Stacked Oppression in Shadowrun

Shadowrun is a game that has persisted, in my opinion, largely because of its setting. The combination of fantasy elements with cyberpunk level technology and aesthetics, mixed liberally with a dynamic timeline, has kept the game alive since its 1989 launch. But there’s some hard issues that the setting continues to face that haven’t been addressed well or at all by the various publishers of the setting. Let’s dive into it!

Background

Shadowrun is functionally the “D&D” of its genre in a lot of ways.

It enjoys genre dominance. While it’s very much science-fantasy, Shadowrun is also what most people in the hobby think about when the cyberpunk genre comes up. It’s the big name with the big history and the long tradition of dodgy at best mechanics. Shadowrun also relies heavily on a setting developed in the 1980s that has a metric tonne of lore and not a lot of centralized planning, just like D&D.

And like D&D, it has challengers. Savage Worlds has the Sprawlrunners supplement by Veiled Fury Entertainment, which offers a solid take on SWADE’s systems to make a more playable game in the same genres. Arden Ludere makes The Sprawl, a pure cyberpunk game using the Powered by the Apocalypse engine, and its science fantasy supplement, Touched Prime, which introduces magic to the operation. And then there’s the pure sci-fi cyberpunk games, like Cyberpunk RED or Genesys’ Shadow of the Beanstalk setting.

However, for the purposes of my work, it’s the setting that we need to look at.

Setting

Moreso than R. Talsorian Games’ Cyberpunk setting, the FASA (and later WizKids, FanPro, and finally Catalyst Game Labs) made the Shadowrun setting considerably darker and more oppressive. Where the governments of Cyberpunk’s earth are ineffective or disinterested bodies, the ones in the Sixth World participate in the active oppression of their peoples. The challenge is that there’s so many layers of oppression that it can actually affect the game at the table. There’s also a persistent issue with far-right elements in the fandom.

When Shadowrun was released in 1989, it was seen as a fairly if not aggressively progressive game. In particular, for its treatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (at least west of the Mississippi) and its reduced reliance on anti-Asian themes as a cyberpunk genre game. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of issues happening.

Ethnostates

To describe the politics of Shadowrun as a “hot mess” or “dumpster fire” would be insulting to both hot messes and dumpster fires. The bones of the setting’s politics are built on the idea that ethnostates are both desirable and the only logical outcome of… anything happening. It literally reads like a right-wing fantasy at points (more on that later). Whomever the key planners were back in the day, they loved the idea of ethnostates, systemic ethnic oppression, and open prejudice/bigotry, and ran with it.

The problem, aside from you know, “ethnostates are good actually”, is that the setting has never evolved past them. In game, it’s 2086. 75 years after the UGE event that resulted in Elves and Dwarves. 65 years after “Goblinization”. Magic is a known, identified thing. Mythic history has been revealed. But the world is still trapped in an 80s apartheid wetdream where systemic normalized discrimination is fine.

Government Complicity

Remember how I mentioned that governments were complicit? That’s the SIN, System Identification Number. This universal standard form of ID is the only way to legally do pretty much anything in the Sixth World. Travel? Rent a car? Vote? Want to enjoy your full rights as a citizen? You need a SIN. Don’t have one? Good luck getting one. Governments, hand in hand with corporate interests, maintain a careful division of haves and have-nots in a brutal form of population control. On top of this, there’s a well established policy of corporate appeasement, where large tracts of land and infrastructure are handed over to corporate interests to keep them happy, examples being Manhattan in New York City, and Lille in France.

Another aspect of government complicity is open fascism. The governments are blatantly authoritarian, use violence to crack down on pretty much anything. There’s no social contract between government and the populace unless you have a SIN, in which case you get to enjoy some privileges that are phrased as rights… that can be revoked at a moment’s notice unless you have the right connections.

Corporate Domination

This is where Shadowrun truly differs from Cyberpunk. In Cyberpunk, the Megacorps are powerful entities, and enjoy disproportionate temporal power, but they’re not the apex predators of the world. Governments are still the final say, and the history of the setting is packed with government forces destroying Megacorps that step out of line, or nationalizing them or their assets to reduce their power. Militech and Arasaka learned this the hard way at the end of the 4th Corporate War.

Shadowrun is different though. Owing to the Shiawase Decision, extraterritoriality was granted to corporate powers, making them de facto nation states that are exempt from local and often national laws. In many cases, civilian government is an appendage of corporate power, as seen in Aztlan with Aztechnology. So the level of reach, influence, and real power is off the scale compared to the norm many assume with a cyberpunk future.

Right Wing Fantasy

Shadowrun, as a general setting, is a right wing fantasy. Specifically an authoritarian, corporate and finance capitalist one; with a dusting of libertarianism to keep the plebs thinking they have agency and to keep people from organizing. But, more deeply, it reflects a combination of unfettered Reagan era capitalism combined with Thatcherite crackdowns (best case scenario) and a strong dose of apartheid era South Africa practices. Racism and speciesism are socially okay, and a solid political platform even in 2080. What I’m saying is that the game’s setting, owing its structures and limitations, supports a brutal, right wing flavoured game just as well if not better than it does a punk based one fighting the status quo. Which is likely why there’s a right wing underbelly to the fandom.

The main thing that perpetuates this is the simple fact that the setting is not developing with any significance on the social and cultural evolution side of world building. The situation described in the first edition book is practically unchanged by the time you get to the sixth edition. There’s endless data on megacorp moves and deals, the development of new tech, and near apocalyptic events, but social change? Not so much. So while this remains the norm, and given that Shadowrun’s base fandom is the increasingly conservative or at least apathetic Gen X (as a Gen X, this is disappointing to me on so many levels) I unfortunately don’t see this changing any time soon.

Player Reality

What all of this adds up to is a soup of oppression that can make the game unenjoyable for players in it and turn off new players when fully applied.

Oppression Picks You

The bulk of player characters are already starting out at the ass end of life, being SINless. So they’re living, at best, in the grey area between “real people” with SINs and their legitimate world, and the world’s vast criminal underground. Then there’s good old fashioned racism, just because that’s still a feature of life. And to top it off, there’s the new speciesism to add to that. The reality of Shadowrun is that being a Black Elf means you’re still Black, you just have a longer lifespan to watch things suck.

In essence, there’s too many levels of active oppression in the game. Racism, speciesism, socioeconomic on two fronts (SINners vs the SINless and the normal kinds), social, political, and environmental are all there and all actively in play setting as read. Does it make for a good read? Yes. Does it make for a great game environment? Not so much. It opens the door to bad experiences for the players and GMs alike, especially if you have players or a GM who are part of real world marginalized groups.

World Restrictions

The world of Shadowrun is vast, but accessing it is remarkably hard within the game’s own structures. I’m not even talking about the GM making things hard, run-as-read, Shadowrun is an intensely anti-travel game. All borders are effectively hard borders. Security systems are state of the art. Guards are well trained and packing more heat than most Runners are comfortable with. This adds up to a situation that’s all but custom tailored to keep players in one area and unable to fully access or engage with the setting.

Now, as was pointed out to me, this is a good reality check for players about just how “powerful” their characters are. Sure, you’re top dog in Seattle, but without corporate assistance or a powerful patron, you’re not travelling anywhere. However, given the scope and detail of the world, I think it’s overkill. It ends up generating the Night City Effect (a game seemingly focused on one small part of its setting) in multiples. There’s Seattle, Chicago, Berlin, Hong Kong and a handful of other cities that become the focus to the exclusion of the rest of the planet. Not because players don’t want to travel and do more, but because the in game setting infrastructure and security practices prevents it from being done with reasonable effort.

Why so much?

Honestly, I don’t think that the creators anticipated this development arc. Mostly, in my estimation, because there’s been no real central planning for Shadowrun in decades.

A little ways back, I posted an official Shadowrun promo video from 1991. And looking at it now, I realize that there seems to have been multiple disconnects between how the world has developed and what the intent was. Watching the video, it’s a very in-and-out mission, with cinematic level security and hazards. The key phrase there being “cinematic”. I think that the creators working with the world of Shadowrun have taken its baseline and tried to make it progressively more “realistic” through new editions. This practice brought the usual detrimental effects that has on a game, and this was done while at the same time trying to maintain its cinematic vibe and appearance because that’s what sells. The result is a lot of mixed messages for how the game runs.

Additionally, as a “gritty” setting, it attracts the “this needs to be realistic” crowd. And so here we are. A game where the setting piles on levels and types of systemic and in-game “okay” levels of oppression and challenge that can take a great setting concept and make it rough as hell to run at the table.

Can it be Mitigated?

At the table level, yes. To me, the primary level of oppression in Shadowrun that actually works in terms of driving story, challenging the player characters, and circumstance without turning into an awkward examination of racism by proxy is the SIN system. Having or not having a SIN, and choosing when and where to use it or the fake one you shelled out for is sufficient and falls well within the thematic aspects of the setting as a capitalist dystopia.

Another way to mitigate things is for both the GM and players to consciously keep things at the cinematic level of things. Think Mission Impossible, Fast and Furious, and similar franchises like John Wick or the Bourne movies. You could even dip back to the 1990s and the material being made then, like Hackers(1995), Nemesis (1992), Virtuosity (1995), and Johnny Mnemonic (1995) to get a lock on the vibe that was being worked with in terms of how hard things actually are/should be in game. A conscious shift here will still provide players with challenges, and you can use the suite of tools, just not all at once and in the face.

Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, shelve the racism and speciesism. Most people aren’t equipped with the knowledge or vocabulary to actively address it in a meaningful way, and a significant number of people have to deal with discrimination in real life and don’t need it intruding on their fictional lives as well. Does that mean take it all out? No. Human Supremacists and their supporters are great antagonists. Having a racist/speciesist encounter or undertone can be both a good encounter or them to a region. Just don’t make it a constant aspect of the game. There’s been four generations (15 year cohorts) since the first big wave of UGE, 19 years in game since the last one (technically, SURGE was more a diversification event), and roughly 1/3 of the population is some type of metahuman. So yeah… it’s past time for the shift to be happening.

The Ethnostate and political issues are harder to deal with though. Part of it has been canonically mitigated with a few sentences like how the indigenous peoples of North America absorbed and assimilated some non-native populations because they needed the skills and expertise those groups and individuals had to develop into functional states. But the reality is that the concepts are deeply rooted and problematic. There’s no real fixes here except world building and a simple step would be having social and political pressure mount against supremacist movements and governments. Which, as an aside, would also increase the punk levels of the game.

Final Thoughts

Shadowrun, as one of the longest (more or less) continuously published tabletop RPGs, enjoys a level of protection and support that is usually reserved for heavier hitters like D&D or Pathfinder. In fact, it reliably shows up on ICv2 reports. But I also can’t help but feel that these are bumps made by the existing fanbase though, as opposed to a growing one. This is supported by ICv2 numbers. There’s the usual new edition bumps, but the game hasn’t been a high performance seller since its 5th edition, where it was present on the best seller list at least once a year between 2014 and 2017. To me, this communicates that the game isn’t growing its fanbase well. And I think a component of this is that the setting is starting to get stale, the same way that D&D’s older settings are.

Shadowrun is an incredibly detail oriented setting, in ways that haven’t been normal practice for decades now. And honestly, it isn’t a bad thing in of itself, the granularity is handy tool to increase immersion and make the world feel like it exists. However, I think that like so many other settings from Shadowrun’s formative area, there’s been too much push to try to maintain the status quo of 1989’s setting without much in the way of evolution. Shadowrun has a dynamic timeline, but where the creatives working on it have been fast to work out corporate and geopolitical content, the social and cultural aspects of the game’s design remain firmly rooted in the problematic build from the 1980s. Until that starts to develop, I think the game will continue to underperform.