Why?
I got my hands on the Shadowrun Hardcover for Christmas in 1989 and instantly loved it, apart from Star Wars, it was the first non TSR game I got into. I was a fan of Cyberpunk, Fantasy and sent more than a little time locking up one of the phone lines calling into BBSes. That interest in Shadowrun continued with various games despite all the World of Darkness campaigns, AEON Trinity and D&D 3E. AEON Trinity was great, but the Australian material was plain awful in the core rules. I did a website of an Australian rewrite and next thing I knew I was asked to work on their Australian sourcebook.
Doing that book I discovered the fustration of writing local material for essentially an American audience. You will fight for something more authentic; sometimes winning (changing the name to Aurora Australis) and other times not because it wastes wordcount to explain, retconning cannon has limits or even simple things like not allowing Australian English in suitable content. It did make me realise my issues with Shadowrun were similar to Trinity. I could understand that Cyberpunk is focused on Asia, North America and Europe. South East Asia, Africa are an afterthought. The mythology around Australia is also problematic, calling “Ley Lines” in Australia “Songlines”. Songlines are actually a form of “Method of Loci/Memory Place”; a mnemonic device used in First Nations Oral Traditions to memorise important information which could include navigation, but also cultural expectations and behaviours…
Anyway, mate and I have been running a continous SR campaign now for almost 20 years. It moved to Melbourne and have had continous lore since then.
I will share some of it here (but not all as it is still running campaign). I will also try to add official and semi/un-official content in as well making down my references.
I am also not going to try to clean this information up and present it like a sourcebook as I would rather get the content up even if it is just rough drafts.
For more information what published content I can find and what problems I have with it. See below
- Published Material on Australia for Shadowrun
- Problems with the Shadowrun Setting
Introduction
High-Level info here…
Victoria
Yes, I will focus on Victoria, as that is where my campaign is set so that is where my content is. Will that mean I might have a bias towards Victoria… sure that is reasonable to assume.
The first bit of Australian content I found makes Brisbane the focus for Australia, likely it is based on his own campaign (KA*GE Issue #7, Vol1.1, 1993)…
How mine differs is acknowleding Melbourne’s prior growth from the Gold Rush that made it the competing capital for Australia, and that many corporations and institutions started in Melbourne that went to Sydney in cases return.