Again, I also find that first part not well founded, considering I've already stated I see this as a much broader revolt. And again, that also negates the whole "Native Americans look Native" argument, since a significant part of the NAN rebel following wouldn't ethnically be in any non-marginal sense Native American.

Let me give a population breakdown of potential NAN support, as opposed to this .009% figure.

Strict indigenous people, north of Aztlan: probably around 2%, according to wikipedia
"One-drop" natives being reabsorbed into Native culture following the Awakening: http://www.xmission.com/~amauta/population.htm has seven million out of our current 300 or so mil, and Wikipedia gives a little under a half million Metis in Canada, so say 3%, claiming partial ancestry. Honestly, not as high as I expected.
Back-to-the-land environmentalists: maybe 1%
Hispanics of ancestry other than pure Spanish: Here we go. This is going to be like, 15%. And in a country that considers many of you an "illegal", I imagine a lot of these folks might sign on.
Metahumans, magicians and their families: It's my understanding that the first magicians mostly trained under native Shamanic tutelage. While the number of actual magicians is likely to be a fraction of a percentage point, they might bring some friends and family, impressed with the whole Awakening thing, with them. Moreover, add dwarves and elves in there and you've got a good 15%.
People with a beef with the federal government as a whole: 225 thousand people are in the Libertarian party of the US right now. So let's say 1%.
Aztlan: That's a good 20 million people, out of maybe 350 million in the US, Canada and Aztlan. So 6%, say.
People radicalized over to the NAN side by US anti-guerrilla actions, such as the internment camps: Say 5%, conservatively.

This adds up to 48%. Not too shabby. You could cut that figure by quite a bit and it'd still be a damn significant minority.

Is it bad, that I wish we were too?

Ugh. Seriously guys? We need to have a how great X political party is bit?

Can't we all agree that they are ALL politicians? And politician is still a dirty word in the context of lawyer, used car salesman, and such?
I sure as heck don't believe there is more than a handful up on the hill without dirty hands. It's the name of the game these days.

You can state that until your blue in the face, however it is not I repeat, not, what happened in the setting. At the time of the GGD the NAN was strictly natives although at some point the elves obviously come into play per the retcon. Afterwards they may have absorbed other groups, but not before.




Wow so much funny math, other then the above timing issue, libertarians? Seriously, their your recruiting base? Theres a huge difference between aligning libertarian and working with a faction that's attempting to wipe out people based on not being born Natam, which IS EXACTLY WHAT THE NATAMS WERE ABOUT AT THAT POINT. I'm telling you right now, in the continental US the number of people identifying as Native American or Eskimo is less then .009 of the whole. That's based on the last census data. Even assuming that VITAS was a non-natam killing punishment from god there's no way less then 1% becomes 48%.

You keep blatantly overlooking that the Natam movement wasn't about peace and hugs, they were burying whole cities under magma flows essentially because they could, and not actively recruiting outside of their own ethnic type. Sure they might have got some conversion because of the power they had but the same logistics that it would have taken to organize and bring to heel those new recruits would have been exactly the sort of things the US could have targeted.

Megu if you get to ignore Lone Eagle then I get to either ignore the aid the NAN Rebels got from the Horror in which case there was no Great Ghost Dance with exploding volcanoes and freaky weather OR I get to pretend that the Awakening happened the way that it should have logically unfolded given the way magical theory works in the Sixth World, namely that everyone's mojo started working at the same time, either way spells the death of the NAN.

And like it or not LurkerOutThere is correct, at the time of the actual reviot the NAN Rebels were pretty well ethically pure so at most you are looking at 1-2% of the population as a whole.

But as covered, or at least the assertion that I & I believe knasser have been making is that the NAN doesn't need a large population.

Magic, Commandos, and Storms & Explosions allow them to quite successfully tear up the US military, so what we're arguing about now is if the NAN could hold the area they are claiming during the GGD. So far the main arguement I've heard stopping this is that somehow the much larger civilian population is somehow going to rise up and take out NAN.

I still don't buy it. You telling me that random dude, who likely just buried part of his family due not to war or magic, but to disease or poisoning of the land, is going to rush out with his completely mundane self. Arm himself with inferior weaponry in comparison to the US military and go searh the ENORMOUS wild and unsettled areas of the the western US, leaving his remaining living family possibly defenseless and staving. All to challenge spirits of fire and beasts, magic spells, and who knows what else right out every worst nightmare movie, all without losing his nerve.

And they to top it off, your assuming that the Joe Randoms of the area do this in significant enough numbers to track down, actually find, and overwhelm through force the NAN that just took apart a much larger, better armed, and better trained force of mundanes?

It just doesn't sound likely to me at all. NAN doesn't even have to fight these guys. If the US army can't find them (and they can't), then these guys have little to no chance except for a few lucky guys who will be greatly outnumbered & outgunned. NAN can simply bypass them, they are under no requirement to actually deal with the population until the whole thing is over after Denver. And then, according to the books rather then focusing on forcing people out they simply absorbed most of them, and left the 'get off my lawn' crazies alone in their own 'anglo reservations' right where they were.

Population, and difference of size of the two forces is not as great a factor as some are making out. History is littered with smaller forces beating larger ones, through superior morale, tactics, and most especially equipment. NAN wins those last 2 in spades, and has no reason to confront the actual US population at any point until it's all over with.

Alexand sorry, but you and knasser don't get to just declare victory, especially when you are basing it off the "magical brave theory". And according to the fluff the citizens don't have to go out "injun hunting", in order to actually govern the area you claim they may have been able to take the NAN will have to come to the citizens.

Government sponsored biosculpting and - later - genetic alteration can quickly give pinkskins a nice red coat. Make acceptance of the treatment mandatory to hold government positions or to get government money (welfare) and some are going to go for it. Corps could throw their offerings in in exchange for research subjects - and that's just what they did in my game with early experiments in geneware tested on NAN pinkskins...

I'm not declaring victory (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

For that, you'd have to agree with me. and I don't mind that you don't (I'm enjoying arguing the points with you Ravor)

I think that the magic part of the equation makes a bigger difference then you give it credit, especially since it's pretty much unopposed.

As for Govern? Who said anything about that? We're talking winning the GGD war, governing comes afterward. In order to win the war against the US & Canadian governements they don't need to fight the indigenous population of the area. For the most part we are talking about areas with some of the lowest population densities on the continent here. Everyone can literally go around where most of the people are pretty easily. They only point of fighting near a population center is to control those areas, which NAN doesn't need to do. They just need to wipe out enough of the Military in the area that the US is forced to withdraw in the face of staggering losses of resources. Remember the US is almost completely bankrupt at this point, and stretched way, way beyond it's limits. NAN simply has to make it so costly to stay that the Military has to cede land and retreat.

Which according to the story is how it went down. US & Canada retreated eastward, and Denver made the front lines between them and NAN into the new borders of the countries. Which is why the UCAS/Sioux border is one of the most militarized in the world, those armies are still guarding that line.

After the war, things are different anyway. As the population who wants to fight now must throw out NAN who is busy swelling their numbers with like-minded non-natives, and still has a lot of magical firepower vs what is essentially the most mook-like group in the game, un-cybered, completely mundane civilians.

Shotguns and Assault rifles or not, that is so not a fair fight for the civilians.

Shotguns, assault rifles, control of those large population centers (you did say that the GGD forces didn't take control of such areas - and the people there never really lost it either, so how is there a smooth transition to the GGDs being in charge) and vastly greater population too.

Incorrect. As I said after the war, things change. Internal dissidents are a lot easier to control then engaging a actively rebellious population at the same time as their Military force.

After Denver, individual population centers do not outnumber or outgun NAN forces, and as time goes on this gets much much worse as NAN gets bigger.

The people of any country, america included, are not a mass hive mind. We're talking percentages of the population actively resisting, and after Denver NAN can deal with them as individual groups not some mass army of civvies.
And if we're at this point, NAN beat up the Army, so mass civvies can't be that much harder being strictly inferior in all ways from a combat standpoint.

NAN can fight the military first, have Denver, THEN take on rebels, and at this point all their forces are veterans of 3 years of conflict. They are well armed, and the shamans are likely initiates with Magic ratings of 6+ (judging by how PCs develop in game develop).

I just don't see the civilians changing the situation much either way. If NAN can beat the army, then civvies aren't a problem. The real disagreement at the heart of all this, is if NAN has a enough magic to beat the Army. I still say yes, because it's unopposed, which make it a ridiculously powerful force multiplier for the NAN forces. There is just to many tricks the Shamans can pull that mundanes can't deal with. Not to mention that some of the Commandos are Physads, in a time period before wired reflexes which is something scary on it's own.

The civies are FAR superior to the US Army in one thing - numbers. And don't believe that you're talking aobut individuals - there are plenty of organizations left - churches, businesses, local governments that don't agree with the feds.

Aand also, if the GGDs attack the civies and they'll lose all foreign sympathy and support. They'll be murderous war criminals, and no amount of magic fixes that.

So let me get this straight. We have say 0.5% of the 2mil proto-NAN who are shamans before the awakening and hence understand how magic is supposed to work. So we get the wakening and of those 10,000 it turns out that about 100 actually have ANY magical abilities, and about 10 will have significant magical abilities equal to a PC mage. So there are about 10 real mages for the entire NAN. I can easily see how they could take over half the US.

The civilian population doesn't need to rise up and take out the NAN, they just have to resist, either passively or otherwise the NAN's orders to comply, which based that the NAN at this point is working on a pogram against non NAN's seems actually like a pretty good case. Additionally because of their extremely divergent views and chosen tactics the vast bulk of American and Canadian society at that point would deny them any sort of support. Even with magic you still have to eat, still need intel on where your targets are, still need a safe place to lay down at night. Even without the population rising up against them the NAN by their very nature and action make the population non compliant except through out and out fear, and they simply don't have the nuimbers to compel that and their tactics don't do them any favors. Are you seriously telling me for example that the US population wouldn't at least try and put up a resistance? I know a lot of RL junk has gotten all over this thread but predator drones might as well be magic for all of al-queda's ability to do fuck all about them and yet they still fight back for much more narrow reasons then defending their own soil.

This thread no longer really discusses anythign new under the sun but here is why i believe it was smashingly unrealistic.

1) In a WMD fight the US wins, if the NAN continued to blow the tops off mountains i can very well see the US nuking suspected nan sites and camps. They only need to be right a few times.
2) Even with magic the NAN is signifigantly outnumbered and out gunned.
3) The treaty of denver didn't really offer the US anything yet the NAN was in no position to dictate unilateral terms outside of storyline fiat. The retcon abotu the expulse all non-nan's helps a bit with that angle as it at least gives the common person a reason to not be up in arms but it doesn't explain why the nation break was so huge other then EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.
4) National systems in shadowrun are all but pointless withint he existing corp framework. I would really like to see a NAN/UCAS/CAS brawl or some other acknowledgement that the treaty of denver is no longer sustainable. Otherwise why even draw national boundaries on the map.

I have most of the SBs for 3rd and 2nd and I find that I need to use them both to get bang for the buck. The 2nd Ed stuff has the info I need and can use and the 3rd Ed stuff is nice for amplifying and giving me ideas to help bring my 2nd Ed books up to date for 3rd.

God i love the comment that the NAN beat up the army, as evidently one AIR cav deviision. Just so we're clear the army has 18 active duty deivisions and 10 reserve so even assuming a generous 40% die off that leaves the Army ALONE with 12 ready active duty divisions IN THE ARMY ALONE.

I get that the NAN had the ability to cause large scale havoc, I'll even grant that, but that alone doesn't win aware especialyl wheny our only options are "Blow up a mountain" or run and hide.

That's the issue, the US/UCAS had nothign to gain by surrendering at Denver and everything to loose. Remember these are the exact same people who were prepared to nuke the whole damn world rather then let communism triumph.

Even post denver its not that things would look great for the Nan. Assuming there were 1.5 million or so NAN pre-ghost dance war, assuming none died in the war or the death camps and assuming every last one of them support the GGD movement and was a rifle or magic carrying soldier their still trying to exert will on a population 100 times their size and convince them their second class citizens now.

Not only that, but what's to stop the US from going back in AFTER the Treaty is signed (and the GGD is over). Just engineer an incident and invade. They won't have nukes because the US would have destroyed them... or worse, USED them. Let's face it, the natams could not have HELD the territory. The same thing goes for Tir over in Seattle.

FASA has a thing for creating an uber-invincible force (the Elves in Shadowrun) that can OMGWTFPWN EVERYONE ELSE. If you looked at Awakening, you'll read fluff about how many Uber Mages™ the Tir SpecOPs guys had. The same thing goes for the Natams. FASA just pushed the "I WIN, BITCHES!!!!!!!" button for the elves and the natams.

Awww, bad FASA for having thousands of years old characters that are powerful...
...That you're almost never likely to meet, so won't ever get to really know about, but who are powerful as some Players want their character to be - how unfair, eh ??

I'm going to ignore some of the vitriol and go back to facts. The effect of VITAS is almost unimaginable to people today.

Fact 1: The global economy tanked in a way that makes today's fiscal problems what economists might term "a piffle." When 25% of everyone dies, things go sideways. One quarter of the breadwinners died, seriously impacting purchasing. One quarter of the producers died, along with one quarter of the delivery system and one quarter of the sales force so even if there had been money available, the products were not getting to market.



Fact 2: Howling Coyote and his band vanished for TWO YEARS (2012 & 2013) before announcing the NAN in 2014. No one really knows what happened then but a crash course in magic theory, medicine lodge building, spirit quests, and weapon collecting was probably on the agenda.


Fact 3: The military was more a food delivery service than a combat force. They maybe had 6-12 months to begin the task of restructuring, retraining, and rebuilding their combat infrastructure between the end of the VITAS chaos and the announcement of NAN by Howling Coyote. While I don't doubt that the military had become eminently popular for out of work people to enlist, that results in a military full of relatively unskilled troops who went through an abbreviated Basic Service with a much reduced officer corps. Even ignoring that, the VITAS-induced economic paralysis would have had a serious impact on their stockpiles.

Fact 4: Once the U.S. Military really got engaged their job basically broke down to "Find Bin Ladin." Without getting into politics, we know how this story goes. The NAN is at least as big as the Middle Eastern countries that Bin Ladin hides in and many regions are just as cave-riddled. Plus, Howling Coyote has jedi mind trick powers that compensate for any support the populace may give to the US Military. ("I am not an AmerInd. You will sell me the gas and ammunition." "You are not an Amerind. I will sell you the gas and ammunition.")

Fact 5: Howling Coyote had the support Mexico/Aztlan. Between that and the relatively porous US-Canada border, the NAN forces have the same ability to hide behind national borders that Bin Ladin does. (I'm not suggesting Canada was intentionally harboring the NAN, merely that the US forces couldn't operate there without prior agreement, none of which is noted in any of the official timelines. )


Fact 6: Even weak mages are dangerous to large, obvious mechanized forces that do not have a doctrine to deal with magic. I'm not going to call casters all powerful, but imagine if Custer's cavalry ran into a small force of tear gas equipped indians. Magic is pretty comparable to tear gas in that it can thoroughly disrupt unprepared forces but isn't a major factor against those who are trained to deal with it.
If multiple low-force Spirits use indirect powers like Accident and Weather Control in concert with low-force spells that make the environmental conditions difficult (Confusion, Chaos, Barriers, etc), you can get pilots are going to crash when they botch on their single maneuver action per round (This is pre-cyberware or riggers). Once the pilots burn through their karma (SR1-3) or edge (SR4) they start crashing. With these powers being LOS they can be done from cover miles away, assuming you don't have your own casters to shoo the buggers away or provide coordinates for artillery/rocket barrages. On a mundane level, those powers are LOS so stealth, smoke, or operating under the cover of night do a lot to offset magic.


Fact 7: The U.S. Government had not really accepted magic yet and operations were done "by the book." For anyone who doesn't understand how that's possible, I want you to go read up on how militaries throughout history have not dealt well with the introduction of doctrine-altering technology. For simplicity, focus on the start of WWII, particularly german tanks, submarines and, to a lesser extent, rocket bombs.

Fact 8: there were many members of the NAN who not only knew military procedures but were also personally acquainted with the military targets in question. As of 2007 there were roughly 10.7 million working-age veterans. American Indians represent 2% of the US military enlistments so that means there were roughly 200,000 AmerInd veterans who would know just what that book says.

fact 9: The NAN almost never fought the US forces directly and other than the showy volcano attacks didn't attack the populace much. Even the Los Alamos volcano was as much an attack on the military infrastructure as it was a civilian strike.

No because FASA did this in BattleTech as well.

Also, Synner667, there are a LOT of people in this forum who despise the IEs... AND they are not the frakers I'm talking about!

Shit, you are talking about the Immortal Elves, and I'm talking about ALL THE REST OF THEM! You know the fucktards who are not 100's or 1000's of years old. Most of them are only at MOST 60 years old. No, FASA pushed the "I Win!!!!" Button™ for the elves.

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And where does it say that 1/4 of the US population dies?

We already know that if a global pandemic hits the world, there will be more deaths in 3rd world countries than there will be in 1st world countries. We have medicine, and they do not.



And everyone else was sitting there staring dumbly at the wall soiling themselves and giving away nuclear weapons.



Where did you get this information? Which source book stated this so I can read it.




The reason we can't get bin Laden is we want to keep the people in the Middle East happy. If we had to get him otherwise we know (I'm talking it's almost the Word Of God level certainty) that millions of people will die, then we would get him because if nothing else we would kill EVERYONE who was trying to stop us.



Did Mexico have nukes? If they don't we tell Mexico to turn him over otherwise we will start nuking them. People don't like it when their cities daytime temperature gets to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.



At this point you respond with mass carpet bombing of natam settlements. Use Sat Recon to find them and then you bomb them all. This is a war of survival, not the patty cakes types of war like the Gulf Wars. I'm talking World War One and Two types of wars.




This is a valid point, but honestly, if you know that those natams are using Something Strange™ then you firebomb the area and let God sort them out.



This is also a timeline where natams were being rounded up and put into Concentration Camps. I don't think that they were recruiting them for the military... kind of counter productive if you know what I mean.



18,000 civilians died in that attack... and the US government was just going to play patty cakes with them? No kigmatzomat, the US government would have gone completely and utterly insane with Rage and would want to kill EVERY SINGLE natam just so they could not do this again.

I am just curious...

If the background fluff says that the events happened, why try to change that?
It is after all a fictitious world, who really cares?

Because we want the setting to be plausible enough to pass the suspension of disbelief test.

Well within the acceptable ranges for the cyberpunk genre of course.

Maybe, and without having all the books, My assumption is that we do not have all of the facts... because of this, we are left with some questions that apparently require answering to pass the "verisimilitude test" you speak of. But here is my point... If we are lacking information, we will never be able to get there in a reasonable time frame, and really, it is irrelevant anyway...

Just take it for what it is worth and enjoy the game... I have lost no sleep due to the lack of "verisimilitude" on the NAN situation... Why is it so damn important?

Just me, I guess... and besides, it allows for some really interesting backgrounds for characters... that is a plus for me...

And as a Note, I am not really looking for a fight here, it just does not make sense to spend so much time on something that occurred 55 years ago in the timeline... Again, it is history, who really cares?

Actually no, there won't be more deaths in 3rd world nations than in the US because we DO NOT have much in the way of anti-virals (VIRALLY Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome) for the simple fact that virii don't have the kinds of biological processes that bacteria have that we can poison (anti-biotics). Closely related groups of viruses sometimes respond to an existing anti-viral (e.g. TamaFlu works against some swine flus) but most virii require a specially cultured anti-viral.

Even in today's world with the current crop near-pandemic events, our anti-viral stockpile is maybe enough to treat 15% of the populace, assuming that it even works. And nothing, nothing in SR history indicates they had one.

QUOTE (kigmatzomat @ Jul 12 2009, 05:25 PM) *

Fact 2: Howling Coyote and his band vanished for TWO YEARS (2012 & 2013) before announcing the NAN in 2014.

Actually, no. They were probably desperately trying to make the world look like something better than the Great Depression + Dust Bowl + TB Outbreak. Howling Coyote probably wasn't on their radar at all.


QUOTE (kigmatzomat @ Jul 12 2009, 05:25 PM) *

Fact 3: The military was more a food delivery service than a combat force.


Okay, this is extrapolation. When things go bad, we call in the National Guard. When things go totally FUBAR, like when you have "The Year of Chaos" we use the Army. Given that the U.S. military is probably the single largest and most effective logistics organization on the planet and the only system in the U.S. designed and trained to function under attack, it was most likely the only one working. Or do you think FedEx, UPS, and/or the U.S. Postal service is going to be working when 25% of their organization is dead?





Yeeeaah. I'm beginning to question the value is in having a discussion with anyone who suggests nuking sovereign nations that we share a border with.

If we won't tick off the mid-east for Bin Ladin, why would we tick off Mexico, that's on our border and, in the SRverse, is much more functional militarily? Keep in mind, until Los Alamos the military isn't really involved. It's all FBI/ATF enforcing the re-education act.



QUOTE (kigmatzomat @ Jul 12 2009, 05:25 PM) *
Fact 6: Even weak mages are dangerous to large, obvious mechanized forces that do not have a doctrine to deal with magic.


What you call "natam settlements" are what in the normal universe we call "towns." You see, thanks to Vitas, there are plenty of depopulated or abandoned towns to move into. There's nothing specific that would make them distinctive to any satellite activity. Assuming they find ones that have supportive "pinkskins" to act as fronts, neighboring towns won't really know anything either.


QUOTE (kigmatzomat @ Jul 12 2009, 05:25 PM) *
Fact 7: The U.S. Government had not really accepted magic yet and operations were done "by the book."



The problem with this is that a) you have to admit they have something weird and b) that short of using artillery to carve 700 mile long, twenty mile wide deadzone across the continental U.S. between Fort Hood and Los Alamos then the very aircraft you would use to firebomb them come under attack before they can drop them.

And going back to my statement above, there's nothing that would let SatRecon or an AWACs tell the difference between a God Fearing White American and a Red Devil Injun, since in this case the AmerInds aren't carrying shoulder-mounted SAMs like you see on Middle Eastern insurgents.






Yeeeaaah, the re-education camps happened in 2009. Unless the government had a time-machine, they wouldn't be able to un-enlist the hundreds of thousands of American Indians who have been enlisting in the U.S. military at twice the national average for decades.





First, 18,000 citizens died. Los Alamos National Lab employees 15,920 people according to Wikipedia. Given that it is a nuclear weapon development facility, it qualifies as a valid military target by pretty much every definitions of the term. If you compare the deaths from the volcano to those of airstrikes against targets of comparable size (bases with 16,000 soldiers) in close proximity to a civilian city, you'll find the Volcano was pretty much on par with a massive airstrike. That won't change U.S. views of the events but it means that Mexico's support of the NAN is in keeping with international standards.

And second, the U.S. Government did, in fact, go "utterly insane with Rage and would want to kill EVERY SINGLE natam just so they could not do this again". It was called Executive Order 17-321 and Congress ratified the order with the Resolution Act of 2016.

I have two answers to that, the first "nice" answer is that we should care about the history of the setting because the devs have decided to make it important, personally I would much rather have the "history" section of Shadowrun be a farse that talks about how people simply don't give a damn about anything that happened more than a hour ago.

The second "answer" is why do you care whether or not we discuss an issue that you have no interest in?

First... I DO care about the History, I just do not get bent out of shape when it does not conform to what I think that History should be... It is history after all, it has alreasdy happened... how often do you go back and disect the history of World War II, or the History of the War of 1812... Unless you are a Historian, it is of no intrinsic, functrional value...

2nd: It is interesting in a way to see some views on why things should be different... but we have generally diverged from Discussion and Debate realm into the realm of Argument for Arguments sake because opinions differ... there are interesting statements, but they are being overshadowed by the Pointless Arguments as far as I can tell...

I like Debate... Not so much the "Neaner, Neaner, Neaner, I am Right and You are Wrong" comments that seem to be cropping up more and more often on the subject... No offense intended Ravor...