Except that for those corrupt guys it is in their best interests to resist the Treaty. 24/100 senators would have directly lost their jobs/gravy trains as a result of this (and I've probably missed 1 or 2 states). Also I can think of at least 2 former Mexican Provinces that would be very worried about a Treaty that gives any power to Aztlan. So you've alreay lost your 2/3 majority in the Senate, which I'm pretty sure you'd need to push this through. I'm also not even sure if the POTUS could use his executive veto to push this through, let alone the former Vice-President having enough political clout to go through with it. This is also not even taking into account the various Governors, Representatives, and State Legislators that would have lost their jobs and possibly their lives for this. Corrupt people tend to unite behind other corrupt, and more ruthless people.

Of course with the addition in the narrative of three little sentences it could have solved all those arguments. "When the Treaty of Denver was tabled before Congress it caused quite the uproar due to its general lack of support. The day before the vote went through a great form spirit, bigger than anything ever seen to that point, manifested in the Senate Chamber and began killing all the most vocal critics of the Treaty. After that it was passed unanimously."

Edit: Definitely missed Alaska, and possibly Hawaii since I don't remember if they got their monarchy back through Denver or not.

Although not cannon, my short piece entitled "A Question Answered " touches on this premise. It can be found in the knassers viginette thread here on dumpshock. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

(I would link it but the granddaughter is screaming for Cheerios.) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif)

Except when that happens, the Senators give in and when the Spirit leaves, the NAN is nuked to hell and gone!

That is one thing to remember, DO NOT kill only some of those in power, the rest will make sure it does NOT happen again by killing EVERYONE and letting God sort it out.

For those espousing a righteous crusade to reclaim the NaN lands, (not an unreasonable idea) the timeline does a lot to kick the US while its down.

The US started out in a bad place from vitas 1 before NAN. Afterwards they have to deal with goblinization, race riots, another 10% Vitas die off, a major natural disaster,and a global computer crash.

August 2017 Magic is real
-Crusaders would start magical manhattan project
-begin with no casters, no theory and a pile of money. Not going to be fast. Figure 5-10 years to have something equivalent to the GGD, more to develop a defense.

-Crusaders start quiet military build up for Operation Indian Giver. Kept slow and on down low to prevent any indian "accidents" from happening.

April 2021 - goblinization hits 10% of populace regardless of race, creed, color, or social status. (around 22M in post-NaN US)

-race riots ensue

Summer 2021 - martial law declared for months in US and some concentration camps built to hold "infected".

- production again goes into crapper. One decade was probably enough to rebuild key technical staff levels but now 10% are down for a while as their body mass doubles and then some of the wind up in concentration camps. Plus the martial law means all the national guardsmen are out of the labor pool.

2022 Vitas II kills another 10%. (22 Million) Hello US economic collapse round 2. Between martial law and the concrentration camps, this is about as bad for the economy as VITAS 1.

Combined with the damage from the race riots, I expect the US is economically exhausted for 4-5 years, meaning they get back on their feet in time for:

2028 California earthquake

2029 -NaN open doors for all metahumans (begin exodus of those sent to concentration camps) further kicking US economy

-Computer Crash 1 - destroy economy. Watch as banks lock their doors, air traffic control goes back to paper, and the mail (mostly sorted by computer-driven auto-sorters) piles up.

Maybe that's the main reason that only one GGD has been made? Sorta like Daniel Coyote and his fellows realized how high the price for a second GGD would be and thus decided not to do it again?

I doubt it for a couple of reasons, firstly the NAN would have been given practical magical knowledge as opposed to the theorical knowledge they would need to make that conclusion in part because the Horror wouldn't want them to find out and also because it was more important for the NAN to know how to use magic as a weapon as opposed to understanding how and why things worked.

Secondly, the fluff that talks about The Great Ghost Dance from a supposed eyewitness spells the picture out clearly, the NAN simply did not have the ability to pull it off again because of the cost in lives and energy.

And thirdly, remember that Big A believes/believed that the Horrors were their Gods of old, and they didn't give a frag about fragging up the Astral, possibly forever with theit other projects, including "remapping" the Astral.

Ravor, you're comming up with some pretty extreme stuff. Where is it all written ? I only have the shadowrun 4th core rulebook, and it doesn't say ANYTHING about any horrors. I understood it was left to each GM to determine the reasons behind these events for his own campaign.

The information that Ravor is referring to is from earlier source books.

Wouldn't it be best to just think of SR world to be diverging much earlier, so that things like NAN can be possible?

Sure, the country is called USA and it might not have made sense for them to give up territory and allow NAN to become a separate nation and what not. 

However, you are using information about our world to judge a fictional setting that's very similar to our world with an alternate history. It is likely that there are other details that the writers have not mentioned and couldn't possibly have mentioned due to space, understanding, and other factors that go into how such thing is possible.

Sure, they might not come up in your games at all and you might find the whole thing ridiculous, but I think many people do find the existence of NAN as interesting and possibly useful. Unless there's really some fundamental flaws that completely spoil the game, why take it out?

No I find the idea of the NAN to be so repulsive that I can't push the "I BELIEVE!!!!!"™ button at all. I can push it for the megacorps because otherwise the game doesn't exist.

The sad thing is Siel, the NAN and the elven nations don't have to exist at all. The megacorps are all you need because they are what you're going to run against 99% of the time.

The only reason that the NAN exist is because the people at FASA were retarded. They didn't even come up with anything unique because they just took stereotypes and blew them out of proportion. For example, Mexico, would they REALLY have gone back to being Aztecs? They are a country of 76% ROMAN CATHOLICS! I think if you add in the other denominations of Christianity they are like 94+% Christian.

Troll much ?
Also, which previous sourcebooks exactly ?

What a load of rubbish.

The fact that You think the corps "have to exist" to justify the game kinda ignore that the whole Amerindian sequence "has to exist" for SR to have it's look and feel (now very much in decline)

Though, if you don't know anything about SR before v4, you might not actually know how much the Amerindian look was SR.

Also, it seems very sad that you think only megacorps ever conduct covert ops...
...All those people conducting industrial espionage for all those other companies, and all those Special Ops chaps in the various armed forces, are all irrelevant - to you.

Also, the Aztecs being the dominant religions is probably not through the choice of the people, but what is forced on them - convert or die, makes people convert real quick.
Wiccans and similar went through something similar when the Roamns made Christianity the religion of choice.

They don't have to exist at all for a simple cyberpunk setting where runners go against the corp. On the other hand, I think a lot of people enjoy shadowrun because it's not just runners against the corp. I can play in a game dealing with gang wars, corp wars, runner/corp wars, or of course, wars between various nations such as Nan, Tir na Nog, and others.

If you really can't take it and think that they don't have to exist at all.. do so? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)  


On a side note, 94% Christian might not mean much if it's data from our world. Maybe there are fewer believers in Christianity. Maybe a lot of people thought, shit, if there are magic, maybe there aren't gods, especially if the crazy dude doing blood sacrifices can perform miracles and their local priests can't.

Personally, I'm rather fond of Aztechnology. I don't think FASA was wrong there (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Here are some passages from SR1 (1989) and the Seattle Sourcebook (1990) I've belatedly typed up in response to issues raised throughout this thread and to to protect FASA i.e. the SR founders good name (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
The first addresses the issue of SAIM and NAN's racial composition.





These show SAIM was sort of an anti corp left wing native rights group and the later Salish War Council also had no issues working with non Indians.

This relates to the apparent retcon in the North American sourcebook of the NAN's Anglo purge. The NAN sourcebooks typically give a pop. of 5% of those with absolutely no Indian heritage.

Based on this I'm wondering if there was a retcon but I need to dig up the NA book to see.

I see the formation of the NAN, Tir Na Nog (yeah, I'm sure I'm capitalizing it wrong), Azzie turf, the breakdown of Germany, Japanese samurai culture taking dominance, etc, etc...not as "OMG, Fasa were racists and retards, what stereotypes," but rather as (a) "What can we do to set this game apart from a no-magic cyberpunk genre," and (b) "Let's tie ourselves to the magical past by having society, away from megacorps, regress to earlier periods and cultural traditions, perhaps from when magic was around the last time."

It's like the Victorian period's "reclaiming of the past," celebrating the old by revitalizing it with new literary styles.

Mirilion most of the things I've raised come from the days when Earthdawn crossovers were being pushed down Shadowrun players throats, if I remember correctly Second Edition was the worst offender so I'd point you in that direction if you want to start your research.

As for the timeline spilt between the real world and Shadowrun, if I remember correctly the divergence happened sometime in the 1970-1980s, so with the notable exception of IEs pissing all over history "real world data" pre-1970s should be a perfectly valid place to start and then any changes still has to pass the "smell test".

Although I am mildly curious why people think the devs would even pretend that the Sixth World was an alternate Earth and then change and throw out all sorts of numbers and historic facts without bothering to tell us about the differences.

Except FASA were retards because, for example, they took the Mexicans and turned them into Aztecs. Yeah, yeah, I know "Magic Works and therefore only the Aztec medicine men had Uber-Power™"... which is bullshit because what about all those Catholic Priests that were praying and praying and their belief in Higher Powers did nothing for them.

Magic is magic and the Aztec shamans were just as surprised as everyone else when their magic worked. FASA had that they were able to take over Mexico? Yup FASA were a bunch of fraktards.

Well to be fair to the devs, the NAN and by extention Big A did have a hand up from a Horror and Blood Magic is pretty effective which is something that I don't see very many Priests being willing to use.

Not that it invalidates your larger point of course.

So who's more retarded? The retards who wrote something you don't like, or you for spending money on it and bitching about how stupid it is, twenty years later?

I might be inclined to agree with you Critias IF the devs have not shown that they are willing to retcon things and IF I felt that the written history was something that couldn't be stripped form Shadowrun without rendering it useless as a whole.

This is exactly the way I view this. I really wish I could have expressed it as well, Critias.

Who said I spent money on this? I can go down to the local B&N and read the source books all day long. I did spend money on Shadowrun because I like the game system. It's clean and there is balance between the different "classes" of characters. Yeah, you can be a shit hot spell slinger, but you're a bit squishy. On the other hand, you can you can be cybered to the max and kick a lot of ass, but you don't have any magic.


The fluff on NAN and Aztecs... I don't like because it doesn't make sense. That is my problem with it. The logic around it is so inane that I just can't accept it.




The reason I said what I said is that "SpecOps chaps" are not freelancers, they go where they are told to and do what they are told. They have no "freedom" to do what they want. They don't like a job, they can't just walk away. That to me limits the types of games that you can run.



Except those Wiccans could run. In Mexico, the Aztecs are outnumbered many times to one. The tiny number of spell slingers don't take over rest because they are only human.

Let's look at it another way: sure you are a Big Bad Ass Mojo Slinger™, but if you get poisoned then you are dead. Remember this is a game of "glass cannons" No matter how tough you are you can be splattered with a lucky shot.

Except that even in the real world, History gets re-written from time to time... don't look on it as a retcon, view it as a revision of history by those who dislike that historical outcome and are attempting to rewrite it over time...

It still does not invalidate the original historical significance of the events that occurred, it just dilutes them so that they are palatable to others...

Examples please. I know that scientific theory gets re-written when new discoveries are made, but history... I would want an example.

Read a history book written in New York City in 2009, and compare it's coverage of America in the 1800's to, say, a history book written in Atlanta in 1909.