I think I said long ago that you and the rest are basing all their arguments on the assumptions that dragons are impervious to harm.

I don't. And that's the whole point. I do not start with "dragons are gods and invulnerable" because that would mean that weapons are useless, and magic rules supreme. And that's simply not fun. It's "where man meets magic and machine", not "Mage: The Ascension". If devs are ready to wreck game balance on the altar of dragon worship, that's their problem. But their fluff does send out a signal - wrongly I believe, going from the rules - that magic is top dog.

As far as having better insight into firearms than you, I don't know. I do know I have better insight into firearms than whoever wrote the rules on firearms for the last 4 SR editions. And I know my assault rifle has a better range than what they wrote for the first two editions.

Ok, let's assume we are in a city, with lots of buildings. And now, let's add a weapon into it, that has an effective range of 20-50 kilometers and ignores most obstacles bye obliterating them. Sure, that's something every one will put into every urban area, because one of the 20-30 GD might decide to go Gojira. Also, ignoring the huge energy consumption and cost of said weapon, of which you of course put at least 10, or 20 per city. Just to make sure the GD can't dogde all of them. Also, you build a fusion plant for every railgun defense grid. Just in case. Because money grows on trees. Sure.

GDs have not hit real countries (i.e. europe/northern america) enough to make anyone care enough.

Anything else to add, Mister Realistic?

"Shhh. My common sense is tingling" -Deadpool

Why should I? You ignore counter points (like to your assertion that mage research was useless) as well.

And the general picture is pretty much easy: One side starts with "Dragons are invulnerable to weapons". And the other starts with "Dragons are not invulnerable to weapons". Then both sides extrapolate, and justify their assumption.

So, you won't ever convince me that any argument has merit since I consider the very base of the arguments - that dragons are invulnerable to weapons - as completely wrong.

Going by the rules we have in the books, it is wrong - heavy weapons in the book will kill the dragons we see statted out in the book.

What I am interested in - or was - is how one can reconcile this assumption - dragons are invulnerable - with the assumption that they are not gods, and ruling the earth. And so far there was not really much that convinced me that.

But once again: I consider the ruling that dragons can't be hurt by weapons stupid. I noticed the devs said long ago that they think it's ok, so that's how canon is in SR.

You don't need a fusion plant for railguns by the very rules you quote. Those are light weapons, for vehicles. A taurus light gauss cannon costs 200K by arsenal. That's a drop in the bucket for security. And they can be used to deal with other targets as well - vehicles, drones, etc.

How do you think the no-fly and zero zones work?

Wrong. We, or at least I, don't start there, but arrive there after looking at the facts given by SR. See the diffrence?


I never said how much I know about weapons, or even that I know more than you. I just question the depth of your knowledge to make a call how to make realistic (whatever that might be, I don't even believe in reality) rules. I know a certain german game you might be familiar with that tried that road for a medieval setting. It was hillarious, not remotly realistic and a bother to even think about playing it. Since that game if anyone pull the "realistic" card in a RPG discussion I go on red alert. There is no such thing as realistic in an P&P game and can never be. How can we simulate something, we don't really understand?

If on the other hand you are able to prove with a mathematic formula why a dragon will be hosed by a Browning M2, I will STFU. Good luck.

sue me, i missed one post in 15 pages.



there is very little information available which speaks with any authority on the subject of who discovered what and how they went about discovering it. no doubt some mages used the scientific method. but there are also many instances of mages discovering those techniques all on their own, with no method whatsoever. research is one way that works for some people, but it doesn't work for everyone--and there's no evidence that it works better than any other method.


verifiably untrue, and i'll thank you to stop putting words in my mouth.

The big railgun is a ship only weapon. Guess why that is. The light version is still a Maingun, so it's fair to not call it a light weapon. You would still need some power to operate it. I don't know how much, and I tried to exxegerate in my previous post.

But now let's hit the gold. No fly zero zones. Now, you claimed to know something about weaponry, if that's the case, you sure know what kind of weapons are used against airborne targets. Slow firing big guns, or rather fast firing guns? And in what category will a dragon go, I wonder. The Railgun is the only threat in the rules to a dragon. But you will not really hit him with it, so, there goes that bubble. By rules it's difficult, by realism impossible. Great.

And you also missed my point why no one will use a railgun in a city. It will tear the city a part. Deconstruction is rather counter productive as a defensive measure. Every miss or even hit will also flatten severel buildings. That has to suck. Unless you are Horizon, they can even make money by putting the right spin into it .

Also, 200k per gun, so to make sure you are safe you have like 10. That's already 2 million and now you need maintenance, personell and an unspecified amount of power. That's a little much to ask for the little possibility of Gojira. People will rather refuse the possibility of beeing attack by a GD than spend 2 million buck just in case. Per city.

How can we simulate something we don't really understand? I don't know.

But I do know how to simulate something we did understand. In my old gaming group, everyone was in the military. Different branches, but we all had training with assault rifles. We all had training with hand grenades. We shot them and threw them. Most had a personal pistol or revolver as well. Half of us had had taining with the Panzerfaust. One of us was a Lt. in the mechanised infantry. He had done a lot of training with just about every small arms our army has. Another was a non com in the explosive specialists - the ones ready to blow up our bridges and tunnels. He went ove the explosive rules. I and another were artillery - not much use for our knowledge in the game, but we chipped in when it came to tracked vehicles a few decades old. Then there was the guy from the Stinger company. Some experience with guided man portable missiles came in handy.

So, it was easy to throw out the worst offenses (Ammo weight, range). Replacing rate of fire was easy as well - we simply assumed we shot more than the rules said per burst. That alone changed combat significantly, since reloading was needed. We also upped damage a bit, iirc, so people took more cover, but we generally tried to act in a firefight in game acording to what we had been trained to.

I doubt that. We're spending a lot more on defense, for an even smaller chance. My company wasted ammo for about 300K in a single afternoon for dubious training purposes. Dumb ammo, artillery grenades, not misiles.

As far as railgun efficency goes - by the rules, it's not that difficult to hit something fast with a railgun compared to a machine gun. And as far as collateral damage is concerned - we got a long history of destroying towns we defend. Nothing new.

What? You're seriously saying that rich and mighty people aren't going to spend money on guns in the dystopian Shadowrun future of North America, where crime, violence and weapon smuggling runs supreme? Especially the corps and nations who can easily afford the money because they get attacked by terrorists daily? Where megacorps being attacked by High Force Great Form Spirits sent by eco-terrorist groups is quite common? Where the balkanization of the former U.S.A. has led to the formation of several smaller countries all hostile to each another (the PCC annexing the Ute Nation, CAS and UCAS blaming each another, crazy seccessionist moves leading to cities becoming independent and then in turn being almost conquered by elven fashistic troops, imperial japanese marines landing and "pacifying" other interests for peace, cities getting invaded by huge insect spirits, rogue A.I.s scheming around with fission reactors and holding arcologies hostage etc.)?

North America by 2060+++ is practically a permanent war zone. And everybody's itching to press the nuclear holocaust button.

Actually most WW2 battleships would open up at long range against aircraft with there main batteries loaded with flak shells. In fact I think a 2070 heavy cruiser would likely be a real threat to a GD, seeing as how it would likely be heavily warded and have astral spotters and have the sort of missile, laser, and coil guns to really lay the hurting on a GD as well as being important enough to warrant a significant number of Mages / Spirits.

Once again, this is descending into a circular bout of arguing and sniping. We have asked that all parties involved please stop. I think everyone here should step back, agree to disagree and approach the subject matter from other points.

The dev(singular) has said no such thing. Please provide a quote if you can, since in fact, the dev has said quite the opposite on a couple of occasions.

Edit: Sorry Caine, I was posting while your post went up. As far as I'm concerned my involvement in this thread is over, as you've pointed out it's going nowhere.

So, you have experience with weapons. And from that you assume that futuristic fictional weapons must under every circumstance be able to kill fictional dragons, right? I will disagree, I guess. Especially, since knowing how to use a weapon and putting it down on paper with every single detail are diffrent things.

And seriously, who cares about Ammo weight? Or ranges (did you increase, or decrease them?)? Well, most military types I know, until I tell them to open their mind and let it go, since it does not matter in any serious gamesituation. But hell, whatever. And RoF was alway utterly off in SR, still I fail to care. It's a game. It works for me well enough.

Still, those issues are not really important when we talk about dragons and railguns. Just imagine the hardest/most effective armor used on a tank today. And now imagine a dragon beeing still harder/more difficult to penetrate. You still think he would be concerned if that was the case? And that is the case in SR, so... I guess GDs are still hard to kill.

I wonder about the armor penetrating properties of flak shells. And WWII planes were build from light metals, basically, so back in the day flak was great. Last time I checked modern anti air-craft guns fire a gazillion rounds into the air in the hopes of hitting anything. There are sure exeptions to this, a you sure as hell don't need a gatling rate of fire to hit a dragon, but a railgun is flat out. that would be like shooting at a A-10 with a 120mm gun. Not a very likely scenario, I say.

And now I take a break from this thread, since nothing good will come out of me spouting my non sense here.

Good luck in disproving the superiority of dragons.

I could continue to make a lot of different points, but it doesn't matter since your not listening. I will say the number on rule of RPG's of any sort is that if it has stats they will kill it.

Not quite
Here is a mechanical analysis of the possible ways GW could do this, using only abilities mentioned in shadowrun sourcebooks.

Firstly premises and assumptions:
1: All discussed abilities are used, even those that have not yet been given stats
2: Great forms may be more skilled in areas than lesser dragons
3: Ghostwalker, aka Icewing, is the foremost Summoner amongst Great Dragons. As such his conjuring group skill is 9 (I see that as a low figure for the greatest immortal summoner in the world, but it will do)
4: For the purpose of this exercise GW will be without any useful foci for his prep research (either he has no foci, or his foci are not useful for this task)
5: Assuming here GW has no additional magic stat, but that he has sevral initiate grades and metamagics.

Note: Fuchs if you disagree with 3 then please instead assume a force 3 power focus for GW, not unreasonable for a Great dragon, or for any initiate magician.


COurse of events
a: GW goes and gets his body (he can sense where it is) this takes a few minutes.
b: GW Notices big ass settlement nearby.
c: GW summons a force 9 Sage spirit with the knowledge skill "That town near where GW left hsi body" (ok it is the 'Denver' skill but GW doesn't know that yet)
d: GW rolls his dice pool of 21 and scores 7 hits. the spirit rolls its 9 dice and scores 3 hits GW has 4 net hits. GW also has 26 dice for drain and thus gets an average of 8-9 hits. thus insuring that drain almost never happens
e: GW channels the spirit and uses a service to gain access to its knowledge skill. He muses for 5 minutes or so on his newfound knowledge and then commits it to a dragon memory crystal (standard, not the great crystal of memory)
f: GW then summons a Sage spirit with "Denver Politics" as a knowledge skill, at force 9 (this means the spirit has a skill value of 9 in that skill at skill 7 you are the political science equivalent of Hawking or Einstein)
g: GW muses for another 5-10 munites then commits this all to a memory crystal.
h: GW summons 2 more spirits, once again at force 9, one by one of course. The first has knowledge skills in CAS, UCAS and Aztlan. The second has skills in Ute, Pueblo and Sioux Nations.
i: More memory crystal goodness.
j: GW looks at the accumulated knowledge and decides Aztlan is too close to the Horrors and needs to be bitch slapped. But hsi previous skill 'downloads' have told him that tactics have changed.
k: GW summons another spirit, this time at force 12 (risking a box or 2 of stun drain, oh well) This one has skills in Urban warfare tactics, Mechanized infantry and Tank tactics, Air combat tactics and Combined arms tactics.
l: GW spends an hour or so looking at the map of denver in his memory crystal, cross referencing it with the data on the various sectors and needed targets. He identifies likely tarets and makes his rolls on the tactical skills. He gets an average of 8 successes per skill roll and plans accordingly.

Note that a tech savvy magician of a possession tradition can do a similar, if lesser, form of this trick. Also a hacker can do something similar, if much more limited, although the hacker finds it much easier to do.


EDIT: also agreeing with Synner again, sorry Caine I didn't see your psot (it took some time to get the research done for this one) I am trying to change the approach but I am not sure if this post is a big enough change

There's no need to change, I am bowing out. As I said - I disagree with the idea that a dragon can withstand heavy weapons. It runs counter to what Shadowrun is for me - a game where everyone and everything can be shot, and so has to act accordingly. Something GMs used to emphasise whenever a new group started.

The rest of the argument boils down to

"GW can do this"

"Runners did the same for decades, people should have counters to it"

"Nope."

"Tanks can kill dragons"

"No they can't"

"Magic means GW wins"

"Does not, tech will have advanced to the point of making dragon killing easy"

"Nope"

As I said, we're operating from very different assumptions. In my games, GDs are mortal, and usually only venture out from fortified positions with the amount of security a US president currently has becuase they are not significantly more invulnerable than any human compared to what weapons are out there. They are still a scary power but not because they can shrug off bullets, but because they are experts at plotting and planning, and have a lot of wealth and influence - like most corp execs.

But one dragon armies they ain't in my game, not even close. The battlefield, in my campaign, is ruled by the military using combined arms, high tech, and magic integrated to take the most advantage of indirect fire and range as possible. There's simply no place for a dragon, not since spirits (expendable assets) can do anything useful the dragon could do as well, and cheaper and without putting the dragon or any other mage into the line of fire.

It's not what the devs imagine, but it feels a lot more internally consistent to me, which may not have any direct impact on my game, but makes GMing it more fun.

With that I am out of the thread.

*applause*

Kremlin that was a well written response that seems to be a pretty reasonable answer to the question "Why GW kicked ass". I can't find anything that looks like you were really stretching.

*bows*
I humbly accept your praise

Pity, this was getting fun. Note i did not say he could nto be shot, i merely shot down your argument that he would have the inferior tactical knowledge.



Umm my point wqas on a very different tangent to this line of 'reasoning'



And here we differ. I look at the dragon stats as is to work out their physical power. They, in SR4, are statted out to be about individually as tough as a tank or T-Bird. You may disagree but I find that reasonable.
Not individually indestructable, but about as tough as the aforementioned.

Their grasp on tactics would be based on their stats. at BASE, they have 12-13 dice on all mental stat based tests. this means that they are in the league with the world's best strategists before they train. After they train they are moving toward competing with Petey.

like I said, sorry to see ya go, I was having fun

sorry for my denseness, but dragons havent played much in any of the games I've ran or played in. Where is the info on memory crystals? I have not heard of these before. Back in my SR2 days I had planned on having a lower league corp being ran by a wyvern until I found out they aren't allowed to be sentient. well at least not like dragons are. I was kinda disappointed.

They are referenced in Dot6W, they are an ED tie in. basicaally they are magic crystals that dragons use to store memories. (they are also unstatted)

ah okay I have Dot6W I just have only read through some of it. I have little if much of any knowledge of ED. Thanks

I failed my own knowledge skill test to remember where the sage spirit rules were.

SR4 street magic

I think he means the Guidance Spirit. Am I right, Kremlin?

yeah, sorry
I just think sage spirit sounds so much cooler... same thing tho

It does sound cooler.

Spicier anyway. And really, it's all about flavor.

You should really learn to leaf the puns at the door.

i think it is thyme to stop this line of, well not tasteless but bitter, jokes

I feel stupid. Now, were does Street Magic guidance spirits get knowledge skills ?

Well we have to do some assumptions there, since the only "Tank" we have in SR4 is the Citymaster which has similar body and armor stats but without the weapon immunity....

You know what, hit it with a force 12 weapon focus, make it a spear, maybe call it a dragon lance, it should die...

Good times. And maybe make a party of adventuring runners take up arms and save the world. Wait....

Er, optional powers, isn't it? I think Task spirits get technical skills too.

Yes, it is an optional power. As weapon skills are to guardian spirits, and technical skills to Task spirits.

You are using a source I that is being debated as silly to justify the silliness? The entire point is that tha whole section is not believable - at least to me.

In any game I have been in or heard about, the actions and reactions make very little sense. If a shadowrunner team decided to use the exact same illusions GW used, astral mages and/or spirits would be drawn to it and learn it was false in moments. In short, the SR team would not get away with it, but we are supposed to let GW get away with it why?

SR team engaging multiple targets while flying a Great Dragon Illusion in every game I have been in or heard about draws in combatants, but somehow GW gets them to supposedly sit back and reason things through. Why the big difference? TGIF? Casual Tuesday? Why?


I'll go back then to growing your own loyal free spirits for defense. Governments and corporations can afford to buy karma for these spirits and have had decades to do so. Each of them should really have a Force 1000+ away doing what it likes in another metaplane until it is called in to bitch slap some uppity critter, then its committment done freed with a polite thank you.


Which makes all that planning even sillier.


More sensible would be to make some phone calls around the world to other Aztechnology security forces demanding astral backup, or send watchers with the same message. A computer program could almost instantaneously make it a huge conference call. So in about 15 -30 seconds it isn't 10 security mages and their 40 spirits; it's 10,000 astral security mages and 40,000 spirits.


After the first encounter, everyone is going to be a bit more vigilant and prepared with dragon powered weapons and means of detection.


Unless either of them or ther tactics glowed in the dark, which what spells, spirits and dual natured beings do on the astral. See them with spirits, mages, adepts using deepweed, or be alerted to astral entities with plants and animals sensive to magic astral presences. (And you know some yahoo is going to have some FABIII rigged up to hit a dragon. They had FABIII in the 4th world, right?)


Fiberoptic magevision - probably. If not, then the mage scope where they can cast spells without exposing themselves to LOS. In any game I have been a part of, Azzie facilities had as much fire power as they wanted. Usually, it was GM code for do not go there.


Must have me on ignore, because I think one single person has even tried to counter my points. Especially the ones that are not facetious.


Please try this using rules prior to SR4, which GW/YotC operated under.

Now, instead of conjuring and needing 5/6s for a success, he needs 9s, 6 or 8 of them to not take drain summoning F9 spirits. F12, be ready to start using Karma Pool for re-rolls, because on average it takes 288 dice to get those 8 12s. Even with a spirit focus and power focus (remember focus addiction rules), GW is going to be using up Karma Pool. It might seem limitless, buta dozen here, a dozen there. When someone does drop an anvil on him and he wants to burn a point to invoke his dragon will (a power that was invented after this scenario, btw) all it takes is one person using their KP to counter it, so he needs to use another, etc.. Outnumbered as he should be (by about 50,000), there is a lot of KP to counter this unique dragon HOG.

Prior edition spirits did not get knowledge skills, so all this GW consulting is a moot tactic.

To sum things up, try exchanging a group of runners pulling the same stunts GW is supposed to be pulling, and the likely reponses and consequences. Then apply even the great dragon level of power in carrying the tactics out. I can't see how they succeed within the limits of the rules.

heh, to be perfectly frank, i kinda was mostly ignoring you in favor of... let's say more vociferous targets.

i don't agree with your assessment because i don't agree that GW was completely locked away from all contact while he was imprisoned wherever. he is being known for his facility with spirits, who was trapped on a metaplane--the metaplanes being, among other things, where many (maybe all) spirits come from--for, what, five thousand years? plenty of time to make a lot of friends.

then there's what he's capable of. he's capable of summoning powerful spirits, obviously, but he's also capable of a lot more. in the attack against the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, he brought in a flight of thunderbirds--he can control, or at least influence, paracritters. moreover, as much as he's dealt with spirits, it seems pretty likely that he's got a lot of True Names tucked away. who needs to take conjuring drain when you can just invoke a True Name for the big stuff?


assuming we limit him to the ridiculously low rate of karma accrual i mentioned earlier, GW would have a minimum karma pool of 250. at more reasonable rates, he'd have 500 or even a thousand--or more, depending on what exactly he did while he was trapped on that metaplane. not enough to counter 50,000 people dropping anvils on him, of course... but then, the idea of there being 50,000 people at any given location in Denver who are capable of dropping an anvil on someone as powerful as a GD is ridiculous to begin with.

And we could've saved precious bits on the Dumpshock servers if in your first post you had clearly stated that you would only accept arguments from sources you had previously approved, and that you only approve of sources that do not contradict your opinions.
Runners do things like Ghostwalker did, and as long as there isn't a huge knowledge and force discrepency against them, it usually works. Often even against targets with a significant power advantage over the runners, but no 24/7 Runnercams™.

Also, why I have pretty much held my posts. I know it is futile.


Sorry, spirits come from several distinct metaplanes. Just check MitS for finding a free spirits true name; you have to go to the right metaplane. Fire elementals and water elementals have their own metaplanes. I think when you create an ally, you need to designate its metaplane. Recovering disrupted spirits, requires going to their metaplane.


And the 10,000 magicians are going to have chances to know free spirits, too. I would not be surprised if every megacorp did not have hundreds of bound free spirits toiling away enchanting radicals and orichalcum. The magicians in the corp control them. Major attack - they get called in.

And like I said, governments and megacorps are going to be lanning to counter dragon attacks. They have had decades to prepare since the first one. They have the resources to buy karma to feed the free spirit, and/or order their "subjects" to make donations, and/or to go to impoverished countries and get really good deals buying karma. They all will have no problem having control of a F1000+ free spirit, and that bad boy is going to punk any GD. (Using your explanation that karma can be earned on the metaplanes, they could even speed up the process by finding metaplanes where the treasure from afree spirit's wealth power can be traded to the locals for karma.)


I think his Karma pool could be in the 1000s, it doesn't matter. Only one person has to get in that anvil hit, then everyone else keeps alotting a point of karma to counter each of GWs. GW can't use his spirits karma for this, and I think he would run out before all the opposition empties their entire KP. Using the free spirit Nuke theory, free spirits can buy KP with their karma, which the big boys can buy. Example - 10,000KP costs the free spirit 10 points each for 100,000 karma. Using the most universal stated amount for buying karma, that is 500,000,000 . A lot, but look at defense budgets. This is also not considering finding cheaper sources of karma, such as starving people willing to sell karma for 50lbs of rice.


Wow, profound! We could've saved more everything by just saying YotC says so. I thought the point was we disagreed with the story as printed in YotC. But you want to cite said story as proof why we are wrong. I did not clearly state I disapproved of the source because I thought it was obvious that text was being disputed.

Do not suggest I am just censoring sources because they do not support my position and try to infer that I'm a flake.


Riiiight. Is anyone even going to believe an illusion of an unknown dragon? Isn't seeing a real honest to ghost dragon something hardly anyone ever gets to see? Wouldn't that just by itself (not counting it is a new dragon that might just choose you to be its buddy - see other dragons and human references upon awakening) draw quite a crowd? If it keeps making appearances over 3 weeks, wouldn't Denver be a circus of dragon watchers?

Each place he attacked the first day invokes multiple security forces with magical assets in the thousands. They know it was real and what attacked. All the illusions that didn't resist it think they are under attack and that invokes more multiple security forces, with magical assets in the thousands. When the guys that can say it was an illusion get around to doing so, confirmation has come in about verified real attacks elsewhere, so they are going to be searching.

It just invokes such a massive hunt, I do not see how it can be evaded, especially within the rules.

You say it is silly, and then when an argument is made that there is more at stake than the straw-dragon you have created, you demand a source. When the source is in the book you have declared silly, you reject it rather than read and even consider whether the authors did use even a speck of the tactical sense you have declared they did not use at all.

Edit: This flakey personal attack removed since it just seemed pathetic.

Governments and megacorps are not going to spend countless amounts of time, manpower and money to adequately research, develop and TEST a plan for a scenario that has such a low probability of occurrence, let alone success. The truth of the matter is that dragons attack without provocation almost never. Ghostwalker, unless I miss my mark, was really the first, solid example we have of such a thing in the modern world.

Beyond that, is the testing portion of that plan. Unless they have a dragon on standby that is willing to take one for the team as a test dummy, their plan will be nothing more than theory. My wager is that they never, ever planned for a Great Dragon to be able to bring in the sheer amount of force (via spells, spirits and paracritters) that Ghostwalker did. He hit harder than anyone likely thought possible. After getting pounded by lots of 21st century tech, he beat feet, and came back later popping very specific, lightly defended targets before getting out of dodge again.

One thing that's caught my eye in this thread is Fuchs and others talking about GW getting waxed on the battlefield with his tactics. I'd agree. Problem there is he didn't attack a battlefield, or even a properly defended fortress. He attacked moderately (if at all) armed and armored locations. The Azzie pyramid was the hardest target he faced off against, and he booked it once he realized he didn't do what he came for, and he was facing larger opposition than he could handle at the time. It wasn't a battlefield. It was a downtown urban environment NOT SUITED to full scale battles and wars.

i'm not sure what the fact that individual spirits come from different metaplanes has to do with the fact that GW was on a metaplane. i'm just saying, if your special skill is manipulating Chinese people, and someone puts you in a prison in China for five thousand years, chances are you're going to come out with more friends than you had going in.


any trick a megacorp could pull with spirits, GW will have had tens of thousands of years to discover first and perfect. if it's a numbers game, GW has more numbers because he's had a hell of a lot more time, and started out with a much higher level of expertise.


that's... not how Twist Fate works. DotSW, page 179. there's nothing in there about what you're describing.


nothing says he stayed in Denver in between attacks; a dragon with a high-force movement power being used on him can move pretty far pretty fast. as well, nothing says that he stayed in draconic form the whole time. all he has to do is duck out of sight and shapeshift; his masking will be high enough that no searchers will be able to figure out who he is. if he's being pursued too strongly to duck out of sight, shapeshift into the form of a mouse (if his magic is strong enough to go from a bod 25+ dragon to a bod 3 human, he can certainly eke out the 2 extra successes he'd need to turn into a bod 1 rodent), drop through a sewer grate, and then shapeshift into a frog or something. poof, gone.

it's also worth pointing out that nobody officially had any military hardware in or around Denver. the forces they were allowed to maintain were, basically, heavy security. of course, all the players had military hardware secreted around, but nobody wanted to pull theirs out until everyone else had. and when they did, they certainly didn't work together--Aztlan and CAS forces, for instance, would have spent as much time eyeing each other as hunting GW.

woo, double post! i missed this one:

only if you don't take into account where the action is taking place. 10k astral security mages and 40k spirits suddenly crowding Denver's astral space--i can't think of any way that the other sectors wouldn't view that as a military invasion. Aztlan didn't want a war over Denver; even when they got kicked out, they chose to cut their losses and retreat, rather than fight for it. and that's ignoring the vanishingly low probability that AZT would be willing to leave a gigantic chunk of their facilities unguarded in the first place. i mean, seriously, you could drive a cruise ship through that big a hole in AZT's global strategy. convince one location (via Matrix infiltration, if nothing else) that it's under attack by a GD, and suddenly a large number of other AZT facilities lose their awakened defenders.

He wasn't, but even if he was... well how many trillions of dollars have been spent on nuclear weapons and countermeasures? So far they've been used exactly once in all of human history. GW was far from the first high-power magical assault in the Sixth World, nor was he the first army-from-nowhere or even the first Great to attack a city essentially unprovoked. So there has no doubt been a whole lot of research, and I dare say testing, poured into dealing with large-scale magical threats, and even GDs in particular.

This doesn't invalidate the fact that such things would probably not have been employed in Denver, just like no one would have ever tried to build, much less use, a nuclear silo in Cold War era Berlin. What we had there was essentially a Cuban Missile Crisis-type situation, though the parallels are somewhat inexact.

Seriously, re-read the section, starting p. 59 YotC. Reading between the lines, we seem to have:

1) GW really doesn't seem to be after destroying the physical assets of the places he's been after. In fact he'd been consistently attacking a target until he could pull some sort of evil spirit out of the building--a blood spirit out of the Aztech teocalli, for instance, and one who looked "deep black with pinpoints of light within its form, and it just oozed coldness and inhumanity," out of a building in the UCAS section, where oddly enough Unity** made its home. He kills the spirit, rips it to shreds by most accounts, and then skedaddles, usually taking fire from missiles and lasers and looking pretty beat up by the end.

2) The places GW was attacking don't line up with a simple terrorist campaign. Sure, some were high-profile, but others weren't. What they do line up with, at least the ones that were outright named, are either places which house high-force blood/toxic/otherwise nasty spirits or have high background count and would have such spirits arise on their own. In other words, it looks like GW was on a campaign against magical threats, not millitaries; it just so happened that, especially in blood-spirit infested Azzie-town, those two were the same areas.

3) There is return fire, but noone seems to want to commit too much to GW's destruction, for fear of over-extending themselves in the treaty zone. UCAS and the NAN in particular go so far as to order their forces not to engage GW at all, and let him go on his spirit-hunting campaign unmolested. The only ones who seem really adamant about going after him are the ignorant--PCC and Ute--and the people who are actively seeking to use blood spirits and other nasty magical things.

**BTW, what the heck is Unity? That section describes it as some sort of Humanis-like org based in the CAS; any details on what it is and what's behind it?

They weren't. Re-read the Denver Boxed set materials. Ghostwalker was, almost certainly, releasing the components of Zebulon, the Spirit of Denver, so that it could reassemble.

Eh? What is this whole spirit of Denver about, anyway? The Denver boxed set was, um, before my time.

kinda like the 'Spirit of St. Louis' Except for the 'being an airplane' part

In days long before 2060, Denver had a really high force spirit that would occasionally show up at parties. At some time, two mages had discovered the true name of this spirit and tried conjuring it to bind it to their wills at effectively the same time. This lead to there being two high force spirits neither of whom responded to the true name they both knew, so the two mages were shredded. Since then, as Denver splintered, the spirit splintered as well. From there, it gets confusing as there are lots of still significant free spirit bits floating around and joining with all sorts of factions and groups in the city.