-human/pure human racist groups which won't deal with any "muties".

Corporations

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There is no third world. There is no west. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast interwoven, interacting, multivariate multinational dominion of dollars. Petrodollars, electrodollars, reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today. It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things.

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit and in which all men will own a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. --Network

Life

The corporations have supplanted any form of government. Any government exists in name only, half-forgotten by the average man. The police force is corp-run. The schools are corp-run. The hospitals are corp-run. Life is corp-run. It matters far much who you work for then what nation you were born in.

The affluent lives in well-guarded enclaves under the direct control of the corps. To all appearances, these enclaves are a utopia. The days are always bright, the city always clean, the serving staff always helpful and happy, traffic is non-existent, the parks are numerous and well-manicured, and everyone always feels safe even though they never see a single police officer. In truth, these enclaves are Potemkin Villages. Underneath the utopia is a massive network of corporate control. Hidden cameras in every room in every house, undercover cops on every street corner, an army equipped with the finest weapons money can buy. Dissenters are silenced and incompetents are quietly removed. The corp-enclave is a well-run machine whose sole purpose is to increase the profits of it's mother corporation. The enclaves are the priests of the Corporate Religion - handing down edicts from on-high to the huddling masses.

Of course, that's when everything goes right and not all the corp enclaves have gone right.

A number of enclaves have rebelled against their corporate masters, some have been subjected to a hostile takeover, and some are just closed down to make way for newer and better enclaves.

Outside of the enclaves are the middle-class laborer. They swarm over the enclave, desperately looking for jobs and money. And the corps are happy to provide. Most of these places are like the cities of old: dirty, noisy, and bustling. There is always a seedy underbelly to these sorts of places, but they're usually not allowed to fester for too long. Corporate tactical teams have a habit of going through the underground ever so often and ripping it to shreds.

And then you have the poor. The down-and-outs. Sometimes they form shanty-towns and ramshackle buildings just outside of the middle-class cities. Sometimes they just seemingly spring up in the middle of nowhere. But it's the same all over. Desperate people doing anything to just keep surviving for one more day. Here is where one finds the birthplace of Shadowrunners. The average Shadowrunner is somebody who scraped together enough money to buy an antique SMG and some basic combat armor and happens to know the right people. The average Shadowrunner has a life expectancy of about 2 missions. Elite Shadowrunners have cutting-edge tech, the highest grade genetic enhancements and cyberware, and enough magic to blow up a skyscraper, but here is where most of them start.

Corps view Shadowrunners as expendable, untraceable assets. Some corp big-wig wants to screw with his competitors so he tells someone who tells someone who tells someone who gets in contact with a guy who's friends with a fixer. The fixer gets a bunch of Shadowrunners and then points them in the right direction. Low-grade Shadowrunners are little more than shock troops to the corps - they aren't expected to survive but at least they'll do enough damage to achieve results. As Shadowrunners get more experienced, they get sent on more missions that require a bit more finesse and skill. Elite Shadowrunners are prized by the corps, but at the end of the day they are just as expendable as any other Shadowrunner.

The only good part about being a Shadowrunner is that the jobs usually pay very well. Most of the time, you won't come back alive, but that's why the corps are willing to pay so much. No corp will risk alienating it's Shadowrunner contacts by not paying up when the job is finished, but that doesn't mean that the corp isn't above sending a team on a job the corp doesn't expect them to finish. Often, a corp will hire a team to do a job they know the team won't be able to do but, in trying to do that job, the team will accomplish the actual goal of the corp. Corps are like that.

[lol grimdark much? However, this is -punk! Shadowrun usually is higher on the cyber than the punk and I want to emphasize the punk part. The corps have gained control of the world and are slowly breaking down the last forms of resistance. Most people don't even realize their doomed. Life is cheap and a plaything of the Corporation. Everyday is another day that your 'runner might die. That's what I'm trying to get across.]

Day in a Shadowrunner's Life

• Wake up. Probably hung over, having spent the night celebrating a mission where he came back in most of one piece.
• Quickly check footage from his installed security cam, making sure nobody was around his apartment too much last night.
• Get some insta-make food from the cupboard (shooing away a rat) and plop it into the microwave. Nuke and eat breakfast.
• While cleaning gear, get a call from fixer to meet a Mr. Johnson at a seedy bar in 2 hours.
• Drive over to said bar. Pass the bouncer some creds so that he doesn't check you for weapons.
• Meet with Mr. Johnson in a back room set up for such things (though, of course, the owner would deny it)
• Mr. Johnson explains that it's a smash-and-grab at a tech supplier in the city. The pay for the job is non-negotiable.
• Accept job and get rest of crew together.
• Spend rest of the day casually driving by tech supplier, casing the joint.
• Late at night, break in, 10 year-old assault rifle at the ready.
• Find out that it's actually an organized crime hideout - and the crew just interrupted a big time meeting.
• Shoot and run frantically.
• Die bleeding in the streets. (Later on, a corp tactical team will mop up the rest)

Gangs

Not nearly enough is done with go-gangers and gangs in general. When you have stuff to use like the Akira motorcycle gang or the gangs from The Warriors, how can you not use them?

Common Characteristics of a Shadowrunner

• Very little cash (assets are all tied up in weapons, armor, hacking, cybertech, etc)
• Criminal record before becoming a 'runner
• No living parents or at least estranged from family
• Lives alone (unwilling to trust others)
• Grew up poor
• Very little or no friends (see above: lives alone)