New York in 2020 is a shattered city. While the initial recovery efforts after The Bomb looked promising, The Collapse of the United States in 1996 erased that promise, as well as any support from any level of government. New York City government held it together until 2000 when Staten Island announced they were no longer part of New York City and reached out to New Jersey for support. Queens withdrew shortly thereafter and almost immediately splintered into a number of smaller, neighborhood-based governments. Brooklyn stopped listening to City Hall around 2003 and the Bronx had been written off when it took the print of the fallout from The Bomb.
What’s left of New York City is technically all of Manhattan, but when The Bomb sheared the city in half, the northern half was either irradiated by fallout or ignored by the government. What is realistically left of New York City is really just Manhattan from 14th street and under. The Upper West Side, Harlem, Inwood, and Washington Heights alternate between tightly-bound neighborhood coalitions and anarchic war zones, individual blocks alternating between the two. The Upper East Side is still a contaminated fallout zone and Central Park is a blighted space that most fear to tread. So, from here on out, when I say Neo-York, I am referring to the area still under nominal city government control, from 14th Street down through the Financial District.
Neo-York is not the hub of international trade and finance the way New York was. It is still reeling from the trauma of The Bomb and has not yet determined what its identity will be moving forward. The Megacorps might not use New York as a headquarters location anymore, but they are active in the city, many seeing the diversity in the neighborhoods as an opportunity to conduct product and brand research in a relatively unobserved market before taking it national. Arasaka and Militech shake down much of their new military equipment in the combat zones of New York City.
One of the themes of the campaign is the bitterness New York has for the rest of the United States. There is a palpable tension between the government and corporate agents who ignored the city in the decade or so after the Collapse. When they show up to operate within New York, the foreign agents are viewed with distrust and anger.
The Outer Boroughs are happy with their independence, having recovered from the Collapse a little better than Manhattan. Queens has become a giant in the “unofficial” manufacturing market, with farms of autofactories pumping out replicas and knockoffs at an alarming rate. Brooklyn has a fierce independent streak and a thriving economy of crafts and specialized labor export. Staten Island is a sterile Beaverville, with executives in their Aerodynes coming and going to either New Jersey or New York.
There is a lot to work with in Lower Manhattan. Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown and Little Italy alongside commercial zones like Wall Street allow for a wide variety of stories. I plan on fleshing out the part of the Lower East Side between Houston and Grand Streets as the “strip” where the player characters will likely live and base their operations. Other locations will be fleshed out on a more as-needed basis.
Next week, we will start our tour of the Lower East Side with The Nomad Market!
What’s left of New York City is technically all of Manhattan, but when The Bomb sheared the city in half, the northern half was either irradiated by fallout or ignored by the government. What is realistically left of New York City is really just Manhattan from 14th street and under. The Upper West Side, Harlem, Inwood, and Washington Heights alternate between tightly-bound neighborhood coalitions and anarchic war zones, individual blocks alternating between the two. The Upper East Side is still a contaminated fallout zone and Central Park is a blighted space that most fear to tread. So, from here on out, when I say Neo-York, I am referring to the area still under nominal city government control, from 14th Street down through the Financial District.
Neo-York is not the hub of international trade and finance the way New York was. It is still reeling from the trauma of The Bomb and has not yet determined what its identity will be moving forward. The Megacorps might not use New York as a headquarters location anymore, but they are active in the city, many seeing the diversity in the neighborhoods as an opportunity to conduct product and brand research in a relatively unobserved market before taking it national. Arasaka and Militech shake down much of their new military equipment in the combat zones of New York City.
One of the themes of the campaign is the bitterness New York has for the rest of the United States. There is a palpable tension between the government and corporate agents who ignored the city in the decade or so after the Collapse. When they show up to operate within New York, the foreign agents are viewed with distrust and anger.
The Outer Boroughs are happy with their independence, having recovered from the Collapse a little better than Manhattan. Queens has become a giant in the “unofficial” manufacturing market, with farms of autofactories pumping out replicas and knockoffs at an alarming rate. Brooklyn has a fierce independent streak and a thriving economy of crafts and specialized labor export. Staten Island is a sterile Beaverville, with executives in their Aerodynes coming and going to either New Jersey or New York.
There is a lot to work with in Lower Manhattan. Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown and Little Italy alongside commercial zones like Wall Street allow for a wide variety of stories. I plan on fleshing out the part of the Lower East Side between Houston and Grand Streets as the “strip” where the player characters will likely live and base their operations. Other locations will be fleshed out on a more as-needed basis.
Next week, we will start our tour of the Lower East Side with The Nomad Market!
When I hit "product and brand research" I knew this was going to be one of the top things of the year.
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