Actually in this particular case i'm not domains is something that spirits lost in 4th because of the rising magtical level and a better understanding of magic so says the 4th edition books. If memory servers the 100 x magic level has been around since at least 3rd edition. Astrally projecting is one chink in the theory that I will concede however if a mage is astrally projecting to guiode the attack their not summoning more spirits as others have suggested. So there is a limited amount of resources that can be sent out on this attacks, finite number of magical resources and whatnot. WOuldn't be a huge deterance given astral travel speeds but it is a limiting factor considering the multitudes of military assets and targets scattered throughout the country.

Additionally from another thread, as to manifesting spirits, stick-n-shock.

I'm sure that any minute now one side is going to convince the other that the NAN is totally realistic/irredeemably pathetic. Seriously. Somewhere on page 11, for sure, it'll happen.

Yeah I hear ya Critias. The bottom line for me is that the existence of the NAN doesn't significantly affect my SR games. The NAN are in SR lore now, so you either deal with it and move on, or you go back and rewrite a bunch of SR history to suit your own tastes for "realism." *shrug*

That would take some serious handwaving. You can't just handwave away this conflict, it just doesn't make sense. According to RAND studies on modern conflict, the favored faction would totally kick hoop here. Don't go injecting your fiction.

BlueMax
/not serious at all
//only serious cat is serious

EDIT: Does one side of this argument get to play the "Magic I win" button or "story fiat card?"

Ceiling cat is watching you be serious?

SERIOUS CAT is serious!

I need to buy more willpower

NVM

Willpower is pathetically broken in SR4!

The NAN of Shadowrun was completely unnecessary.

The main reason I say this is that most of the 'Runs are against megacorps and NOT against a nation's military. Taking on a government is a Bad Idea™ for Runners.

The world could still be as dystopian as it is shown in the fluff, but not with the stupidity of FASA and their overblown Cliches and Stereotypes. I mean honestly, WHY would Mexico go from what they are now to being Aztecs... you those flaming assholes who like to cut hearts out of people.

Yeah, I know the magic thing... but why didn't any Christian spirits manifest? If it's belief, then Mexico with 76% of it's population being Catholic not have any "Angels" manifest?

FASA may have come up with a nice idea or two, but to be honest... some of the background fluff behind Shadowrun (or BattleTech) is complete crap.

And yet... That is nothing more than Opinion...

Yeah, but all the bitching in the world ain't gonna change it, so why rail against it and stick your fist in the air, slinging insults at the developers and their work?

All the bitching in the world won't make him change his views, so why rail against it and post?

Thank you.


Ok, just two problems with that: (And I REALLY hate to derail you because you're arguing FOR me here)

The NAN's image and all that other jazz would especially frown on biological agents. See: European IRL resistance to genetically enhanced crops and animals. I can't see them signing off on that.

The other problem is that, as I went on at length about elsewhere, while technically "Weapons of Mass Destruction", delivering Biological or Chemical weapons to STRATEGIC or "Counter Value" targets like, say, New York, Chicago or Dee Cee, presents some daunting challenges. These weapons are most effectively utilized over shorter (read: tactical) ranges where you can utilize mass bombardment systems to disperse the agents/toxins/bugs; It's a lot easier to deliver chemicals or biologicals with rocket or tube artillery than a MRBM/IRBM (Medium/Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile). This would make them much less useful as a counter to the CAS/UCAS threat of mass nuclear attack on soft targets. Combined with the "bad press" such weapons garner, I don't see them being of much value to the NAN. The final nail would be that you need to spend a LOT on your own troops (pretective/decontamination gear) if they're going to be able to rapidly follow up on the use of such weapons for meaningful operational gains. And weapons you don't acknowledge don't have an effective deterent effect... except for maybe Israel which doesn't officially have any nukes; On the other hand, the number of people who believe THAT is right up there with those who actually think the Apollo moon landings were faked (Come on, it's two days before the 40^th anniversary... cut me some slack).

I'd say that I have better odds of getting through to him and making him realize the futility of his rants, than he does of going back in time and magically rewriting half of the SR1 sourcebooks.

The one is a complaint that has a chance -- however slight -- of altering someone's behavior. The other is nothing but a complaint and a pile of insults heaped upon game developers who aren't here to hear them, and who can't go back and change what was written a couple decades ago anyways.

In our world, by 2060 even the NAN was like the OAS or UN in RL. A good idea but functionally broken and existing only to keep paper pushers employed. And using it like the RL UN is a really good set for runs. Nations ignore it if they don't like it but like the prestiege of having it go their way.


so do like I do and stay with 3rd ed.

Oh, please, Critias, FASA took every single stereotype in the world and blew them so out of proportion as to make them almost laughable. Anyways, I'll never convince people here that the idea of the NAN is insanely stupid that it isn't funny.

Finally to those who say that the use of nukes is stupid, I have a question: If a nuke went off in New York and we know who did it, what would our response be? What the NAN did was like setting off a nuke. 18,000 people died in that blast the natams did. Honestly, what would YOUR* response be?


* == Assume that you are the President of the US in the Shadowrun world.

Oooooh, I like the analogy. Fits on most levels (admittedly it's not perfect), and gives something to fall back on for feel. Mind you, some nations probably carry more of their weight than others, but that's like the UN, too.

"NAN Security Council Resolution B.S. 2071-69A

We, the undersigned in representation of our separate sovereign nations, do condemn the actions taken by the Ute Nation in their dealings with the [redacted] corporation, and as a consequence, we wag our collective finger at you sternly and sanction the transport of fluffy bunny slippers in and out of the Ute Nation until such time as they make reparations to the agreived parties and publicly renounce such activites for the future.

Passed, this day, 18 July 2071"

Right, but my reply is "so what?" Some of the bigger stuff's been retconned in more recent books, and...and...well, what else do you want? The game is what it is.

And although I'm not holding my breath, in the deepest, darkest corner of my blackened heart lays a hope that the NAN and most of the rest of the "Magic I Win" nations will continue to get retconned until they either make sense or no longer exist in any true sense of the word.

So you're saying it won't help?

What I think happens to us, far to often.

Um, "less than ground burst" doesn't equate to "minimal", and keep in mind here, ICBMs don't generally lob kiloton-range warheads, and especially not the ones that the game was based off of back in the 1980's. Multi-megaton range strategic warheads are still going to pick up a hellacious amount of material; The fireball is several kilometers in radius, and that places a typical airburst well within range to touch the ground. And we're not talking about a bomb or two, either. We're talking about dozens of strikes if you want to wipe out all the enemy troop and equipment concentrations, strongholds, depots and caches, command centers and other vital assets. And lest we forget, Cheyene Mountain is in Wyoming, which if my geography is not too far off, lies squarely inside the NAN; That's the kind of target that earns itself a ground burst, along with the missile silos in the Dakotas. A single nuclear air-burst alone isn't a cataclysmic event; the equivalent of a Trident missile boats's full load IS. Um, where DID the "nukem!" crowd expect to find ICBMs once the midwest was overrun, anyhow? Yep. Boomers. 10-14 multi-megaton range MIRVs per bus (depending on treaty compliance), 24 missiles per boat.

But it's immaterial, because it's still nuking American soil, if you're talking "retaking' the area. And ground burst or not, Iowa's not going to be a prime place to feed millions of people for a good while. The nukes are exactly like the GGD: a countervalue threat to deter the other side from attempting to shift the status quo. If either side winds up using their trump card, the game's already effectively over for both sides.

No. People have done a lot of work on how to effectively use nukes and how to set them off precisely where they want them. "An air burst, by definition, is one taking place at such a height above ground that no appreciable quantities of surface materials are taken up into the fireball. The radioactive residue of the weapon then condense into extremely small particles which remain suspended in the atmosphere for a long time." 'Effects of Nuclear Weapons' by Glasstone is a very interesting book.


It's outside of Colorado Springs, which is also where the 10th Mountain Division lives and the USAF Academy is.

The NORAD base was covered in the Denver boxed set a few years ago. It was supposed to have been destroyed before the USA pulled out. It's kind of up in the air for each GM to decide how much damage the place took.

Oh hoh! So that's how the NAN won!

They got access to the Stargate and used it to round up all the slave tribes the Goa'uld took and thereby bolstered their numbers. Throw in some of that advanced technology (weather control device, cloaking devices, maybe some of those human-enhancing armbands) that looks like magic. So we aren't actually playing Shadowrun, we're playing a dystopic version of Stargate!

That makes me a lot happier.

Cheyenne was destroyed before SAIM could get its hands on it. I think NORAD moved their operations to their other base (North Bay).

This is a Sheddim thread. It refuses to dies.

Query, if a thread ressurects itself and then spawns new topics, does it become a Master Sheddim thread?

I've accepted that I won't convince the NAN haters regardless of what examples, numbers, or book references I might dig up.

Perhaps we could turn the thread to more constructive uses?

NAN recieved some serious shakeups from SR3 -> SR4. Ute got absorbed into Pueblo right? I don't have my books handy, but doesn't that make Pueblo the biggest NAN state now? I mean combined with LA, it seems like they are bigger than the Sioux now which used to be the 'big brother' NAN nation. And Tishimishan (I can never remember how it's spelled without looking it up) got eatten by the Salish, but I don't remember if it's all one nation now, or if something else happened.

As far as we know so far, the Pueblo probably has the largest population (absorbing the population of LA and Ute), I think the Athabaskan Council still has the most amount of land though. While Tishimishan is technically still it's own country it is effectively controlled by the SSC and I would expect that over the next 10 years in the SR universe it will be formally absorbed as well.

IN the case of domestic terrorist, my respons would definedly not be a nuclear bombing of the guilty party.

OK... but you didn't answer the question. What would you do to prevent them from doing that again. Let's face it, the President of the US did NOT know if the natams were able to do that again. What would you do to stop them?

Also, this was NOT terrorism, this was an open rebellion.

------------------------

@Alexand: Of course this thread will not die because there is more to discuss. As for not being able to convince us that the NAN make sense, of course you will not be able to because they don't.

KCKitsune:

I dunno, it seems the last 4 pages or so of the thread are just talking in circles. As for NAN not making sense .... SURE it's simply impossible that you might be wrong about anything.

Yeah I buy that. :rolleyes: In case you hadn't noticed, several people on this forum alone find NAN more believable then you give it credit. As much as I hate to break it to you, SR is for more than just you.

Conversations involve 2 people communicating, this is more like 2 brick walls ramming into each other over and over. SR Bumpercars if you will.

If it bugs you then stop coming back, for the record you show all the behaviors that supposedly drive you insane. When your evidence is debunked, specificly the population gaps between the native population even under best case and the rest of the poplation on orth american your response was basically "Well in my game everyone wanted to join them" when people pointed out that seemed somewhat fanciful given that they were basically a racist indians only movement you said "Well all the mexican's joined them" evidently other races in your own words don't "act like a hive mind" but the transient mexican/south American population does.

In short your lecturing pulpit is looking somewhat busted and if a discussion ont he internet is bugging you to the point where you can't add anything constructive to it nor add new arguments then maybe it is you who should back away and disengage.

I never said that I was not wrong. I was saying that the idea of the NAN was completely asinine. It was FASA asshattery and their overblowing of stereotypes and cliches. Honestly, Mexico all turning back into being Aztecs...



And there are people who agree with me.

Also, I do know that SR is more than me. I wonder why you ever said that?



And yet you have yet to answer my question on what YOU would do if you were the President of the US during this time period. So, Alexand, what would you do?

If you were the POTUS and Coyote and his boys just killed 18,000 people, what would you do?

================================

@Kerenshara: I would also like YOUR answer on what you would do if you were the POTUS and the GGD just killed 18,000 people.

Finish reading my picture book.

OK... what does you picture book have to do with the topic being discussed? I mean what's the context?

Sorry, I should've quoted for context.

POTUSA

Keep underestimating us,white-eyes. Yellow-Hair did at Little Bighorn.

The same thing that would happen if Bin Ladin took credit for Katrina trashing New Orleans- laugh at him.

Keep in mind NO ONE TOOK LOS ALAMOS SERIOUSLY. Natural disaster, yes. Terrorism, no.

The GGD was not acknowledged as a credible threat until Portland. Given the volcanos blew a mere hour or so after the death squad operation officially started, it had the timing to be a direct response.
Which means they can blow things up when they want. Los Alamos was retroactively declared the first exhange in the war. At that point you've got panic. Pants-wettening panic.

If you think Los Al is a horrible event, think of what New Madrid or San Andreas fault lines could do. In 2008 FEMA stated a New Madrid 7.7+ quake woukd result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster." Keep in mind, this report is even post-Katrina.

We don't know what messages may have been sent to the POTUS through intelligence agencies or Aztlan diplomats. I'd wager "Portland was a warning shot. Care to negotiate or should we just get straight to MAD? If so, would you rather have California sink into the ocean before or after we make the Ohio and Mississippi run backwards?"

The Nan is improbable but history is full of panicked or demoralized groups surrendering lands and resources in the face of an unexpected military defeat. Rome traded some cities with Persia for centuries as reparations for this or that. Well, cities and literally tons of gold.

OK, that's a good answer. Thanks for answering.



I guess that I'm a much bigger flaming asshole who would look at the NAN and go "OK, let's play your way!" and nuke the Aztecs so badly that I would make Hitler look like Mother Teresa. I would not stop until they cried for mommy.

The reason I would do this is once you give in there is literally nothing to stop them from taking everything... a lesson that the Romans failed to learn.

Keep in mind that while the Romans traded outlying cities in the empire to another empire they didn't trade Rome or another central imperial city to them. That's the problem with the NAN, the US gave up so much that the losses due to MAD start to look viable by comparison.

If you want to play a zero-sum game you can but it'll come at the cost of your nation and people. Even if the NAN does no other GGD magic, nukes will still kill off the US.

Not just Rome but every great civilization that has fallen, and those which are falling now.

I don't have my Shadowrun books with me, nor do I know where to look up the information needed online. However, one has to ponder the POTUS at the time. What platform did she/he run on? Was she/he a staunch patriot?

BlueMax

And the Treaty of Denver didn't?

Sorry Kigmatzomat, the Treaty killed off the US and the Natams got to laugh all the way to the bank.

There are other elements required for treaties, like senate approval. Can you imagine the senators from Texas, Colorado, Arizona, etc voting for this?

Remember, it is an area that has little to no actual population in comparison to the rest of the United States... SO they got the Great Plains... SO What...

At least 24 Senators.

As a person living in Nebraska right now i'd just like to say a hearty F U.

Which actually raises a good point even with the lack of actual population numbers the economic loss etc are pretty well cataclysmic.

SO... All States get 2 Senators, Big Deal, California gets 2 Senators... How many House Representatives are there? Not that Many in Comparison...

Having said that, you arn't going to pass a treaty without 24 senators from the states that will be ceded to a hostile and genocidal nation.