Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Syndicates & Governments

[Almaz]

I strongly agree that the CSA should at least be publicly tolerant even if there is some occasional tension. There are some pretty firmly entrenched black communities in the South (for somewhat obvious reasons) that are now everyone's neighbors. While they don't always go to the same churches, it would be utterly bizarre for most people who grow up in the South to contemplate the kind of racism that was seen in the KKK's heyday. Keep in mind, a large number of white supporters of civil rights who marched in the South were... well, Southern, and they marched for exactly that reason.

The CSA would be kind of odd in places, and there would be the occasional "no blacks!" sign, but I could almost see as many "no whites!" signs as well.

Quebec should have a magic system related to French (political?) philosophy. I spoke with two Canadians, though, and they voted Quebec should become a floating continent: "I gotta be honest. With how much Quebec wants to leave Canada? It'd probably just disappear." "Or float away."

When I explained in more detail, they added: "The NDP take over Quebec. It becomes a communist state." "Wait, it isn't already?"

[name_here]

Caledonia
A vast region in Central Canada and parts of the fly over states lie Montana.

Alberta has significant oil sands deposits, and Wyoming has oil shale formations. The Dakotas have actual oil reserves as well as massive amounts of coal, and the Great Plains are a heck of a place to generate wind power. I'm thinking that the economic viability of exploiting some or all of these resources may well have jumped dramatically in a largely post-oil world. Caledonia as the energy capital of the world (or at least North America) might be a potentially interesting twist, and somewhat different from the usual "yeah, cows, grain, more cows, more grain" theme.

I can totally see that happening. IIRC, the Canadian oil sands and such total to about two trillion barrels of oil. They're currently a bit on the expensive side to extract and not the best quality, but even today the high price of oil is making them viable economically.

There's probably a powerful "Good Old Days" ideology that wants to restore things to the way they were immediately before everything went to hell, with some dispute about exactly when that was. Not necessarily politically, just back when you could forget to turn off the lights when you left for a week and still have money when you came back, and traveling from New York to Washington for said vacation was something you just did without having to assemble a giant convoy of amphibious tanks.

They'll alternately support or attempt to topple regional governments depending on how they seem to be doing on energy policy, finance efforts to locate or de-monster major oil reserves, go out and shoot giant monsters living on old highways, and generally attempt to make trans-continental journeys routine again. They're probably good for 2-3 groups with differing opinions on magic and what exactly constituted the good parts of the Good Old Days.

[fectin]

Quebec should have a magic system related to French (political?) philosophy.

Magie française de l'Ancien Régime?
They didn't call him the Sun King because he liked yellow...

[sabs]

They called him the Sun King because that was the size of his Ego.

[TheNotSoEvilNecromancer]

From the layout of North America it looks like there is going to be a lot of traditional geographically oriented governments. Does that rule out globally distributed nations like those seen in Diamond Age and Snowcrash (The First Distributed Republic, Atlantis, Ashanti, Sandero, etc.)?

[fectin]

From the layout of North America it looks like there is going to be a lot of traditional geographically oriented governments. Does that rule out globally distributed nations like those seen in Diamond Age and Snowcrash (The First Distributed Republic, Atlantis, Ashanti, Sandero, etc.)?

Heinlein's Double Star lays out a surprisingly decent model for something similar. You could easily appropriate that into the citizenship model for one of the hidden kingdoms.

On the other hand, that sort of nation is also much easier to splat in later.

[Lokathor]

It doesn't rule out distributed nations because each area is being tied together primarily by currency, and currency can be weird digital stuff too.

[Almaz]

I would expect to see something like distributed nations along certain ideological bases that have far-flung seeds from ages ago, like Islam, with economic power meaning certain areas become effective capitals of those distributed nations. Some bases of power are going to remain fairly static even in a fluid nation.

I mean, all of Scientology can go off and declare sovereignty too for similar effects.

[zeruslord]

I could see distributed nations, but really only for ideologies that are reasonably unified. Also, the more temporal power an ideology has as a political party, and the more frequently there are nationalist variants of it, the less likely it is to hold together as a distributed thing. While Scientology would well do that, Islam is too deeply fractured, too frequently nationalistic, and too politically powerful for it becoming a distributed nation to make any sense. I'd expect distributed nations to come from groups that are smaller, more politically on the fringe, and more wired overall than Islam.

[fectin]

4-Chan does a reasonable impression of nationalism. Not that I want to see them as a nation (I don't; proof of concept only), but distributed nationalism seems to work fine there, and it's less than a decade old.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Does that rule out globally distributed nations like those seen in Diamond Age and Snowcrash (The First Distributed Republic, Atlantis, Ashanti, Sandero, etc.)?

Global citizenship is corporate citizenship.

[Username17]

I could see distributed nations, but really only for ideologies that are reasonably unified. Also, the more temporal power an ideology has as a political party, and the more frequently there are nationalist variants of it, the less likely it is to hold together as a distributed thing. While Scientology would well do that, Islam is too deeply fractured, too frequently nationalistic, and too politically powerful for it becoming a distributed nation to make any sense. I'd expect distributed nations to come from groups that are smaller, more politically on the fringe, and more wired overall than Islam.

In general I agree with you. However, different groups of Islamic fundamentalists are very nearly a single nation already for the purposes that actually matter. They have a single set of laws that they work with, and while those are woefully inadequate for the needs of the modern age, their system of local Mullah-adhoccing to fill in the rest on an as-needed basis is about the same in Somalia and Chechnya. Their armies are not particularly effective, but they do support each other fairly well. Islamic fundamentalists from Yemen show up to fight for secession in Chad and vice versa.

The things they are currently missing are a coherent foreign policy (which may not be necessary in the cyberpunk future) and a common currency. Really, all that is required for Islam to sustain a distributed "country" composed of Wahabist wack jobs from Kabul to Tripoli is for someone somewhere to start issuing currency backed in martyrdom somehow that is accepted anywhere that representational art is not.

But the thing to remember is that even such an ideological country would not be "Islam" or even "Radical Islam", it would be the equivalent of Sister Miriam from Alpha Centauri. Some lunatic who happened to be a Muslim would put together a school of Islamic Internationalist Separatism thought, and start issuing Caliphate Dinars on a global scale and getting some of the radical Muslims to start following him and taking those Dinars as currency. It would be like how Wahhabism is named after Abd al-Wahhab, the setup would have some special name.

I would actually be super surprised if none of the Ideology Syndicates were explicitly religious. Just as I would be super surprised if none of them were based on one of the local magical traditions being the one true path. You're also going to have racial separatism movements for the different demihuman groups.

So there are straight up going to be people who support R'lyeh in its holy war to cleanse the surface of corruption. Yes, outright "Who Will Be Eaten First?" style Cthulhu-cultists. There are also human purity advocates who freak out on anyone who has accumulated any Stress.

But in general the groups should be more out-there than that. Groups that "hate people who are different" are mostly just there to be villains you don't feel bad about shooting in the face. The ones that players might actually join should have complex social policies and a wide range of issues that you probably don't agree or disagree with them on all of.

-Username17

[zeruslord]

Yeah, that model totally works. I read Almaz as proposing a real Caliphate as a distributed nation, which is dumb for the reasons I pointed out.

There are some cults from After Sundown that translate really well to megacorps, distributed organizations, and ideologies in a $PUNK future, and a couple that might be interesting ideas but are probably too deconstructionist to include.

• The Laughter Factory
  The first paragraph of the writeup should probably go on a couple of different syndicates. I'd say a terrorist/anarchist group along the lines of the Panther Moderns from Neuromancer, a hippy anarchist group that probably keeps the name Laughter Factory, and a technocratic group, possibly with some aspects of the Drummers from Diamond Age.
• The False Face
  "Why do the megacorps bother with deniable assets, extraterritoriality and the Corporate Court when Megatek makes half the tanks in the world and Paladin makes the rest? Well, you know that little convenience store at 4th and main? big smiley face? Waltmart or something? Well, they say that back in the twenties, it was the biggest corp in the world. As much gross as the fourth biggest country, back when they had those. Then they tried to muscle into Megatek's space, pushing their guns department into rocket launchers and tanks. Megatek was none too pleased, and they rolled out their own tanks. Totally crushed 'em. Now it's just a tiny distributed nation, got a few dozen of those little stores selling peanuts and pop. Half the corps don't even know it still exists."
• The Order Daziban
  Obsessive archivists and knowledge seekers? sound like any big tech companies you've heard of?
• The Stellar Oracles
  I'd support yanking these guys over pretty much intact. The relationship with the supernatural may need to change, but having humanity's best interests at heart and having a bunch of prophecies are both pretty rocking. They're inspired by prophecies both ancient and modern and are the reincarnations of a previous such group, but have also moved into tech and cyber in a fairly big way. One of their main efforts in the modern age is data-mining the news for anything that might match their prophecies. The only reason anyone else takes them seriously is that they shorted the False Face and won huge.
  As antagonists, they probably show up as other teams of runners trying to achieve a different, possibly orthogonal goal from you. This is mostly an excuse for introducing complications at runtime.
• The Hollow Ones
  A megacorp that is just a front for a totally unrelated conspiracy that got out of hand could be really interesting. However, having it as a canonical part of the setting is probably a bad idea, because if it doesn't get pretty thoroughly addressed in a particular campaign, it'll be an element of silliness lurking around the corner all the time.

[Almaz]

Yeah, that model totally works. I read Almaz as proposing a real Caliphate as a distributed nation, which is dumb for the reasons I pointed out.

Oh, no. The days of a true caliphate are over. The divide between Sunni and Shia has widened over the ages, and within each many factions of various sizes have grown. Countries that are not already controlled by a bunch of crazy clerics will likely not be controlled by a bunch of crazy clerics in the future for the vast majority of their territory. But at the same time that it is ridiculous to suggest a single leader to step forward and claim legitimate power over Muslim nations, it would be almost bizarre if a leader did not step forward and rally the people worldwide to a banner that features the crescent and star. Because even if not a single state will follow such a rule, many people will.

[TheFlatline]

Side note: Deseret originally was supposed to occupy most of the southwest, including what is now San Diego and I believe up north through Los Angeles. The US Congress shaved Deseret down repeatedly from it's massive proposed territory into what is Utah as precious resources were discovered, to prevent the mormons from getting monopolies on them (true story).

Deseret may nominally claim those areas to be part of it's jurisdiction, and it may create inter-government tensions.

[TheFlatline]

The Hollow Ones
A megacorp that is just a front for a totally unrelated conspiracy that got out of hand could be really interesting. However, having it as a canonical part of the setting is probably a bad idea, because if it doesn't get pretty thoroughly addressed in a particular campaign, it'll be an element of silliness lurking around the corner all the time.

Oh you mean like Dr Evil's cover corporation that turned into a multi-billion dollar corporation that is vastly more profitable than Dr Evil's schemes could ever be?

[sabs]

Quebec, deciding that they are the True Inheritors of the French Legacy in Canada, decide to reconquer the whole of the Louisiana Purchase?

[fectin]

It would be a bit of a waste if Louisiana didn't become it's own nation. They already have a stovepipe legal system with some real differences from the rest of the US, and New Orleans is exactly the sort of hotbed of corruption and cronyism that makes a great Capitol.

[sabs]

Thats' because Louisiana is using a legal system based on the Napoleonic Code in it's origin. Not English Common law.

[Ganbare Gincun]

It would be a bit of a waste if Louisiana didn't become it's own nation. They already have a stovepipe legal system with some real differences from the rest of the US, and New Orleans is exactly the sort of hotbed of corruption and cronyism that makes a great Capitol.

How high are the seas supposed to be in this Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker? Most of Louisiana may not even be around if the sea level rises.

[name_here]

Like, a foot higher. Considering that the beachhouse I go to every summer is, at high tide, like 8 feet above sea level at the bottom of the stilts, that's not a big deal.

[Username17]

Megacorporations of the World
“If a person is wealthy enough, they are afforded the rights of a corporation.”

A megacorp is a corporation with the power to issue money that is recognized by the IMF. Even in 2075, corporations are not allowed to produce fiat currency and corporate money is technically a bond that becomes backed in other currency after a certain amount of time has past (usually 5 years). These are called “currency-backed-currencies” or “CBCs”. Megacorps achieve their status by being very large and powerful, but also by having control over a large portion of a key industry: Biotech, Commodities, Energy, Finance, and Telecom. Megacorps are all diversified to one degree or another, they really are tremendously titanic syndicates. Each Megacorp is diversified into being both a horizontal and vertical monopoly in its field, and also have numerous holdings in other industries and around the world.

From the standpoint of the megacorp, issuing a CBC is like getting an interest-free loan that might not ever be asked to be paid back. So it's certainly a win-win as far as they are concerned. However, economic realities still exist, and if they issued too much of such currency, it would undergo hyper-inflation and lose purchasing power (but still have to be paid back in five years with money that was still worth something). So you'd think that maybe simple self interest would keep the currency printings modest and within predicted currency demand to keep inflation levels low. And you'd be wrong. Several megacorps went down in the fifties because the lure of the printing press for short-term profit was simply too great. In 2075, the IMF operates rather strict oversight on how much CBC each corporation is allowed to print. It's a complex formula based on total holdings, term profits, and expected regional demand in the projected currency deployment zones. Violating the CBC limits imposed by the IMF would be a very big deal, and no megacorporation does it (at least, that anyone can tell).

Biotech
“If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.”

Mankind's first wish, above all others, is to not die. And so it is relatively unsurprising that over the 21st century the industry that has grown the fastest is healthcare and biotechnology. In honor of this fact, the IMF started assigning megacorporate status to biotech firms when they were still substantially smaller than other corporations afforded the honor. This caused a lot of resentment in the forties and fifties, but consistently massive growth of the industry has closed whatever gap might have existed. Not that this keeps the other megacorporations from referring to the Biotech firms as “upstarts”.

Blue Hand

• World Headquarters: Chicago, New Egypt

Blue Hand provides healthcare to more people than any three other healthcare providers on Earth. They provide insurance, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and cybernetics. They also provide emergency services such as ambulances, fire protection, and police contractors for areas that have them. The pharmaceuticals provided by Blue Hand are not legal in all jurisdictions, and in many regions they operate essentially as drug dealers.

Immortelle

• World Headquarters: Marseilles, Occitania

Healthcare from Immortelle is incredibly expensive. They have positioned themselves as the provider of luxury healthcare needs. They have the finest spas, the finest ritual thaumaturgists, and the highest grades of body modification. And it comes with the highest price tag you can imagine. Actually, you can only imagine it, because they provide services that are so expensive that there are no listed price tags. They have heavy penetration into Helheim and Atlantis, and claim to have magitech procedures unmatched by Earthly science.

Splicex

• World Headquarters: Madras, Vijayanagar

Splicex is the world's leader in genetics, and they are responsible for most of the food that you eat. Not the actual growing of it, but the design. Eating food that hasn't been genetically modified is downright dangerous, since it sometimes develops magenetic qualities, so people just don't do it. Splicex are the reason that when you order a corndog it is blue, but it doesn't ever start flying around and breathing fire and stuff.

Commodities
“Wealth that cannot be touched is just the idea of wealth.”

The world economy of 2075 exists in a state of consistently low industrial utilization. Simply put: there is a lot more productive potential than there is actual production. And one of the main limiting factors is raw materials. Where the raw materials go, industry, employment, and economic prosperity follow. Corporations that control enough of the world's commodities trade that they can dictate where economic booms and busts will happen are granted megacorporate status to save time.

A/V

• World Headquarters: Rio de Janeiro, Amazonia

A/V stands for Amazonian Vale, which was created by a merger of several South American mineral and agricultural producers and traders. They control a plurality of tropical goods, which considering the importance of rubber and sugar to the modern economy, is a really big deal.

The Folis Group

• World Headquarters: Cape Town, South Africa

The Folis Group is essentially a collective of criminal syndicates that operate as cartels for various goods such as gems, metals, and hardwoods. A relatively recent entry into the megacorporate roster, the Folis Group still issues its commodity-backed currency, which is redeemable for diamonds. This exists in parallel with their standard megacorporate currency-backed-currency, which they now also issue.

Agrencore

• World Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland

The world's largest trading house for raw materials of all kinds is the Agrencore Core, an arcology in Geneva dedicated to determining who should get the copper, and who should get the gold. Agrencore does not strictly speaking produce anything, but they virtually own or partially own almost all real world goods at some stage of production.

Energy
“Power is Strength.”

The power demands of 2070s society are incredible. Despite the advances in power efficiency, there are simply a lot more electronic devices in 2075 than there were at the beginning of the century. Peak oil has happened, and there is not enough energy to go around. Those companies that provide the world's go juice are afforded megacorporate status.

Standard Oil

• World Headquarters: Dallas, Lonestar Republic

Before the collapse of antitrust legislation in the thirties, Standard Oil was two companies in the top ten. Now it is only one. Standard Oil reformed and merged with companies through the Americas like Pemex and Petróleos. They are also big into mining, and are the world's source for literally half of global demand for rare earths.

Gazprom

• World Headquarters: Moscow, Russia

Originally the state-owned oil company o the Soviet Union, Gazprom is now a megacorp that does mining and drilling all over the world. They also run the Red Army, using it as their own private army to protect corporate interests, and to rent out to countries and syndicates that need extraordinary firepower.

State Grid

• World Headquarters: Beijing, Wei

The largest provider of power in East Asia. They have several of the world's largest hydroelectric dams as well as maintaining 4 out of 5 of the largest nuclear reactors. State Grid is also a major space player, operating the Tiangong-2 space station and having several power satellites.

The Green

• World Headquarters: Lagos, Benin

The Green controls remaining oil fields from West Africa to the Middle East. But their biggest claim to fame is their massive set of solar collectors in the Sahara Desert.

Finance
“Banks are where the money is.”

Providers of financial services are afforded megacorporate status by the IMF if it finds that they already control sufficient amounts of capital that they could crash the world economy without destroying themselves by going on strike. An important thing to remember is that while banks control a lot of money, they aren't really very interested in giving loans to individuals. They give loans to corporations and governments. And to a lesser extent to the salaried employees of those permanent institutions. In 2075, pretty much anyone could simply get a new Anchor and move to the Caledonian Wildlands, so no one without a garnishable salary is considered safe enough to lend to at any interest rate – no matter how much they normally earn or what they own as potential collateral. The only people who do small business loans these days are the Triads and the Mafia.

BHB

• World Headquarters: Hong Kong, Hong Kong

BHB is the largest banking institution in Asia.

Monolith Corporation

• World Headquarters: Calcutta, United Bengal

Monolith owns human capital. People who have valuable skills sell the rights to those skills to Monolith and then Monolith resells those skills to corporations that have use of them. Then, if necessary, they ship the people with those skills across the planet to go provide them. It's like a global staffing firm, or possibly like human slavery, depending on how you look at it. Monolith has even taken contracts with entire countries in order to maximize employment by assigning people who have needed skills to do needed work.

FED

• World Headquarters: Boston, Union Territories

FED is what was made out of the United States Federal Reserve after it completely lost governmental oversight in the thirties. Until the various regional governments stood up to start printing their own money, FED had essentially “all the money”, and when they went private they went on an unprecedented shopping spree. To this day it is actually unclear how much they own, since they keep records of that sort of thing pretty secret. But they own land, they own brands, they own subsidiary corporations, and they even have controlling interests in some of the privatized governments like the Singapore Corporation.

Telecom
“Who will obey an unheard command?”

Running the world requires information infrastructure, a fact formally acknowledged by the IMF by recognizing any corporation that controls enough communication and data management that the economy can't really limp along without them by affording them the rights of megacorporation. These corporations produce enormous amounts of research and are constantly spying on each other and arguing over data management standards. Every one of them produces real world devices of many different types, and all of them have quite impressive space programs. But the reason that they have megacorporate status is that they basically have veto power over The Network mirroring itself in their controlled regions.

MaBell

• World Headquarters: Kansas City, Colorado

MaBell is the reformed remnants of the American Bell Telephone Company, now reunited after anti-trust legislation stopped existing in the thirties. In the meantime, the different Bell successor companies had merged with numerous electronics, research, and industrial firms – each attempting to out compete their rival successors through vertical integration. After reintegration, many of those partnerships remain, and several MaBell subsidiaries continue to be in competition with each other to this day.

SKYNet

• World Headquarters: London, Albion

With the privatization of the old BBC and Britain's military communications network, the SKY Network became one of the biggest players in news and space exploration. In 2075, SKYNet provides reasonable rates on military intelligence to governments and non-governmental syndicates around the world.

Ichi

• World Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan

Ichi is the largest Zaibatsu in Japan, and has holdings from automobiles to personal electronics to food to shipping. But what they are really known for is their IchiSystem that integrates Ichi Anchors to Ichi data transmission pathways and guides people through Ichi shopping channels. Almost everyone in the world knows their slogan “Ichi is number one”.

ShinCo

• World Headquarters: Bangkok, Siam

ShinCo has had a pretty rocky relationship with many of the military governments that Siam has had over the years, but it has used these times of forced exile to expand into markets throughout South Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East. Today, ShinCo is the largest media provider in the Southern Hemisphere, and they have used this power to force the Siamese King to return their property in the country of origin. Their arcology in Bangkok is as much to put pressure on the Siamese government as it is to conduct business.

[Grek]

Please explain Chicago, New Egypt.

[Username17]

Please explain Chicago, New Egypt.

"Egypt" is the name for the area Southern Illinois and Tennessee. That is why there is a city there called "Memphis", and why you have bands called Egypt Central. It's ultimately a reference to how the Mississippi river is as important as the Nile.

So the country that forms from that section of the Mississippi and parts of the Ohio is called "Egypt", except that there is already a country called that, so it is called "New Egypt".

-Username17

[Vebyast]

The Folis Group

• World Headquarters: Cape Town, South Africa

The Folis Group is essentially a collective of criminal syndicates that operate as cartels for various goods such as gems, metals, and hardwoods. A relatively recent entry into the megacorporate roster, the Folis Group still issues its commodity-backed currency, which is redeemable for diamonds. This exists in parallel with their standard megacorporate currency-backed-currency, which they now also issue.

Why are diamonds still valuable in 2070? Industrial diamonds are pretty cheap even today, and their only other value is as a luxury item. It seems like a weird thing to back a currency in.

Other than that, cool stuff.