[Serbitar]

Shadowrun, being cyberpunk, was also always about showcasing how man was destroying the earth. In the 80s we had sour rain, pollution, forest decline and hole in ozone layer and such. Natives and magic fighting back and sometimes winning but mostly loosing.

I havent read a lot of shadowrun background since 4th. And nowadays we have climate crisis.

Is this (the climate crisis and its effects) being showcased in Shadowrun? 5th 6th? Should it be?

[Hobbes]

North America, for example, was torn up by the Great Ghost Dance.  Outside the Metroplexs it's usually described as desolate, toxic, and hostile with occasional small to medium sized corp towns.

Any sprawl that I can think of has some kind of toxic, polluted, area, usually where the SINless and other undesirables are crammed into.

Man made pollution and it's impact on the environment are certainly themes in Shadowrun fiction and in-game material and modules.  "Climate Change" not so much, it's more like Chernobyl and other localized disasters, that seem to be everywhere in Shadowrun. 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Man made pollution and it's impact on the environment are certainly themes in Shadowrun fiction and in-game material and modules.  "Climate Change" not so much, it's more like Chernobyl and other localized disasters, that seem to be everywhere in Shadowrun.

Very much this.  Toxic zones are an important aspect of the setting, and they're usually the result of some combination of greed and ambivalence as opposed to disaster areas caused by climate change.

As far as the SR setting is concerned, the awakening was much more of a climate shift than anything that corresponds to the real world.  Not just in a rhetorical sense, but literally, the climate got changed by the reintroduction of magical energy.  Meteorology is still catching up with how weather patterns work in the sixth world, even without man-made ecological disasters.  There was a bit of fluff from one of the early books that mentioned how tomorrow's weather forecast in the sixth world is about as vague and unreliable as next week's forecast is in the fifth.

[Wakshaani]

Whenteh game started back in 89, and when it was being written before then, climate change wasn't really a Thing, but pollution as. The days of rivers being on fire and casual littering weren't that far behind us and those who grew up in that time still recall the messaging.

So, when Cyberpunk was invented, and Shadowruncane about, things like Acid rain were the "new hotness" and got featured. if you started it TODAY, you'd probably see high levels of water, coastlines changed, and so on, but in 89, not so much.

That said, the Great Ghost Dance (GGD) mucked up the weather something awful and in some areas it's just freaky. Rain that erupts from the ground, blood rain, hundred degree hail, and so on. The closer you get to old Ute territory the worse it gets.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Here in the real world in the Sixth world's FRFZ we see hail in 90 degrees days... 100 degree hail doesn't sound that fantastical

[Serbitar]

Whenteh game started back in 89, and when it was being written before then, climate change wasn't really a Thing, but pollution as. The days of rivers being on fire and casual littering weren't that far behind us and those who grew up in that time still recall the messaging.

So, when Cyberpunk was invented, and Shadowruncane about, things like Acid rain were the "new hotness" and got featured. if you started it TODAY, you'd probably see high levels of water, coastlines changed, and so on, but in 89, not so much.

Exactly my point. Just like SR4 updates Shadowrun with wireless, shoudnt SR6 update the world with climate change?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well, again, magic has done more climate changing than climate change has.

[FastJack]

Well, again, magic has done more climate changing than climate change has.

And in a lot of cases, for the better (more trees, less global warming, etc.)

[Marcus]

So the only game i can recall leaning into climate change or at-least sea level rise was/is Rifts.
I do think the setting could benefit from a remind that the NAN won the war against the old USA via Volcanoes. Most folks don't really get the level of catastrophe that could occur if Yellowstone Erupted, the scope just doesn't register. To me that fact that those early mass rituals have never been employed again strikes me as odd. Magic wise the setting is now many time more sophisticated then the early Shamanic rise. But no one seems to be ready to play the Volcano card any where else?


 

[Moonshine Fox]

I mean, it did take a few hundred people sacrificing their lives to power the ritual that had dozens of shamans directing the flow of the much mana, so maybe there's just not been an organization with that many disposable people and that many magically active to guide it all since then. It's possibly others have tried and failed to pull it off. Even the second Ghost Dance and the spike blood ritual that guy down in Aztlan was doing in the 50s didn't hit that high of mana.

[Marcus]

I mean, it did take a few hundred people sacrificing their lives to power the ritual that had dozens of shamans directing the flow of the much mana, so maybe there's just not been an organization with that many disposable people and that many magically active to guide it all since then. It's possibly others have tried and failed to pull it off. Even the second Ghost Dance and the spike blood ritual that guy down in Aztlan was doing in the 50s didn't hit that high of mana.

The Amazon war didn't heave enough magical talent to do this? I don't buy that for a second. Their numbers were large enough to hold of an army and they had bunch next level magic going on including special magic trees and even their own weird tradition.

[Serbitar]

Well, my question was more like:

Shadowrun is a projection of certain things into the future. One of them is tech, and as tech SOTA changes in our world, so does the projected tech in shadowrun (via ret-cons mostly, we are not having 80s tech in SR4-6).
A second theme of shadowrun is man destroying nature. Shouldnt this be ret-conned, too, to reflect the way we are destroying our climate today (in contrast to what was the vibe in the 80s)?

Of course this means changes (ret-cons), but we had them, as mentioned, in the tech department, why not have them in other departments, too?

(Or for example, the predominance of Japan vs China, much different today than it was in the 80s)

[FastJack]

Well, my question was more like:

Shadowrun is a projection of certain things into the future. One of them is tech, and as tech SOTA changes in our world, so does the projected tech in shadowrun (via ret-cons mostly, we are not having 80s tech in SR4-6).
A second theme of shadowrun is man destroying nature. Shouldnt this be ret-conned, too, to reflect the way we are destroying our climate today (in contrast to what was the vibe in the 80s)?

Of course this means changes (ret-cons), but we had them, as mentioned, in the tech department, why not have them in other departments, too?

(Or for example, the predominance of Japan vs China, much different today than it was in the 80s)

The main thing to remember is that the Shadowrun universe branches off from ours as of (officially) 1999 with the Shiawase decision. Climate change was happening twenty years ago, but it was nowhere near the calamity of 2019. With a couple of events, magic coming back, etc., it's hard to compare if the SR universe is better, worse, or the same as ours.

[Wakshaani]

I mean, it did take a few hundred people sacrificing their lives to power the ritual that had dozens of shamans directing the flow of the much mana, so maybe there's just not been an organization with that many disposable people and that many magically active to guide it all since then. It's possibly others have tried and failed to pull it off. Even the second Ghost Dance and the spike blood ritual that guy down in Aztlan was doing in the 50s didn't hit that high of mana.

The Amazon war didn't heave enough magical talent to do this? I don't buy that for a second. Their numbers were large enough to hold of an army and they had bunch next level magic going on including special magic trees and even their own weird tradition.

Oh, no, the Az-Am war had some, but it was the Az-Yucatan war where the Big Blood happened. No one's really talked about it of late, but the whole penninsulagot astrally WRECKED, after which both sides leaned back and went, "Yeah, that … was dumb. Let's … make with the peace. Deal?" "Deal."

There's still fallout in the region over it. Mind you, it's never been stated exactly *what* happened, but it wa sbig, it was magic, and it screwed things up a LOT. The spirits in the Yucatan want nothing to do with Metahumans in the astral and will let you know it at top speed.

[Serbitar]

The main thing to remember is that the Shadowrun universe branches off from ours as of (officially) 1999 with the Shiawase decision. Climate change was happening twenty years ago, but it was nowhere near the calamity of 2019. With a couple of events, magic coming back, etc., it's hard to compare if the SR universe is better, worse, or the same as ours.

Sure, but as I mentioned they retconned tech. Wireless was never in SR1-3. Also Augmented reality. They retconned it in because real life overtook the SR developments.