Our campaign is about to begin in a few weeks as we're in Sacramento, so is the campaign. Now I know I read an account that gave at least some details about the liberation of CA from Saito in some book...can anyone tell me where that is? I seem to recall it was primarily an Ares sponsored effort and this chapter or whatever had the dates and battle details of how it went down.

Either SysFailure or Runner Havens. I think Sys Failure. But nothing really goes over the details (yet at least). There's some stuff in SOTA 64.

It's neat that you're in Sac and running the game based in Sac. I'm in Redding, so all we'd get to do with a game based here is smuggle water... and dodge elves and dragons.

...I live in Portland (OR), so for years it would have been dealing with Facist manipulationg elves after the TT sourcebook came out. That's when I decided to move my campaign to Europe.

Chicago.

Never at a loss for run plots for Chicago...

...or TPK runs either .

My group is in Davis. There is no way in hell that I would set my campaign in Davis...

SoTA 64, I believe, has some information on an Ares-sponsored "Shadowrunner army" against Saito. But there really is no detail beyond that on how Saito was ousted from power.

Yeah, defending the dam IIRC. Living here, with a possible draught looming, only relieved because a butt load of rain we just got last week, really makes you think about how important the water is in NorCal. Especially once the summer hits. It's hot as hell up here.

KK: Ever wonder if people in Europe prefer games in Portland? We did the Seattle games for a long time, and decided to jump track and try two seperate areas: New Orleans and France. Been good times.

Back on topic, I think the other reference was in Sys Failure, but since I just moved, my books are still ahrd to find. I think it mostly amoutns to "Saito isn't there anymore, MTC moved it's headquartes to SF from Tsimshian since the pull out."

Grinder, I think fist was say that when summer comes it is hot, not that it is hot right now. Right now it is winter and cool/cold (highs in the 60's F).

Lets see, rough conversion, 7C * 2 + 32 = ~46. That was where the temps were at last week.

It is the god given right of anyone who lives north of Walnut Creek and south of Yreka to use the word "Hella" in sentences. It's not surfer talk, it's not new, it's a genuine dialect. It's like Canadians saying "zed" with a straight face. They just... they just do that.

And trying to make them stop is discriminatory and pointless. You can argue that you don't want that language use infecting other areas as part of some sinister Ukian cultural imperialism - but making them stop is not going to work.

If you actually hate the word, you just need to come up with new ways to express extremitude. Such as terminating your statements with the words "dot com." or using the word "way" a lot.

Personally, I way don't mind Hella - dot com!

-Frank

I sure hope so. Otherwise I don't know where they'll include it. I could seriously settle for "..things have been calmer since Ares got rid of Saito up north", followed by two sentences aobut jsut how it happened. I need closure damn it!

@Alex: Rajaat99's tag under his name says he's in Manga. I was Orem. Where are you at?

Yeah I know the place. There's a good game store called Hastur Cards & Comics just south of Salt Lake (215). They've got some 3rd edt books last I checked, and a lot of everything else.

Also, my old group is in Orem, so there's players there if you're looking. Great game store called Blackfyre in Orem. And there's another called the Dragon's Keep in Provo that has a whole bunch of old second and third edition books at good prices. Bit of a drive for you, but worth it. I lived in the are afor aobut 4 years so I have a good idea of what's arounnd there, including what Used Book stores are worth while for SR stuff.

Well, thats not an inflammatory statement at all.

Oh god, let's please not get into the intricacies (or lack of) of Utahn dialect. I just might cry.

Actually, I think it makes a lot more sense to talk about the Utah Accent than it does to talk about a Bay Area accent. There are four times as many people in the San Jose - San Francisco - Oakland sprawl than there are in Utah and they are more ethnically diverse.

Utah has an 83.5% White population - that's enough to consider a majority and regard other ethnicities as aberrations or minorities. San Jose, on the other hand, has no majority ethnicity. White people are less than 47 percent of the population - people speaking in different manners, even different languages, is well within the norm.

-Frank

Hi folks.

This topic greatly interests me, so I'm adding to an old thread.

I first want to say that I agree in general with Cynic project's critique of California in the Sixth World: while the initial occupation of San Francisco (and part of Alameda) by the Japanese Imperial State did not strike me as poorly designed, the subsequent invasion of Sacramento and the Central Valley, the apparently bloodless conquest of Los Angeles by the Pueblo Corporate Council, and the map of those parts of Cal Free that were flooded after "the Big One" all strike me wrong.

They seem more about ignorance (lack of knowledge) and messing with California for its own sake and less about rigorously imagined fantasies, which I think campaign setting designers should do.

In part, as I return to GMing Shadowrun, I think of these canon developments as indicative of a failure to contemplate war adequately. Even in a moment of freakishly important cyberwarfare and magic, moving beyond San Francisco and into Sacramento, let alone the entire San Joaquin Valley would likely be impossible for one errant general with two divisions of marines.

If Cal Free guerrillas checked Tir Tairngire for almost thirty years, then surely the government in Sacramento and the town militias throughout the San Joaquin could have stopped, checked, undermined Saito's alleged conquest.

These points barely even evoke my critique of the notion that any army could conquer "the Southland." Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties contain an absurdly dense population today. Even after several waves of VITAS and the social upheaval of the Awakening, UGE, Goblinization, and SURGE, the Los Angeles basin must contain an amazing number and concentration of people, and this density would make Los Angeles a place for Aztlan to choke on -- at least as much as the Yucatan. That the PCC was said to have seized LA stretches the suspension of disbelief past the breaking point...

Anyhow, my and Cynic project's critiques aside, I want to respond to JanessaVR's initial post. I don't have SOTA 64, which fistandantilus3.0 mentioned, but neither System Failure, nor Runner Havens discusses Cal Free's liberation from Saito's two divisions.

However, System Failure describes the explosion of the tac-nuke to the "northeast" (northwest?) of San Francisco, and Shadows of North America evokes disgruntled resistance toward Saito's apparently bloodless conquest of Sacramento (and the entire San Joaquin Valley!).

Anyhow, I'd love to hear about the first few months of JanessaVR's campaign, and I will be happy to comment and share ideas.

I recently started a SR4 campaign set in the S.F. Bay Area in an undetermined year after the Crash 2.0, and I am presently (re)imagining the fate of Cal Free in the 2060s.

Long Beach, CA here.

The CalFree stuff is utter garbage, nothing really worth using. But a lot of the meta-setting in SR is dumb, and I throw out. The whole NAN Indian.. thing.. yeah.. I have lived in the U.S. for over 20 years and have never seen a Amerindian, I have met more people from weird unknown SouthEast Asian countries than Indians. Its hard for me to believe that they took over most of the continental U.S. magic or no magic.

there was one cool thing that's happened in SR Cali. when Saito sent troops up to Chico-Oroville and got his ass handed to him by a bunch of runners hired by Ares? that was totally sweet.

incidentally, check my timestamp. i have apparently been cursed by gypsies to never sleep again. exciting!

Hey fistandantilus3.0, I agree with you that the terrain in the Northern Crescent, and especially around Lake Shasta and Redding is ideal for guerrilla warfare.

My point about Saito's canon invasion of Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley goes to a few other relevant factors. First, although there are several freeways from the Bay Area to Sacramento, the main eastbound one is Interstate-80. A different major route is the 580 to Interstate-5, effectively driving into Stockton (south of Sacramento and roughly mid-way into the San Joaquin Valley).

These are the routes for any wheeled military vehicle. While hover, thrust, treaded, and even knobby tired vehicles might take other routes, regular troop transportation would likely be channeled into those two freeways, which provides Cal Free with two places to block Saito frontally and multiple ambush points along the way.

Even if Saito somehow blinded Cal Free to his mobilization and blitzkrieged the Sacramento-Stockton sprawl, my second point is that he would have too few troops to hold even even that northern tip of the San Joaquin Valley. To hold central California without losing San Francisco with only a division and a half of ronin Imperial Japanese Marines, Saito would need major Japanacorp support to hold S.F. itself, and his supply line (I-80 and the 580) would have suffered significant, perhaps overwhelming, urban guerrilla warfare in the East Bay -- home to the Metahuman People's Army and October 25 Alliance.

Even granting the Japancorp's support to retain S.F. itself, I can't see how Saito could maintain his lines into Sacramento and the San Joaquin. Moreover, the canon in SoNA fails to describe any armed resistance offered by the Cal Free populace in Sacramento itself -- an absurd assertion given the xenophobia and "rugged frontier individualism" presented as canon Cal Free.

I think I am starting to repeat myself, so I will end by mentioning that SoNA also expanded Saito's California Protectorate to roll well past its original Neo-Anarchists' Guide to North America limit of San Francisco -- gobbling all of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties (except for "Silicon Valley") and even beyond to Salinas and Monterey!

This is way too large a region for one and a half divisions (however many marines are in one division) to take and keep. Even given the general population decrease due to VITAS, the establishment of the NAN, Cal Free's secession, the canon earthquakes, and the Sixth World in general, the sheer size and population density of the Bay Area sprawl would choke Saito's ronin.

Finally, the notion that Ares would allow Saito's marines to encircle "Silicon Valley" also breaks credulity. It would be strategic folly, perhaps only permitted in order to then destroy utterly that limited military force by supporting urban guerrillas in the South Bay.

Thanks for that post Frank. I will review the other thread later this weekend and look forward to sharing here the future history I am imagining for my campaign.

I hope JanessaVR will also post about the first few months of the campaign that started this thread.

Very insightful Frank. Any chance you could give us a rewritten version that you would support in preference to cannon? I'd probably use it, and others might too.

One note

Due to the "quality" of the land which LAX is constructed on, ie landfill etc. The runways there "sink" over time, so more runway needs to be built over old.

Check your history records, in earthquakes, what happens to things constructed on cheap, shoddy landfill?

That is how LAX can be destroyed.

WMS

Speaking as a Californian transplanted to Seattle, I support the use of hella.

That is all.

One Hundred and Eleven years ago the LDS church bent over and compromised its religious beliefs in the name of political expedience and it has been the government's butt-whore ever since. Only a few highly marginalized splinter-churches were actually willing to stick to their guns and defy the government's immoral laws. But, I could certainly see a charismatic fundamentalist rising up and seizing an opportunity to take the LDS church back to its roots and remove it from under the thumb of the corrupt and evil US government.

SAIM isn't a bunch of terrorists. SAIM is a group of freedom fighters seeking to reclaim occupied territory. They're no different from the brave Frenchman who blew up Nazi occupiers during WWII. By all rights, the entire continent should belong to their nations instead of the occupying colonial powers.
And looking at it from that point of view their cause is as right and as just as the opposition to Hitler. In fact, when you compare US and Canadian treatment of Native Americans to Nazi treatment of the Jews, Hitler comes off looking like a great humanitarian.

At the time, the Native Americans were really the only organized groups in the US to have any real magical power. The Wiccans, Satanists, Vouduns, and Santarians had some, but most of their rituals and spells were diluted diring the downcycle. The Native Americans, however, learned their magic directly from Thais, an absurdly powerful Immortal Elf/Horror hybrid who could freely practice magic in the downcycle because he was so absurdly powerful.
This gave them an extreme advantage over any and all magical forces that the US might have been able to muster. It doesn't take a genius to see who the winning side would be in the battle of modern arms vs. ancient doomsday magic. The fact that SAIM was going to leave them be and allow them to practice their faith any way they want, allowing for the return of mainstream official legal polygamy certainly wouldn't have hurt matters.