I have a love/hate relationship with Shadowrun in all its aspects; this especially includes its lore. Its potential has always been great, but in practice its always felt frustrating (to me). This isn’t a modern problem or a lore change issue. Even reading older lore stuff from 1e, I felt Shadowrun could never decide if it wanted to be tan trench coat or purple mohawk.
That's a good way to phrase it and an excellent point. The thematic point of the noir-cum-cyberpunk genre is the contrast between what is ostensibly an advanced, peaceful and enlightened culture and the corruption running under the surface, a corruption resulting largely just from people being people. Throwing in the high fantasy elements up-ends both the systems and the nature of the corruption -- it's a lot harder to be cynical and resigned to achieving some minuscule good at best, if there are elves running around with the songs of the ancient wild in their heart and magicians who can heal wounds and demonstrate miracles.
One of the biggest decisions about running a
Shadowrun campaign should be deciding, is this fantasy with cyberpunk trappings, or is it cyberpunk with fantasy trappings?
So I was thinking about how I would tweak Shadowrun to be more full ‘purple mohawk’ in subtle, and not so subtle ways.
Subtle:
1. The State of the world is pseudo-anarchic. Corporate feudalism isn’t a state of betterment (even for the corpos), but of collapse. ...everybody falls back into tribal conflicts.
2. The Biggest rivals to corpos are (gimmicky) gangs. Large scale governments sort of exist, but in a massively fragmented and weakened state. Militarized gangs with a mixture of radicalized populace and disenfranchised ex-military/ militarized police have control of the streets (sort of like a more extreme version of mexicos gangs).
The primary question a culture like this would have to answer is, how is the industrial manufacturing base maintained? Failed states of this sort tend not to be able to endure for very long unless they can gain support from external powers with stabler economies. It's hard to have the cyberpunk adventures of Matrix-running in a city prone to rolling blackouts on an unpredictable basis.
3. The lack of a real culture of respect at corpos means that retention of upper tier talent is very weak. This is especially true for security forces that often have to do the corpos dirty work. As a result its more profitable to be an independent contractor, in the similar principle as a pirate during the age of sail.
As above, the thing about the Golden Age of Piracy was that it was only viable for a brief period of time (about 30 years) and required a stable base of legitimate economic activity from established powers to parasite upon. If it really is more profitable for top talent to be freelancers rather than bound by contract, the corp contracts have to offer benefits that are worth sacrificing that profit and freedom for in order to stay stable and viable. (AI memory backup, allowing for "resurrection" in a cloned body a la
Altered Carbon, might be one such benefit, and would explain why shadowrunners keep running into the same foes even if they do kill them.)
4. The fall of centralized power means corporate power is less powerful and watchful outside of its own borders. What happens if somebody does a breach of contract and runs into another corpo. How do you punish them? Ask for them back? Tell the police? Organize an expensive retrieval squad?
Well, one thought that occurs to me is: What if this is a world that has
already been taken over by massively powerful AIs? The whole point of noir as a
sub rosa corruption is that there
does have to be a remote, but real, threat of destruction from whatever systems run the nation if the bad guys get too visible in their crime. If central human governments have become too weak, maybe there's a coalition of AIs who will join forces to contract private security on any shadowrunner who becomes too visible or destructive. (In fact, that is why the corps need the shadowrunners; the AIs enforce their primary contracts in a way that only zeroed-out private contractors with no licit Matrix presence can avoid.)
Not So subtle:
1. The FEV virus only directly killed like 10% of the population. But this indirectly massacred billions. 50+ish percent. Broken supply lines and starvation killed much more people.
2. Many metropolises are necropolises haunted by ghosts. With FEV as contagious and airborne, concentrated population centers that didn’t evacuate on time just died in massive amounts. The depth of the agony creates mass hauntings. For this reason places like new York have not been possible to reclaim fully or even at all. For some reason the ghosts also somehow stabilize the areas, preventing it from simply instantly crumbling from disrepair. So trying to explore literal ghost cities for loot is a thing.
3. Magic has allowed human society to survive. Quickened spells and such allows for things like infinite energy, or increased crop yields. Its not just good for medicine or killing people.
4. Lots of areas have been reclaimed by magical effects or aggressive magical wildlife. If calling the exterminator requires they grab a rifle, staying in a place becomes more then its worth.
5. As a result, new denser mega-housing projects have been constructed in magically weaker zones.
That makes for a really interesting setting, but I would have to say I think it has completely parted ways with anything resembling
Shadowrun at this point. Again, if you don't have a mostly stable and widespread culture that
looks like it's thriving and prospering for most ordinary folks, you can't have the elements of noirish cynicism and punkish rebellion that are central to the game, because there's not really an established system to be cynical about or rebellious against.