QUOTE (Semerkhet @ May 13 2010, 11:49 AM)

Thank you for so eloquently stating the reasons why I'm taking Ghostwalker out of my game and thus de-emphasizing Great Dragons overall. Really, I couldn't have put it better myself.
You want to do away with/ignore dragons in Shadowrun? Go for it. As has been said in the past many times over, "its your table, whatever makes it fun for you guys." I know there are a fair number of people here who seem to despise the high-power magical stuff that has traditionally cropped up in the past. People boo GDs, IEs, Bug Spirits, and even totem spirits and horrors if they too directly put hands in things.
The fact of the matter is, they are in the fluff. If you don't like that part of fluff, ignore it or change it. But its put in the fluff to take standard thoughts like "The dragon takes his money from a king and builds his secret lair in the mountains" or "The elf lives in the woods and ignores everybody in their big cities" and put a different perspective on it. How would these powerful entities deal with and work in a world similar to our own? If you don't like the author's solution, use a different one.
Personally I really like GDs. IEs I admit are much more hit or miss. Some stuff they have done with them I find interesting, but some of it is certainly silly.
That said, a GD is more intelligent then a standard person. Even someone who has found all sorts of ways to bump up one of their stats, will still fall short of a dragon in every other respect. That isn't fanwankery, that is simple crunch. Add in the facts that Dragons have incredibly long-sighted plans, have plenty of practice at being Machiavellian, and really REALLY don't like to lose, and you have a very difficult to defeat foe.
Turn around and look at standard meta-humanity for a moment. Sure, they don't like to lose, but they don't like to let other factions win either. In a case of Denver they are watching each other just as much as the Great Dragon. Most people seem to be in agreement that
early on Ghostwalker could have gotten away with it, but by now they should be trying to oust him.
How, pray tell, would they be ousting him? He doesn't walk down the street with a sign on his head. He doesn't say "oh bee-tee-dubs, I'm sleeping in this secret lair today, not that one". It isn't a simple matter of rolling in troops, even if the city was owned by a single government. You can't fight him like one would fight a war. He is one target, and he should be able to out think most any general on the field. Are there fights he can't win? Sure. They are fights he doesn't commit too. Does that lower his prestige? Not at all when he can bring his force (and spirits) to bear somewhere else.
Again, my ranting aside, you don't like dragons, here is how you remove them from you game. You sit down at your table with your players and say "Guys, I hate the fluff for GDs, so they aren't going to be around in my world. Cool? Cool." And your problem is solved. Don't try to solve it by randomly bombing Denver, the whole strategy doesn't seem to make any sense to me.