Yes, which produced the butchery of the ACW and resulted in a series of near disasters in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, with a fairly huge butchers bill in France. Narco guerrillas have somewhat limited expertise in running corps level combined arms operations. Much less than the Germans or the ACW senior leadership did. Or Iraq.

SCNR. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Which is why they'd be smart to hire in outside contractors I'd think. When you consider that the global drugs trade is worth an estimated 400 billion dollars a year even though the South American groups only make up a part of that just look at the sums the Cali and Medellín Cartels were raking in at their heights. They already hire whole armies of outside experts nowadays such as accountants, money launderers, former special forces soldiers, ex-intelligence agents to run counterintelligence programs, tech specialists - apparently back in the mid-90s during a raid the Colombians found a cartel data centre manned by up to six IT staff running a $1.5m mainframe computer.

Sorry for the derail but I just have to comment: I wish, most Germans would even care to possess such detailed knowledge of our past. And you know about what happens to those who refuse to learn from history...

Well, speaking for myself ... I feel that Nazis over and over again for four yeears (9th to 13th grade) were quite enough. Anyway, the history repeating itself just now is not about Nazis, it's about communists. Though the Nazis oiginally were a leftist party too, admittedly (that the 'socialist' part in national socialism).

isnt there a saying about stalin being so leftwing that he became rightwing?

i fear that fascism, nazism and communism all have now become so much branded, that trying to float either as a political direction will be political suicide.

(funny thing is that all argued that the group/nation/race was more important then the individual, but for different reasons iirc)

but authoritarian hawkism seems to be very much in vogue these days (thanks to al-qaida and the perceived need to do something about those terrorists), so some variant of either will pop up again, if under other names.

thing is that to distilled a political direction will not hold anything good in the long run, sooner or later one will bump into ones own ghosts in a corner...

I see the NSDAP as in it's roots socialist in name only, as well as Stalin being a right wing dictator who hijacked the bolshevist agenda to establish the imperialist superpower we all know as the USSR. That doesn't make real commies seem any less lunatic in my eyes though (WARNING: personal views, discussing such things can only lead to catastrophe).

Personally, I felt bombarded with Third Reich History in school too, but since I've got my Abi, I meet so many people who don't know anything about it because they just coasted through history class without paying attention, their classes got cut down due to personnel shortages or their teacher skipped the topic (apparently, some STILL do!). I find knowledge about the beginnings of the Nazi movement and the circumstances under which they rose to power much more important than the exact course of WWII, after all it's "principiis obsta!"

Well, overall I wanted to highlight that I rarely find such detailed knowledge of the interior workings of this part of German history on an internet forum and that I did. If there is interest in a more extensive discussion we should indeed move that into private or a thread on the offtopic forum.

Yes, let's keep this private. Not that this thread is closed or all the Americans are bored to death. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Hat jeder von euch einen Account im SR-Nexus, Technoschamanen-Forum oder dem Eisparadies? Dann koennen wir es ja da fortsetzen.

sadly my german is basically non-existent but the topic could be interesting...

It's soon-ish coming to an Offplay section near you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

OK, then I'll quickly summarize Chrys' post to start off a thread in the general discussion forum.

Edit: Here you go.

Edit2: Seems like such a discussion is against the Terms of Service and the thread therefore has been locked. Any idea where we could move this?

While the topic is interesting, it is not appropriate for Dumpshock so it has been closed. Please keep the conversation relevant to Shadowrun the game or Shadowrun the universe.



One or more posts make generalizations about people by their country of origin. That is considered a violation of the Terms of Service everyone agreed to. Any further actions will be addressed with administrative warnings to the offending party(s).

[nods]
For starters, with 1/3rd of the world being Christian, 1/3rd of all magicians will be Christian. Then, there are churches pretty much everywhere - each with a background count of at least 1, and places like Notre Dame, St Paul's etc probably up around 5. Or higher! Theurges can pick and choose where to create Domains. The return of magic will persuade the Pentecostals etc that this is 'the outpouring of the Holy Spirit', so they'll be welcoming any wonder working believer. With non-Christian magicians fighting the background count of the churches, their spells and spirits are going to fry when entering churches - encouraging Christians to chase them out of the churches, and making it clear to everybody whose side any spellcaster is on. The large number of domains means that most Christians will first discover their abilities in church, reinforcing the belief that these are miracles, and getting training/spell designs will be much easier than for less common traditions.
There really should be multiple theurgy traditions - any Christian theurgist who focuses on theology will have an Augustinian/Calvinist slant resulting in Drain based on Logic, mystics following in the tradition of St John of the Cross or the Quakers, Shakers etc will have Drain based on Intuition, the Pentecostals, Charismatics etc would have Drain based on Charisma. (of course, most won't touch shadowrunning, so the rules don't ned to worry about this). What would get 'interesting' would be if they found they couldn't couldn't cast spells in each others churches; initiatory groups would probably focus on getting around the problem.

The really interesting denomination in Shadowrun would be the Baptists - they've always hated racism, were in the forefront of the battle against slavery and segregation etc. They'd have been fighting bravely on behalf of metahumans. But they also have a reputation for loathing magic - so (for example) an Orc Magician could well owe his life to Baptists who risked their own lives to save him from Humanis goons - and still have to hide his magical abilities from them. Create some interesting complications.

P.S. For the people talking privately about Rome vs Hitler - be sure to check up on the Bismark's Kulturkampf - it was in the minds of everyone involved.

hmm, culturekampf, that turned up in cyberpunk v3 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

about christianity and magic, isnt there a special order doing that? order of st sebatian or something?

There're several. From that Televangelist guy whose wonders are actually magic performed according to a christianised hermetic tradition, to the Order of St. Sylvester, the Vatican's magical arm, to the Theurgs of Germany's renegade catholic church, to countless smaller christian-ish orders covered in German as well as international publications.

As has been described, especially in Europe, the Awakening triggered knee-jerk anti-witch/wizard reflexes wih the local churches, which kind of alienated the awakened population as a whole from the Church and Christianity as a whole. Thus, a öarge number of Awakened in Europe follow Old Paths (be that roman/greek influenced, neopaganist, druidic/celtic, gypsy magic, Theran, Sarethian, Blood Forest or shamanic). Also, you have strong islamic, jewish (like classic Hermeticism) and modern (Psionics) traditions of shadowrun magic. There is a share of christian-influenced groups, especially among Hermetics and Idolists, but generalising 1/3 of the world's awakened are Christian is naive.

Furthermore, 1/3 of today's world's population live in countries with a strong christian history, correct. That doesn't actually make them Christians by default, though. You're, for instance, about as likely to find a devout Christian in Kairo as you are in Rostock or Leipzig or Berlin. You're also MORE likely to run into devout Muslims in either of these cities. Same with many (not all) Eastern european countries. Don't try to compare European and American christians. They're worlds apart.

true that, most of norway is by history protestantic christians. but i would claim that the majority of those only practice the social rituals of baptism, wedding and so on out of tradition then out of real religious believes.

but then there is always the vocal minority that speaks up, loudly, about homosexuality, abortion and all the other stuff.

The figure of 1/3 of people being Christian is from the UN figures. Large slabs of the 'Muslim' world are predominately Christian, while Christianity is spreading rapidly in Africa, India and China.
Sure, that includes purely social Christians - so do the figures for Hindus, Muslims, Daoists etc. In all those cases though, the stress of emerging magic is going to send budding magicians running to the nearest comfortingly stable support group - humans turn to the familiar when facing too much change, and the Sixth World will have 'future shock' far beyond that described by Toffler.

As an interesting note, I sat through a class on Central Asia (specifically the former soviet republics) which covered such things as the high percentage of muslims and the vast differences between, say, Uzbeck muslims and arabic muslims. For one, your typical central asian Muslim doesn't think much about a drink of vodka now and again...

Relavence? None. I just like showing off my big brain (so big, I have to strap a backup brain to my waist... looks a bit like liver...)

And just where exactly are religions largely overwhelmed by Awakening any more stable than science or their family?


I'd like to see that link ...

The existence of dragons, spells, spirits - all are going to be a shock to science, simply because they can't be explained scientifically (not initially, anyway - however given science has a successful track record going back centuries, science will remain highly respected, especially because it *can* explain so much else).
Families? Difficult to have "daddy's eyes" when you goblinize. If there's even the slightest hint of adultery, that charge is going to be thrown around with UGE babies.
But a religion whose holy book has a prophecy about a dragon turning up when dragons *do* turn up? You can't buy that sort of publicity. And fearing dragons is a survival trait in Shadowrun.


Sure. It's somewhere around here: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/pro...dyb/dybcens.htm
There's a lovely easily read table there somewhere, but I couldn't find it when I went searching.
I normally use this site when researching for games:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Something that has a lot of fun potential - nobody thinks of their own beliefs as halfhearted or wrong, and Shadowrun Magic is powered by personal belief: so how other people perceive their beliefs is irrelevant.
This allows for some weird spellcasters. An exaggerated C0fE parson whose Spirits of Man turn up in cricketing gear; has Britannia for spirits of water, steam locomotives for spirits of fire and so on...his magic would work as effectively as any other spellcasters.
Hmm....

I would name my own belief at most halfhearted...

Yeah, Awakenings said that ten years ago ...

As for the links: http://www.adherents.com lacks a proper source for their numbers (I have dire trouble considering anything published by a US religious fundamentalist to extremist Christian a proper source, as I would not believe figures coming from a Saudi religious university or the Muslim Brotherhood). However, please take a good look at the third largest 'religious' group on that site. Why do you assume they'll turn to religion during the awakening, when they can also consider dragons Space aliens or something?


Sure, but there're numerous other possibilities. Godzilla comes to mind, for instance - here's what I'd expect as headliens in 2011, after Japan's first sighting of Ryumyu - "MANDA COMES TO LIFE, ATTACKS BULLET TRAIN - ARMY: WE'RE DESPERATLY SHORT OF MASER TANKS".

Similarily, Dragons might be seen simply as monstrous, unidentified and possibly hostile creatures and be attacked by nations' air forces. Unless, of course, the Dragons make contact and explain themselves, which is what most of them have done (those who didn't were usually shot down).

? have another look. They're linking to govt sources from around the world, the UN and so on. (why are you referring to them as a religious site, much less an extremist site? The ads?)


Sure. Which is why Shinto - which is one of the religions of only one country - is deservedly represented.


It's physically impossible for a dragon to fly - they're too big, about as aerodynamic as a brick, and covered in armour.
Trying to explain one rationally just isn't an option.
Which dragons were shot down? I can recall dragons oh, destroying Tehran, airliners and so on, but I can't recall any that lost.

Nachtsomething. woke up in a pool of toxic waste, found her eggs corrupted by the same, flipped out and flew around blowing things up until the German air force shot her down with space lazerz.

They claim they took most of their the info on Christianity from the World Christian Encyclopedia, a substantially less-than-scientific publication.


Shinto isn't a religion in our sense. Shinto believes in living spirits in everything; it's animist and very, very vague. Godzilla can well be interpreted as a menancing kami out to avenge mankinds ecological sins, or just menancing because it has a bad day (that's how Godzilla is usually portraied in the new movies, anyway). Kami are neither omnipotent nor invulnerable. They're not gods in the sense God is. They're spirits, but they're also mortal and limited. Additionally, they're so pop culture and commonly integrated into modern life with most japanese, they'd definitly not find back to 'true' shintoism in droves - simply because there IS no 'true' Shintoism. It's very much mix and match.

Anyway, 4 Million is maybe a bit low a figure - just, many Japanese won't readily associate themselves with Shintoism as a religion in the way Westerners would with their faith of choice. Asians tend to have a very different, less dogmatic way of living out their faith (or not).


They said that about bumblebees too, once. Besides, trying the scientific approach - if our laws of aerodynamics don't explain that properly, the laws of aerodynamics are flawed) - is just as feasible as running to the next church and kneeling down, shouting "you were right all along!". Aside from that, Dragons play a very minor role in the Bible.


Firewing in Germany, Kaltenstein barely not (because Lofwyr made him stop), both covered in DotSW, that UniOil dragon in the Secrets of Power, two Plummed Serpents mentioned as downed in the Atzlan book ... no Great was ever downed (save for by another Great, or personal choice), but many lesser forms.