Campaign ideas

I'm having more issues with this campaign...more in the creativity than anything else. I want it to be heavily city-oriented, and I have the basis for this. In reality, it's a stagnation thing. There's a lot to be writing, but with no real starting point, it's difficult.
I have the basic US ideas. Realcorps control most of the property, giving them a lot of power over anyone who wants a roof to live or work in. Techcorps deal with the Realcorps by giving them insider hands in the volatile Intellectual Property market, where patents and technology licensing rights are sold in an open market. The IP market is much more volatile than the stock market, because patents and licensing negotiations are one-time deals. However, static IP rights like design patents, musical copyrights, books, and the like are sold back and forth like stock, depending on end-user demand. This means that musical artists generally have control over their IP shares, forced to wait until their contract expires before they sell the shares. This means that share status is integrated into digital music, making DRM easier and more logical. It also means that older artists who have sold their shares are often very available, since anyone who buys shares in musical property has limited say to its distribution, but also full access to the library from the property creator.
This complete change in the way IP works is due in part to the advent of the Grid, and also the reach of the global access singularity, a social phenomenon where access to information is so fast it is no longer limited by technology. Computers now have smaller hard drives, and much more RAM, since virtually anything can be streamed off the grid. In fact, due to this, one of the easy ways to pinpoint a hacker is by his hard drive purchases. A 100GB drive can fully hold any end-user information you could possibly need, including Gspace, an audio player, wave3D or the like (closed-source 3d engine used to backbone most 3d games), a chat client, and publishing software. Purchases of hard drive space in excess of that often indicate the use of high-bandwidth software used in forced decryption and other computer crimes.
Anyhoo. The last category of corp is the agricorp, who hold land property used for cultivation, as well as any remaining natural resources, like oil, gas reserves, and forests. The Midwest and Appalachia are almost exclusively held by agricorps, who compete among themselves fiercely for land holdings. The agricorps also have firm hold in Asia, some influence Europe, and certain isolated holdings in Africa, which are being fought fiercely. Due to this strife, as well as nomad activity in the US and Russia, the agricorps field more security personnel than either of the other types, though the realcorps station guards for their more affluent tenants, and the techcorps have large security staff to control and guard labs and complexes.
The corporate structure has created the areas of strife in the world, as well as most of the new conflicts. Africa has become significantly more developed while the Western world was busy recovering from nuclear war. Now united under the Southern Republic, the Pan-Arabian Emirates, and the Central Confederacy of Nigeria, the African nations are resisting any corporate influence, notably throwing out the conglomerates owning Exxon's oil holdings, and DeBeers' diamond mines. The agricorps don't like this, and have been attempting to take these holdings back by force, with little success. The relative unification of Africa has made all three countries formidable opponents, despite infighting and the occasional religious flareup.
South America is notably more fragmented, with most of the national borders dissolving due to corporate interests. Venezuela has the world's largest remaining oil reserve, the Amazon is in Brazil, and Rio is still a bustling city. Thusly, the northern sections of South America were quickly swept down upon by corporations looking to secure resource holdings. Rio is a massive resort town for the ultra-rich, and the rest of the corporate conclaves and their puppet governments are extremely dangerous to foreigners, as the region is sandwiched by independents on both sides. The Argentinians and the Nicaraguans are the two largest independent forces, but 10 national identities, both displaced and also in their homelands, are fighting the corporations stealing their lands and wealth.
The US is fragmented by the nuclear strikes, but everywhere is corporate, save the dustlands and the most inhospitable parts of Canada, which are inhospitable. Asia is similar, with China and Russia used for natural resources and cultivation, and Singapore, Thailand and Japan all developing into massive urbo-archipelagos, cities divided into islands, rather than islands divided into cities. Europe is a little dicier. Britain was ravaged by nuclear strikes, but a lot of Europe is as it was. Many towns went An-Grid, especially those in favorable climates. In contrast, nearly all of the former Soviet republics were bought out by corporate interests, as was most of Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Nuevo Praha is a standout city, being built over 200 miles south of Old Prague's ruins. the city is, like Version City in the US, a mix of "punk and prole". Both cities were built by national planners before corporate interests got involved, so private ownership wreaked havoc on the corp's plans. The two cities are both filled with conclaves, theatres, apartments, and other services owned by small owners. Astropolis, by comparison, has corporate-designed amenties: the famous SL1 meat markets are small-owned, but those and the few other SL1 zones designated for open market estating like that are still corporate planned.
Astropolis in general is corporate planned, the whole city arranged simply. TL1 through TL3 are commercial, corporate controlled stores, malls, and the like. TL4-TL10 is upper-level residential, ranging from modest (TL4, storetop apartments, efficiencies, studio apartments) to ridiculous (TL10, from two-story penthouses to zep penthouses that have 15 rooms and float suspended from gasbags, two miles above the mile-high skyline). L0 is transit, where the lift stations, highways, subways, and exit zones are (the name is deceiving, as L0 is still about 100 feet above the ground). SL1 and SL2 are open control, the last levels with full access walkways and express lift services, and levels that are given to lower expense endeavours (the aforementioned meat markets, as well as single-control bars and restaurants, and certain approved single-control commercial establishments). SL3 to SL5 are also housing, ranging from 3 room apartments at best to 10x10 cubes at worst. SL6 to SL10 are heavy industry, with the upper levels going to manufacturing, and the lower levels going to power generation. With all 21 zones, Astropolis is an arcology in the biggest possible sense. As a result, getting around is not terribly difficult. Only the commercial areas and the first two sublevels have particularly interesting layouts, the rest are buildings and walkways clustered around one of the 50 lift tubes around the city. Every point is within a 2 mile walk to one of the lift tubes, but many choose to use bikes, scooters, and even grav vehicles, though in such a densely built city, grav travel is quite hazardous.
Version City is a mix of neighborhoods, ranging from sprawls, to industrial/commercial areas like The Docks, to corporate areas like Bohemia, and its 'Punk counterpart Bedford Heights. Each has its own flavor, and as a result, Version City has some very interesting things in it.
The Coast was bought corporate pretty early, but its massive and old developments make it hard to control in that way. Areas have been built up pretty densely, and some feel like suburbs, but all are under varying levels of corporate control. The areas with less influence tend to have less police influence as well, and therefore more crime. An interesting sub-area are the communities around the gigantic Harbor Mall, one of the few shopping centers in the world that attracts nearly all economic strata. It's big, and hard to control, and as a result, the surrounding area is a big punk haven, anti-authoritarians looking to undermine the corporate image at its epicenter. The mall is clean, well guarded, and visually appealing, but both the scale of it and the way it integrates into the surrounding community makes it impossible to completely stop the crime that does take place.

There you go. My bit about the world. That feels much better. Next time, I'll write a piece on the technology level of this place, cover the guns bit (which everyone loves) and I'll be just about ready to write the nitty-gritty when I buy the GURPS basic set.