Howdies.
I'm looking to start a Shadowrun game with a small group. We'll be using 4th edition. The setting is 2070 South Florida.
Sunshine and Shadows: Broad Strokes.South Florida has been part of the Caribbean League for decades. The gateway to Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, it remains an important shipping hub, tourist destination, and ecological treasure. It has become three distinct cities.
Miami Beach This city has grown exponentially, literally. With the sweat and blood, the islands of Miami Beach have been extended over and over until the city has its own highways over the sea, two airports, and is home to five million permanent residents. The city welcome new developments, including residences, offices, and corporate enclaves – with the exception of Aztechnology who are not welcome anywhere in the Caribbean League.
Daily life in Miami Beach is expensive, but enviable. Even the lowliest residents live a middle class lifestyle and eat food on a regular basis. They rub shoulders now and then with celebrities and stars. Here is where many people come to play, and many corporations come do business away from what little scrutiny there is elsewhere. Life is frenetic and those who can't keep up will be evicted, and may have nowhere to go but into the sprawl.
The population is mainly human, though elves and humans are abundant, too. Orks and Trolls are regarded suspiciously, and seldom fit into the image Miami Beach itself tries to maintain.
The Miami SprawlExtending from the coast to as many as thirty kilometers inland, The Miami Sprawl is almost entirely lawless. When magic returned to the world, an awakened hurricane roared into the city and sat with its eye over the Miami Circle – a archaeological relic of circular stones discovered by construction workers before the turn of the century and ignored. The hurricane persisted for three weeks until the Seminoles and Mikosukee who took credit for it were appeased by being “given” the Everglades. The damage, however, was done. Most of the city was now in ruins and the sea has yet to retreat from some of the former downtown districts. The wealthy and powerful left for Miami Beach.
Over time, the Sprawl's diverse community has adapted. Communities tend to be tightly knit and well defined. Race, skin color, nationality, ethnicity, and language all serve to identify to others what community you belong in. The sprawl is essentially a dizzying array of tiny neighborhoods that have divided themselves, interspersed here and there with Florida Utility buildings, or corporate properties.
Of course, all this makes it a smuggler and runner's haven. Proximity to the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf, two nations, and the Awakened Everglades make it ideal for moving things unnoticed. Generally much poorer, some areas are like relics of life as it was fifty years ago, with hardly an intrusion from modern technology except the most basic.
The Awakened EvergladesThe Everglades is not a swamp, it's a wide and shallow river of grass extending from the water basin in central Florida to Florida bay. Magic's return has made the Everglades intractable. Satellites observing it from orbit find it literally shifts daily. Filled with awakened critters of all types, it can seem deceptively tranquil, like the slow flowing water.
Arguably more dangerous to visitors than the monsters inhabiting it are the two communities of Native Americans living there, the Seminole and Mikosukee. Too far from other NAN tribes to form a powerful coalition, they were left stranded and refused to abandon their homes. Though their populations are small, they are the de feacto rulers of the sawgrass since no one else can manage to keep structures there for long. Either the swamp or the Indians conspire to destroy outsiders.
The Everglades' inhospitable and impossible to map aura of course makes it an ideal place for poachers and smugglers to ply their trade. Be warned, the water drowns all fools.
Important GroupsThe Miami Circle. This lodge of mainly shamanic practitioners lives in the half-flooded ruins of what was once downtown Miami, and has build a lodge over a circle of stones discovered in the previous century. They take credit from all the weather in the region, and it may true as far as anyone knows. They are the most influential group in the tumble down ruins soaked by the sea, usually infested with smugglers and function as neutral mediators when groups wish to settle disputes.
The Florida Sheriff's Office. Half police force, half military, this organization treats the three regions of South Florida differently. In Miami Beach, they are solicitous, helpful, and always aware of what you're doing. With dirigible drones in the sky, strike teams always ready in VTOL aircraft, cameras on every street, and patrols threading through the city, they suppress crime through extreme means. Registered tourists and citizens have little to fear aside from the loss of privacy. Unregistered vehicles and persons will be searched and seized. They rarely get involved in the Sprawl except in force, and seldom venture to the 'Glades. However, the routinely tangle with dangerous criminals and have a variety of air, sea, and ground resources you'd more typically except of the military. They rarely attack unless they think they have the raw firepower to win.
Los Reyes The Kings A huge, but loose organization of Latin gangs spanning two continents, many local chapters run ethnic enclaves at the street level. Violent, they runs drugs, better-than-life chips, prostitution, and protection rackets. Their main strength is numbers and the roots in their communities, but they do have rivals.
The Mob. No one mafia family has supremacy in the area, but several UCAS and CAS based families have interests in the area. They often run entirely legitimate businesses in both Miami and Miami Beach, and focus mainly in smuggling and money laundering.
The Yakuza The Yakuzu presence is relatively small, but they run all the bunraku prostitution rings, legally. Bunraku prostitutes are sex workers whose brains have been modified to accept any personality downloaded to them. Many celebrities and politicians have personalities that have been. . .creatively entered into surgically sculpted sex workers available at hourly, daily, and weekly rates.
Friends of the Everglades An affiliate organization with Earth First! this organization loudly pursues legal and illegal means to make the Awakened Everglades its own sovereign nation. The biggest obstacles are that the local Native Americans view the 'Glades as their home, resenting outsiders, and much of the watershed consisting of the Everglades reaches halfway up into the peninsula, into CAS territory. Many members live in the 'Glades and are among the greatest experts in the terrain and ecology.
Notes about character creation.
I strongly encourage normal metahuman types. Language can be important, so don't neglect it. English is the lingua franca of the region, but whole neighborhoods exists where people go their whole lives speaking only Spanish or Haitian Creole. I'm looking for around four players. Feel free to send me a message if you have questions. 
Topic: Shadowrun: Miami (Read 7704 times)