What is life like outside the shadows? What is it that makes the life of an upright uptight citizen tick? And does it affect me and my shadowrunners?

It sure as hell does. Your shadowrunners aren't always on jobs or doing shadowy-type stuff. Sometimes they are just regular people watching the trid and ordering out for pizza. Sure, the runner answers the door with a gun in one hand, but it's the same thing regardless. We'll discuss traffic, fashion, unique adornments for orks and trolls, and how hard it is to find a good smoke and a drink in 2060.

One key example of real life affecting shadowrunners is be the first topic of discussion. And that's traffic

What makes you think that your shadowrunner team or your rigger can scream down the streets of Downtown Seattle at 200kph? Okay, I know where you got it from. The movies, where traffic always manages to be out of the way just so you can have an action-packed chase sequence. But real life rarely cooperates.

In a large city, traffic is a major part of life. I've never commuted less than 30 minutes to any job here in Southern California, and never less than an hour in my professional career. I've never dated anyone closer than 20 minutes away and I've sometimes driven an hour just for a date. Los Angeles always has traffic and we've all simply become accustomed to it. Seattle isn't that much different, especially in 2060. Traffic jams probably snarl the morning and evening commutes, and you will never be able to find a patch of wide open freeway on any day or any time. About the only time you won't find traffic (or rather, enough to significantly slow you down) on the majority of roads is between about 9pm and 6am.

Okay, that's prime running time for most shadowrunners you say. Well, who else do you also think is going to be out on the roads during those times? Road construction crews. It's amazing how much traffic you can create, miles of back-up, by going from a four lane freeway down to just one lane, at two in the morning. Now wouldn't that just suck to be trying to get away from a shadowrun only to run into a practically closed freeway at 3am?

So trying to drive Mach 8 isn't going to be an option everytime you step into your Saab Dynamit 776TI.

What about the wage-slave? We read about them, the shaikujin, and we generally feel sorry for these poor brain-dead schmuckos that slave away for an evil corporation. But is that a realistic portrayal? Not by a long-shot.

Most people don't think that their employer is evil or wicked or does illegal things. Some don't care, but most think that their corporate employer is generally a good citizen. Your 2060 citizen isn't that much different. To them, their boss may be a total jerk, but an evil shadowrunner-hiring scumbag that orders hits? Why, that's preposterous! Think about this not from a shadowrunner's jaded cynical perspective, but from your own, your parents, that of the individual who has to work for a living. Things like shadowrunners and magic and dragons aren't something that the average citizen will ever come in contact with, it's a world light-years outside their own. They neither want nor will believe it when that shadowy world does intrude upon their own.

Most wage slaves are simply decent hard-working citizens trying to get by. Sure, they could have turned to a life of crime, like your shadowrunners, but they opted, for whatever reason, for the relative safety and security and regular paycheque of a corporate job. A lot less nuyen to be made, but the chances of them being killed is dramatically less also. Security in a world as unstable and chaotic as that presented in Shadowrun has got to be extremely attractive to a lot of people. So like any shadowrunner, they are doing whatever they can to get by. They are real people, just like you. Sorry to break it to you, but 99% of the people playing Shadowrun have more in common with the upright uptight citizen than with any shadowrunner. You don't work where you do because you are a mindless slave, do you? It's because you've got a talent or a skill or something that an employer found worthy of hiring you for. Just like the citizens of Shadowrun.

What about fashion? Okay, we know about runner fashion and corporate fashion. Runner fashion is supposedly all about chrome and leather and looking like you are ready for combat. Some even seem to think that neon green mohawks are the way to go. And on the corporate side of things, not much seemingly has changed from the suits worn today and the suits worn in 2060. Okay, the Shadowrun versions are more often made with ballistic cloth, but the style doesn't seem to have changed much.

High-fashion and common fashion have probably been heavily influenced in Shadowrun by all sorts of historical factors. Fashion after the discover of magic was probably very "airy-fairy" and meant to simply look magical. Clothes after a major traumatic event like the first VITAS plague or the Night of Rage would probably have taken a darker tone, with less bare skin. Hem lines would have gone down. In 2060, I see a sort of a return to lighter and brighter colors and fabrics. The UCAS has gone through Bug City, gone through the failed 2056 elections and the entire business surrounding the death of President Dunkelzahn. Probably all of which inspired lower hemlines and darker, more drab clothing. By 2060, people are ready to come out of that; it's a new decade and things are relatively stable for a moment. And so I'm guessing there would be a return to lighter, flimsier, less bullet protective and more colorful clothing. Hemlines would climb up and necklines would again plunge.

Another major source of fashion would be the increased multi-culturalism of Shadowrun. Normal clothing would have touches and hints "inspired" by traditional Japanese, Sioux, Aztlan and Celtic garb, to name just a few themes. And of course there would be those individuals that will wear full traditional clothing all the time and everywhere. FASA says it's not uncommon to see a Native American walking the streets of Seattle in full traditional garb. I don't further see why it wouldn't be that uncommon to see everything from women wearing Sioux inspired jewelry to office managers wearing a traditional kimono. The actual fabrics would probably be very high-tech, but the style would be totally retro.

You can also bet that there would be metahuman fashions also. Light pastels and gauzy fabrics for elves and heavy, chunky dark earth tones for orks. Most metahumans are pretty much people too, average citizens. But you can bet that the fashion industry will take a cue from metahumanity and design for/be "inspired" by, metahumans.

There is one area of metahuman fashion that I do see springing up and becoming quite popular amongst at least younger metahumans, and that's jewelry. Not just any jewelry, but adornments designed to accentuate their metahumanity. Elves and dwarves may take advantage of their longer ears to pierce them more, taking ear rings to a higher level of use and fashion.

What I think is most interesting is what orks and trolls might do.

What do orks have that the other races (aside from trolls) don't? Tusks. Many orks seem to take quite pride in their tusks. Given that, I would suspect that orks would take a great deal of care in their tusks. Expensive polishing treatments. Gold plating. Perhaps expensive filigree work and/or carved art. Perhaps even implanted precious stones, like diamonds. We see some of that today with some cultures and I think it would become very popular with younger orks.

Now what do trolls have that the other metahuman races don't? Horns. It's the single most "non-human" thing about a troll. I've heard about and seen pictures of all sorts of troll horns, to those like a ram to something akin to a unicorn. Some are oddly shaped and scraggly, others are nicely symmetrical. Much like ork tusks, I see great decoration possibilities for troll horns. Carvings, bandings of precious metals, implanted jewels, colors and polishing. And there is a whole lot more surface area with which to work. I don't think that the average troll would be able to afford more than a polish job (probably a bit like a modern day manicure), but I could see pretty much any troll with money, which means many shadowrunning trolls, to put a fair portion of that money into their horns.

Now let's shift gears and look at another element of daily life, that of alcohol and smoking. Let's be honest, neither of them are very good for you. But as long as alcohol continues to intoxicate and nicotine gives you a buzz, people will consume them.

I see smoking in general to be down drastically. Whereas only low-lifes would smoke continuously and have a habit, I would see cigarettes going the way of modern day cigars. An expensive treat to be had on the weekends or for special occasions. Gone would be cheap cigarettes sold by the hundreds. Instead, much like cigars, you'd be able to purchase even a single cigarette which could be hand rolled, with everything from synthetic tobacco to extremely expensive organic tobacco and may or may not have ultra-high tech filters. There'd be a certain coolness to smoking again, but the cost for anything decent would certainly keep it out of the hands of children and even most adults. Today, I'm willing to pay as much as fifteen bucks for a good cigar. In 2060, expect to pay that much for a single decent cigarette.

The 2060 cigar would remain the vice of the elitist and the snobs; and the wannabes of course. Finding good people to hand wrap cigars is becoming increasingly difficult today; imagine what it would be like in 2060. Much as with cigarettes, you'd probably have two classes of cigar. The lower class cigar would be machine rolled and would be at least partially made of synthetic or "fake" materials. Then there would be the luxury cigars, the ones that are hand rolled by the tenth straight generation of rollers, grown totally naturally in small fields in the Caribbean or in Central America somewhere (which does mean Azzie involvement with cigars...).

Alcohol in general would be in similar straights. Much of the common beer would be brewed in much the same way as it is now, though I'd be willing to bet that even more adjuncts, like myco-protein and synthahol, would be added than are now. Cheap hard liquor would almost certainly be little more than flavored and colored synthahol. At the high end, you'll have beer much like the true microbrewed beer available to most people today. Beer brewed for only a few thousand people, of only totally organic and natural materials. The price tag for a real beer would almost certainly be rather high. Real liquor would also be rather expensive also. You can buy a fifth of Jack Daniel's right now for what, ten bucks or so? You don't get decent single malt whiskey under thirty (I don't consider Glenlivet and Glenfiddich to be decent) , and when you get to about seventy dollars or more for a bottle, you're getting specially crafted, limited run alcohol. That's today. In 2060, you might as well multiply everything by about ten. Either buy a car or buy bottle pulled from a single special cask of ultrarare whiskey. People do it today.

Wine and champagne are in a similar situation as to beer and wine. France seems to be in general trouble, and the general chaos of the California Free State can't be good for wine production in Napa, Sonoma, Temecula or Santa Barbara, but I'm sure they are all doing their best.

How prized is real alcohol in my games? Once, several years ago, I had a PC accept as payment for a shadowrun several bottles of aged French champagne. Almost certainly worth far more than the nuyen that was offered. Sure, not as portable, but it had other advantages.

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