Earth 2096 Setting Thread

[Reiver Party]

Earth 2096 is set in a cyberpunk near-future. Traditional society has collapsed: governments are distant and uncaring or thoroughly corrupt whilst giant corporations exploit and plunder the societies that support them. Dark and horrific magics have returned, horrors rise from the depths and demons walk the earth. The player characters are professional criminals who do industrial espionage mercenary work for hire.

Contents

Themes & Guidelines

Life in the 90s:
Documentation
Life on the Streets
Corporate Drones
The High Life

Technology:
Post-Q Computing & The Mesh
AI
Biotech & Cybernetics

Locations:
Supranational Governments
World Gazeteer
Hot Cities
Black Markets
Finance Centers
Helltowns
Stopovers

Megacorporations:
ACP
Ðê thêm
Lanka Corp
Platzeriung
Shidai
Skynet
Thaumaco
Tounga Industries
USAF Inc

Factions:
Alpha League
Cats For Justice
Doom Threaders
Frontline News
Gaia Uprising
Langit Lanun
Leviathan
Skyfall
Viva Imperii
Yellow Signers

TOCs:
BACRIMs
Blood Axes
Bratva
CIA
Kkangpae
Mafias
Maggia
Narcos
Sai?o Cakara
Triads
Yakuza
Yardies

Magic:
Alchemy
Blood
Mythos
Technomysticism
Totemic

[Reiver Party]

Themes & Guidelines

Identity Crisis
Personal, national and social identity are more complex than they've ever been.
Incorporating technology into your body is a benefit sometimes and unavoidable at others, but either way can change a person's perception of themselves. Cheap(er), safe(r) and better cosmetic surgery has allowed people to modify their bodies in almost any way imaginable. Changing your appearance to be more in line with how you identify yourself in turn leads to change in how you see yourself, which can be responded to with more surgery... It's a slippery slope many people fall down. The same thinking pushes people to change their lifestyle, their wardrobe, etc.

Most people are citizens of a country but also citizens of a supranational government that adminstrates and leads a large region. Many also feel they are part of a country that does not exist any more (or yet). Marie was born in Sacremento. she is "Californian" but also "Aztlanian" and also sees herself as "American", even though the USA hasn't existed in her lifetime. The idea of the USA still exists, and she feels a sense of belonging to it.

Your social identity is your understanding of where you fit into society. Concepts like "class" are basically useless except as disempowering generalisations. A lot of people don't actually have a lot to do and can easily be persuaded to join factions that offer them some purpose. At the other end of the spectrum, a sort of "urban tribalism" emerges, with "tribes" being like their own mini-societies. These tribe members see themselves as a seperate society and don't really intergrate with the rest of society. They really are like mini-nations inside cities. They are most common across the old construction, but there are mega-blocks and arcologies that produce them as well.


Social Divisions
The haves get to live in futuristic high-rise towns, whilst the have nots get to live in the old buildings that were already built.
Even among the haves, some get to live in fabulous arcologies whilst some get to live in the megabloks from 2000AD. Those divisions fracture further: some arcology citizens have entire floors to themselves as private estates whilst some are actually still living in coffin motels. Some megabloks have shiny malls and are like some happy American 1950s fantasy of the future, some megabloks are the one from Dredd.
Among the have-nots, some get to live in brightly-lit neon-signed (or w/e) society roughly analogous to today and some get to live in the post-apocalypse.
Those living like we live have some people who get along fine and some people living off food banks and getting their services cut off for non-payment.
Being out in rural areas is incredibly dangerous, and what societies there are pretty much live in the dark ages. I can see Druidic or "Nativist" or "Naturist" colonies existing.


Economic Lockdown
The global economy is in the toilet and has been for quite some time. Advances in technology have vastly reduced the need for people in industry, leaving huge swathes of the population being excess to requirements. Work still exists for those willing to permantantly sign their labour to a big corporation, but it isn't year-round employment and they have to find other ways to make ends meet. People who don't qualify for the work programs or aren't skilled enough just have to fend for themselves (some governments still give welfare).

A few corporations have ridiculously unfair monopolies and have been able to grow dangerously large and powerful. They are effectively locked in a cold war with each other and rountinely hire professional criminal mercenaries to make covert (deniable) strikes and raids against each other.

[Reiver Party]

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[Reiver Party]

ACP
HQ: Delta City, Greater Ontario
Key Sectors: Retail, Commodities
Powerbase: North America, South America
Divisions & Notable Subsiduaries: Food Concepts, Industry Concepts, Life Concepts, Medical Concepts, Security Concepts, Style Concepts, American Mining Corporation, Omni Delivery, Tradition Autos
Business Language: English

The juggernaught of western consumerism, American Consumer Products fills the shelves of supermarkets with every retail good from food to clothing to kitchen appliances to cars. They control every aspect of product manufacturing from harvesting the materials through to delivering it to the stores. This makes production very inexpensive, allowing ACP to severely undercut competitors on price. ~40% of the world's population relies on cheap ACP produce to survive.

While ACP products are turned out quickly at low quality, each division also runs a limited high-quality line for the gated-community middle classes. These lines have very limited runs. Security Concepts' high-quality lines are of course aimed at the military and are seen as a "gateway purchase" for their armaments and vehicle lines.

ACP has close business ties with Platzeriung, Ðê thêm and USAF Inc, relying on the first to staff it's factories and the latter two as lucrative SC customers.
It competes fiercely in it's key sectors with Skynet and TI. It is swiftly making an enemy of Shidai through it's attempts to enter the Japanese markets.


Food Concepts produces a vast array of foodstuffs from flash-heat burgers to ready meals. The food is mostly high-fat and high-sugar; the target consumer don't have the education to know that this is why ACP food products taste so good or that it's unhealthy to live on this food. (The back of the packet certainly won't tell you.) The actual food production happens in huge high-tech compounds, utilising hydroponic arrays, vat-grown meat and cultivated insect protein.
Food Concepts also produce low-quality kitchen and cooking appliances (through internal sales from Life Concepts). Their high-quality line focuses on the "integrated kitchen", a fully furnished kitchen with networked smart appliances monitored by a user-friendly app.

Industry Concepts produces vehicles and equipment for heavy industry.

Life Concepts produces electronics, focusing primarily on entertainment and lifestyle systems. The Life Concepts Solar TV is a best-seller.
Attempts

Medical Concepts primarily procures and sells pharmaceuticals as a commodity. MC offers low-quality biotech and cyberware, but they have low margins and a negative reputation.

Security Concepts produces armaments and automated warfare units for military customers. ACP's low-cost low-price philosophy is perversely popular with cash-strapped militaries and police forces. Security Concepts operates a fully-automated contract police force in

Style Concepts sells almost exclusively to middle-class consumers looking to appear more affluent and better than their peers. The division produces designer fashion, designer lifestyle items and designer sports cars. These are offered in several distinctive "themes" that are gradually rotated out and replaced.

[Stellar_Magic]

I have a suggestion, though this may be a bit of a blow against the traditional cyberpunk setting. Megacorps controlling everything is a bit overdone, and you mentioned in your overview one of the technologies that is likely to actually bring artisanship back at least for one economic sector.

3D Printing.

Anyone with basic engineering knowledge and free or relatively inexpensive tools (like Google's Sketchup) can make plans for a 3D printer to manufacture an item. As 3D printing technology progresses, I'd expect larger and larger printing systems to develop ultimately allowing for on-demand manufacturing of all non-organic goods, be it a nuclear reactor or a toothbrush. This means that anyone can design something for consumption and sell the design, not to a manufacturer but the end users. These 'creators' are the closest your world will have to 'new rich' or 'self-made' individuals and likely provide examples that many would aspire to and ultimately fail to reach.

Megacorps are more likely to be much more distributor based then traditional manufacturers (Amazon, Google, iTunes, and so forth would probably emerge as huge players, with Google basically being the least morally reprehensible of the lot). They would focus a lot more on resource acquisition and creating a marketplace for designs, and make a profit off things like service fees for printing and getting a cut of license and blueprint sales. In fact Google was planning on selling a device to book sellers that would allow them to print a physical copy of any e-book in 15 minutes. It's on hold due to legal snarls over copyrights.

In the extreme poverty scenario you've detailed, you suggested that roughly 3/5th of the population is out of work. Such people would have no connection with megacorps, and effectively be out of the system. Megacorp control really only works when everyone is employed by the corporations, the more individuals that aren't the more likely it is for independent competitors and businesses to be started up, resulting in a second smaller economy likely based off commodity and resource exchanges rather then money. Life may be hard, but if people are banding together to support each other, it won't be apocalyptic. Do not underestimate individual resourcefulness, if food prices soar people will rip out the flowers from their flower pots and start trying to grow their own food.

Which brings up another question, currency is largely dependent on confidence in governments to government failures will inevitably result in their currency being downgraded to the point of being toilet paper. Are the megacorps issuing their own currency to take up the slack? Is their an international currency in place? Is there a commodity valuable enough to be commonly used instead of currency?

While 3D printing would kill most forms of international trade, so would soaring oil prices. If international travel and trade is still ongoing, how is it running? Are we using nuclear powered freighters (these have been prototyped already), and what about air travel? How does that work without aviation fuel?

[Carl]

I hate to say it but I've got to agree, the first few lines sound like about 50 other settings I've seen before and that's not a good thing. It doesn't help that since the concept was first popularized decades ago various factors have shown that such a system in a long term sense can't work. Oppressive regimes get toppled because the security forces are people too, and any corporation not large enough and self sufficient enough to be a government in it's own right is too vulnerable to taking a bad risk and destroying itself. Back when the concept was popularized people believed really big businesses could be invincible once they got big enough, but history since then has shown that not to be true.

Basically you have a setting that's very generic and that because of many factors is becoming something of a dead horse trope making it hard to take seriously.

[Everyl]

I hate to say it but I've got to agree, the first few lines sound like about 50 other settings I've seen before and that's not a good thing. It doesn't help that since the concept was first popularized decades ago various factors have shown that such a system in a long term sense can't work. Oppressive regimes get toppled because the security forces are people too, and any corporation not large enough and self sufficient enough to be a government in it's own right is too vulnerable to taking a bad risk and destroying itself. Back when the concept was popularized people believed really big businesses could be invincible once they got big enough, but history since then has shown that not to be true.

Basically you have a setting that's very generic and that because of many factors is becoming something of a dead horse trope making it hard to take seriously.

That seems a bit harsh to me. We don't accuse everyone who makes their own generic fantasy/D&D/Tolkien-inspired setting of using a dead horse trope, even though it's probably more overdone in tabletop roleplaying than cyberpunk dystopia. GMs regularly reinvent the wheel for D&D and PF settings, why can't they do the same for Shadowrun?

Stellar_Magic had some good ideas, though, I think. Taking into account technological advancements over the last generation or two, a corporate-dominated dystopia wouldn't look much like the ones originally envisioned in the 1980s or thenabouts. And a world with 60% unemployment is a world where megacorps are fast growing irrelevant - more than half of everyone is neither being paid by nor paying money to the corporations, yet they are somehow surviving. It may not be a comfortable living, but it sounds like most people are getting by without the megacorps.

Furthermore, it seems odd to me that governments would give up on basic infrastructure like power and water, letting organized crime take over. Those kinds of projects are huge undertakings, and governments would already have established networks in most places. If that kind of basic infrastructure has fallen into criminal control, it's probably through rampant government corruption, not through the government randomly deciding that it doesn't like having a reason to exist. If the entire department of water resources is in the pockets of a major gang or syndicate, you get the same kind of opportunities for infrastructure collapse to poor neighborhoods, corner-cutting leading to brownouts and occasionally-undrinkable water, and demands for bribes to maintain basic services.

[Stellar_Magic]

Sorry, I've thought a lot about a cyberpunk setting as one of my projects is a novel set in such a future, based on technological developments.

Many states in the US have government approved monopolies or government sponsored corporations that run utilities... So them being provided by a megacorp isn't that big a leap, and really changes absolutely nothing. In fact such corporations already exist.

Also, the idea of the America Consumer Products - a company based on the production of consumer goods, would be killed by 3D printing. You're essentially talking about Wal-Mart taking over in a setting where traditional manufacturing and distribution is prohibitively expensive. With 3D printing, it'd make more sense for a major company to build 3D printers and sell processed raw materials for those printers then the finished goods. They might also make money off service fees for using industrial scale printing systems for cars and so forth.

Unless those 3D printers are exclusively owned and controlled by the megacorp (which is very unlikely for small units) the idea that is the basis of the various manufacturing lines would collapse (aside for food, which is another subject entirely, and I'd heartily approve of an Agro-Corp as one of the megacorps in a setting like this).

Megacorps already exist and can be hugely powerful entities, but they aren't usually that explicit and obvious. If you want an example of what a Megacorp looks like.

General Electric

They make freaking everything... Refrigerators, Power Plant Turbines, Jet-Engines, and on and on... They are so prevalent and powerful that it's actual Star Trek Canon that the antimatter-matter reactor in a Federation Starship is a GE product. The thing is, GE doesn't really scream 'EVIL' does it?

Now... this doesn't mean I think parts of this setting design are totally wrong. Rising levels of efficiency and robotics will likely cause massive unemployment, especially in unskilled labor. Not everyone is capable cut out for working as a hacker, tech, or so forth and as a result there will be large scale unemployment for unskilled laborers.

Some estimates suggest the Industrial Revolution caused as much as a 30% die off in the population due to the radical shifts in the economy.

At the same time 3D printing, free 3D and drafting programs, quantum computing, the internet, and virtual reality systems will allow for skilled and exceptional people to exchange and create things like never before. Companies already exist that will make 3D figurines of your MMO characters, now imagine if some 13 year old designed a really neat and easy to use interface for his cybernetic UI and some twitter/tumblr person with a huge following picked it up.

That kid is going to instantly be wealthy, even if he's not charging much. At the same time there are probably 100 people that did the same thing and didn't make more then a fistful of dollars off it.

As efficiency increases and the unskilled labor sector shrinks there will be a growing creative economy revolving around customization, 3d printing, and competitive designs. In such an environment it should also be expected that copyright as we know it today will break down.

Another thing to consider is that the creative economy is not going to be limited to physical objects or even blueprints for physical objects but for data. Look at Steam Workshop, Second Life, and DAZ 3d selling computer models. Even flat currency exchange between virtual worlds and real worlds exists and will probably grow.

I think you're taking too much of an 80s and 90s view of the future with the setting. Here's a chance to do a 2010s version with all the advances and changes that have happened taken into account.

[Reiver Party]

Ðê thêm
HQ: Haiphong, Vietnam
Powerbases: SE Asia, East Asia, South Asia, North Africa
Divisions & Notable Subsidiaries: Death Corps, People's Army of Vietnam, Trưng Dụng, Yokai Luc
Business Language: Vietnamese

In the wake of the first demonic incursions, disgraced Viet colonel Ngô Thánh Bào saw a need for a mercenary contracting service. The fledgling Ðê thêm was able to connect desperate governments, cities and individuals with mercenaries quickly and for a modest fee. Mercenaries had to agree to exclusive contracts, but Colonel Ngô kept expanding his operations and crushing rival contracting services. Ðê thêm was increasingly the only real choice for mercenaries who wanted to even appear professional.

As the incursions raged on, Thánh Bào began to recruit the "tame demons" that had survived the first incursions. With training and discipline they were formed into the Yokai Luc, the first option for clients who wanted their mercenaries to "wreak havoc" rather than "accomplish objectives".

With the rise of Platzeriung, Ðê thêm translated it's mercenary contracting systems over to the civilian labour markets. It has especially succeeded in Asia and Oceania, where governments would rather buy local than rely on some corporation on the other side of the world.

Death Corps offers a "penal legion" service to governments across the world. For an annual fee, a violent prisoner can be removed from their cell and forcibly conscripted into the suicide squads of the Death Corps. Conscripts are kept in line with severe physical punishments and gruelling conditions. Torture, extreme psychological stress and forced biomod surgery and cyber implantations are common.

People's Army of Vietnam is run out of Hanoi and operates police contracts across the globe. Their reputation has suffered due to allegations of war crimes during deployment in the Laotian Rubber Wars.

Trưng Dụng is the civilian side of Ðê thêm, currently accounting for 47% of total revenue. Trưng Dụng operates the work program's across South East, South, East and Central Asia as well as Oceania and Northern Africa.

Yokai Luc is Ðê thêm's ferocious and well-funded mercenary army composed of tame demons. They pursue their own contracts and are used to provide high security and fire teams for Ðê thêm installations.

[Carl]

They are so prevalent and powerful that it's actual Star Trek Canon that the antimatter-matter reactor in a Federation Starship is a GE product.

Be cautious of extrapolations like this, cannon has a WW3 that obliterated every major government and corporation in the mid 20th century, there may be a company called general electric in the setting, but it has no possible connection to it's 20th century counterpart.

That seems a bit harsh to me. We don't accuse everyone who makes their own generic fantasy/D&D/Tolkien-inspired setting of using a dead horse trope, even though it's probably more overdone in tabletop roleplaying than cyberpunk dystopia. GMs regularly reinvent the wheel for D&D and PF settings, why can't they do the same for Shadowrun?

i got dead horse and discredited confused actually, Sorry about that. What i meant is that some setting types have become overused to the point of not being taken especially seriously Generic Fantasy/Tolkien/D&D settings haven't really achieved that kind of thing except in specific sub cases. Which is what i'd argue the megacorp steampunk future falls into, it's a futuristic dystopian sub section of the steampunk genre. Steampunk as a whole work quite well as a setting, but dystopian future ones tend to verge on the dicredited category unless they have something unique because people have seen the basic premise a 100 times before.

That said i wasn't trying to be harsh about it, merely honest. And in truth i think a lot of factors make futuristic settings amongst the hardest to do well. Mostly because many of the common options have been overdone.

[Reiver Party]

Platzeriung
HQ: Berlin, EUF
Powerbases: Europe, Southern Africa, North, Central & South America
Divisions & Notable Subsidiaries: PlatKred, Sleipnir
Business Language: German

Platzeriung operates the rotating work programs that sustain the majority of the western population. To be eligible for placement, workers must sign permanent labour bonds with Platzeriung. In this way, the corporation owns the greatest stock of human capital in the world.

PlatKred offers financial services to low- and mid-income workers.

Sleipnir is the military and police wing of Latzeriung.

[Reiver Party]

Blood Magic
Blood carries both symbolic and actual power. There exist techniques to tap this power, either diverting it into oneself or using it to influence the unfortunate carrier.

The very nature of blood magic carries a stigma of fear and disgust for most. This is made worse by several blood traditions being actively derived from the activities of demons and vampires.


Dakini is an eastern tradition based on the observed activities of blood demons in East Asia. Blood is liberally shed and imbibed to induce inhuman attributes in the user. Dakini techniques can seal wounds, turn blood to acid and inspire a ferocious blood rage. Practitioners are referred to as Dakini.

Green Dragon was developed by the Triads from existing blood rituals. This wicked tradition forcefully manipulates the victim's blood to produce movement, immobility or the blinding distractions of hyper-elevated blood pressure. The most advanced techniques can crudely (and torturously) puppeteer a victim, boil their blood or rip the vicous liquid from their body. Practitioners are known as Dragon Adepts.

Kukulkan is a purely ritual-based tradition. Time-consuming blood letting and full (bloody) sacrifices create long-term effects for the practitioner. Practitioners are known as J-Men.

Vampirism comprises an array of similar practices popular across Europe and North America. Vampirism manipulates the essential natures of blood as giver of life and carrier of disease. Practitioners are known as Vampire Cultists. Practitioners who take it too far are as Vampires (or the name of some regional vampire myth)

[Reiver Party]

Old Construction

Whilst a large minority of the world's population gets to live in the vertical towns of New Construction, most people have to make do with what's left of the old horizontal cities. Streets are crowded and frequently blocked by masses of people or rubbish. Most cars are solar/electric hybrids, although many people either can't or don't bother to own one. Public transport is privatised and unlikely to service OldC areas. Taxis are both omnipresent and effectively completely unregulated.

Those who qualify for work have to pick a company to bond their labour to and hope for the best. The big three (Platzeriung, Trưng Dụng & ZLab) are present and competing in just about every city on the globe and between control 97% of the planet's cheap irregular labour. These months-long work placements can provide for a family if you stretch the money, but people who don't qualify for the programs (criminals, addicts, the undocumented) have to make do on their own. Criminal organisations can provide a pale and violent facsimile of employment, and trash piles or abandoned buildings can be picked through for materials to sell. Not a few people make a living hunting animals and vermin for street vendors.

Bars and cafes are vital cornerstones of the community. They have reliable booze, power and water (almost always requiring criminal connections) and usually have TVs blaring away at all hours of the day. They function as both eateries and social hubs. Highly commercialised small stores also operate in slums and some favelas. These stores offer a variety of ready-to-eat food and domestic essentials for as low a price as possible. Attempted robberies are frequent and the staff are usually armed.

Emergency services to OldC areas are unreliable. Paramedics, if they operate there at all, are armed and armoured. The police are aggressive, militarised and under little supervision. Actual police stations often look like fortresses.


Slums
Slums are over-populated areas of old construction. Most slums are run by "slum lords", semi-criminal landlords who charge as much rent as the market will bear. The average slum building is an apartment block or house that has been subdivided into as many one-room apartments as possible. The highest quality are bedsits with an tiny bathroom and "kitchen area" installed. Most are literally just a bedroom, with communal bathrooms down the hall. Even malls, cinemas and theatres have been broken up and rented out.
Sanitation, water, power and other basic services are spotty.


Favelas
Favelas are similar to slums but consists of a mixture of extant buildings and irregular or shanty construction. Favelas are characteristically controlled by competing social, criminal and religious groups. The police effectively have no control here, usually leading to bloody "pacification efforts" being inflicted at regular intervals.
The more organised nature of favelas means they tend to have a higher level of services than slums, with most residences having water, electricity and refuse collection. Only the larger organisations are able to marshal enough resources to implement sanitation.


Shantytowns
Shantytowns are built into whatever spaces are available. Parks, dump sites and demolished buildings are the most common. The shanties are made from whatever materials can be scrounged up or looted, usually composite woods, scrap metal and cardboard.
Shantytowns have basically no services. If you're lucky there might be a tap into a power line or something.


Abandoned Zones
Residential neighbourhoods standing empty and uncared for was a problem in some cities at the start of the century and the problem has become a global pandemic with time. Abandoned Zones are crumbling and foul. The first heavy rainfall floats the sewer contents onto the streets, making the area uninhabitable and too costly to bother recovering. Buildings crumble with time and neglect and the streets get overrun with animals and vermin.


Rural Areas
Spiralling costs led to services for rural areas being rapidly curtailed. Typically postal and social services are first to go, gradually followed by more critical services as one industry after another is privatised and deregulated. As people move from rural areas to towns, those towns expand and become more like small cities.
Many former rural settlements are effectively the same as Abandoned Zones, but some have been occupied by scavengers and fugitives.

[Reiver Party]

Totemic Magic
Neototemism and corresponding with a totem is in itself a very mild form of totemic magic. More developed techniques allow far more than just communication with totems, they allow the practitioner great gifts in return for actions and rituals of appeasement. Totemic practitioners claim to have a reserve of "life energy", "essence" or "soul". This reserve can be tapped and invested into their gifts.


Nahuallotl
Practitioners of Nahuallotl claim their soul is fused with that of a totem animal. This totem can lend them it's strength and form, and can guard their soul after death. Certainally, Nahualli have been seen to take monstrous half-man-half-beast forms, display great strength and have been seen to return from death. Different totems offer more different abilities, but practitioners can only split their soul so many ways. Practitioners are known as Nahualli or Were-X (X being their totem animal).


Ndongo
Practicitioners of Ndongo have many totemic patrons. They are able to call on multiple totems at one time, although each totem bestows only a single gift. Practicitioners are known as Ndongo.


Shamanism
Shamen are the archetypical totemic caster. They have a single patron totem that they both worship and are granted miraculous powers by. Shamen are influenced greatly by their patron totem. Practicitioners of Shamanism are known as Shamen.