I recall reading about specific cities in various sourcebooks. But I don't have a feeling for the area in general. I was wondering if it'd even been laid down in cannon or if was wide open for the GM. Specific issues include:

1. Once you get out of the cities what is life like? After succession, wars, plagues, and crashes I wouldn't be surprised to find some areas aren't all that different than they were 100-200 years prior.


2. Is at least the airspace wide open for runners that generally keep their noses clean? Obviously the Azzie boarder is militarized as well as the UCAS side to a lesser degree. But could a team just fly around within the states if they stayed away from major cities without having to file flight plans, get harassed by some kind of cop, or anything like that?

3. How bad are things for metas?

4. What's the Pueblo border/relations like?

Does it vary by state much?

The best book out there with the best CAS coverage is: Shadows of North America. Theres a very nice CAS chapter (page 57-72), with some nice maps (page 61), as well as some very useful general info about CAS and focus on some of the cities. The over all map of North America on page 11 also give a nice geographical overview of CAS.

2. Theres a section in the book about how to get in and out of CAS on page 193-194.

3. According to the "at a glance" tables in each chapter: CAS has 66% humans as to 68% in UCAS according to Shadows of North America, so I guess it's just as bad as UCAS. These are 2062 numbers. These "at a glance" tables which are used in Shadows of North America, Shadows of Europe and Shadows of Asia can be use to reflec how harsh racism is in the different countries. For example take a country like Switzerland which is well know for it's harshness towards metas, humans make up 86% of the population, which means alot of Metas have left the country for friendlier places, like the Czech Republic (59% humans) or France (60% humans). I dont recall any specific sections in the book covering racism in CAS but I might be wrong.

4. The book mostly focuses on CAS's borders with UCAS and Aztlan on page 194, it also mentions the border with the Carribbean league, all of these are heavily patrolled. On page 196 in Shadows of North America which focuses on info on Pueblo, it talks about the Pueblo borders in general and states that all Pueblo borders are heavily patrolled, though the Aztlan, Ute and Califree borders are especially strict.

If I was you i'd get the book it's a really great source-book

Does the spirit of Robert E. wander astral space in the grand nation of CAS?

His ghost was actually elected president.

And at least two churches.

Seriously though, the whole "we're re-fighting the Civil War daily" is more stereotype than reality.

-Siege

P.S. Robert E. Lee

I personally like the idea of Southern Preachers forming a new aristocracy with slave Task spirit labor on giant organic cotton plantations.

Well, in SR they sort of are actually. Yeah probably an exageration of reality.



Now that's thinking SR style. Most of the time the spirits would get miffy and start using edge when summoned. But there might be some slightly messed up path varients that would work with that.

Ahh...yes. The CAS. The south shall rise again!

OK, probably not...

I just wish I could find that old link about "You might be a Redneck Mage if..." from a Shadowrun site long ago...

Really, the big difference between the CAS and the UCAS is the same big difference that currently exists. The majority of the UCAS is urban or suburban, with lots of manufacturing, design and services. It's very political, and very muchso about 'who you know'. The CAS is significantly more rural, slower moving, and individuals are more independent (both physically and in mindset). Economically, they are more focused on agragarian and production industries, and so it's more 'how hard you'll work' over 'who you know'. There's a lot more history there too. Up north your enemy today is your friend tomorrow. Generally not the case south of the Mason-Dixon line. People remember a lot longer, and they have tight bonds and tight communities which are slow to accept outsiders.

Of course, those are broad generalizations, and there are many, many exceptions on both sides of the line.

Yeah, you're from "Away" until you've been in the town for three generations.

Still that's something that's good to work with in game terms. Just because the runners have CAS citicenships and have the accent that might not mean they're truely welcome as they travel about. But the work thing might make them worked with and tolerated.

I find it works well with runners to have them on the edge that way.

Remember though, there are large parts of "the South" that are every bit as urban and modernized as the North.

We tend to take religion seriously - friends visiting Atlanta comment on the number of churches (and we do have quite a few). Fried food is everywhere.

Basically, there are two key differences between CAS and UCAS: In the UCAS, you have sprawl and more sprawl. In the CAS, you have sprawl, small town, rural farming, woods, small sprawl.

-Siege

Edit: I was born, raised and spent most of my adult life in the South. Atlanta, specifically. Only one person has ever, ever managed to guess I was from the South. And I met her on a train in Italy. The whole 'Southern Twang' isn't as common as you might think.

The books that have most of the information on the CAS are Shadows of North America, Target: Smuggler Havens and the Neo-Anarchists Guide to North America. SoNA is the most recent being a Third Edition book that gives you a good overview of the whole country and how it's set out as people have already said. T:SH is also Third Edition and has a fairly in-depth look at the city of New Orleans. And Neo-A's Guide to North America is a fairly rare Second Edition book that gave you a pretty decent write-up of the Atlanta and Dallas/Ft. Worth sprawls.

To go very briefly through your questions after all the plagues and crashes the population levels of the Shadowrun world have generally grown back to about the same levels as today by the 2060s IIRC, so sure you'll have big differences between the sprawls and the countryside but no more or less so than other countries. As for flying around since they've got major border complications with both Aztlan and the Carrib League, not to mention T-bird smugglers, I'm guessing that they'd have a fairly decent national radar/sensor net so as soon as someone gets spotted flying around without a flight plan or not on the air traffic control grid they'll be getting a visit from the local fighter jet patrols or law enforcement drones. Although this is of course pure speculation on my part so do what's best for your game. As for the metas question I not sure but I think I remember that by Third Edition they'd moved away from the rather silly general anti-metahuman bias that might have been mentioned in earlier editions. And someone seems to have covered the Pueblo question so I'll leave that one.



*Ahem* War of Northern Aggression.

Heh.

-Siege

I've never been down South but at least histrionically there are very sharp divisions between classes that restrict what you can do. It was, almost literally, an aristocracy until the North reconquered it. You had your rich plantation owners on top, followed by your middle class educated and small plantation owners, then the blacks, and finally the PWT. Think Victorian England but without an actual constitutional monarchy. Also there is more of an emphasis on Entrepreneurial work than actually sweating in the fields. Everyone wants to be the guy sitting in the shade of his mansion sipping burbon while workers pick the cotton. Essentially the same as the north but WAY more social barriers to entry than say New England or Ohio back in the day.

And if you don't know what PWT stands for you'll have to look it up before you plan on playing in the CSA.

On the one hand, yes, I suspect they'll have good networks for tracking intruders, because they're basically surrounded by enemies. On the flip side, from what I've seen, Southerners are more likely to respect your right to do as you please, and less likely to be nosey. People are more likely to be individualists and more likely to have the gear necessary to survive on your own, and that means you're more likely to get noticed as a stranger in the neighborhood, than as someone carrying a lot of gear including firearms. After all, when you have people who live on farms, carrying rifles, heavy duty trucks and so on makes a lot of sense.

But again, rules change a bit when you enter the cities.

interesting interpretaions of the southern folk from you peeps, ones i've been around don't really fit into ya'lls view

live in new orleans, but my job takes me all over the state at times. Very friendly people and after a few meetings they treat you like family, even us minorities. They stop and wave to say high and actually talk to their neighbors. Much hotter down here so maybe that is why they move at a slower pace, the main thing about them is that they still have their tradition al values, which contrary to what hippies might tell ya, is a good think no doubt

oh and the women? they ain't fridged like the women up north, no, true southern belles they are. They won't completely ignore you if you try to talk to them, even the most stellar hot babe will chew the fat with you about anything and more often than naught you can get them taking about sex easy. Flirting is second nature to them. Yeah you'll have the hot chicks up north too, but they won't give ya the time o day.


but in the end, i'm a true jayhawker born and raised in kansas, so i'd definately go to UCAS shoudl the break up every happen. Gonna have to steal they kids away from the wife, but it's all good

Managed to dig up Shadows of North America and the Neo Anarchists guide.

The Shadows write up kind of annoyed me. They wasted so much space poorly presenting stuff we don't care about so much. And it wasn't like some books where there is some blather but lots of good stuff. I really felt like it left me hanging.

Neo Anarchists guide was better. Tighter writing, more stuff to use.

Though neither do too much to answer the above questions. Neo indicates that back then the metahuman situation was pretty bad. Despite some strong proponents many are in enclaves seperate from society or in pretty horrid economical conditions.

I did gather that Pueblo is an ally and so their boarder probably isn't very hot. Essentially you can buy a visa to the PCC on the stock market from the sounds of things so that's pretty easy.

But still no idea what things are like outside the cities nor of what security is really like off the borders. The latter may be a deliberate ommision to leave it up to GMs I suppose.

My favorite tidbit? The CAS gives out letters of Marque.

@ Siege: I figured everyone would know who I was talking about. There was only one General Robert Edward Lee who happened to be my grandfather's name sake.



You would get noticed sooner if you did NOT have a gun in your pickup truck window. As for family heritage, I'm an Okie born and bred but my people come from Tenn, Tex, and SC. My wife on the other hand is a Kansas Yankee.

And you were probably right - it just offended me to see his name so casually abbreviated. (I'm joking! I swear to god, I'm joking)

As noted earlier - the South did develop from an agrarian base, but the notion of plantations are all but gone now and I suspect will be nonexistent in 2050; just a footnote in history next to sharecroppers and family-owned farms.

-Siege

Hell if you consider how small family farms are becoming less and less economic to run compared with large corporate operations that are able to take advantage of factors such as economies of scale just imagine what the introduction of things like drones will do and the rise of large agricorps. Family farms and plantations as people are talking about them will be long in the past by then IMHO.

Hmm never heard the the Amish? Family Farms working extremely well with less technology than the corp farms.

Also today's corp farms get a major boost from Government Aide in huge amounts. So in 2070 I see less of that Government Aide, so the family farms will make a come back.

WMS

I'm sorry, you actually expect small independent operators to be able to prosper at the expense of corporate interests in the Shadowrun world? You'll have to excuse me if I express a degree of scepticism with that viewpoint.

There are mentions of corp soy operations edging out farmers.

Here's the thing though. Much of the south is not Iowa (which from above resembles a big patchwork quilt due to the near coninuous array of rectangular fields). In the south there is a lot of woods, swamp, mountains or land that is for whatever reason not so developed. Fields are tucked away here and there where there is some good ground.

I imiagine the corps took the best and most convenient land one way or another. But the tucked away farmland just isn't conducive to lard scale drone farming. This I imagine is left to family type farms. Though the efforts of corp farms probably drives prices down, so these family farms probably aren't exactly the best off.

The point I am attempting to get across is this.

Today corporate farms are heavily subsidized/aided by our government. Check out the top Corp Farms and you will be amazed at how much they are getting from our government which basically underwrites their entire production. In fact some corp farms make more money off subsidies/aide than they make off their product. Some corp farms it is better to losing monies on crops than to make a profit, because if they are losing monies, the government will give them even more money.

So will Corporate Farm Welfare continue in 2070? Yes more than likely but on a much more smaller scale. Which will give the family farms the opportunity to make money also. Corporations would rather use government money to underwrite their production/start ups than their own money.

Again Google the Amish, they have been one of the most productive farming groups for over 100 years, and they use little of current day technologies to do so. They are an example that one does not have to have technology/drones to compete in growing crops.

Edit in retrospect, the Amish practice Community Farming and the Corps practice Corporate Farming, both will exist in 2070, in some areas one type will prevail and in other areas the other type will.

WMS

We're not really a political debate forum. But when mentioning stuff like that it's customary to link to some respectable source, else likely your point will be to some degree disregarded by others.

And the Amish are successful for varying definitions of success.

Regardless the tradeoff between corp and family farming is the balance between the corp having better tech and the family farm having family members often pitching in for little or nothing and slighly less overhead.

I contend the tradoff will be that corps win in spots where the logistics are easy (nice continuous fields near cities), whereas families will win out working small fields out by the bog. Or I suppose most places where people would rather farm and live on their own land and live like the SINless as opposed to selling out and living the corp life. I'm imagining some redneck/hillbilly sorts that fit the bill for that.

As long as both sides are held to the impression/rule.

Here is links for the DataSearch Impaired.

2006/2007 Farm Subsidy
Old McDonald Had a Scam

WMS

I was born and raised in Alabama and have been to some of the hotspots mentioned in SoNA. Major cities visited: Atlanta, Mobile, New Orleans, Houston, Nashville, Memphis. Even went to DC as a kid, so I'm sure that there are some I'm missing.

While the amount of information contained in cannon is limited, he is my perspective on the CAS:
The urban areas will have many of the same problems and opportunities that the UCAS. The suburbs will be smaller but they will be there nonetheless. The rural area will have a mix of agrarian (both farming and ranching) as well as luxury. (Nothing like a private club with a heli-pad and an 18 hole golf course.) While racism in the form of skin color will be way down, I would imagine that meta-racism will still be a problem. In my experience, the racism of the South is open while that of the North is a few layers down so it just might be more noticeable.

In my CAS games, I normally don't have the Star or other cop-like organization bother with as many gun laws as long as those involved keep to themselves.

I have to disagree with the idea that there is no element of "who-you-know" to the CAS. The"good-ole-boy-club" is alive and well.

Well, that's my two cents.

P.S. It's Y'ALL - a contraction of you all.

Hah!

And pronounced "u Awl."

-Siege

I do not see the Good Old Boy network (GOB) disappearing in 2070 in the South.

WMS

Hell - "it isn't what you know but who you know" is true anywhere you go.

-Siege

I'd like to see an Elf version of Larry the Cable Guy.

Family farms still are not going to be able to cut the profit margins as tight as corp farms, especially when you consider the following:
1) Pollution and cost-effectiveness have pushed farming to become a more interior deal, relying heavily on hydroponics, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, pollution-neutralizers, etc. This requires a substantial up-front investment, and ongoing repairs and maintenance.
2) Drives for cheaper foods have resulted in more 'unusual' crops. Soybeans and rice, while grown in the US, are going to be genetically engineered and such to the point that these crops will have special needs, and therefore, again, special infrastructure to support them. We can expect that at least one person on the crew who brought you your soy shake was a genetic engineer/biochemist.
3) Corporations don't like competition. When you're Ares and you want that piece of land there for your new corp. farm, and old Farmer Bob is giving you problems, it isn't hard for ol' Bob to get a few problems of his own. A shame about the fire, Bob. A shame about HMHVV in your drinking water. A shame your cow grew wings and a tail and ate your wife. So sorry.
4) This is dystopia. Bad things happen. That's the MO. If you don't like it, play some other game ;P

Family farms will have a role, however. They'll get the land the corps don't want, for whatever reason. So for instance, land which is a chemical dump they might get because the corp doesn't want the legal liability of having that in their portfolio. Borderlands also, since they don't want to be easily targeted by angry rebels or whatever. Places which have poor transportation, or other high costs for production (which would include those little spots in Iowa which are too disparate for giant, sprawling farms). And of course, in nations like NAN where they frown upon excessive corporate interference.



I think it depends on where you are. Farther South, where people talk slower, it'll be longer. Up here in the Old Line State, they contract it to one word, hon.

Given the background's emphasis on social exclusion and prejudice against the outgroup, does the Shadow CAS carry any baggage from its segregationist (and older) past? Does it operate a more unequal society than the other post-USA relic-states? Have old prejudices reawakened and applied themselves to metatypes as opposed to skin colour divides? How institutionalised and widespread are any such attitudes? Do they remain the province of backwoods good-ole-boys, or have State Governments returned to the days of front and back bus riders?

My take on the CAS: It's like the UCAS but smaller. As an American Northerner who has spent a good deal of time in the South I can say there isn't much of a difference between the two other than climate; they both have sophisticates and rednecks. They both have Good 'Ol Boy networks. They both have large sprawls (New York vs. Atlanta). They both have rural farmlands (Indiana vs. Alabama). Culture is homogenizing at a rapid pace and with technologies like the Matrix to spread ideas I doubt many Southern traditions (positive or negative) would last other than the most culturally ingrained. In Shadows of North America, the "author" of the section writes "We consider ourselves American...". Meta-racism is probably equal to that of the UCAS and much, much, much lower than Japan.

Y'all.

This is true, Nezumi - but baby steps first. Once the damn Yankees get the basic pronunciation right, we can worry about timing, inflection and regional dialects.

-Siege

I lament that I lost my Southern Drawl after years at the Call Centres.

Be perfect for when I have the Texan, Nas, in-game. Ah well, ten years out of the CAS, and he'd probably lose the accent.

Well something is different.

[img]http://politicalmaps.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/2008-prediction-map-11252007.jpg [/img]

I'm guessing Universities are rather the same. And at any rate your focusing on the similarities. (Which aren't so much fun for gaming).

On that note dystopia was mentioned about. People tend to forget about that sometimes.

I guess one thing, it seems that Southern sprawls are larger and higher percentages of the population are SINless for whatever reason. Troubles with metas getting SINs could be part of the issues they're having (in the Neo Anarch texts at least). You can't have a slave that doesn't exist. And at any rate they're free to leave anytime, and starve.

Focusing only on presidential results by state makes the country look more polarized than it really is due to the winner take all rules.

America is more purple than media coverage implies because Red vs. Blue conflict makes for better news ratings. It is also encouraged by political power brokers who want to maintain perceived political power bases.

Compare the map linked above to:

• U.S. elections by county
• U.S. politics by Senate seats

That elections map is really interesting. Note, however, that it actually isn't very purple in much of the south. Rather you get nearly very high democrat regions mixed with very high republican regions. Often this correlates to the big cities or general population density
http://www.censuscd.com/images/lf-map.gif

I'll believe the big cities are corpy enough in SR4, but what about the spots that are currently 100% republican for example? Also

Well, you also have to consider we're talking about 2070 here. Honestly what keeps the south different politically and culturally from the north is that right now the Baby-boomers are still running the show, and with them comes their ideals and the ideals of their fathers before them. The generation after them is a lot more open-minded and progressive. Not to mention more in-tune with technology.
I think the more time passes the more the lines between "Yankee thinking" and "Southern thinking" are going to blur.
Now rednecks will always be rednecks, but as someone from up North pointed out here (thank you by the way, I've always said it too) Every state has rednecks.

Besides, I live in what will be the Capital of the CAS, so I can't complain.

NAGNA is a far superior source for all of the settings in it.


I assume it's intentional. And I say that in part because the last chapter of Target: Smuggler Havens is about smuggling across North American land routes, and even then it is pretty fucking sparse. It does mention that most of the conventions of SR don't really exist outside of the major cities like privatized cops and the presence of significant numbers of metas and mages and runners. But those generalities are applied to pretty much the entire continent (though specifically UCAS and CAS).

Well, I think you're probably right in real life. However a lotta crap has happened in SR that (hopefully) won't be happening in the real world. The timelines are already diverging, though for a dystopian future they aren't divergent enough for my liking.
(Next year in SR the resource rush in on and US oil companies receive rights to 25% of national parklands and 10% of Indian lands. ).

Anyway with actual nuclear exchanges having happened in the world, the liberalization of the UCAS when it merges with Canada, the havok of VITAS, the kick in the ball to hight tech with the Crash, and the new racism of UGE/goblinization the CAS finds itself in a rather different place than now.

Actually that's interesting with VITAS. The people that were the most isolated and/or paranoid about outsiders would likely have survived at higher rates than the more cosmopolitan.


Plus again it's a game set in a dystopian future. Now which is more fun for the GM when the players aircraft goes down?

A. The CAS countryside is the same as everywhere else, not worth mentioning. There is a local mechanic and the repair parts arrive the next day.

B. Deliverance

That being the case, why did the CAS split from the UCAS? Surely there has to be some sort of ideological dissonance between the two. I'm sure you're right in the real world, but we're talking about the Sixth World here...

Basically it was over the UCAS taking on the Canadian social welfare system as the one thing that kept the union from being a takeover by the U.S. government over its northern neighbor.

I'm thinking maybe martindv is right. It sounds like there really isn't much more for detail out there and if they felt like it they could have added some info pretty easily. So I guess adapt to your game as appropriate.

That's not the full story. The Second Secession of the South was due to economics. Heavy industry was in the North and e-startups were in the South. Labor unions supported the liberals in the North and free-trade activists backed the conservatives in the South. When the first Crash hit, the South was devastated. Relief measures passed by Congress went to big-business in the North. Integrating the social welfare system of the liberal Canadians into the rest of the UCAS was the straw that broke the camel's back as the North was spending money on that rather than on helping Southern industries recover.