[Skunkheart]

This is my first post, y'all, so before I say anything ~ hi!  I have lotsa names; Skunkheart is just the one I chose cuz the digital world isn't great when names>users (yet).  I use either old Spivak pronouns (e/em/eir) or fairy pronouns (fey/fem/fear), but accept singular they if that's what you need to fall back on.  I've been playing Shadowrun since I was in high school, oh, about 22 years ago or so (!).  I remember buying second edition with its lovingly cheesy art and being very confused when I bought sourcebooks and they were from first edition and had that number in parentheses after all teh Damage Codes and i didn't know why.  I remember falling in love with Paradise Lost and Shadowbeat (still the best SR book ever published, imho; I own two copies to this day) and wanting to fall in love with the realism of Shadowtech but never figuring out cool weird things to do with it.

ANYWAY:

I made that little trip down memory lane to express that I LOVE this game and this setting and that it really played an instrumental role in my inner landscape in a lot of ways.  I never would have had a pink beard if it weren't for the one-two punch of being a Shadowrun fan (Pink Mohawks!) AND a Radical Fairy.  But I also have a bone to pick with the game, a serious one.

There's a meme or trope that is omnipresent throughout RPGs that is essentially a shitty math problem.  Aztecs=human sacrifice=EVUL.  Only, nextlaomiztli (human sacrifice) WASN'T evil.  Many of those sacrificed (not all, I grant you) were willing and honored by the idea that their teyolia could contribute to the ollin of the world.  To call it evil relies on not seeing the act through Nahua ("Aztec") eyes and relying on how the conquistadores saw it.

Aztechnology and the resurgent Nahua culture in Aztlan (whose borders extend FAR beyond those of the Azteca Triple Alliance or the Nahua peoples; it's even larger than the Nahua and Maya territories combined) are one of my favorite things about Shadowrun, but that 16th-century colonialist logic has made them the bad guys in Shadowrun's backstory and that makes me sad.

Even if you're attached to the idea that human sacrifice is always evil, I might point out the unfortunate nature of having the evilest megacorp be Mexican in light of current U.S. politics.  And the idea that the Ghost Dance almost built the bridge the Horrors need ~ that indigenous folk turning to religion to fight for their liberation almost doomed the world ~ is likewise awkward.

So I've been wondering how I could rewrite Shadowrun's backstory to make Aztechnology not the cosmic danger so vile even most shadowrunners will avoid their Mr. Johnsons that it has so often been presented as, allow an honorable blood magic that could be incorporated into daily life (autosacrifice, or the giving of a small amount of one's own blood was common back in the day and is still practiced now, though usually with lancets like your diabetic uncle uses instead of flint or obsidian bloodletters), and in other ways reduce the racism that ha inevitably cropped up in Shadowrun* while preserving the threat of the Horrors, Dunkelzahn's sacrifice (and, I suppose, similarly the pain Harlequin caused Bull  ), and the fact that Aztechnology is a megacorp and megacorps are in fact evul**?  I thought y'all might have some interesting ideas on alternate takes of the Shadowrun universe, hence my posting.  Please share your ideas with me, if you would!





*  As a white person, I will affirm that racism is inevitable (we were raised steeped in it, after all), and that the important thing is what we do when we realize how it has affected our behavior.
**  I can't remember where it is right now, but one of the SR5 books had a whole aside about how the whole Neo-Nahua Renaissance thing Aztlan pushes is just, like, a PR and cultural indoctrination effort of Aztechnology's and not actually, y'know, genuine.  Why?  What even did that add to the setting?

[Eddren]

Being honest here? Rather than changing the events, just change the reasoning. Change the reason sacrifice is so widely accepted there to being a resurgence in awareness of their roots, hell, go full ham and say that they actually outlaw blood magic, too--Unless performed as a Noble Sacrifice. Say that it's not that the sacrificers are the ones doing the casting, but the one being sacrificed--And those sacrificing are simply helping the follow-through. Say that as these developments continued, the Awakened population actually saw a massive spike as mana levels shot through the roof, but that they're kept in check by the regular sacrifices.

Say that the Big D still sacrificed him, that everything happened as was, and that it was all caused by a cabal of actual blood mages who managed to piggyback off of the noble sacrifices to achieve their goals, lead by the horror-touched Dragon. Just rewrite it so that the bad stuff is, you know, the actions of the shadows, rather than representative of the people.

[忍]

inb4 lock (>'-')> <('-'<) ^(' - ')^ <('-'<) (>'-')>

[kyoto kid]

...many years ago I considered taking a similar tack with the TT. Pretty much got my ideas shot down in flames on another forum.

Being from Oregon I am very familiar with many locations in the state but given the sociopolitical setting of the Tir, it was a terrible place to set a campaign as it would most likely end up a TPK once the Peace Force got wind.

I would say if you can make it work, and keep it consistent, go ahead.  I fleshed out the Kingdom of Hawai'i from what was presented in the old Paradise Lost run for a campaign I ran and it worked very well (also spent time there in RL).

In my European campaign I didn't bother with Lofwyr or Rhonabry as they were not important to the overall storyline.  Oh yeah, S-K was there but just as another Mega.  Instead I played more on the Russian adventurism that was occurring in Poland (this was 2060 2061) the rise of a despotic regime in the Balkans, as well expanded on a few elements like the New Druidic Movement, The Lord Protector, the Ley lines, and the mysterious figure who popped up in London known only as "The Pendragon."  Some of it stretched the notion of "canon" but I don't see an issue with doing so if again, it is consistent and advances the plotline.

[Reaver]

First off, leave current politics out. You won't win that homicide of an argument...

Second, on if human scarfices are 'good' or not boils down to a simple argument of "is Life sacred?" If it is, then it is immoral to end it. If it is not, then it is not.

The other issue with aztec has nothing to do with tradional people, or tradional faith, they have been perverted by those in power and are using blood magic to fuel 'something bad'. - this is all talked about in the 2e aztec sourcebook.

[Jack in the Box]

For every evil thing in Shadowrun (or any other RPG); cyberzombies, CFD, insect shamans, etc., there exists some tortured twist of reasoning which tries to say it is morally okay.  And I'm betting that there is an Internet rule which states that somewhere in the anals (not misspelled) of the Internet, that twisted reasoning has been advocated, probably by somebody who uses Spivek pronouns and has a pink beard.

Human sacrifice is no exception.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well, bear in mind that SR's lore comes from the 1980s which to modern sociology majors probably looks like the 1480s.  But with regards to a couple points made in the OP:

1) Aztechnology is the evilest mega around: Not so much.  Don't make the mistake of thinking racism is involved in Aztechnology being "bad".  ALL the megas are bad.  And always have been. By way of comparison Ares is the "American as Apple Pie" mega and it's the one that set of a fragging nuke in Chicago.  Aztechnology gets more attention as "bad guys" because so much of Shadowrun's lore is set in Seattle, where there's a big Aztechnology presence.  Shiawase or S-K would be probably seen as the "most evil" if Shadowrun's spiritual home was Neo-Tokyo or Berlin instead of Seattle.

2) The Ghost Dance almost ended the (sixth?) world: Again it's not so much a case of "indigenous culture is bad" as "people can't be trusted with power".  The revelation that Ghost Dance almost caused the Horrorpocalype in is just a way to demonstrate that Magic is no less "inherently evil" than say: Nukes. Who was wielding the magic is irrelevant to this point.  Besides, a key tenet of dystopian cyberpunk (upon which Shadowrun is based) is everyone is bad, anyway.  Noone's being picked on based on not being white.

**  I can't remember where it is right now, but one of the SR5 books had a whole aside about how the whole Neo-Nahua Renaissance thing Aztlan pushes is just, like, a PR and cultural indoctrination effort of Aztechnology's and not actually, y'know, genuine.  Why?  What even did that add to the setting?

You're not seeing the forest because of the trees being in the way.  That's a way of addressing your point.  It's making clear that while Aztechnology's Blood Magic is clearly presented as "evil", it's an in-game only thing that's different from actual historical practices.

[Nephilim]

Ok, wow. Little bit of forum etiquette here before I dive into your point

*  As a white person, I will affirm that racism is inevitable (we were raised steeped in it, after all), and that the important thing is what we do when we realize how it has affected our behavior.

Don't post stuff like this. I'm not saying I disagree with you, that you're wrong, or that you shouldn't feel this way, but nothing good will come of posting this. It's pure flame bait (even if you don't intend it to be) and just as importantly it's extremely off topic. Given that this forum gets into plenty of knock down, drag out fights over things completely on topic (See: Magic Bullets and Spirit Armies) there's no reason to toss in a live grenade like this.

Now, on to your point.

First a bit of nuance to establish.

I can't speak to Aztec culture, since my knowledge of it is limited to pop culture (which is generally laughably incorrect,) but I can speak to western culture. No western culture (in universe or out) is going to see human sacrifice as good. Cultural or not, willing or not, the sanctity of life is one of the core principles of Western Civ. So, while you can certainly make the Azzie's less evil if you want (which I would argue is missing the point, but that's already been expressed by others so I'll skip it) no one will ever see the people practicing human sacrifice as 'Good Guys.'

As for actually changing the background it's hard to do. The easiest way would be a patch of sorts. Make it clear that Darke and his ilk were outsiders who took over Aztlan/Aztech, remove the unwilling sacrifice and whatnot. If you're talking about a full on retcon into 'Good Guys' well, A) You're not really talking about Shadowrun anymore and B) You're teeing up for a doozy of the task, since you'd essentially have to rewrite some 60-70 odd year of canon, much of which the Azzies had a major hand in. Frankly that sort of a rewrite is beyond the scope of any aid anyone here could/would provide.

[Reaver]

The Corp guides through the editions do a really good job of subtly showing you just how "bad" the corps really are in their ugly little practices.

Ares will do anything it chooses to keep its market share and Home Turf safe. (the Chicago incident, the Excalibur project, the Firewatch orbital base)

The Japancorps just flat out tell you "Not Japanese by birth? Not Human? No place at the top for you!"

SK has no qualms about doing everything and anything it chooses. (secret matrix kill switch, its entire history)

Aztech likes to cut out hearts and serve that up with a nice slice of blood magic pie...


But keep in mind, That is not what the public thinks.

The Public thinks Ares invented and patented Apple pie. The Public thinks the Japancorps are Humanitarians. The Public thinks Aztech is one of the best companies in the world. And so on it goes..... Thanks to the billions spent in PR campaigns... Campaigns that have turned media from a product, into a MegaCorp (Horizon).

WE know (meaning we as Runners) know what we know because of other Runners that have shared their stories with us. All the rule and source books are written from a Runner's perspective. 

[Marcus]

The Aztec or Mashka people as their tribe was called before they came to power among the various competing city states that made central America pre-1492. This is something of a hard topic, certainly there is no clean hands in terms of sources, the Spanish were totally intent on demonizing the Mashka, but that said, the reason the Spanish were able to over throw Mashka, was that those other city states clearly seriously hated the Meshka, and for some fairly obvious reasons. They demands tribute in the form of human sacrifice and by that i mean a lot of human sacrifices.

You have keep a couple things in mind. Cortes showed up with a couple hundred guys and ran into a city that had greater population then Paris did at the period. People say metal made big difference but it's just not really true. Cortes crew were not solders, they were mostly sailors. But they were epicly out numbers. Now there we multiple factors that lead to the spanish eventual escape. One being studies suggest before Cortes ever set foot on Central Amercian soil, they indigenous populations of America were ravaged by something like 11 or 12 various high casualty plagues. As those who had contact with Europeans traveled up the local trade networks and the new diseases raged across the city states.

Mashka culture was altered at the time they came to power to require a lot sacrifices as a mechanism to keep the culture "strong". There's various sources for that, I recommend 1491 as a good starting point for some this, but many native scholars looking at, and there is body of work from the Mashka to study directly.

The parallels drawn between human sacrifice and European nation executions of the period are very powerful. As anyone who's know anything European history executions were large scale public entertainments at the time, but had the Mashka arrived in Spain instead of Cortes arriving Tenochtitlan, I can honestly say I don't think they would been at all successful in the courts of Isabella and Ferdinand.

So much of that is mystery, we will probubly never fully understand how any of that happened. I would have a very hard to calling the Mashka leadership "good" but that said, Isabella and Ferdinand's leadership were certainly not "good" ether. The inquisition they helped founded at the conclusion the reconquesta, claimed untold numbers of lives good percentage innocent.

[Lorebane24]

I think it's as easy as climbing out of the trap of assuming that Aztechnology is the evilest corp.  There is all sorts of horrifying stuff that gets glossed over in light of human sacrifices.  MCT has always been my favorite big evil corp.  Aztechnology has, at its core, an apocalypse cult, but most in the corporation, even the high ups (I think), are ignorant to this agenda.  They have a moral code, it is just one very different from what we're used to.  It values might and ambition, regards mercy as a weakness, and could probably be called evil by most standards, but there is a sort of values system one can get a grasp on.  MCT, I feel, values two things only: Nuyen and loyalty.  The human sacrifice thing is easy for players to get Jaded to when they deal with people dying on a routine basis.  MCT lets me dig pretty deep into the most soul-rendingly unethical business practices imaginable.  Some of their security factions favor cyborgs, for example.  One source book mentioned that MCT has found most natural brains are unable to cope with being implanted in a drone, and cloned brains lack imagination and experience, making them barely better than drones.  They have found the brains of children to be a happy medium.  Drop some sort of helpful street kid as a contact for the party during an MCT run, then have them go dark after MCT starts to get wise to the party.  A couple runs later, one of the drones in a Zero Zone "recognizes" the PCs.  Aztechnology will seem pretty tame to them after that.

[knppel]

As Reaver stated already, it's less a setting of Aztech being the top evil villain (them providing a bunch for a number of official publications are exceptions stating the rule, imo), and more a matter of the point of view.

Taking this in account, from a number of viewpoints Aztech is in fact the big bad player- reaching from Horizon's PR machinery depicting them as such to the public, up to even Dragons being concerned over the practice of blood magic occasionaly (as displayed in the old core book).

Same goes for the already mentioned lore composed by shadowrunners. The old Aztech corebook, if I recall right, is mainly composed from the point of view of a guy, who had to illegaly enter Aztlan to then do whatever shadowrunners do there, steal something or kill someone etc.
Naturally Aztech, being in charge of public security in Aztlan, throws whatever they have at such a terrorist threat once it's detected.

The average Aztlan citizen will see on the trid that the state-corp does not shy back from any effort to maintain his safety, however.
For him, they will be genuinely the good guys: After all it's only Aztech who protects us from completely being bought up by the Aresicans, and from all these terrorists they send because us Aztlaners do not bow to the worldwide corporate dictatorship etc. like everyone else does.

We've been playing a group of native Aztlan citizens the past two years, and shifting the point of view was great fun indeed. Mind you, most of our villains still are on Aztech-payrolls of course- who isn't in Aztlan?- but so are our Johnsons, and so are the characters that have a regular dayjob aside. Thus, it makes no big difference to our characters- on the other hand, if we know an involved corp is one of the few Joint Ventures with other, non-Aztlan-corps, we right away suspect something fishy (it's foreigners after all, and you cannot trust these!)

The matter of blood magic is a similar topic. With the right propaganda, any kind of magic can be depicted as evil- thus in return, it is just as possible to brand something others deem risky as totally valid and safe ("Latest research shows blood magic now 40% safer for the user if new regulations are followed"- I could imagine reading such an essay in an Aztlan-based Science Magazine).

tl;dr, it's not so much ab out rewriting the setting, an alternate point of view can do the trick already. Or with my character's words: I do not use blood magic because I am power hungry, it is a cultural thing, Jeez- I meant, by Huitzilopochtli!

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

One of the issues with 'positive only, please' is that you don't learn anything; you're refusing to discover why you shouldn't do something.  But see my .sig for my attitude towards that.  As a result, my question for you, Skunkheart, is ...

... why?

I understand the urge to make your own neighborhood 'good' and 'cool, but when it comes down to it, why do you need to rewrite the 6th World in such a way as to make Aztechnology -- not the Aztecs/Nahua, not the Mexicans, but Aztechnology -- a 'good guy'?  Or, if not that, at least a 'not quite as bad as it's made out to be' guy?

Because simply put, all your logic up above is already taken into account in the source material.  There was no '16th Century colonial logic' in the evolution of Aztechnology; yes, perhaps they DID start out by saying 'Aztechnology does human sacrifice, and thus they're bad!!', but right away in the London Sourcebook they had druids doing human sacrifice without 'teh evul'.  And the Sacrifice metamagic (IIRC, not looking at it ATM) still has the 'voluntary = good, involuntary = bad' aspect.  And as they delved into Aztechnology, evolved its origins and everything, they took 'Aztechnology = bad' and came up with a whole f'skin' host of bedrock-solid reasons why Aztechnology is bad -- and human sacrifice is only about 7.14% of it -- if you go by number of reasons and not by sheer volume of dastardliness, which would put 'blood sacrifice' at about 0.018%.  Aztechnology --

• -- grew out of three Central and South American drug cartels, and retain the mindset of the same;
• -- kicked it into high gear when they corp-raided a mining company and proceeded to perform massive mineral exploitation, paying the country that allowed it a pittance while polluting the area;
• -- used strong-arm tactics, including both character and actual assassination, to take over Mexico after helping to push the government into a collapse;
• -- used the same strong-arm and assassination tactics to 'encourage' every other Central American country into joining them;
• -- intentionally selected the 'Azteca Triple Alliance' / Nahua as being just the kind of highly exploitable identity -- 'theme' in point of fact -- to create an almost instant hierarchical structure for them to use to control their citizens (Disney was already taken);
  
• -- utilized that cultural identity to pretend they were 'in with the tribes' of the Native American Nations, avoiding their wrath by 'joining up' and breaking the power of the only possible entity that might have had a shot at stopping them, i.e. the United States of America, then bugging out the moment the opportunity to do so presented itself;
  
• -- nationalized every corporation in the country, i.e. took them over by fiat;
• -- used their international corporate capability to not only bottom-rung every possible consumer consumable ('the maximum rat-hairs-per-bite the law allows!!') but also securely ship the addictive substances they are still producing (legally, since they're their own country!), because an addict is an almost permanent repeat customer;
• -- continue to seek out every opportunity to co-opt, seize, and exploit any material, individual, or information they identify as potentially being to their benefit;
• -- bribe, threaten, or outright kill anyone whom they see as having a position of influence useful to them;
• -- used chemical weapons against their own people on such a massive level it literally turned hundreds of square miles of jungle into fully toxic zones, an ecological disaster on par with the Scottish Fringe Toxic Zone combined with the Scottish Irradiated Zone;
  
• -- spread thousands of indiscriminate predators throughout a civilian zone in order to achieve 'area denial' during a military conflict;
• -- continues to suppress, control, and eliminate any internal threat to their rule, whether that's outlawing (and imprisoning/killing not only priests but anyone caught at a Mass) the Roman Catholic Church; forcing their people to use a currency that is ONLY good inside the country, and which takes a massive financial hit if you want to buy the one that can be traded outside the country, and which can only be done by Aztlan citizens at approved government (read: identity-controlled) locations; and every other standard 'fascist regime' technique employed by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, the Kim family, etc. etc.;
• -- oh, and uses the unwilling side of the Sacrifice metamagic more-or-less indiscriminately in pursuit of advantage and power over other individuals, nations, and corporations in the 6th World.

... one of the SR5 books had a whole aside about how the whole Neo-Nahua Renaissance thing Aztlan pushes is just, like, a PR and cultural indoctrination effort of Aztechnology's and not actually, y'know, genuine.  Why?  What even did that add to the setting?

Unfortunately, this is where 'lack of complete knowledge' comes around to bite you in the rear again.  This extends the setting because --

• -- the Nahua, along with a number of other indigenous peoples, are not pleased with the way Aztechnology and its puppet-government and -country Aztlan have co-opted their history, for just the reasons you've argued, and employ very passive resistance (because active ones get shot) and as second-class citizens of the very 'nation' that claims to follow their cultural beliefs, try to survive and inform the rest of the world of the reality of their culture, not the twisted version Aztechnology presents to the world as being 'the real deal';
  
• -- by noting that it's PR/indoctrination and not the real deal, the writers re-emphasize the point that the controlling powers of Aztechnology (and thus Aztlan) are not actually interested in the Nahua culture, only in controlling people.  Because, see, that's all they really want.

The more you know about the game, the deeper you dig for information -- the Aztlan Sourcebook is really paydirt for you, because that's where you get much of the above information -- and thus the more information you get, you can realize these things.


TL;DR -- Aztec sacrifices were sometimes, perhaps even often, willing.  In modern Shadowrun, willing Sacrifices are not evil.  Aztechnology does not follow this practice, and its sacrifices are mostly unwilling -- hence evil.  And without its rampant pursuit in this manner, at least preserving the threat of the Horrors is impossible.

If you WANT to do something for your players so that they don't have a knee-jerk reaction (which isn't 'racism', thank you, but instead a very real and very earned general antipathy for a corporation that is perfectly willing to kill them all at the drop-off, and as often as not tries to do just that), instead write a screed from the POV of an Aztlan/Aztechnology citizen, and talk about the auto-sacrifice, the small voluntary bloodletting, that sort of thing -- how, from their POV, their 'teyolia could contribute to the ollin of the world'.