[GiraffeShaman]

So, I decided I'm going to do some gang stuff with my upcoming 5th edition game. Unfortunately, the 5th edition main book was kind of light on gangs. (But things being missing is a common complaint with the book already being huge) Anyway, I could use names and descriptions of any homebrew gangs you've used in your games. I'm familiar with the major gangs in Seattle, as I have all the older Seattle Guides, but it may also be useful to GMs if you mention your favorite Seattle gangs and some text about them. (A simple data search will probaly turn something up) It might also remind me about someone I'm forgetting. I'll get things going with one of my favorites, The Red Hot Nukes:

The Red Hot Nukes are a Gang of Dwarfs - i. e. dwarven adepts - that calls the Redmond-Barrens in Seattle its turf.
 
Their colors are red and grey, their symbol is a mushroom cloud and they always wear baseball caps.
 
They are led by a dwarven adept, a former shadowrunner, called Grinder, who has strong anti-corporate feelings and sees himself as a neo-anarchist.
 
Their initiation rite consists of having to defuse a bomb built by Grinder. If the newcomer succeeds, he's in. If not, then the blast usually kills them.
 
They excel in explosives and use self constructed bombs as a tool for extortion of protection money or for destroying buildings in order to help locals to commit insurance fraud. Sometimes they hire their explosive skills even for terrorist attacks or wetwork.
 
The Red Hot Nukes are long-time enemies of the «Rusted Stilettos» gang, but - following Grinders neo-anarchist view - they have the tendency to call any other gang in the Redmond Barrens - like the «Crimson Crush», the «Brain Eaters» or even the feared «Spiders» - "enemies of the people" and tend feuding with them sometimes.

[GiraffeShaman]

A few more of my favorites:

The Reality Hackers are a techno-gang out of Puyallup proper. They go for a sleek techno look and feel, and recruit from runaway corp kids. The Hackers pay for their toys with theft, datasteals, chips and pirated software, along with normal ganger fare. They also throw parties, complete with special effects, at their converted warehouse headquarters. The Hackers used to work for the Yakuza but were screwed by them a few years ago: now they love to hurt the yaks. Their colors are chrome and gold.

The Spiders are one of Redmond's largest and newest gangs, made up of victims of the Universal Brotherhood. They all follow the Spider totem, even the un-Awakened, and are led by a Spider shaman named Widow. The Spiders are obsessed with protecting Redmond from insect spirits and other magical threats, and press-gang people into the gang from time to time. They are headquartered just south of Beaver Lake and Glow City, and their colors are black or dark brown with a red web pattern overlaid.

Renton Gangs:

Renton has a lot of gangs, and they are all particularly tough and violent. Most are involved win the drug and chip trades. The Blood Mountain Boys are the largest go-gang in the area, and they claim nearly all of I-169. The BMB go for a "tribal" look; They wear tribal leathers and often war paint as well. Though they primarily run chips, the BMB prefer drugs and alcohol to technological vices, and their all-night traveling binges are legendary.
 
The Night Hunters are actually several splinter thrill gangs, all using the same name. All the groups are technofetishists and extremely anti-metahuman. Hunters go for lots of cybermodifications, and enjoy using vocal modifications to make weird "hunting calls" to scare their victims. They sell BTLs to raise nuyen, and spend the rest of their time handling out Humanis propaganda and terrorizing anyone caught on their turf at night, especially metahumans.
 

[Tecumseh]

I have a ganger campaign in progress. Here are some of the NPC gangs, minus spoilers just in case any of my players are reading. All of these are Puyallup gangs surrounding the PCs' territory.

The Corsairs
Colors: Not so important. Just be happy when they remember to put on pants.
A small gang of trolls tripping on pirate BTLs. Includes such memorable names as Hard-Hearted Davy, Blood-Loving Axe, Francis/Frances (gender uncertain, trolls you know), and Steve the Pirate King. They enjoy pillage and plunder and can be convinced to fight against the "bloody lobsterbacks" by anyone clever enough to frame the opposition as such.

The Merry Men
Color: Lincoln green
Led by 'King John', who looks like Henry VIII (the fat version) but fights like Richard I. King John is a burned-out adept who's still capable of chopping fools in half, even though he completely lost his grip on reality about 20 years ago after a brush with 2XS. He's been slotting medieval-themed chips ever since and insists on gang members using period-appropriate weapons. They stay competitive via troll bows and poleaxes, and the associated intimidation factor. Their link to reality is Chamberlain, a beleaguered black man forced to wear a Robin Hood outfit while speaking in Ye Olde English.

The Royal Ronins
Colors: Purple and Black
Despite the name, they are neither royal nor ronin. What they do have is an excellent business sense and a flair for entertainment, both licit and illicit. They're not crazy - they're frighteningly sane - but does that make them less dangerous or more? For whatever reason, they shun the Awakened.

The Übermen
Colors: Steel and chrome
Human supremacists. This small but heavily-chromed go-gang prizes Thus Spoke Zarathustra and low Essence values. While they're a real chore to deal with, they're worth a lot when you chop them up for spare parts. They drive Scorpions because their Robocop asses weigh too damn much to bother with racing bikes.

The Mohawks
Colors: Pink, rainbow, anything flamboyant
Led by Josie, who has a flaming-red 'hawk down her back, the Mohawks are a go-gang that only cares about their bikes and their 'dos. They ride Mirages and other racing bikes, largely to enable their hit-and-run tactics versus the powerful-but-slow Übermen. Primary sources of revenue are hijacking and protection payments (from said hijackings).

[GiraffeShaman]

Awsome, Tecumseh. Thank you. I'll definitely use some of these, although I may have to tone down the Ubermen or they might kill my players! I'm kind of reminded of something from the Stephen King Dark Tower novels, the Hitler Brothers. I think that was it, in one of the later ones, some backstory involving the priest. (Looks like it was in the Wolves of Calla)

[farothel]

use the Seattle 2072 book from 4th edition if you have it.  It has tons of stuff on gangs, and since it is all background, you can still use it (or modify as you see fit). 

[GiraffeShaman]

use the Seattle 2072 book from 4th edition if you have it.  It has tons of stuff on gangs, and since it is all background, you can still use it (or modify as you see fit

Indeed I do. I use 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition Seattle guides. Them they're quite simply my favorite GM aids. I not only use them for gangs, but area and location descriptions, making the city alive, and ridiculous amounts of shadowrun ideas to mine. I cant recommend all the Seattle guides enough for any SR  player playing any edition. They aren't stat heavy and thus can easily be applied.

[DigitalZombie]

The blissed brotherhood
keywords. squatter network, drug addicts, drug manufactors and distributers (bliss in particular), K-10 suicide hit squads.
physical training and equipment. very low (K-10 suicide squads would be medium )
magic. NIL (except for top tier)
matrix. very low. (only a few AR spam commercials and no BTL production or distribution)
numbers. High
professional rating. low. poor strret cred rating and a worse notority

Lady Bliss is the gangs face and official leader. An elven dryad toxic mystic adept shaman. (thanks to her dryad symbiosis, she is almost always under the sympathetic effect of bliss and other substances, actually so much she has already lost a point of essence for her addiction).

The true leader amongst the blissed brotherhood is actually a powerful toxic free spirit. Unlike other toxic spirits, this one isnt into all that polluting the enviroment, or radioactive death, nor destroying the metahuman cancer. No, his realm is the pollution of the meta human free will, through damaging addictive substances. He is a high force spirit (whatever force fits the story) with the free spirit wealth power, with a twist. He doesnt create precious stones or metals, but ingredients used in drug manufactoring, which also means that most drugs from the blissed brotherhood actyally carries his astral signature. In particular his K-10 equivelant drug is created almost solely from his wealth power. (which also explains why such such lowly scum has an availability 16 drug in their pockets (or veins))

The free spirit also infects his area with his personal domain of drug influence. (this means his domain has a background count of half his force, acting as a penalty for all awakeneds magic attribute, unless they are under the influence of some drug or BTL, in which case they gain the background count as a dice bonus to spellcasting and whatnot).

He  also has the spirit pact power, giving him the ability to grant some of his powers to his followers.
He has the venom power, but instead of damage it counts as Bliss (power level 6, if subject feels like resisting)

The free spirit is of the possession tradition, and he has a unique ban, limiting him to only be able to possess living creatures under the influence of some kind of drug. Furthermore, should he ever be the target of a detox spell, he immediatly loses a point of edge (not burned) and possibly gets ejected from his former drug influenced vessel.
Note being a spirit makes him unable to experience BTL, which is also why the brotherhood doesnt deal in those. And BTL alone doesnt grant him the ability to possess people, but it does give them his background bonus.
(this could of course be a story plot, if the runners where to find out his Ban and still gain access to his domain power)

(I dont have a name for him yet though)

relations with the runners.
Good terms\ cheap drugs, access to the squatter network, cheap favours, only a little harassed by the lower tier junkes.
neutral terms\ drugs, theft and harassment from lower tier junkies
bad terms\ violent encounters from mid tier combat drugged members, boosted with free spirit pacts, squatter network working activily against the runners.
worse terms\ K-10 suicide hit squads, backed up by mid tier combat drugged members, boosted with spirit pacts and magic, free spirit assisting sometimes
holy sh#t terms\ as above, but with an insane K-10 troll possessed by the highest rating free toxic spirit the runners have ever seen

 

[GiraffeShaman]

Well, you read my mind Digital. I was also thinking of doing some drug stuff with the gangs, and so this I believe will be quite useful. Can you explain the term "K-10" or is it just a name?

I like to keep things simple, so I'll probaly make the shaman simply an Elf. The spirit kind of reminds me of the Jester spirit from the SN game, so I might give it some kind of true name the PCs must discover. I've never actually used a free spirit in a game, but I've wanted to for quite a while because I loved the use of the Jester spirit. Just never got around to  due to suddenly ending campaigns.

[Tecumseh]

K-10 (Blood of Kali) is on page 75 of Arsenal. It's good for troll gangers and lolz.

[DigitalZombie]

As Tecumseh said, its in arsenal. It is described as kamikaze grade 10, it gives INSANE bonusses to users. and its side effects are they suffer 18stun unresisted when it has run its course (hence the suicide part)
Among its many bonusses is a whooping plus 6 strength and pain resistance and bezerk. While a normal human junkie on K-10 still looses to the troll streetsam, that trog will still drop his jaw when that lousy scum hits him square on his armourd chest with  str 9 or 10, breaks his sinny junkie hand and tries to STAB him with his broken bone potruding from his wrist.  The troll street sam can hardly take him alive in a wrestle match either, as the junkie is so strong that he either A) muscles himself free or B) breaks his own arms and neck trying to do A)
A troll with K-10 would just be nasty 

yes, a truename to be discovered would make perfect sense

[GiraffeShaman]

Thanks guys. Sounds like a good time, especially with halberds, claymores or the like.