First Post in Fate of the Shadows: Winnipeg

 Hello.

This is the Fate of the Shadow:Winnipeg blog where we post session recaps of the tabletop game Fate of the Shadows:Winnipeg.

Fate of the Shadows:Winnipeg is a tabletop game using the Fate pen and paper role-playing game. It has inspired by the likes of Shadowrun, the Canadian Board of Film, the films of Guy Maddin, and whatever comics books, horror films, action flicks we've seen. 

The Setting:

In the future after the War, Winnipeg has changed. During this War where the First Nations made a desperate bid on behalf of the spirits to save themselves from the genocide enacted by the Governments of Canada and the United States, known Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin died and, simultaneously, the spirit of Winnipeg, the Genius Loci, the City God, call it what you will, died as well - - - 

And Guy Maddin was made the new Spirit, the new Genius Loci of Winnipeg . . .

With this new-found metaphysical position, Guy Maddin rearranged, one might say remixed, the time and space of Winnipeg. Like he did with his movies, he recreated and remade the pasts and dreamed futures of Winnipeg into the present. Now the entire city is a strange landscape of what pasted decades thought the future was going to be and their present was.  Going down the streets, you might find yourself black and white the same as your surroundings of the 1920's district, then find the world coloured yet grainy in the groovy 1970's district, finally you may find what a ten year old from the year 2000 thought a cell phone would look like in the 2000's district.  

Winnipeg is now a divided city like Berlin in the Cold War. The city is confusingly divided into zones between the First Nations States and the Corporate Capitalist remains of the United States of Canada and America.  America and Canada having to merge together after losing the War to the First Nations.

Immigration has led to new people from different continents to find home in this divided city, now a million different cultures groove together in Winnipeg - - - Yet when a new culture comes to a new place, they bring their legends and myths with them.  

For the supernatural has returned to the world. It is an open-secret, the elephant in the room that everyone in the world knows about, but is weary to speak out loud.  You'd be hard pressed to find a hardcore atheist around now in this future. Everyone knows a friend of a friend whose aunt met a warlock or saw a werewolf dash in the night.  Though, it would be difficult to actually find these beings and people talked about in hushed tones.

Technology marches on. Finally the Virtual Reality, the Computer World of our dreams has been realized, though the supernatural might have had something to do with it. Bionics, both the expensive biological, genetically engineered kind and the much more affordable metallic, cybernetic kind, have taken off.

Because of these developments a new metaphorical underworld has arisen.  People who, for whatever reason, be it necessity, life-style choice, or forced by poverty, have no Universal Identification Number or UIN live in this underbelly of the world that people turn a blind eye to and half tarp up. These people are known as Blanks.  They are often heavily augmented cyborgs, looked upon as we do heavily tattooed or body modified people today, or people who have had too many turns of bad luck, or even persons who practice the secret arts or beings of the supernatural.  

Within this underbelly underworld of Blanks, freaks, and cunning folk is the Eco-Anarchist Taxi Inc. or the E.A.T for short. A taxi-cab service which is an obvious front for an organization of eco-anarchists since everybody drives automated cars these days.  Created by anarchists and recruited with people fed up with and disillusioned by paternalistic led and human ruled governing and organizing systems - - - or anyone who happens to join them accidentally.  They believe that it is time for the old rulers to govern the world who were here before kings, corporations, and oligarchies.  They are Mama Nature's hired goons. The exterminators for the Spirits who find that their lands have been infested with pests called corporations who are saying that they rule the place. They are Left-Anarchism's Legion of Doom. They fight against Neo-Nazi, violent fascists, privatized police, and, most important of all, the E.A.T. rocks the Corps.

You are part of the E.A.T.

Yet the E.A.T.'s enemies are many, the fore-mentioned Neo-Nazi organizations and police along with the Mercenaries Without Borders, corporate aristocrats, the mysterious Yama-Kings, the gods of death, who look upon the world as one of them hold it in the palm of his hand, and other beings secret and sinister.  

(Disclaimer notice: This tabletop pen and paper game will not focus on the First Nations States. The First Nations getting back most of North America was inspired by the stories in Shadowrun. I have found that people express discomfort with the aspect and I find Shadowrun handles it rather ungracefully.  However, I find that the idea that the First Nations are put through even more hardship yet are able to be victorious through their spirituality to be a positive one and I didn't want to rob that. The whole the supernatural has returned premise begs the First Nations question. The situation I am in is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.  The First Nations States aspect will not be focused on. They're there, they are doing alright  I mean no offense.  In the end, this is just a tabletop game where you pretend to be a witch teaming up with a cyborg to fight Gordon Gekko for a few hours.)