I have an aggressive love-hate relationship with Shadowrun. It's got so much stuff I think I like from a distance, and then I utterly despise up-front.
I find so much of it forgivable or re-workable (The nonsense of NAN, the hipster - spiritualism, the incongruous tone) If I could envision it in a way I think the game wants to be but just I can't read: I want to run games where it's rebellious and not soul-crushing.

This isn't a modern version issue or the like. I read the 1e books and rulesets and try to envision a rebellious game, but the nature of the worldbuilding, as well as the core assumptions of the game, don't lend themselves to being a badass cool rebel as much as a corporate pawn (but with a Mohawk), or at best a gangbanger that doesn't extort the old people I guess.
The corporations are just presented as too monolithic, and the forces at play as too overwhelmingly powerful and in control that nothing your party could do could change anything even on a small scale.
And it's not a grim tone that gets me. One of my favorite settings is GURPS: Reign of Steel and it's a way more miserable place than the 6th world. Its just written with more adventure hooks.

Now of course so much of the above is a rant, but I just wanted to get this feeling off my chest. I genuinely want help in running a punky, anarchic, gonzo, Shadowrun game but I can't really find any good material for reference stuff.

One of the things that needs to be crippled in SR is the monolithic 'surveillance' and the power of the corporate authorities. It's hard to rebel when everyone's got their eye on you.

Using the current state of the 6E metaplot, I'd start with nuking Zurich Orbital and crippling GOD. Oops. Sorry, too bad, so sad. No sky fortress for you.

Meanwhile, I'd flat out rewrite the UCAS repeal of the Business Recognition Accords so that they don't get boned by some diabolus ex machina bullshit that brings them to heel. That was a HUGE story blunder on Catalyst's part -- the corps (or whoever it was) have permanently locked in the status quo. If an entire Army group can be disappeared and multiple cities can have their electronics shut down for extended periods, how do you even fight that -- not just as a 'rebel' but as a country?

With GOD crippled, Z-O space debris, and the BRA 'under review' after 'corporate abuse', you have a nice bubbling pot of factions and impulses, just perfect for rebellious runners to try and bend the arc of history one way or another.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 18, 2021, 12:15:58 PM
One of the things that needs to be crippled in SR is the monolithic 'surveillance' and the power of the corporate authorities. It's hard to rebel when everyone's got their eye on you.

How would you change existing lore if say I wanted to have the plot take place in 2050-ish?

My idea would be to do your idea, just with the original bug plot. Corporations find out about the bugs at first and want to weaponize them and don't do anything about them until bug city. Suddenly BRA is up for review and tensions boil. Suddenly if enough dirty laundry is found the tides may actually turn to collapse the corps.

So i would throw the Lore of 4e and later out of the Window. Take the lore of Second Edition make the Big Corpos a bit less all mighty, rewrite what you dont like. As for the more Rebell part, that in my opinion is up to you, I have run different Storys in Shadowrun, from Corpo Security to Anarchists in East Berlin, you make the World.

Assuming Seattle.  You can't think beyond the local fringes.  Like at all.  It's the nature of the genre.

Usually the first change I make is that the NAN are not racial purists.  NAN is full of marginalized communities -- black, latino, poor, rural, and of course the Orcs and Trolls.  This makes them a much larger population base and more of a populist revolt against the Corporate Feudalism.  They're the ones who fought the law and won.

Play up Man versus Machine versus Magic A LOT more if you want to be able to have "wins".  Megacorporations, with exceptions like Wuxing, should NOT be strong in Magic.  Corporations NEED to be the MACHINE that is trying to grind down Man and Magic.  Play up stuff like Blood in the Boardroom and the collapse of Fuchi.  The corporations have to be shown as being torn internally and externally as the wheels grind and chew up everyone from the wageslaves to the C-suite.

If you want truly game changing things then it needs to be a technological change that characters get a hold of and distribute against the corporations' wishes.  Technology in this case can be anything on those 3 axis -- new ways of Organization/Thinking, new magic, or new machines.  Pick a point on the official timeline and be clear with your players that it ends there.  From then on everything is up to your table.

Take a look at Brainscan for another interesting case where the players are able to effect change in the setting.  It and the Bugs are the only ones I can think of that do that.  Or make your own craziness like the group manages to stop Dunklezahn's Assassination.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 12:43:07 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 18, 2021, 12:15:58 PM
One of the things that needs to be crippled in SR is the monolithic 'surveillance' and the power of the corporate authorities. It's hard to rebel when everyone's got their eye on you.

How would you change existing lore if say I wanted to have the plot take place in 2050-ish?

My idea would be to do your idea, just with the original bug plot. Corporations find out about the bugs at first and want to weaponize them and don't do anything about them until bug city. Suddenly BRA is up for review and tensions boil. Suddenly if enough dirty laundry is found the tides may actually turn to collapse the corps.

Or you could use the Renraku Arcology shutdown. That came damned close to a big ol' slapfight between Renraku and the UCAS when the Army took over containment of the Arcology while Deus was in control. It probably didn't turn into a fight because everyone else -- corps and contiguous nations alike -- were wondering what the hell else Renraku was doing.

EDIT: And KingCheops mentioned the arcology with Brainscan. Derp. Oh well, he's still right

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 18, 2021, 03:49:25 PM
EDIT: And KingCheops mentioned the arcology with Brainscan. Derp. Oh well, he's still right

Lol all good.  Hard not to include the Arcology considering it is everywhere in the books and novels early on.  It could be because I didn't start until university in 1998 so I started with 3rd but the Arcology is the defining story for me.

One more thing to add to the considerations and to specifically tie it into the AI/Deus storyline.  The Corporations may be monolithic security states that monitor everything -- but that much data is hard to store, sort, and analyze.  To be effective at all the corporations would NEED to use Thinking Machines if not AIs to get through it all.  If you take that away then it is hard for corporations to proactively monitor all this data.  They'd only be able to react to actions.

There's more room to maneuver especially in older editions.  From 4th onwards the rules make it too easy to proactively stop people at little cost.

Quote from: KingCheops on March 18, 2021, 04:01:08 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 18, 2021, 03:49:25 PM
EDIT: And KingCheops mentioned the arcology with Brainscan. Derp. Oh well, he's still right

Lol all good.  Hard not to include the Arcology considering it is everywhere in the books and novels early on.  It could be because I didn't start until university in 1998 so I started with 3rd but the Arcology is the defining story for me.

One more thing to add to the considerations and to specifically tie it into the AI/Deus storyline.  The Corporations may be monolithic security states that monitor everything -- but that much data is hard to store, sort, and analyze.  To be effective at all the corporations would NEED to use Thinking Machines if not AIs to get through it all.  If you take that away then it is hard for corporations to proactively monitor all this data.  They'd only be able to react to actions.

There's more room to maneuver especially in older editions.  From 4th onwards the rules make it too easy to proactively stop people at little cost.

Exactly. They tried to pare things back with the fears of AI from Crash 2.0 and Emergence, but as you noted, the rules are just too weighted. I actually instituted a house rule during an SR campaign I ran where if you had a fake ID and it passed enough checks regularly, it got 'hardened' against failures (because it now had corroborating links to prior checks). Effectively, your fake ID got more 'real' because there was more bits of data dangling off it (I hope that makes sense). It counterbalanced the 'surveillance state' effect because if you could fool it enough times it got easier and easier, because it saw what it expected to see.

I really do not like the current 6E metaplot, with the magically vanishing (and now reappearing) Army group, to say nothing of the 'turn off all the lights' trick used on the UCAS.

I think I have begun to circle in on what my issue is: It's not that the Megacorps are Monolithic (at least that's not the root cause). It's that the Status quo is monolithic, and Shadowrun is known for its metaplot more than any of its characters. As a result, it almost feels like the big megacorps (and rarely a godlike being) are the real 'protagonists' of the setting.
And they can't really kill off the 'protagonists' because that would mean the end of the setting. So all that's left is to top themselves in how evil and powerful the corporations are, or how unstoppable the godlike threats are.

There are now 65 flavors of mind-controlling boogyman, and corporations can cause magical EMPS that affect entire cities.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 04:14:45 PM
I think I have begun to circle in on what my issue is: It's not that the Megacorps are Monolithic (at least that's not the root cause). It's that the Status quo is monolithic, and Shadowrun is known for its metaplot more than any of its characters. As a result, it almost feels like the big megacorps (and rarely a godlike being) are the real 'protagonists' of the setting.
And they can't really kill off the 'protagonists' because that would mean the end of the setting. So all that's left is to top themselves in how evil and powerful the corporations are, or how unstoppable the godlike threats are.

There are now 65 flavors of mind-controlling boogyman, and corporations can cause magical EMPS that affect entire cities.

I've only played Shadowrun in a handful of one-shot games, but I believe there are still places in the world where the corporations aren't fully entrenched the way they are in Seattle.

So I would pick a city outside of their core control, where it still possible that local government could be turned to restrain how the megacorporations act.

So the PCs wouldn't be toppling the megacorps, but they might be able to make it unprofitable for them to operate in their local area.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 04:14:45 PM
I think I have begun to circle in on what my issue is: It's not that the Megacorps are Monolithic (at least that's not the root cause). It's that the Status quo is monolithic, and Shadowrun is known for its metaplot more than any of its characters. As a result, it almost feels like the big megacorps (and rarely a godlike being) are the real 'protagonists' of the setting.
And they can't really kill off the 'protagonists' because that would mean the end of the setting. So all that's left is to top themselves in how evil and powerful the corporations are, or how unstoppable the godlike threats are.

There are now 65 flavors of mind-controlling boogyman, and corporations can cause magical EMPS that affect entire cities.

Fuchi says hi!

They literally killed off THE megacorporation in the setting as part of the metaplot.  Why can't you kill off more?  Who steps in to fill the void?  More megacorporations?  Neo-anarchists?  Government?

Wuxing, Cross Applied Technologies, and Yamatetsu all rose up as a result of Fuchi falling down.  (been a while sorry if I pooched that list)

Quote from: KingCheops on March 18, 2021, 05:42:00 PMFuchi says hi!

As a great example of status qou.

Because their fall meant utterly buttfuck nothing and was caused by godlike beings and the internal politics of high up executives. As you pointed out - they were replaced by just more largely interchangeable megacorporations.

This has the Star Wars effect - by having one villain just be replaced by another villain it makes the changes that brought it up before futile, and thus makes even the idea of hope from before seem like a false one.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 04:14:45 PM
I think I have begun to circle in on what my issue is: It's not that the Megacorps are Monolithic (at least that's not the root cause). It's that the Status quo is monolithic, and Shadowrun is known for its metaplot more than any of its characters. As a result, it almost feels like the big megacorps (and rarely a godlike being) are the real 'protagonists' of the setting.
And they can't really kill off the 'protagonists' because that would mean the end of the setting. So all that's left is to top themselves in how evil and powerful the corporations are, or how unstoppable the godlike threats are.

There are now 65 flavors of mind-controlling boogyman, and corporations can cause magical EMPS that affect entire cities.

This is a VERY recurring theme WoD settings all the way to Aberrant.

The thing with SR's metaplot is that... dramatic revelation ahead... IT IS MEANINGLESS!
No. Really.
You can deviate from it as much as you like. The novels had little to no impact on the RPG and each edition was practically a new setting as they changed things, sometimes dramatically like in 3e and 4e. 1 and 2e presented a background and the future was literally whatever you wanted to make it into. The corps in 1 and 2 were also alot less powerful as were supernatural threats. Everything was more in line with a viable RPG setting where the odds are tough, but not insurmountable. The PCs could take down a megacorp if they set their minds and resources to it. This is why I like the older two editions and got less and less interested from 3e on. Though 3e had some interesting ideas here and there.

Later editions this gets harder and harder, the threats more and more insurmountable. Very losing sight of the originals set-up.

So roll back to 1 or 2es more relaxed position and then range out from there.

Quote from: KingCheops on March 18, 2021, 05:42:00 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 04:14:45 PM
I think I have begun to circle in on what my issue is: It's not that the Megacorps are Monolithic (at least that's not the root cause). It's that the Status quo is monolithic, and Shadowrun is known for its metaplot more than any of its characters. As a result, it almost feels like the big megacorps (and rarely a godlike being) are the real 'protagonists' of the setting.
And they can't really kill off the 'protagonists' because that would mean the end of the setting. So all that's left is to top themselves in how evil and powerful the corporations are, or how unstoppable the godlike threats are.

There are now 65 flavors of mind-controlling boogyman, and corporations can cause magical EMPS that affect entire cities.

Fuchi says hi!

They literally killed off THE megacorporation in the setting as part of the metaplot.  Why can't you kill off more?  Who steps in to fill the void?  More megacorporations?  Neo-anarchists?  Government?

Wuxing, Cross Applied Technologies, and Yamatetsu all rose up as a result of Fuchi falling down.  (been a while sorry if I pooched that list)

*laughs in Novatech*

Sorry, man, but Shrieking Banshee is right. Yeah, Fuchi died... and we promptly got Novatech and nothing changed except one of the names of the Big Ten.

Honestly, I wonder if the demise of Dunkelzahn made the later devs a little scared of a metaplot event that would shift things so much and have so much fallout.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on March 18, 2021, 12:06:32 PM
Now of course so much of the above is a rant, but I just wanted to get this feeling off my chest. I genuinely want help in running a punky, anarchic, gonzo, Shadowrun game but I can't really find any good material for reference stuff.

Okay fine.  Maybe Fuchi wasn't a good example.  Score yourselves some internet points.

To loop back to this which I guess is the main thrust.  There's honestly nothing in Shadowrun itself that'll do this for you.  There's the odd smattering of advice on playstyles but nothing much to actually help.

Honestly we just fell back to Snowcrash with Magic when we wanted gonzo.

For how to do it just lower response times for everything.  As I mentioned it takes a while for people to discover and analyze footage so be more reactionary than proactive.  Assume that everyone is stupid AF (which is more realistic) so you can't have crazy big security everywhere for someone to get accidentally shot/blown up.  Really reinforce that megacorporate power only extends to the edge of the property and bear in mind they if the employ terrorists (shadowrunners) then there could be PR blowback so it should only be in extreme circumstances.

You own and control the world.  Do what you and your players find fun.  The Halloweeners are a thing man.