So one day I got to thinking about Shadowrun's back story. There are some similarities to the re-education camps to the actual, real world camps from WWII where so many jews and political dissidents suffered. As I pondered the link between the two, I considered the real world history of what happened afterward. The jews founded Israel, and for a number of years they hunted down the Nazis and brought them to justice. In fact, one could even see parallels to shadowruns operated by the Israeli government, even going so far as to kidnap some of the big names and haul them to Israel for a trial and eventual execution. Now, i'm skipping over a lot of the details but that's essentially what happened. The Shoah project is the jewish dedication to the idea that the massacre should never be allowed to happen again. They record the testimony of the survivors, and make the evidence of the atrocities available to any/all who want to learn the truth.

So back to shadowrun. I've not seen anything in the official game back story about the NAN that would indicate they took a similar route. Did the NAN hunt down the camp guards? I would presume they educate their children about what happened...but that's mere presumption on my part. Thoughts? Comments?

Play nice though. I realize that i'm treading close to some dangerous territory here. It's just that I take dedication to the 'reality' of my campaign/story arcs very seriously. I could see some interesting campaign ideas coming out of such a project from the NAN...and I think it's a subject area that might be a good place to further develop the back story for Shadowrun.

Magical attempted genocide doesn't count?

~J

One could argue that the Ghost Dance was the NAN using the only weapon they had left in order to strike back against a better armed opponent. And i'm also fairly certain (again, this is mere speculation on my part) that Howling Coyote was given the knowledge of the Ghost Dance by someone (or several someones) for reasons of their own that had nothing to do with the re-education camps themselves. Or even the well being of the tribes.

there have been worse atrocities, and more lesser ones throughout history the one you cited is just the most famous. and one of the only ones to have the backing of the rest of the world to assist in the justice.
its not out of the ordinary for the oppressed to simply be glad they are free and return to a life away from what happened
I'm not going to touch on specifics due to the sensitive nature of the subject but you can google most of the famous incidents

well yeah, but that goes to my point - the ghost dance changed the world, but it's one of the least discussed items in the back story of the shadowrun setting. none of the tribal societies seemed to organize any effort to bring the camp guards (or their bosses) to justice. And given the magical backing they had at their disposal, I'd think they'd be not just motivated to strike back directly at their former torturers but that they would have the means at their disposal to do so without exposing themselves to any danger.

I'm not finding details on the Ghost Dance in my collection, but I would quite seriously suggest that the reason is because they already murdered them all (or most of them) in that event.

~J

Capturing prison camp guards and putting them on trial before the STC would make a GOOD Shadowrun.

How would a presumably mostly Anglo group of runners feel about it?
How much of a Sadist was this camp guard who escaped?
How much of an "everyday Joe" with a family has the former guard become?

If you like runs with moral dilemmas (and I LOVE them) then this could be a great premise.

1)Evidently the NA Concentration camps were nothing like the nazi death camps as enough magical indian badasses came out of them to start a multifront war against the most powerful nation on the planet and it's northern neighbor.

2)The parallel further breaks down as the Jews were imprisoned because of lung standing racial bias and scapegoating where as the NA were incarcerated (justifiably or not) because NA radicals tried to more or less end the world in nuclear fire. A sentimen that more or less held true when as soon as they gained the abiloity to cause more mass scale death and destruction the NAN pulled things like Los Alamos.

3) Israel is only able to get away with extraditing nazi war criminals back from Israel because the government that is responsible for those crimes is now defunct and the world court has standing orders for the extradition. If the NAN government did the same to UCAS citizens the UCAS could ask the corporate court to intervene or go to war themselves. Given the NAN's anti-corporate rheteric I cannot see them having very many friends amongst the powers that be outside of Horizon.

The reason the GGD isn't discussed is because it's an embarrassingly racist piece of tripe that serves no other purpose storyline wise then to isolate Seattle, which is the primary game setting. From a rational or geopolitical standpoint, or within the context of the games own explanation of magic it doesn't work.

ooook then. sorry I asked.

Well unless things start getting interesting the only piece I'm prepared to say about the NAN is this; It simply doesn't work and there are too many holes that the devs have tried to plug that we've basicallt ended up with at least three different versions of the story that all contradict each other on key parts.


I can buy the NAN being able to pull off the Great Ghost Dance Ritual itself given that they were handed it on a silver platter by an agent of the Horrors, but for the NAN to actually win we have to forget the fact that 1% of everyone's beliefs just became real, and the "ancient shaman rituals" are no more valid than a Christian praying to the ArcheAngels or even a Star Wars Geek wielding The Force to crush his enemies.

Wait, what?

~J

Search your feelings, young Kagetenshi for you know it to be true.

On the contrary—precisely two beliefs turned out to be legitimate, one of which was native American tribal shamanism.

~J

I disagree with you as strongly as possible, we've been told time and time again that Magic doesn't care what you do, merely that you believe it is going to work, and I'd point to the multitude of Traditions out there as proof, hell, at least one of them doesn't even believe in Magic but that doesn't stop them from shaping mana and frying some poor slot's brain.


Also remember that Big D is on the record as being amused by the Traditions and the "self imposed limitations" if I remember his words correctly.

It does indeed sound like we disagree as strongly as possible. Despite pollution from later sourcebooks, the core message has been that magic works in two ways and two alone for Sixth World metahumanity. The psionic adherents are given crippling disadvantages to reflect the fact that they are, ultimately, deeply wrong about how their power works.

Metahumanity magic is fairly laughable to Dunkelzahn, I'd imagine.

~J

Aye, but the mere fact that the Psions are able to do anything at all while refusing to believe in magic is rather telling in my eyes, plus we've been given countless Traditions that aren't crippled in the slightest, hell before Fourth Edition it seemed like almost every last one had to have their own "special" ruleset to reflect their differences.

Ravor is right, it hasn't been a two tradition game for a very long time and wasn't a two tradition game for very long at all.

Ravor is right, it hasn't been a two tradition game for a very long time and wasn't a two tradition game for very long at all.

Now repeat after me, Ravor is always right, even when he's utterly and completely wrong.

I am so stealing this idea and running with it. Thank you

And on the subject of the various nations that are NAN being possible thanks to SR magic, going to have agree to disagree, which should be apparent from the NAN Fading thread. Long live the Salish-Sahidhe Council, fuck the UCAS.

To each their own, I happen to like backstories that aren't built on fairy dust and LSD.

*EDIT*

Yes, even mellow Ravor has some snark in him.

Hey Ravor, just as a matter of interest, what parts of Shadowrun do you believe are not built on fairy dust and LSD?

Has SR4 really been out for that long? Because since 1989, it's been pretty clearly 'two schools' (assuming you group Voudoun into Shamanism, which is basically where it belongs).

To answer the original question, my assumption is the organized tribes realized it wasn't worth the trouble and political flak of trying to convince the UCAS/CAS to give up citizens when they're struggling to achieve the most basic political goals and ultimately need the help of their neighbors to maintain stability, and the disorganized tribes were too far removed and too busy fighting each other to cut out their place to care. Any search like this will be privately funded and run (but does make complete sense).

pbangarth sadly not nearly enough.

From a physical plant Stand Point the Midwest, and Western states are dotted with a number of newly minted maximum security prisons, that are truly state of the art. Many of these specialize in isolating trouble makers from each other-be it segregation units, with single man cells, or even double bunked assignments, to cells that even contain their own yard modules, shower modules and use highly sophisticated sally port style pass through systems, with angled floors, and safety plumbing, with built in gas dispensers.

Some states have prisons set up to handle large numbers of prisoners, but most of these are older facilities with a great deal of problems. Few of these places would be inaccessible to the media completely, even if staff were supplemented by the Military.

I suspect that how the media perceived this event would be a significant factor in how events unfolded. Internment camps, like the ones the Japanese American citizens were subjected to in the World War II era would be immensely difficult to run in a similar fashion due to various state and federal mandates on how we incarcerate people. (Things like OSHA, local Environmental Quality, State departments of Agriculture, etc... all have a role to play in how a prison is run.)

Now magic is, of course, a real X factor. I mean imagine how scared out of their wits people would be to find out Magic was real. Really real.

I personally like the Great Ghost Dance, but I also like that the game uses racism to enhance the Dystopian feel of things. Issues like racism, slavery, human rights, medical rights are common place in our games. We've had some great IC discussions on how people feel about these things. Heck in our D&D game we dedicated six sessions just to freeing slaves, and groups like Tamanous, and the Humanis Policlub are amongst my favorites bad guys.

Obviously your mileage will vary. What always kills me in these sorts of discussions is how people discuss what happens at their table as if it should happen at every table. I thought the fun of an RPG was that we can each do it our own way, and no ones wrong. But what do I know after 20 years of gaming?

Well I guess I always figure that "do at your table as thou wilt" is taken for granted and that the passion in these types of debates is a good thing as it shows that people actually care about the issue at hand.

Three words "State of Emergency"



Well as i've stated elsewhere I find it A) Riddled with inconsistencies and retcons. B) Racist in it's portrayal of "Magical Indian Braves" C) Irrelevant to the story of Shadowrun as a whole.

Do you also do runs for Alamos 20k wanting to track down the shamans responsible? Or is "racism" and genocide only cool when it's directed at whites or Catholics.

I mean all this talk about Shoah laws in regards to internment camp guards always overlooks all the rediculously mass murdering, enslaving, people displacing things the NAN did, which with each ensuing edition is softened just a little bit more so they were the peace and hugs brigade. But if that's the case how was there support for the "wipe out all injuns" act in congress. These events don't happen in a vacuum.

Don't you mean good guys?

~J

Also, back in the days when I was doing demos for Shadowrun 3rd the Great Ghost Dance war was one of my favored settings for introducing new players completely unfamiliar with Shadowrun (like those walking into a game store having never heard of it before). It kept things very simple, no metahumans, no cyberware, no matrix, and most of the magic doesn't yet exist. I always had the players playing U.S. soldiers sent to track down the natives when I used this scenario. State of the art military tech versus Spirits of Nature coming out of nowhere. I always got positive feedback from the demoers that is was a good way to introduce them to the basics of the mechanics and how the setting takes a left turn from our reality. "Goblinization day" was another demoing scenario I sometimes used.

One of the things I've disliked about how settings have been covered in... oh mostly the last decade. Is that they're portrayed mostly as how things are when the subject matter was written with a sprinkling of magic and corp. tech. I've lived a lot of places and played with players from a lot of regions and I always like being able to portray their home setting as somewhat familiar with a large twist. Also, as a GM I didn't have to know the place as well as my players did because I can dictate how things changed. It also kills a lot of painful metagaming. The U.K. and Germany settings took it a bit too far for my taste, but in general the major upset was a good thing. I love portraying upper class Redmond and the Microsoft headquarters as huge buildings for Squatters and street Deckers for instance. Make people think about how a volcanic eruption and a flood of refugees can turn the way things are upside down.

This.

I find it hard to sympathize with people who set off volcanic eruptions in urban areas. In the face of terrorism, mass murder, swarms of refugees, and numerous other atrocities, I'm supposed to feel bad about abusive internment camp guards? Nope. One of the biggest inconsistencies about Shadowrun has been how the AmerIndians were always portrayed as the "good guys", when they did all that stuff. I agree with an earlier poster that the whole formation of the NAN is better off ignored as much as possible, because so much of it doesn't make sense.

Well, from the native american point of view, they were being incarcerated and murdered. Using the Great Ghost Dance to stop the USA military and call them to the negotiation table puts them as heroes.
If you take the PoV of the people who had their families and friends killed by volcanoes and evicted from their homes, yeah, the native americans are a bunch of bastards.
Still, I believe that one of issues that was negotiated some kind of anisty for both parties. The USA wouldn't put the most radical members of NAN on trial and the NAN wouldn't hunt down the camp guards and principals.

Remember that history is written by the winners. In this case, the NAN won. So I guess that makes them the good guys.

Exactly!

And I feel that like all things we take for granted we tend to forget about it. I'm also not so sure everyone agrees with it, but I've been wrong before.



Meh, handwavium by any other name... Say don't you go onto complain about internal consistency in this same post?



I don't, so I guess we'll have to just agree to disagree. Luckily I'm not looking to run your table, and you're not looking to run mine.



Actually I haven't done this specific idea, but yes we have run a Humanis campaign.



I'm not sure what sort of personal axe you've got grind here, but I'm not looking to play this game. My game world is dynamic, just like the real world. If usage of racism as tool to tell the stories I want serves the purpose, then yes I'll use it.

I get you don't like how events are presented in the books, and actually I agree to a point. As I need to get internal consistency in my games, I'll adjust the events for maximum cool story effect.



I'd like to discuss this more, but you mentioned you've posted on this before. Could either link me to those posts, so I can read them or explain this a little more? I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're saying here, and it seems interesting to me. So instead of putting words in your mouth, what do you mean?



I think we did four or five games as Humanis Policlubbers. It had a feel that I best describe as similar to Showtimes first season of "Dexter". Dark, but humorous.

Handwaivium? We're talking about something that happened IRL LAST WEEK. The president used state of emergency powers to supersede food and drug administration guidelines to get the H1N1 vaccine to market faster. Hell do you really the Gitmo was OSHA compliant? I'm all for internal consistancey but evidentl you and I have different reads on it.



Thank you for missing but at the same time proving my original point. The NAN killing 20k people at Alamos and countless more with the ghost dance ritual is A-OK because dont' ya know they were minorities being oppressed. Yet any anytime someone suggests how people might have reason to be annoyed with that state of events or the mass depopulation that followed or the treatment of non NAN's as second class citizens in nan territories their likened to humanis.

As far as personal axes to grind there's a part of me with Cheyenne ancestry and a fairly good knowledge of their culture good baand a part of that is always hurt and annoyed by "magical noble indian brave" as a hand wave for how the NAN happened. If I look at things through the lens of my own experience I know I would never stand for a plan to exterminate all Native American citizens and would re-act violently to that plan. BUT part of the same belief system that drives that is not a function of my ancestry but based on my beliefs as an American. Similarly I do not believe the bulk of American's would be sympathetic to a racial superior NAN movement any more then the bulk of American's ascribe to the views of the KKK or Aryan nations.

Summary of my points from the NAN thread:
1.Even assuming every single member of the NAN movement was a certified native american badass magic should not have been enough of a war winner to allow 1% of the population to boot out the rest or beat a better equiped and trained military force. This isn't even getting into the issues of mutually assured destruction that has been America's policy since well...ever, it also completely discounts that America has one of the highest gun to private citizen ratio's on the planet so if the population wanted to actually resist there is very little the statistically insignificant NAN forces could do about it.
2. The Saim and the NAN did some absolutely horrible things, but for some reason their always the good guys because supposedly the US government had a plan to wipe out the NAN's. Which based on the absurdly small population figures above never even begun to succeed. Furthermore it's my opinion that the extermination plan only serves as an after the fact ret-con justification for the NAN's actions inserted sometime between second edition and now.
3. The existance of the NAN does nothing for the shadowrun setting other then isolate seattle. The existance of a "back to nature" racially pure nation amongst a setting of future distopia is more or less unworkable.

May I just add that I find it fabulously ironic that so many people are willing to shed tears over the atrocities of the Ghost Dance, while conveniently ignoring the historical genocide against Native Americans? I mean, if we're going to accept revenge as a reasonable motivation for this kind of thing...what trumps this?

Executive Order 9066

just adding fuel to the fire here. "Putting people you hate in camps" is not new or old.

I'm pretty sure that SR3 core mentioned native Americans being put in happy-fun-camps in the events leading up to the GGD.

Usually for me at least it stops for things that occur in my lifetime and there is an additional matter of scope. Sand creek, which I've been to by the way, while horrible was universally deplored. Further more it's a drop in the bucket compared to the fictional Los Alamos and can't compare to the unnumbered casualties that would have taken place whent he mountain range went up. Not to mention the human cost of the mass relocation. Frankly these are HOLOCAUST level events which is what makes the title of this thread so ironic.

I wouldn't say "universally". Nobody involved was ever punished, and the commanding officer had a street named after him until a campaign to change the name succeeded.


If you take the full scope of the atrocities against Native Americans into account, nothing the NAN has done really measures up. It's not like white Americans are an endangered species in Shadowrun. By contrast, when was the last time you saw more than one Native American in the same place (to paraphrase a famous comedian)? Also, why are actual events in the past normally out of your scope, but events in a future that will never happen aren't?

I'm not defending what the NAN did, but making them out to be worse than the U.S. government is naive at best, and revisionist at worst.

If we start counting attrocities no race, people, nation, or religion comes off clean. This includes indigenous people of north America and their treatment of each other before and after the arrival of Europeans. Human beings, as a whole, are jerks. The question was within the scope of the game world does the NAN have something like a Shaoh porject tryign to treat the NAN as if their plight was similar to Holocause survivors, my only point is and continues to be that if there is a a Nazi analog in the Sixth world North America they are the NAN. My question to you is, and please wok with me a bit here I realize this is a bit of a reach. If another group lets say Viking descendants founded a nation on the same principles for Scandanavian residents would they get same kind of response.

Addendum: Additionally as I'm restating my point I am not aware of indications that the experience in the camp were that bad. Which is the genus of why the Shoah project is an issue. The NAN's issue outside of particularly sadistic guards who may be individual or part of a larger issue, should be with the administration and no PFC Joe guarding the gate.

Yeah you're pretty much way too serious, and not nearly enough fun for me to keep playing in this thread. Have fun being an anchor to someone else's fun, but I'm not looking to live my real life problems vicariously through a Role Playing Game.

Ah yes because having an opinion that differs from yours clearly means I'm an anchor tos omeone elses fun. Enjoy your ride out on the Wahhhhhhhhhhhmbulance.

JonathanC everytime I enter the rez I know I'm going to see more than one indian in the same place at the same time for sure and not uncommonly when I visit one of the towns within a couple hunderd miles of the rez. And yeah, I find your veiled implications of racism offensive.

Execute Order '66.


Is that RAW? If not, then that is an incorrect statement.

Yep, tis RAW alright.

Nothing is RAW, but it may be canon.

~J

Sorry, but I'm pretty sure I do not have a split personality.

I wouldn't say the only. The "New Caliphate" Pan-Islamic Pan-Arab Empire that takes up the entire middle east wouldn't happen without further massacre. It would be more of a "holocaust" than the Internment which happened to the NAN. If you wanted something like that it would be the perfect setting.

Myself I think the whole thing is so awfully done it is part of Canon I choose to completely ignore except for the Shedim angles. In my Shadowrun Ancient Egyptian culture is resurgent and in league with Aztechnology. Ethnic miniorities would be resurgent there as well. Also, less mainstream forms of Islam (i.e. Sufis, Druze, etc) as well as other religions are less prohibitive of magic and metahumans and gain an upper hand.

On another counter plothook the anglo angle needs to be considered.

Were there "traitorous" military soldiers to defected to the NAN side and are still wanted? The military still tries to set an example with military defections, but how far would they go for it after a peace treaty? Maybe they need some "plausible deniability" aka Shadowrunners to bring "Justice" to the deserters. What do the Shadowrunners think about being in the middle and the scape goats for an international dust up?