Well, we only know what the final version of the Denver Treaty says. Maybe the Aztlan negotiators did try to get parts of California and Texas. Considering the stake, the negotiations probably were high-level hardball, with the big corps closely watching. ORO/Aztechnology maybe not felt ready to oppose all the other corporations on the Inter-Corporate Council, if those wanted business to go as usual in California, US. They waited for the second round to start in 2034.

Most of this has been touched on upthread but a quick overview of the NAN set-up in SR will help with those who don't want to wade through petty arguing.

1. Read SoNA and Target: Wastelands as they reveal two very important points about population.
a. The majority of NAN residents aren't full blood Native though they have the rights of such.
b. Depending on the nation, some have populations of non-Natives (also referred to as "pinkskins") equal to nearly 50%. Many live in their own Anglo ghettos or reservations or amongst the Natives. Or in Salt Lake City.

2. NANs are named after the predominant tribe, not the only tribe.

3. Yes, the numbers don't reflect modern demographics and future trends. SR was written 20 years ago. The devs at the time made their best guess and it turned out to be wrong. It's like 'decking' and wrist phones. Get over it. Accuracy doesn't necessarily equate believability. Hollywood runs on this meme.

Also, not all hispanics are mexicans/Aztlan or would not consider themselves as such.

To the people talking about using WMD's against the Nan. Please remember when the GGD happened. They didn't have a 'target' to use the WMD's on. They would be shooting the nukes at US cities. Populated by and large by US people. innocent US people. The NAN people were not all bunched together to form a target they could shoot at.

The only way for that to work, would be to ceed the land to the Nan. Wait for all the white people to move out (( and as pointed out here, nearly 50% of some of the nan nations are still white)) then once all YOUR people left the NAN, employ the weapons against them. And even THEN you're using WMD's on your own turf. (( or turf just a few months ago yours)) Ruining it.

In spite of comic book or action movie knee jerk. "Killing them because they kicked our butts and turning the area into a glowing crater for a few 1000 years isn't really a viable option.

There's a reason you don't see nukes used in war.

and the US isn't going to use BIO Weapons on it's own populace after campaigning for decades against it's use around the entire globe. Noone's going to deploy that in the US period.

One small note (( that's been hit on a bit)) Just because the NAN are Native American Nations, doesn't mean that's the only people living there. They removed a lare portion of the population who -would not follow the NAN rule-. The Native Americans lead the NAN. They have all sorts of people living there. Native Americans. Blacks. Whites. Asians. ect. The "Minority/Majority" numbers are just differentiated now.

How do you control a country where 50% of your population is in pinkskin internment camps.

Look at South Africa, that kind of thinking doesn't work long term.

I like the Nan, and don't have much of a problem with it. One of my justifications was that it was seen as unimportant land that the government did not seem to think it was worth fighting over. They were wrong since, caving in this regard also lost them the south. Still even removing WMD which is a bit more far fetched, I would think there would be significant sabotage of the area. If I were leaving, unless someone currently had a gun pointed at me, and not invisible monsters etc. I'd burn my house down at the least. If I knew how to take some infrastructure in a significant way I would. Still even with sabotage, that just slows them down, it does not stop them.

It does make them significantly poorer though. Infrastructure sabotage is popular with insurgent groups for a reason, it is expensie to repair, immediately impacts the lives of the populace and makes the government in power look weak.

Sure, but I can see that being rolled into the 30 years of history to 2050 as crap they already dealt with.

Except it would pretty much cripple them economically and factionalize them internally, especially since there woulb me "never gonna take my land or my flag" types that would resist the sort of change we are talking about resisting, considering everything else that happened and the fact the NAN was surrounded by hostile nations and predatory megacorporations their survival as a state not directly controled by a megacorp is.... curious to say the least.

Because they're not in internment camps. They're out picking crops or working 'working class' jobs or what ever as a conditional second class citizen. (( Argueably)) what Hispanics an such do in Cali and Az and other states today. (( not saying it's right. Just saying it's done))

If they accepted the rightful rule of the NAN and agreed to stay in the country under the NAN's conditions they were allowed to stay. But being 'white' was no longer a member of the "ruling socio-economic class' in the NAN, it was regarded as a disenfranchised minority.

Depended on the NANation they were in. Pueblo was a ton nicer to their Anglos the Ute nation was.

Right. Just painting with broad strokes as per explanation.

Hooray! That's how houses get finished.

And to be honest, the analogy of South Africa for Ute isn't far fetched. After all, Ute did collapse...


Anywho, I just have one more thing to say, and this will probably rile the anti-NAN crowd but oh well.

I don't think you're playing Shadowrun if you delete the NAN from the game.

Here's why. So much of North American flavor and history, and even a bit of the general flavor of the game is tied around the NAN's creation.

1. To begin with, the Great Ghost Dance showed people that magic was a force to be reckoned with, that it needed to be controlled or exploited. Without the GGD, I believe that magic would have been relegated to a curiosity for a long time, that you might have had the fundamentalist religions being the only ones to put limits on it. Oh sure, eventually there'd probably have been some major event down the line, but the GGD was only six years after magic fully returned so you had near immediate acceptance of it into the general mindset. After that, you have things like the UK revamping itself with the Office of Lord Protector and its magical rules that sorta backfired and codified the druids into taking over major portions of the government.

2. The flavor of North America would be drastically changed. Aside from Quebec (that had already supposedly seceded in 2000, though that got retconned into 2010 according to SWA), every major flavor would be altered.
A. Seattle would lose its prominence, since without it being the only enclave of the UCAS on the west coast after California was forcibly seceded, it wouldn't be as big a deal.
B. California would retain its prominence, and you wouldn't have the issues of the Imperial Navy getting a toehold into San Francisco, and even if Aztlan existed (covered below) they would not have been able to take over San Diego.
C. Tir Tairngere would probably not exist, because without Oregon already have been split off, the USA wouldn't have just let a bunch of elves suddenly declare the place their own.
D. Denver loses its prominence, the entire point if it in the Shadowrun world is the analogy of Berlin and its zones. Dunkelzahn and Ghostwalker would probably still lair near there, but Ghostwalker would not just be able to take it over.
E. There would be no reason for the US and Canada to combine, since the only reason it became the UCAS was the major excising of enough of both countries' land that they couldn't survive apart anymore.
F. That means the CAS never secedes, never kicks out South Florida into the Caribbean League. The combination of the UCAS is the entire lynchpin of the CAS secession.
G. Puerto Rico probably would not be let go into the CL either if the USA would still be whole.
H. Hawai'i never secedes without the impetus of the NAN's success.
I. Aztlan is probably about the most possibly likely thing to still exist since it was largely due to ORO's influence, but it would mostly likely not take the Aztec/heavy blood magic flavor it did. Aztlan became Aztlan because it figured it would hop onto the NAN train and get a good portion of the southwest out of it, when in the end all they got was a section of Denver and whatever they could get away with invading. And with a strong US, Mexico/Aztlan more than likely does not rise to the same prominence it does, with pressure on its northern border combined with the pressure with Amazonia, they don't try to get aggressive.

3. Ultimately what that would also mean is that the US would not lose as much in the global sphere as it would, especially after China disintegrates and Russia goes into semi-dormancy until Evo shows up. The only things that could challenge a non-balkanized US would be the Corps and Japan. I would argue that would have DRASTIC changes on the world, right down to US influence trying to vie for Japanese influence; the would would probably be divided between the nuyen and the dollar for major currency for example. I would also see a US that, while still shaken, would probably try to do what Imperial Japan did, try to exploit the weakness of a lot of other countries. Perhaps they end up taking over the Caribbean League for example, with Cuba's fall from communism and the collapse of the other countries.


As you can see, these three categories would represent a completely different paradigm for Shadowrun without the NAN's creation. It wouldn't be the same world at all; oh sure the idea of corporations and the need for runners would still be there, but there would be two major world powers still instead of just Imperial Japan being run by the Japanacorps. Major books would not be written, since all the North America books would just be about US/Canadian cities. I would even wager that the worldwide popularity of Shadowrun is in part BECAUSE the US isn't such a major power, that it isn't seen as an Amero-centric game and therefore be easier to adapt to other countries like it has.

So sure, you've got the right to not agree with the NAN and excise it, but in doing so I posit that you're only playing with the d6 system instead of Shadowrun as a whole.

Really? That changes everything. Thanks for putting me back on track.

Not exactly. The first and only Lord Protector to this date, Lord Marchment, was himself a druid.

You think that Canada would give up just about the entire country without a fight? I see....

The problem is, it's not a foreign nation you'd be fighting against.

It's a group of people mixed in with a population of your own citizens. On your own soil.

So that right there takes a lot of options off your list. You're limited to what weapons that won't cause mass collateral damage.

Against folks who apparently have attained godlike powers, and clearly have no such collateral damage concerns. And that you know can destroy entire landscapes with their minds, at a minimum.



-k

Actually, the part of the SR timeline that conflicts the most with reality is the breakup of Canada. Once the secession sentiment surfaced, we would have sat down and talked it all out, coming to an amicable solution that satisfied everyone. Then we would have welcomed refugees from all of the fractured states in North America and elsewhere, building a powerful economy, mixed with a caring social system, that would have soon rivalled that of Japan.

So SR really should have two superpowers: Japan and Canada.

Eh, all that they needed to do to keep Canadians from attacking was to say, "Sorry!".







-k

I don't always equate land mass with country. For the US it was still a huge % of the land mass, it just wasn't as populated or worth while as the east coast. Canada is a bit more far fetched in that there is some serious natural resources in the regions taken. But I think Canada has a much smaller bargaining stick than the US does.

But a much larger bargaining cookie! With tea.

Who would be turned over faster then witches at a puritan convention. They could NOT mix with the rest of the population because they belong to a group which has attempted to start a nuclear war, destroyed a city, and use at least 4 WMDs against civilian populations...
They would have NO popular support, and MOST of the natives mixed into the normal population would try to kill them on sight for making their lives harder.


Since I'd mostly be dealing with people on the reserves.... no, not really.


God like? Hardly, they blew up a few mountain, so have the chinese, and I don't bow down to them. Since I outnumber them 25-1, and even by any standard in SR they would at best have a tiny population of mages, which are "obviously" dealing with Satan himself, the rural, and highly christian population would likely engage in mass slaughter of the native populations on their own, to try and fend off the wrath of their god... I mean really, this was a terrible idea.

You are still missing the point.

You know the limitations of SR magic. You know what it can and can't do.

They didn't.

Magic was brand spanking new to the world. NOBODY knew what it was capable of. You were dealing with people that could set off earthquakes and volcanoes, thousands of miles away, just by jumping around a bit. People that could make people's heads explode just by thinking about it. People that could conjure terrible creatures of flame and fury at will.

For all the US government knew, the NAN folks might have been immune to any conventional firepower that could be thrown. The NAN folks might ALL be mages now, every single one of them - from reports, most were involved in the Dance, doesn't that make them all mages? The NAN might be able to read everyone's minds and know everything you're planning. The USA have a new enemy of which you know next to nothing about their capabilities.

It's not "just" blowing up a few mountains. Anyone with enough explosives can do that.

It the fact that they did so with the power of their minds. And nobody knew what else they were capable of.

That is what scared the hell out of people.

To a mundane person that up until that moment had always thought real magic was a fairy tale fantasy, someone who could throw bolts of fire, summon magical creatures, and destroy people at whim, IS godlike.

A guy who has bombs next door is one thing. People could deal with that. Lynch mobs could deal with that.

But a guy next door who can turn people inside out just by waving his hand?

I'm sure there were some local uprisings attacking NAN groups. They almost certainly broke up real damn fast when their leaders started erupting in flame and exploding into bloody giblets.

Heck, even a simple threat like, "You have children, families at home, yes? Leave this place now. Or they get turned into charcoal in five minutes." would have given a lot of people pause. For all anyone knew, that kind of thing was entirely possible.



-k

That's precisely what I meant. It was supposedly created to control magic in the UK but all it did was let the foxes run the henhouse to use a bad analogy.

The long term radioactive effects of nukes are greatly overrated by many people. And that was exactly what declared US strategy was. One common comment in the military in the 80s was "towns in Germany are an average of 10 kilotons apart".

Those were absurdly minor in comparison to the GGD. They killed a few hundred people and were the results of things completely understood by everyone. The GGD wasn't understood in the slightest, and could have potentially killed billions of people for all anyone knew.

I'm not talking about European countries. I was talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The GGD was very very similar to those events. All the sudden, out of no where, two entire cities were destroyed, by some completely unknown force. It was like all the sudden America had the power of God and could level cities where and when they wanted, and there was nothing that Japan could do, so they gave up. Similarly with The GGD, all the sudden the Native Americans could level cities where and when they wanted, and there was nothing America could do, so they gave up. In both cases it was "Fight against someone with God like powers and be completely destroyed" or "Surrender under not all that bad conditions"

My only issue with it is that it seemed like the only people who had this sort of thing was the Native Americans. I can't imagine that other peoples wouldn't have kept these ancient practices alive, and suddenly found themselves doing the mojo for real.

Also, considering that the US, and USSR, dedicated efforts to studying psychic phenomena (and for all we know, still do), and Hitler's interest in the occult, I can't imagine there would be some white folk who at least knew a bit about mojo some where in the system to make some sort of effort to form a magical front for the US of A.

Also, people would totally trash the place. I mean, look at the housing market now, and people being kicked out of their homes. And if that's not an a close enough comparison, look at the whole Palestine/Isreal/Gaza strip thing going on today. People gotta have a place to live, and if you are trying to take that from them, what else do they have to lose? Send the spouse and kids across to the new happy land of UCAS, but you stay and fight the good fight, if you are of that mindset.

That being said, I like it. I liked it, I guess, since it has been played down. It was fun, it shook up the whole concept of the world you know, and yeah, gave it a taste of the Wild West. It never really came up though for me though because I don't run a game out of Seattle, so despite my longish reply, I don't feel terribly strong one way or the other.

Lol at Canada being able to stick together. Large parts of the West are already fed up with the Ontario/Quebec biased Federal Government. Throw the oilsands into the mix and an exploitive Corporate Resources rush which increases the wealth of the East at the expense of the West and most Anglos would have been in rebellion alongside the Natives.

What I find funny about SR is that the Northern part of Quebec was retained. That area is nothing but Natives and resources companies. Seems a prime battleground.

While I generally agree with your premise for me the example only barely works. Sure the two drops of the atom bomb might seem similar, but the difference was the situation otherwise. Japan knew they were going to lose the war the only real question was how bad ass could they go down fighting in order to force more favorable terms of surrender. The Atom Bomb took even that off the table, since now they thought they wouldn't even get to really fight. In the ghost dance scenario all they had was the atom bomb they did not otherwise have things set up so they would win. If we didn't have any troops, no battleships, etc. and only had the bombs would they have surrendered when at full strength? Maybe, but there is a good chance they would have waited to try and figure things out first.

Yeah, because I'm sure that if you talked to the Japanese the day before the bomb they were all like "Yeah, we know we're going to lose, but we're going to keep dying so that we can get decent surrender terms".

Possibly, or, you know, the US could have said "Surrender now or we blow up all of your cities, military bases, battleships, etc" and the Japanese would have either had to surrender or risk getting obliterated, regardless of what strength they had, because they had literally no defense, their conventional forces could do nothing against the bomb, and they likely didn't even know (for sure) it was a bomb at the time.

It's kind of like if someone puts a cold metal barrel against the back of your head and says "Give me your money or I blow your brains out." you either give them your money, or take the outside chance that they have a metal pipe as opposed to a gun. And in the case of the GGD, they had the gun. And keep in mind, NAN basically asked for the least populated parts of the country, they didn't ask for New York or Florida or some other high population area.

The threat to Quebec is that if Quebec can secede, so can the Iroquois and various other native groups that make up a significant percentage of Quebec. The Iroquois are the real threat, as they straddle the US border AND have tradition of armed resistance to Canadian government actions they find sufficiently offensive.

You seem to keep forgetting the fact that you'd be nuking 25 of your own people to try and kill every 1 of theirs. In your own territory, against a foe who was using Magic that was unknown as to it's limits.

In short the reaction would be like hearing you had a tumor and suddenly picking up a hatchet and starting to hack at your body randomly.

Noone nukes THEMSELVES to try and get their foes. You don't use nukes like that. Or at all but you surely don't nuke your self. That's insanity.

Actually, the Japanese military was planning to fight to the death, in the hope that if they killed enough US troops dring the invasion that the US would reconsider unconditional surrender. If you read "Downfall" you'll see that they had a pretty good chance of doing this, but the US was heading towards not invading due to the enormous forces Japan was massing in the areas planned for the invasion. In which case about 1/2 of japan might have starved to death over the winter.

The Imperial HQ wrote in the official war journal.
"We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight."

Exactly why the Emperor decided to act to end the war and how he convinced the senior leadership is still unclear, and will probably never be fully understood.

There was an attempted coup to prevent the Imperial Rescript from being transmitted. A significant number of military officers, of various ranks, killed themselves over the order to surrender.

The formal NATO strategy was to nuke the crap out the advancing WP forces. Artillery delivered nukes have a max range of about 30 KMs. Guess what is there in addition to lots of guys with AK 74s? "Towns in Germany are an average of 10 kilotons apart."

And nothing like this ever has remotely happened on the planet. Ever. Nothing even close. You can claim it was strategy (( I'll be honest I'm not expending time looking it up)) but It never was used in any way shape or form.

I strongly suspect you were born after 1976. The serious threat and capability to use nukes against an invasion is considered the main reason why the huge conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact didn't end up sunbathing at on the beach at Pas-de-Calais.

Um. How is he wrong?

They might have strategized it, but it was never actually put into action.





-k

Point of fact I was born in 77. *Smiles* but no. One doesn't nuke their own land. If someone's about to attack you you nuke THEIR land. THEIR capitals or what ever. You don't nuke your own people in some psychotic "KILL UM ALL RARRR BITCHES!!" sort of mentality.

and.. Point of fact. Nukes have only been used twice. By us. And it was in nothing close to what you're suggesting. I'm sure there's plenty of 'possible plans' for defense and what not. 100s of 1000s of them. I'm sure we have plans drawn up that are this utterly stupid. But we have to go through the 999 some what less stupid ones first.

And noone on earth's ever nuked it's on populace to get at subversive terrorists.

No but I do read history. And while it is fairly simplified, yes that is what they thought. They did not want to go for an unconditional surrender and had actually offered lesser terms. The US had a unconditional surrender or nothing attitude. The plan of the Japanese was to make total victory so unpalatable that we would settle for a lesser surrender.



No it is more like you have heard stories about thunder sticks but had never seen one. Some weak looking dude holds um a metal thing and says give me your money. It could be this rare almost unheard of thunder stick, but it could be nothing and you know you could totally kick his ass if you wanted to. You very well may back down, which is why I can agree with the premise that the US and Canada did, but so little is known and the opponent looks so weak you very well might go for it. It is very different than a known quantity like a gun and you hope he is bluffing, or hoping they are bluffing so you can get the less humiliating defeat but still lose.

Well you'd be gassing 25 people for every 1 since nukes had stopped working. But while it seems insane that was actual strategies people had developed for invasions. Whether they would actually have gone through with it or not is unknown.

Well, IIRC the Ghost Dancers got some extraplanar help in obtaining the knowledge for the greater rituals from parties interested in their less obvious side effects. Having your invisiblity charm or love potions now working is not going to help much when the other guys can order volcanoes to blow up, and demonstrated it repeteadly with increasingly more power each time.

If you opt for an extermination strategy, possibly using chemical or nuclear weapons on a large scale, you may push them to a point where they trigger something trully massive, like exploding the whole Yellowstone supervolcano in a final "We're dead but you too" scenario.

Nobody has chosen to launch an attack on a nuclear power that appeared to be an existential threat to them, mostly as it is a really risky strategy. Scorched Earth is a well known defensive strategy, which devastates your territory as you abandon it in your retreat. The USSR, in addition to destroying supplies, bridges, farms, houses and a lot of important building, had tricks to annoy the invaders like planting the occasional honking huge time bomb with fuzes set for weeks to months in facilities they expected the Germans to occupy.

So yeah, except for the nuclear part it's been done quite a few times.

Bad analogy.

More accurate would be if you KNOW that guy has a thunder stick, and has already demonstrated it's power by exploding the mailbox next to you.

You could try to attack him anyhow, but you don't know much about that thunder stick and how it operates, including whether or not he could cut you and all of your buddies down before you can take two steps.



-k

The US didn't know where all those pesky native shamans actually were. So you'd be nuking blind, hoping you get them all before you run out of population and before they do something really nasty, like cause a tsunami to wipe away the East Coast all at once, or explode Yellowstone to usher in a new ice age.

Mutually Assured Destruction kept WWIII from happening, and the NAN had basically the same threat. If the NAN had nothing left to live for, what would there be to stop them from dragging down the US with them?

While lots of folks would love revenge, I think that the people in charge (who were mostly laissez-faire cowardly corporate stooges) thought their own survival was more important than revenge.

Remember: nukes are for when the enemy has big targets they don't want to lose. They're useless against fanatics with nothing left to lose or when you don't know what to target. Same for gas.

Also think that SR IS NOT OUR WORLD. 2010 SR is not 2010 Earth.

US central political power is a lot weaker, it have been hit by major health and economical crisis and the loss of part of his authority to Mega-corporation only show it a lot more.

Take into account the global mindset of the people at that time, they have been hit by major trauma : economical crashdown, rampant killer epidemy, strange new behaviour, the whole nature gone wild, ecological mayhem going unlashed (toxic waste in europe).

Think also about how the Awakening and the NAN action have actually contributed to HEAL the Earth, NAN territories have florished with Forest and Nature getting back.

Actually the fact to put NAN in charge could have been seen as a good thing for many eco-sensitive citizen that have lose confidence into a government that is nothing more than a play-toy for corporation and have been unable to face all the cataclysm he encounter.

Another element that the partisans of WMD dont want to hear and that have been bashed again and again in the other thread is that the US lack the vector to deliver the weapons, even if they manage to find a valid target.

By using magic the Native have full intelligence of any operation and can destroy easily any attempt at launching before it is completed.

Think about the political suicide that would be for anyone to give the order to use WMD on american national soil, and the military aren't the one to give the order. Think also that thoses WMD wont be allowed to be used on the areas under Corporate control or industrial production facilities.

Just more fuel for the fire: many seem to be analyzing the response of the US based on the US of the last decade. Take a look at the financial projections for the US over the next twenty years. I mean, the US is basically broke right now, with nothing but more financial obligation on the horizon.

Hell, it probably makes financial sense to sacrifice half the country, just to get the people living there out of the social security system.

(Sadly, only half kidding.)

For comparison, take a look at the British Empire in 1919 and compare it to 50 years later. And why the big turnaround in such a short time? Lack of money, mostly. And they didn't have anything even close to the threat of the Ghost Dance working against them.

It was not one of several plans, it was THE doctrine of Op REFORGER: Keep Russian advances contained, if they archieve a major breakthrough for their Operational Maneuver Groups plug that breech at any cost. And in the context of nuclear sharing, German forces would have participated in that. On both sides of the GDR border.


That on the other hand is true, what few descriptions we have of the Ghost Dance War say it was some sort of magically augmented guerilla campaign. How those few natives would mount a successful war against the whole US military (which had significantly more manpower when SR First Edition came out) on the other hand...magic?

Well it 'is' known. In that noone's ever done it and in Shadowrun it didn't happen.

And that's what you seem to be missing. Burning crops and denial of resources to an invading army may be common, but NUKING YOUR OWN COUNTRY, is a very different thing. That has -never- been done.

Because...

It's insane. lol

It's not just 'the next step' in a scorched earth retreat.