I used to like the detailed information and focus on the Native American Nations and their denizens in the earlier editions of the game, but it seems with each successive itteration of the main rules, the NAN seem to fade more and more into meta-obscurity. Does anybody else feel that way, and/or does anybody know of intentions to resurect some of the material and update it significantly for 4th ed?

It's history. Ancient History. The latest edition concentrates much more on mechanics and mood/genre setting related to that. More goodies. Fluff and settings are in Fluff books.

Actually it's no problem at all using SR3 NAN source books for SR4 anyway.

Having worked with a few other systems where every splat book contained new rules instead of being cool optional extensions I think it's really nice I can still use a lot of my old SR3 source books very easily with the SR4 ruleset. There's actually tons more material ready to use with SR4 then most other games have with their new editions.

edit: There's always talk about a SR4 world almanac type book. I assume NAN updates would be included in that.

IMNSHO they were a dumb idea poorly executed, and the inherent sillyness of the entire concept became more and more obvious as time passed. It appears everyone has agreed to pretend they don't exist, and the game is better for it.

I get the impression this is deliberate.

- J.

I guess you can just not talk about the NAN's, but how can you just write them out of the metaplot? And I don't think they're any more stupid of an idea or poorly executed than the Tirs.

Thank you. You spoke FOR me.

I personally consider 3rd ed to be akin to Star Trek V: "Star Trek V? There IS no Star Trek V!" - alleged quote of Gene Roddenberry on his death bed.

I bought a couple of the books, and have since lost them without a scrap of remorse for their disapearance.

If I was going to buy a 3rd ed product to get some more updates, I keep hearing about ShadowBeat; Does that really cover it, or are there other books I should be looking for? I remember skimming New Seatle in the game store when it came out and wanting to cry. I STILL have my old copy of the original Seatle Sourcebook safely packed away.

I think they're a fabulous idea, but I agree they were executed poorly. The idea of indigenous cultures using magical power to rise up gives the Awakening a cultural twist that makes it feel less like "our world with magic tacked onto it". Not to mention, I just like it for the indigenous-empowerment angle.

That said, poorly executed. The NAN and SoNA books make up crazy population figures when First Nations groups make up <1% of the modern US and Canada, and yet act like they somehow moved virtually all white people out of the American West. Moreover, even with the one-drop rule Indians and Latinos counted in, the movement never would have survived without bringing in significant numbers of ideologically-compatible pinkskins, from metahumans and their families, to magicians, to anti-corp, ecologist, and anti-federal government activist groups. Finally, things like the Lone Eagle incident would be a death knell for garnering any kind of popular support.

I tend to run SR with the idea that the Ghost Dance War was as much a massive cultural shift as a military revolt, and with the idea that a great many of the "Native Americans" of 2070 are reverse-assimilated Anglos. They didn't cause massive casualties, at least not until the final stages, but the US wore itself out trying to put out the fires of an insurgency with a hammer.

I think the reason they're less prominent now is that the focus isn't solely on North America anymore. We're hearing just as much about what's happening on the other four continents that aren't Australia (for all we know the kangaroos have taken over down there), and I think that's a good thing, considering that nothing says future shock like overglobalization.

Shadows of North America is the most recent book that spends any considerable amount of space on NAN countries. A few of them are touched on (in the Michael Jackson way) in System Failure, put SONA is the one you're after if you'd like something more up-to-date than NAN1 and NAN2.

You realise that the alternative title for Target: Awakened Lands is Shadowrun Down Under, right?

I personally found SoNA to be largely irrelevant. Probably one of the most supremely disappointing books I've read in awhile.

- J.

NAN vol. 1 and NAN vol. 2 are both quite good. And I guess the population figures of the NAN states never really bothered me, because I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it. But if you hand-wave away the survival of the first generation of NAN citizens, there's no reason the NAN states couldn't be fully-functioning in the 2070's.

I've always felt that the NAN idea was an overcomplication born of the desire to shake up the status quo without really considering what it would involve. To depopulate the western half of the US of any non-indians would be something the government, nor those people would ever agree to. For the one thing, there's no place to put them, for another there's no reason for them to choose uprooting as a viable alternative to death. Even overlooking the fact that it would be one of the greatest human atrocities in the history of the world (the simultanious relocation of millions of people) it's just not feasable by sheer numbers, even with magical help. Furthermore even if it had happened there's not a lot of reason to believe the UCAS wouldn't have tried to take the lands back once the magical playing field was leveled a bit.

In short I always felt the fall of nations through extraterritoriality and the rise of the megacorps made a better story then geo-politically cutting north america in two big chunks on racial lines did. With a token "the south rose again".

I feel the complet opposite.

Anyway, Ghost Cartels touches on NAN culture a few times through Native "First Nations" gangs. Considering the theme of the book, I think NAN criminal elements get a pretty decent slice of the spotlight. True the other setting books have not talked about the NAN much, but SoNA was pretty complete. The upcoming Seattle book will probably have a bit more NAN influences.

It doesn't do anyone any favors to think too hard about the game's broad macro-scale backstory stuff. Just accept it as written, play the best games you can within the I-Have-Exercised-My-Right-To-Willfully-Suspend-My-Disbelief framework, and have fun with it. It's not worth overthinking. I have way more fun just accepting the sourcebooks as written (so that I can feel I got my money's worth out of them), and making my characters accordingly.

As I understand it, white folk weren't forced to leave the new NAN states, but most chose to anyways rather than be discriminated against. And any relocation would have been comparable to the imprisonment of all the native american citizens in the United States. And with the NAN states taking a significant portion of the U.S. arsenal with it, plus the formation of the CAS, the UCAS was never in any position to seriously consider retaking the NAN states. After 25-30 years, there's no reason to think that the new NAN states wouldn't have been able to build a significant enough armed forces to defend their territory, if not project power. Plus, I still don't think the magical playing field is leveled now, let alone by 2050.

Disclamer: I will not now nor will I ever justify forced relocation of any peoples. Having said that there is a fair cry difference between the relocation of less then .01 percent of the populace of a nation (extrapolated from current US census figures) to the forced relocation of 50% of the nations population. It doesn't make any sense for a nation to succeed their arsenal or their land with that big of a population difference even with magic involved. To put in perspective even if tommorow the entire US population of Native American ancestry (of which I am one by the way before anyone gets too bent out of shape) showed up to fight the federal government they would still only have comporable numbers to the current standing military personnel. But even if we allowed that they have all this territory and nowhere near the population to utilize or hold it. With magic slipping closer to equality and fractures among the NAN it is actually extremely suprising to me that the UCAS never tried to even the score.

But that's never even going into why are nations still existing with so many of their population bases identifying as extraterritoriality based corps and corporate citizens not paying taxes.

Between extrateritorality, Vistas, elves and dwarves living together-well you get my point. Much of the official population figures don't takee into account sinless and corp citizens.

Basically the US disintegrated in light of the fact that it could not cope or adapt to the situation.

OK, fair exception. And no, I don't have it, so again, might as well be armies of kangaroos and the drop bears and what have you.

Or, as I find more plausible, "the US crumbled because it couldn't hold up the weight of the plot being stacked atop it."

The end result, like much of Shadowrun, might not hold up to too-close scrutiny, but on the surface it's awesome and that's what counts.

Well, yes, that is perfectly true.

Umm, right. There are 10,000 members of the the various Ute tribes, spread over SE Utah and SW Colorado. There are two million non-Utes in Utah. There are >4 million in Colorado.

They are going to do what? At 600:1 odds? Hell, there are 40 times as many Navajo, who never even got one word in the SR1 book at all IIRC.

Just pretend that they don't exist. At all.

Most of the "anglos" were just normal citizens. Most of the native americans were pissed off para militants with shamans and massive magical payloads. Most americans were taught since childhood to avoid violence and be passive, wait for the authorities to fix things. Violence is bad. They were not equipped to deal with what happened, even if they massively outnumbered the natives, specially since the authorities never even tried to fix much of anything.
I can see a small group of seriously powered up native americans watching long lines of relocated anglos, most walking scared, their husbands and young sons (probable combatants) probably dead. A small part of me thinks they deserve it, and another part remembers atrocities commited by europeans against jews over the centuries. Regardless, it's a powerful storyline, but I think 4th edition right now is about the COOL WHOA, and the darkness will come later. You can still read plenty of references to it in the fluff sections.

The names of the various NAN states doesn't mean that only those tribes are represented. I believe that traditionally, the Navajo tribes would fall in Pueblo nation territory. I don't remember why the NAN states got the names they did, but I always figured that they were pretty much all of the native population that existed in the United States at the time. Plus, there are plenty of anglos that stayed to run various things, depending on how receptive each nation was to anglos. I know there's more information about that in NAN vol. 1 and 2. But yes, you are right that the numbers don't quite jive, but still it's pretty much impossible to write the NAN out of Shadowrun.

Personally I'm happy to see the NAN get quietly pushed aside, the very idea that the Great Ghost Dance could overthrow the countries of North America is simply too silly to suspend my disbelief. Even if you ignore the actual real-life status of Native Americans, in the fluff they were subjected to death camps so instead of robust warriors you have a bunch of starving mal-treated escaped prisoners.

Of course, I supose the fact that they had the backing of a Horror/Elf might keep them from outright being squashed by the military but it would hardly allow them to seize large portions of land.

I compare the Great Ghost Dance to the effect of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombings had on japan. Just the threat of another attack forced the US to back off.
I'm not very versed in the fluff, but what elf/horror might ? Do you mean horror as in earthdawn ?

Meh, magical nukes ARE impressive, but they aren't war winners when the other side also has access to their own non-magical nukes. And lets not forget that American culture is not really comparable to WWII Japan.

And yeah, I mean Horrors and Immortal Elves as in the Fourth World.

And that Japan was already losing the war in 1945. They had been pushed back and out from most of the areas they had taken earlier, and had lost most of their naval and air assets.

Well, something about the rightousness of the "native uprising" scenario resonates with me, together with the darker aspects of it that fit well in a distopian future. I'd rather attempt to find logical reasons behind the game history than attempt to change it, but that's just my view. You can debate on the political and social effects of the great ghost dance, but ultimately each group decides for themselves. Saying that the NAN is fading, however, isn't true at all.

Also, what do the horrors and immortal elves have to do with the NAN and the Great Ghost Dance ? I don't use earthdawn in my game, by the way (SR4).

*shrugs* I dislike it when the devs use the power of plot to shape their world in silly ways that simply couldn't happen at the time when the history of the Sixth World deverged from ours. I also have an active hatard for the Night Flight, or Big D actually winning the election.

However to answer your question, even if you don't use Earthdawn in your setting The Great Ghost Dance was given to the NAN Shamans by a creature that is the spawn of a Horror and an Immortal Elf from the Fourth Age.

And as a disclaimer, I don't use Earthdawn as my "Fourth World" either, but over the years aspects of Earthdawn has bleed into Shadowrun in an "offically unoffical" manner.

Where can I find that information ?

Edit : Delete rage.

Your not the first to raise this argument that doesn't make it any less tired. Yes the use of nuclear weapons did force the capitulations of the Japanese, but it wasn't just that, it was the inability of the Japanese to strike back in the face of that devastating weaponry. Additionally all that was asked of the Japanese under terms of surrender was a retreat to their pre-war borders, which they'd already been forced back to, not the largest mass-relocation of half a landmasses population. A population fights hardest when their lands are being taken. Who that land orirignally belongs to is irrelevant to you if it was yours at the time it was taken. Don't believe me? How's peace in the holy land coming on? Even if every single member of the native american population was a certified bonafied Magic Indian badass they are still outnumbered somewhere to the tune of 100,000 to 1, even assuming large portions fo the populace might be traumitized if even one fourth of the population is unwilling to give up the Natam nations shouldn't have had a prayer. Whether you think it's good, bad or indifferent doesn't come into it, my point is even with magic and especially magic as laid out in the setting it's just not possible or, and i use the term loosely, realistic.

What does it make sense for? It make sense for isolating Seattle, that's it. Run a game based almost anywhere else and completely cut out the ucas/nan/cas and what do you have? Still a fine setting for dystopian future about corporate balkanization.

Other then Aztalan and the Japanese what have any of the national elements in shadowrun really done that wasn't directly instigated by a megacorp, dragon or immortal elf since the setting got started?

I don't know about anyone else but I don't see anything righteous about the displacement of somewhere to the tune of 160 million people. I see a humanitarian disaster the likes of which the world has never seen we're talking a holocaust level even and it's cool for some reason because it's Native American's perpetrating it.

Don't forget the USA that effectively surrendered to the NANs is not the USA of today. By the time the Treaty of Denver occured, the USA was very, very near bankruptcy and run by idiots and tools. Take that into consideration.

I wonder why they didn't find a way to tie the NAN in with corporate extraterritoriality. If you're going to go far fetched, then why not assume that the NAN 'purchased' the land from the US for almost nothing as a part of the treaty. They incorporated it and each NAN member state is effectively a large area of extraterritorial property supported by the megacorps that do this too.

OK, so I'm up way too late. The above is very sketchy, but some manner of it could be expanded and refined to help rationalize the NAN if someone is so inclined.

The way I see things, the very concept of "nations" goes against how I perceive the Native American attitude towards the earth, etc. Yes, I know all about the Iroquois Nation and so on, and I can still see some existing (mainly the Pueblo Corporate Council as it's written) but I would generally prefer to have most of the area covered by the NAN as more-or-less independent bastions of order. Possibly we'd have several allied in extremely minor "nations", but political clout wise these would effectively be non-entities.

Furthermore, I half think these wouldn't all necessarily be in the traditional NAN areas of the West. As magic becomes more prevalent and during the time the SAIM and the Ghost Dance are in full effect with the US crumbling at the same time, I could see various tribes moving back to their more traditional homelands -- the Lenape (Delawares) seem to have been a reasonably powerful alliance of tribes.

Ideally, I think I'd like to redefine the Sixth World a bit, but I'd like to hold on to at least some bits of canon.

I would like to know why the US was broken into so many pieces and Japan not only became stronger, but much more unified. I chalk it up to FASA stupidity that Catalyst has to keep going otherwise a major foundation of the game is broken.

Because, like the other cyberpunk worlds that inspired it, Shadowrun was out to capture the awesome 80's. Mohawks meant trouble, yuppies were kings, and Japan was taking over the world.

During the 80's, Japan was an economic powerhouse and the manufacturing base in the U.S. was going into rapid decline. Cyberpunk just takes that set of circumstances and runs with it to conclusion. If you were to split the Shadowrun and real timelines right now, of course things would turn out very different.

I think the current problem with the NAN is that it has turned into a glorified smuggling territory. Basically it is a recreated wild west when they could have done so much more with it. I think the PCC is the only exception. I would really like to see the PCC become a AA or AAA corp, maybe the exclusive corp to the NAN causing the other Megas to be forced out.

IIRC the writers actually turned that on its head and said that since they were isolated in camps stuck in the back end of nowhere it meant that they managed to avoid the worst of the VITAS and VITAS II outbreaks which killed off roughly a third of the rest of the population.



I don't know. As written they were able to cause volcanoes to explode and call up tornadoes on command. Combine that with troops that can become completely invisible and throw in their being able to control spirits of living flame and the other elements and their powers and that's one hell of a combination. When you're enemy can call down magical powers like that and you've got no idea of how they do it or defences against it short of breaking out the city-buster size nukes you're kind of in trouble.

Or you know....shoot them? It's a common distance between storyline magic and actual mechanical magic in RPG's, the level of magic needed to pull off that kind of response isn't depicted in the actual system since and large scale magical destruction wouldn't have done a whole lot to endear them to the population. Even assuming a 30% die off of the population at large every single natam would have to be a certified magical bad ass for it to make a damn bit of difference.

I took a different approach in my home campaign. I set the native American population to its real world level. I let the Great Ghost Dance and rebellions play out but, with the vastly different populations, the level of success enjoyed by NAN was lower. It was unable to force out tens of millions of Anglos.

Instead, the Treaty of Denver was essentially a reversal of the reservation system, a quick diplomatic fix that only annoyed landholders. The anglo territories became reservations inside Native American-managed territories, both notionally still part of the US (and, later, UCAS/CSA). No population shifts occurred; the Anglos stayed where they were. In subsequent decades, poor management by Native Americans and low populations has meant that the Anglos have been able to steadily buy back lands. Since there's no trade or travel barriers between the Anglo reservations and Native American lands (which remain parts of the CSA/UCAS), most folks don't even notice the change except when they look at the logo on the highway patrol car that pulled them over.

It's an approach that let me emphasize to my players that, yes, the 6th World is here and the old nations have altered radically, but without having to deal with the gigantic out-of-nowhere Native American populations. Of course, what works in my game is unlikely to suit many other campaigns.

Which might be why it was called "The Great Ghost Dance" and not, you know, "A Standard Magic Ritual As Can Be Performed By Any Starting Character"...

You're missing a lot of good stuff, I have to say. Shadows of North America, Europe, and Asia were are excellent books that are still mostly relevant, at least until the 6th World Almanac comes out.

I don't think the NAN's are being "ignored" so much as the game has a much more global focus now. The NAN are a very North American plot element, and North America is the entirety of the game anymore. As new location books start to come out that touch upon areas where the NAN have influence, I imagine we'll see them be treated in more detail.

Mirilion feel free to ask Ancient History, maybe he'll be willing to dig up the exact reference for you.

FlakJacket there are a couple of problems with that, firstly even if you assume that the Indians were completely spared the plagues which is unlikely there still isn't enough of them to do the job. And secondly at best the NAN has the same ratio of Awakened population as everyone else at the time, so less then 1%. Sure, you can argue that because of the guidance of the Horror that the NAN's Mages/Adepts had the advantage of being able to figure out spells that were beyond their time, but not beyond what Fourth Edition allows in the rules.

Are you saying that the Great Ghost Dance shouldn't have happened since its not possible using the SR4 rules?

Similarly to Megu, I kept the essential facts but reflavoured things slightly to be believable. First and foremost, I portrayed the uprising as a hugely cultural thing. When you had actual medicine men slipping through the shadows, performing actual magic, then it must have been pretty easy to establish some heavy cultural presence. I see the government's handling of Native Americans as being partly a response to this sudden and (what must have been to them) unnerving and growing power base. It was the beginning of the age of magic. There weren't any well-known traditions on hand for those people that began to awaken, haunted by spirits no-one else could see and granted power they didn't know how to use. But these shamans were appearing that could teach people, give them a framework, take them on vision quests to find a mentor spirit, etc. Of course Danial Coyote's faction gained power.

And when you're judging whether the capitulation of the USA government to their demands is realistic, don't just consider that the USA was battered by crashes, plagues and economic turmoil, remember particularly that unlike other wars the USA has been involved in, this one put the leaders at risk. They faced an enemy that could breach all of their security and which had demonstrated that they couldn't fight back. George W. Bush and Tony Blair might have casually sent thousands to die, but can you imagine either of them being so sanctimonious about the need to "fight terror" if their enemy could get to them personally? Not likely. There's a different standard applied when the leaders themselves are in danger.

As to Tir Taingire, I have that explained in my own campaign as being the result of Ehran's own clever manipulations. He it was that taught Danial Howling Coyote the ritual magic of the Great Ghost Dance. He was regarded by Danial as a trusted ally and confidant. And in my campaign, he was playing off the government as well, using both sides against each other. I can see him getting the country that he wanted.

That's how I handle it, anyway. As far as realism issues goes, the NAN has nothing on President Dunklezahn, imo.

K.

I think you hit on some very critical points here:
* There hasn't been a war on American soil since the Civil War and since then, American society has been socialized that it is better to send thousands (if not millions) to their death then let one American lose their life at home to a foreign power.
* While Danial Coyote may have been the best leader to ever come out of the NAN, his rebellion would not have succeeded without help. I don't think it was coincidence that the Tir was formed from a NAN nation and not the UCAS or CFS. The elves knew about the previous age of magic and knew who would be better suited to learn that magic. They also have their long term goals and they new that the NAN would be a better route to acheive these goals.

Shadows of Asia made me throw it against a wall. I forget exactly what suggested that the writer didn't have the foggiest clue about Japanese society, but I read about 1/3rd of one chapter. It didn't even make a satisfactory sound.

SoNA wasn't bad, other than the inherent sillyness. I don't think I have SoE.

Care to elaborate, I thought that SoA was a good book. Mind you I didn't pay too close attention to the Japanese chapter, but I thought the section on Afghanistan and Central Asia was very informative. I loved all the Shadow books and I wish I could have had a chance to read Shadows of Latin America as well. They were all laid out excellently and while I'm sure you will disagree with me, the info inside was great filler on what was happening elsewhere in the SR world.