So I was flipping through the Shadows of North America the other night and stopped and re-read the section on the Anglo Reservations, and particularly started thinking about where it talks about how they are governed and some odd ball societal structures that developed. SO here is a thread devoted to creating wacky govermental/societal structures to populate your Anglo-Reservations. Have Fun!

To get things started:

The Mulletocracy: The reservation is dominated by those with the biggest/best Mullets.

The Gold Mine - Controlled by Stewart Mining Operations, this reservation came into existence due to large donations of gold to Ute political leaders and various tribes. Politically, it is controlled by the company shareholders - of which only a handful reside inside the reservation and see to the day to day affairs of the citizens. The judical system is based upon Christian religious text, and the assigned pastor serves as judge - there is no jury system. The company hires many amerindians to shore up its pool of workers, which helped ease tensions with locals - despite the occasion anti-Anglo protest. However, since the PCC takeover, the mine reservation has had to fight off Karachi takeover attempts and resorted to blackmail to keep their reservation status. Due to PCC regulations, they must increase their Anglo population by two-fold, which has brought in pinkskins from the SS-Council and Cascade Mountains looking for work. Rumors of more than just gold treasure laying deep inside the mines has brought spies and claim jumpers, as well.

How about a "live in the past" kind of Leave It To Beaver/Pleasantville artificial wholesome Fifties throwback paradise environment?

A medieval rennaisance fair that never ends?

Danutopia: Founded by a firey and violent Irish-American Ex-Catholic mother-of-five who decided to return to her Celtic roots at create her vision perfect government at the same time, Danutopia is a matrocracy ruled absolutely by a powerful group of Great Mother shamans.

While ostensibly a republic the laws of the community prohibit anyone who has not given birth from holding office, disenfranchising men unless they are willing and able to undergo some surgical alterations. Some have, of course, and several genetic males have seats on the community's legislative body.

The requirements for executive office are even stricter. Only magically active mothers who are members of the community's official initiatory group may hold executive office. The group is based around the paradigm of the Great Mother, making it difficult for those who do not follow her to gain entry. This, combined with the groups function as the community's only legitimate policlub, practically ensures that only multi-initiate Great Mother shamans can hold executive office. While it is theoretically possible for male magicians with surgical alteration to achieve high executive office the magic loss caused by the surgery combined with prejudices within the group make this rather difficult and it has not yet been done successfully.

What does quoting me have to do with that?

Open cassinos. Have the indians come in to see the quaint caucasian dance rituals at an authentically reproduced Disco.

Not humoristic, but I could see some neo-luddite, religious/secular anarchist commune.

That could be quite a curveball to throw at smuggling crew.

"you're off course and need to set down for a few repairs after that border dust up with the Sioux Customs T-Birds. You spot a quiet looking settlement up ahead, doesn't seem to be much traffic either physical or EM coming from it. They have a nice white wooden church with a steeple, reminds you of something from a sim"

Of course you land, the locals are torn between their distrust of machines and their religious obligation to treat people hospitably. Oh and of course they don't have any spare parts around, or electricity, or matrix connections, but on the other hand they don't let the Sioux Customs agents in to town either.

Just make the whole reservation Amish. Heh.

An eerily silent town. A child disappears, and strange happenings and shadowy, misshapen forms stalk the shadows.

-Or-

It seems to be a quiet, small town, but everyone is afraid of clowns... They catch a glimpse of a clown, now and then, sometimes it seems like an hallucination, and it takes some time to notice the sharp, needle-like teeth...

Dr. Giggles is the local doc, and your team just got shot up pretty badly redballing it through the Ute.

you could have a small reservation that's a stopover on a smuggling route, run by two rival families--the Rojos, and a yakuza clan run by a man named Seibei. pressure between the two groups of mobsters threatens to spill into open violence at any time.

And the runners, of course, can hire their skills out to both sides then kill off both families just because it is the honorable thing to do before moving on.

A town that (until the runners discover it) has been a secret retirement home for the ultra-class. Every resident is a former president, movie star, or corp CEO.

"Springfield," on the surface, looks like a sleepy middle-class suburb. It is really a front for a ruthless terrorist and arms dealing organization, led by an incompetent tactician who once was a used car salesman and hires ninjas, rich Europeans and Australian bikers as advisors.

The circus came to town... and never left... and took over.

Old people are considered useless and are sent to the slaughter when they turn age 40... or 30... or 20....

What about non-"anglo" reserves? There might be enough back-to-the-land African folks who want to set up shop, or a slice of authentic Thailand somewhere in the middle of Saskatchewan.

Who's seen "The Village?"

The team hacker learns of a mythical city that some of the greatest software designers have supposedly built amongst the NAN reservations. It's called the Logocracy (lō-gŏk're-sē), and the rumors claim that they have the most advanced programs and hardware ever developed. The fact that they've all linked their minds to a logic analyzer and developed a near perfect hive mind isn't mentioned.

Who would sooner rip out their eyeballs with their fingers? This guy.

Oh, even better. Since the law in the Rez is varied, at best, for some of the more "faithful" ones to the UCAS, where the lawman is the resident agent of an FBI field office in Seattle or Denver, and instead of enforcing the law he runs the city as a fiefdom in conjunction with other crooked Feds and BNP agents across the NAN, using the reservations as black sites for smuggling and the production of illegal products/substances.

*props to mfb for that one*

you want to go right off the deep end, who says the inhabitants of this little town not on any map are even terestrial?



Mars needs women?

emo samurai Land

Every escaped mystical real ultimate ninja, insanely powerful chaos mage, vat-grown retired Red Samurai on the run, and ultra-elf-shaman with maxed out Charisma and Willpower descended from nobility that ever lived has congregated here. They formed when they wiped out the lasts colony of smugglers, drug dealers, petty gangsters, and street-level runners for not being 1337 enough. No nation dares challenge their sovereignty, and anyone entering must succeed against one of their residents in a duel to the filled-Stun-track.

You can also buy power armor here.

And Puppies! And Hellhounds! And Insane Clown Posse!

Come in, but leave your sanity at home!

And your weakass 4 in your primary combat skill!

The Rainforest

There was a craze durning the Awakening to build and test sustainable development models. Back then, it seemed nature had turned against man, and some of us tried to build nature shelters to protect ourselves. You have to understand that we thought time was running out, that this was the end of the world. World War III. Some people still feel like that, as if we lost that war and are now under occupation of Magic. I feel like that sometimes, too.

The technologies that were used to create the first nature shelters rested firmly on the bleeding edge of hypothetical technology. A few were built with pseudotechnology - including crap like telekinesis and crystal power. Yeah, turns out that was magic, if very much unrefined. Those shelters are easy to recognize and were built mostly in suburban towns where people would empty out their backyard pools and plant a garden, erect a little greenhouse, and call it "a safety net". By the '21 Exodus these had hermetic symbols painted all across them, but were almost all destroyed because the NAN fighters, assuming they were US military outposts - as if the fucking Marines would have planted goldenrod, sage, goddamn trumpet vines and leave a trail of glowing nightlights from the house to the shelter - razed them without even looking inside.

At the same point, we saw some attempts to use just knowledge of science (with a healthy dose of computer modeling) to build nature shelters. These were more concentrated efforts by governments and corporate thinktanks to design what would become the first arcologies. How such a simple idea could go so wrong was beyond me back then. Fish tanks is all they are now. People too scared to come out and face the world, hiding in their little island with its model castle and big plastic palm trees; bubbles floating all over the goddamn place. They pretend the castle is impenetrable, that the Beast at the Gates will go away. They pretend that the War isn't over, that Nature wasn't declared de facto victor, and that sustainable development means they live forever. May they rot in their plastic hells.

When it came to the building of The Rainforest, though, something different happened. Something like fate. Six people in a coffee shop struck up a conversation about sustainable development, and their minds just clicked. Six of the world's brightest students waiting to here a lecture instead spend the rest of the day, and then the next week, talking and discussing ideas. They forge a vision: the perfect blending of nature and technology, a seamless weave, like a camouflage net. Funding turned out to be the hard part, in many ways, but they found donors and investors all across the world, eventually. Over half the materials and technologies had to be invented or reinvented: nanomachines, genetic engineering, fusion power. Tunnels drilled in to sloid rock, whole water collection schemes barely dreamed of and flora and fauna literally from dreams.

Seven years into construction, a few days from completion, the War ended. We were ushered out, and the Injuns put a goddamn condemned sign on the place. Well, boy, somebody had the last laugh though, 'cause they left the lights on when we left, so to speak.

A few years later, a group of us came back to salvage some of the equipment. There wasn't any work to be had, and the fucking redskins didn't need it; good thing we did to. Without anything to stop it, the place went native. Wild you might say. Sure, she might kill you, but this jungle, she also sustains you. We've been coming back ever since. It's not a permanent home to anyone, but a vacation in paradise.

The Army Base Time Forgot

As refugees flooded into Fort Irwin, the Commanding General Kit Carson decided he wasn't going to let chaos and civilian disorder destroy his base. Enacting a brand of martial law, the general put the refugees to work and training. By the time arrangements for the displaced people were finalized, many no longer wished to leave. Preferring the rigid military lifestyle, those who stayed, along with the enlisted soliders, fought for reservation status in the Ute, which was eventually granted. The base earns money by training native and corporate security forces.

Now under Pueblo control, they act - less than willingly - as one of the staging points for the Council Security Force expeditions into the deep Mojave. There is increasing pressure from the PCC to accept integration, but the ABTF has hired crack lawyers to stave off the "hostile" takeover.

Hye, that's a rather cool idea. Would they serves as sort of foedi or mercenaries?

Or in another manner; look at the Golan/Godland army in Fist of the North Star.

What's a foedi? Dealing with the paranoia and anti-anglo attitudes of the Ute, they probably had to give up any weapons heavier than an assault rifle and any dreams of a mobile mercenary force. If they accepted PCC shares, then they could form a mercenary company, but they'd have to give up autonomy.

Rock and Roll Heaven

Rock and Roll Heaven appears like any other small town but the people there aren't very friendly. They tell you that you should leave for your own good. You should head their warnings. If you don't then you'll find that the people in the town's one dinner and the one hotel are very friendly and they appoligize for the rudeness of the other townsfolk. People with the Rock & Roll knowledge skill or some derivitive such as Dead 20th Century Rockers will have a chance to recognize some of these friendly faces as Janice Joplin, Freddy Mercury, Elvis, Jimmy Hendrix, pioneering Trog Rocker Tommy Troll, and several other great deceased rockers. From this point on any attempt to leave is thwarted by the collective powers of the Free Spectres of Rock and Roll. Further investigation shows that there is a concert tonight. There is a concert every night and the mortal citizens of Rock and Roll Heaven are all forced to attend. For the rockers it is heaven. For the people they hold hostage it is hell. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

Leaving Rock and Roll Heaven requires fighting and defeating every Ghost of Rock and Roll there, which is made even more difficult by the fact their their Ghost chains were burried in a well which was filled in with concrete.

Oh, God. If there was a Hotel California haunted by Jimmy Buffett my PCs would probably not hesitate to kill themselves.

Those are fightin' words. Lock me in with Neil Young doing vocals, then we've got agreement.

After that emo ville, I feel my Jedi ideal driven religious enclave is just an empty gesture.
The Jedi are great comic value though, as is the small green avatar spirit with aggravating riddles and speach patterns.

Come on...

No one has done The Village yet?

[The Village] was mentioned, but more in passing.

I meant the Prisoner version

In a background, not in a game... Yet.

Cute Can Ckill

Springing from the simple idea that a third party, with no stakes in the election, would choose the best qualified persons to lead the "tribe", Random Reservation used Matrix polling to decide such continuous issues as naming the reservation, electing a leadership, and ratifying their constitution.

Surprisingly, this worked well for the first year (other than the name), when only a few intellectuals took interest. By the second year, the meme had caught on and a huge vote block elected just the hottest tweens in the most stylish outfits and a small group of comedic ranters. By year three, all but a token comedian had been pushed out by cute girls.

One might expect some rapid degradation of society leading to collapse of the reservation, but no such luck. Turns out hot girls can have brains (or at least good advisors), and while their society has drifted into the bizarre with laws requiring an approved dress code and mandatory plastic surgery, the reservation flourished in some ways. Those in power use these laws - along with an unhealthy addiction to Leonization - to maintain their power

Plastic surgery and Leonization are the primary money makers, with the fashion school and simporn wrapping up the list. Amerindians are welcome to vacation here, but are encouraged to dress "traditionally" and all other visitors are expected to buy "Cute Suits" upon arrival - something that is considered a draw by tourist agencies. Some plastic surgeons (and other types of doctors) come to Random Reservation to practice more experimental procedures due to the lax laws surrounding the industry. People who don't make an effort at Cuteness are arrested by the Fashion Police and "re-educated" in the basement of the school.

Recent trouble over cosmetics and biochemicals leaking into the surrounding Council lands has drawn some attention to the area, and this year's election may actually have a political edge. An ecologist drawing on Orxploitation seems to be gaining ground on the Cutemeter...