Hopefully you'll like the UK stuff in Dirty Tricks - I wrote the bulk of it (not the Pendragon stuff at the end, which is a very cool section) and I was born in the UK and have lived here my whole life. Obviously I got quite deep into re-reading the London Sourcebook, Shadows of Europe, Conspiracy Theories and Spy Games for research because continuity like that's important, but that's far from the be-all and end-all.

I think you accidentally a word.

I'm a foreigner and I don't see which one (I must be blind).

What I meant though, is that I prefer that an author picks on stereotypes and flesh out a country interesting to play with rather than have it too similar to the quintessential Seattle.

However, the CAS part could be poorly done in Dirty Tricks and I could hate it.

I first wait for it in french but will buy it in english if BlackBook Editions doesn't plane to translate it.



(ps: the stupidest book ever written for SR IMO is Shadowrun France, written by a french and famous RPG author, who the used the WORST EVER clichés. In his book, it's an oligarchy with peasants... and magic like his super Neostradamus NPC... It's so bad that, if I'm right, it ended non-canon since Shadows Over Europe....)

Seems like most folks who've put their opinions forth want everywhere that isn't Seattle to be a generic, overreaching stereotype, which puts me into the vocal minority. In that case, I can't blame the authors for writing something I don't like, since it evidently fills the niche more consumers are looking for.

Still curious to see what someone else who's actually read the book will have to say, though.

Ditto. Other than the part I'm somewhat biased on (cough), the rest of it I was eatting up with a spoon. Absolutely loved the UCAS section, for instance.

I really look forward to some people doing a detailed read and review.

Sorry, let me respond to this:

I don't want everywhere that isn't Seattle to be a generic, overreaching stereotype--but sometimes, generic, overreaching stereotypes are accurate. The entire idea of P2.0 is based on the stereotype that most LA people are self-aggrandizing social climbers well past the point of common sense, which I can tell you, as someone who has lived there for over a decade now, is one hundred percent correct. I mean, for crying out loud, this is a city where you have to have a headshot to get a job as a secretary in some places. (Now. In real life. No joke.) In that sense, the stereotypes make the city.

Now I realize that the "dumb racist hick" stereotype sucks a lot more to have applied to one's area than the vapid social butterfly--but there are valid reasons for doing so. I don't want to get into the politics of it, but the South doesn't exactly have a spotless track record when it comes to racism, its schools regularly rank as some of the worst in the country, and there's a much stronger rural culture than in, say, the Northeast. Does this mean the South is filled with terrible people? Heck no. My entire mother's side is from Kentucky and/or Virginia--has been for nigh on 300 years now--and I'd take them over my father's East Coast socialites any day. But that doesn't mean that when I go to visit them in little old Liberty, KY, I don't get uncomfortable about being the guy walking around in a yarmulke, regardless of who my family is.

Will these issues be solved in time? Hopefully. But it'd be a stretch to say they'd all go away in 60 years; even today, 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the USSC has consented to hear a constitutional challenge to it brought by--you guessed it--Alabama, a Southern state. And that's in the sunniest possible future... it's hard to argue that Shadowrun is the most optimistic vision of our progress.

So basically, I don't think that this portrayal is unreasonable at all. It's a legitimate extrapolation of real concerns facing this area of the country today.

PS: I hate Seattle. Its political situation makes no sense to me, and in my games it's just another city in TT.

P2.0 is the pet project of a AAA Megacorporation who are in the business of generating entertainment as cheaply as possible and are using marketing that borders on mind control to do it. It doesn't rely on Los Angelinos being shallow. It relies on Horizon selling people junk they don't need by preying on their insecurities. They rolled it out in LA because it was where the entertainment industry that they used to seed the product was based. P2.0 is only in LA for the same reason Facebook was originally only on college campuses. It hasn't grown enough for Horizon to start spreading it yet.

There are parts of LA that are really shallow. There are also parts of California that are every bit as "small town" as Liberty KY. There are also parts of Long Island that are just as rural, and parts of Charlotte that are just as urban as NYC. The South doesn't have a stronger rural culture than the rest of the country. It's just that no one wants to talk about central PA, Upstate NY, eastern Long Island, upper Michigan, or damn near all of New England.

On the racism front, the Aryan Nation came from California and are strongest in the northern parts of the mdiwest, and Iowa leads the nation in KKK chapters per capita. The only place I've ever been where I couldn't get a table in a restaurant and was openly called "nigger" was in Boston.

You get far enough away from a major urban center and you'll find people living in poverty with struggling education systems anywhere in the country. California and New York State have the worst literacy rates in the country, per the Department of Ed's last survey.

Shelby County (a county in Alabama) is challenging the Voting Rights Act because the idea that some states are subject to federal approval for changes to voting rights laws is inherently discriminatory and a country that just reelected a black president has come far enough from the Jim Crow policies of 1965 to make the provision not only unnecessary but insulting, discriminatory, and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, so the justices think it has merit. Admittedly, the Supreme Court still has 3 Reagan appointees alongside the 2 Bush appointees versus the 2 Clinton and 2 Obama appointees, so there is still a slight conservative slant to the Supreme Court.

But this is straying way too far into real world politics, so I'm all for dropping the subject.

Has anyone who didn't help write it other than me read this thing yet?

Totally agree with this.

I love the CAS in SoNA for two reasons -

One - it gave them a direction besides, "a bunch of drunk, backwoods hicks that will get rolled over by Aztlan the moment resistance in Texas falls" to, "we're the original America, damn it, and if you don't cotton to that, then fsck you!". They're people who are proud of their history, warts and all, and just want to be that shining beacon that they think that the original America stood by. And (personally) it was doubly because they got that inspiration from, of all things, Dunkelzahn's election to President. And maybe that's just the dragon fanboy in me, but it was something that made me go, "yup, that's my America."

Because Southerners are honest. At least to this Yankee, who's lived around "keeping up appearances" all his life. You may not like what you hear from a Southerner, but it's what they honestly believe.

Second, I liked that focus was taken away from the Atlanta sprawl and spread out across the country. When I read about Austin, I wanted to run in Austin. When I read about the Voodoo Wars in New Orleans, I wanted to run a pirate / voodoo game set in the Big Easy. One of the players from my group plays a gator wrestler from Mobile, AL. One of the major NPCs in our campaign currently is an undercover DSI agent working the field for both the CAS and the Sons of Alamo. We pulled a shit ton from that book, and the other Shadows Of... books.

Hey 'Muse! Love you too, man.

But, yeah, if you find fault with my work, by all means, let me know. Can't get better without feedback and all that.

And if you *like* the stuff, let me know. (And the other writers as well. It always takes us longer to get feedback than artists.)

For a more official review, Alex Lucard has dropped one in, now, mostly positive but not entirely.

http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/14/table...n-dirty-tricks/

You get to see some of the art in the review as well. Teh cover, as noted, is *gorgeous* and I want a poster rather badly. The chosen bit with the "Shadowrunners" showing off how they could hide guns while an unimpressed gal rolls her eyes? Probably my fave part of interior art. Some of the interior art isn't what I'd have liked, but most of it is spot-on, and all of it *far* beyond my meager talent.

Looking forward to more people giving it a good read, of course.

It still has the only ever writeup of Paris. I even translated it into English once. Lacks a lot of things that definitly should have been there (Maghrebiens, for one), but is usable, if you like Paris to be Renaissance meets Immortel The Game.

But yes, it was bad, especially the communist redskin jokes that perpetuated it (seriously, once, but so often?). I still think the Germany book is worse, though, but not by a large margin.

Is this an official translation or just homebrew? Is it just the Paris part or is it everything? Is it still floating out there somewhere? Got a group in my area looking for ideas for Shadowrun Dijon (couple of the players were in on the same teaching English program there).

You're serious?

Wanna create Soymustard?

Official translation with some details from SoE put in that overrode SRF's canon. It's Paris only, but SRF has info on Dijon, too. You can pick up a copy and use google Translate and English (which is half French anyway) to make sense of it if you want. Worked well enough for me (well, that and my meager school French).

What're you up to in Dijon? I'll have a look into SRF when I'm able (don't have the book with me right now). I'd suppose it's not too much, maybe I can just send you a translation. It might be ... bizarre, though. SRF is not short on WTF.

On an on-topic note

Reading the CAS part as a priority, since it stirred controversy so much.

I like it. It lacks some fundamental informations - demograpic data, maps (because I have no idea where many sites mentioned in the text are), and an overview of parties would have been nice, because not everyone can look them up in SoNA, I guess. Also, it has some small canon inconsistencies - the CAS already had a supercarrier in previous books, and there were a couple of other things, but nothing glaring. Still, why on earth has CGL this hatred of maps? Especially the Rio Gambit basically asks for maps!

That said, I liked the writeups. Different voices instead of one always is nice, and while the clichés got played, they always do because that's a Shadowrun tradition. It's less ... proud, than the North America writeup, picks up a few things I sorely missed in SoNA (Cord Mutual Tower! Whoo!). Good hints dropped, a good deal of variety and local color (realistic or not) to work with. More on the Mississippi river's magic would have been nice, as well as a general overview of how the CAS works, socially and culturally, and what True American values actually are (though barring that, I'll just stick with my private little writeup, which carries today into the future, pretty much). I gues there was only so much room for the text in this product anyway, so it's maybe not fair to expect a complete writeup. This'll definitly be helpfuul for me, though, since my campaign will have to engage there soon.

More to come when I read the rest of the book. Ah yes, and low tax/high infrastructure is deam-based economics. Seriously.

The infrastructure's not that hot, actually. You might notice that several states aren't doing well, while others are doing nicely. The confederation government is weak, aside from national defense. (Which makes for some tricky thought processes. The CAS had always been isolationist, with a strong national defense but no projection power, but the past few admiistrations turned that around, started building a super-carrier, is on tap for five more, and that's a huge drain on the coffers. It's unsustainable, which is yet another chip between the True Southerner and True American coalations.) If the state isn't able to provide, the confederation government isn't likely to, either.

CAS and the NAN are an interesting mix, but most of that couldn't get squeezed in. If you go *way* back to the Neo-Anarchist's guide, you'll see that the NAN leaned on the CAS over their treatment of metas back in the day. Let's see...

"2039: Senate hearings in the CAS to investigate charges of racial prejudice agaisnt metahumans. The committee's shocking report verifies that conditions amount to slavery in most states. The Native American Nations invoke heavy trade sanctions on CAS to speed up metahumanity equality laws."

In 2040, the political races are mostly about, well, race, and a mor einclusive administration wins, putting several Elves and Orks into cabinet positions, which gets most of the santions lifted. (Interesting side note: in 2035, Aztlan, who had only recently left the NAN itself, was the first country to recognize the CAS as a nation.)

In 2050, thousands of metas march on Atlanta (Had it been written today, that would have been a "Million Metahuman March", I'm sure), demanding more attention be paid to their plight and that the inaction of the government amounts to genocide against Metahumanity.

Lots of info in the Neo-A book, which set the general tone ... the CAS was murderously racist, gave tax breaks to corps like candy (That they reduced their tax base by 40% was called out, but high tarriffs to make up for it lead to lots of smuggling), had the most powerful military in North America (mostly aimed at Aztlan), and crap for blue water forces.

Shadows of North America started off by changing the name of the country, from the Confederated American States to the Confederation of American States, which is the one that continues to be used. The change slipped in sometime between 2050, when the Neo-A was published, and 2062, when Shadows was published.

Shadows introduces the True American vs the True Southerner conflict, with the isolationist Southerners and the expansionistic Americans sniping at one another right off the bat. You find that the CAS has just over 105 million residents, broken down as 66% human, 4% Elf, 8% Dwarf, 19% Ork, and 3% Troll. 20% of the population is SINless (So, an estimation), a third in poverty, and 58% work for a megacorp (The UCAS has only 51% megacorp affiliation.) This is where you find the exchange rate is 3 CAS dollars to a Nuyen, vs the UCAS 4 UCAS dollars to the Nuyen. Stability was a factor, I suppose.

The CAS splitting off after the Canadians joined, fearing that they'd be forced to integrate advanced welfare systems into their states, was a big issue, indicating that the CAS was a no-welfare/social program sort of state. It can be inferred that social security and similar programs don't exist there, instead using private charities, religious institutions, and so on.

Dunk's running for president lit a fire under the future True America types, and in 2060, they shocked everyone by winning the election and turning the True Southerners into the minority party. Gone were the days of isolationism as the newly envigorated CAS started making big plans. This is where you first start getting the notion of America rising like a phoenix from the ashes, spreading out from the CAS to take back all of the old US of A, which means a massive change in priorities. This increased international push, and showing that the CAS wasn't getting rolled by Aztlan any time soon, brought in a ton of foreign investment, so in 2060-61, you get a new governing force and an economic boom at the same time.

From there, it's detail work, noting that the CAS has the largest military around, but that the tech is behind the curve (UCAS, PCC, and Aztlan have better tech), but a magical strength on par with the UCAS, which is nearly twice as large. Info on Atlanta, New Orleans, and Texas, as usual, but also a few extras. Teh CAS navy has expanded in this time, from the single carrier group featuring Atlanta to a second carrier battle group. Both are 50,000 tons, which isn't giant, but still large enough for what they need. They also have the largest submarine fleet in the world, including a new submersible carrier that no one else has. This is where the True Americans have clearly started putting money into the Navy.

So, that was a lot of what was established in the past. The low number of Elves was called out in Tir Taingire, where it was pointed out that the CAS, which was poor, had lots of Orks but few ELves, and further showcased other areas that were similar, as well as those that were wealthy had fewer Orks and more ELves. Racism was called out, but reluctantly the sociologists agreed, noting food might have something to do with it, local mana, or mumble mumble ... they weren't real happy with the results. You had racism, virtual slavery in some areas, inward-focued attitudes that were conflicting with outward-looking, a growing economy, expanding meta-rights, and, all in all, a blend that established what the CAS was.

By 2074, you'll see that the racial issues have largely weakened (but not vanished), the economy's doing well (in some states but not all), and that 14 years of True Americans in power has brought some big expendatures in the blue-water Navy and better international relationships. The NAN have always been tenative allies with the CAS, put off by the racism but needing them to keep an eye on the UCAS, but relations with the PCC have been grand, as they shared a mutual enemy in Aztlan. The cliche'd bits were in place from day one, so you work from there and see what you can do.

From there, you can expand... New Orleans has a star, not in jazz music, but in nano-fax sculpting. The CAS military's magical wing is a powerhouse that's hard to pin down. Ares moving in and playing to the True Americans, putting them in conflict with Lone Star. Biotech firms are active in Louisiana, Florida, and Oklahoma, while Alabama's the core of industrial production. Georgia, TN, and North Carolina are pushing high-tech industry, and Atlanta serves as the HQ for Saeder-Krupp Prime's North American branch. Dwarves are thick in the TVA, Elves have moved heavily into Asheville, and the Ork population is on the rise.

And that's not even touching on the Gambit and Sirrurg.

There's a lot going on in there. Chunks were established before hand, so you can't just retcon things by saying the CAS was a metahuman-friendly paradise from day one, with flying cars that ran on water and several triple-A corporations were established there. You work with what you got and evolve where needed. That economy's not going to be sustainable, however, and when it falters, it won't be pretty.

Ninja'd. Sorry. If you still have my original post, I'll repost it and put my othher post here.


Well, it sounded like it was, that's the vibe I got - and that just never works. Ressources don't spontaneously multiply.

Also, I was wrong on the canon issues stated (or rather, made sense of Wal Mart's naming issues). You did great research, I'll just save this post for my own reference.


I imagine, with Clayton on Ares' board and KE snatching Seattle from the Star, tensions weren't low before, but it seems Knight is hell bent on making enemies.


Or maybe Ares will just mop it up and build itself it's own Aztlan, with less horrors and more bugs.

Good work, all in all, I just kinda miss a word on what True Americans' values are. But I can see why you'd not want to pour oil into a very real fire right now.

Oh lord, I went back and forth on that a ton. I probably should have grabbed some space to talk about exactly who was in the True American and True Southerner sides, what their views were, and so on ... it's the political book, after all, but lord knows I stepped on some tender toes as it was and had I gone deeper, it would have been a harder stomp. At the end of the day, I decided that newer information was better and that meant not reprinting the demographics and so on from Shadows of North America. If it'd been a couple years later, it would certainly have been in there, but page count was at a premium, so I left it out. Should probably have put a little "See Shadows of North America for more" notation in there.

And, yeah, I *had* to give a nod to the Cord Mutual Tower. That was from back before Shadowrun had Triple-A corps, but I always liked it. 500 stories tall is just insane. Letting S-K Prime move in was this great "We are the biggest Mega in the world. We rule you." image in my head. It's three times the height of the Burj in Dubai, for goodness sakes! How can you not love that thing?

Lastly, maps. The 6WA has the best current map, which had a weird notation ... Mobile wasn't there. "Space City" was. I have no idea whose plot that was originally, and no one I contacted knew anything, so, it kept bugging me so much that I had to invent something. Go grab the 6WA and see for yourself. Isn't that odd? It demanded attention. And, lordy, does the Rio Gambit need a map. My cartography is WEAK, and I made a few versions at the house, but they're all just awful. If someone else wants to take a stab at it and share it here, I'd be *trhilled*.

Using the maps from 6WA and Shadows of North America, getting the Aztlan-PCC border was tricky, and several things published indicate that the borders are kind of ... wibbly. Several cities in Texas were hit by Sirrurg in Clutch that are actually not in the CAS, for instance, despite being reported as such. The whole area features land claims that are disputed by everyone, I think. Regardless, here's an actual map:

http://www.texas-map.org/images/map-texas_01.jpg

(Edit: MUCH better map link!)

For those who want to give it a spin, up around Socorro, New Mexico is the top left of the Gambit, which goes down to El Paso, then follows the Rio Grande to the bend between Castolon and Boquillas, then goes straight north along the vertical line that splits Texas from New Mexico. Kermit falls into the Gambit, just barely, while Fort Stockton does not. This puts Roswell in PCC territory, but with all the chaos, it might take a while before the Azzies are out and the PCC is in.

Anybody that makes a map, I'd owe you my thanks. Trying to do it in B&W on paper was ... annoying, due to having to take into account both state and national borders before and after. Full color was something I fiddled with, but, again, my cartography skills aren't where I'd like. No Photoshop, and trying to kuldge it out of MS Paint would just be sad.

Lots of deficit spending. There's a small nod to this in the TN section, where Rebel Yell grumbles about 'cash on the barrelhead' and paying your bills. The True Southerners are fiscal types who haaaaate the idea of being in debt. The Technocrats in the True American cooalition opened up the checkbooks and have been spending money like mad, gambling that better technology and foreign investment down the line would pay for everything. If it doesn't pan out, they're in trouble. That money is going to shiney new Supercarriers while Mississippi gets no federal aid to deal with hurricane damage is a real sticking point.



Full disclosure: I work at Wal-Mart. Having the "Kong Wal-Mart" sign pop up in a book was a bit of a moment, since, until then, they'd never been mentioned. Obvously, the Wally wasn't a factor in '89 when things were first designed, but it was interesting to see that the first Corporate Shadowfiles book mentioned how much money one of the megas was getting (Renraku, I think, and keep in mind, this is in official reports, so the actual number was probably different) was actually *less* than Wal-Mart was bringing in circa 2008. I figured that we needed a touch of 'backsplination' for what happened and where they currently are. Giving them a Stuffer Shack-like presence across the CAS and the NAN worked out well, and giving them connections with Wuxing helped flesh out the Kong Wal-Mart sign that started the whole process.

And, yeah, Clayton having a big chair at Ares, leaning in on CAS contracts, is certainly going to amp up tensions. You can read more True Southerner/True American stress there, with Americans backing Ares and Southerners backing Lone Star. If Colloton and the UCAS continues to give Ares a cold shoulder, then they might think about moving down south for a while. Corporate HQ in Atlanta instead of Detroit? Oh my.



Thank you! The loudest responses have been negative, so it really helps to hear something positive. Page count is a real hard limit, and I have to learn to aim better... when writing fan stuff, I can ramble on all day and not sweat it, but professional work says "You go no further" and you have to make sacrifices. Trying to figure out what to put in and what to keep out is ... harder than expected.

Hopefully, more people will take a look at it and chime in as we go along. Good or bad, feedback is what helps you grow, you know?

I think there's a way of thinking here that plagued Shadowrun writing for a long time now (and I guess I'm among those to blame for it). The countries megacorporations are headquartered in have been really given too much significance.

Megacorporation are, by nature, supposed to be above states. I mean, your typical game is like, snatching R&D from a Japanese corporation lab in Seattle. People focus too much on the "Japanese" part while it's "in Seattle" that matters. That is, even the most powerful Japanese megacorporations have some major R&D in Seattle, instead of Tokyo or Osaka. That's globalization. The rest is flavor, samurai-design for security armors or office buildings shaped like pyramids. Obviously, it's not entirely random if the "gun corp" is headquartered in America and the "heavy industry corp" in Germany but that was nothing more than playing on a cliché. There are a few places here it really mattered, such as when the Japanese military moved into San Francisco to protect Japanese corporate interests. But that should have remained exceptions rather than the norm.

Ares Macrotechnology headquarters is in Detroit for purely historical reasons, because it was originally built around General Motors. In the 2050-2070 period, AresSpace, headquartered in Houston, is only one out of three major divisions, but this also means AresSpace is one out of three major divisions. When Damien Knight took over the company in 2033, Knight Errant did not exist, Ares Arms was a minor division, General Motors had been sold or was about to be sold, and AresSpace was the most successful division (Blood in the Boardroom, pages 53-54). In other words, when the CAS seceded, the core of Ares operations were in the south (interestingly enough, a major of the US Air Force with CIA/NSA experience under a false name managed to become the largest shareholder of Ares right between the first secession threats in 2032 and the actual move in 2034 ; enough to makes you wonder who backed the move, no?).

True about corporate shorthand. Ares is "The Gun Corp", but all of the megas make weapons; Ares is just the largest. Ditto on the culture. Aztechnology has a lot of John Smith types in the UCAS and Hans Schmidt in Germany... we just tend to think of them as the Aztlan Corp and produce Mexican-ish corporate types to keep the flavor around. Part of the problem with a focus on the top, rather than the lower levels, is that you see more CEO and board of director types... and the Home Office tends to color the page.

Of course, this echoes the very formation of the Megacorp concept and the Japanacorps, so, it's kind of a genetic thing at this point.

This is me, tipping my hat. That's certainly useful.


It also adds both the "Real America" feel to the CAS, and some variance. Bet they have nice historical flags and "buy American!" ads.


Well, I think that also explains some of the louder and more negative criticism. Tender toes are tender. Still, I'd like to see more on that. The US is a far away foreign country that I will not claim I understand anymore. I'd appreciate a guide, therefore. I could wrap up my notes and PM them to you and you give me some thoughts, maybe?


I understand very well, actually. Negative or at least critical feedback helops at least me more, though praise's always great to have.


Always thought that was a nod to RoboCop's OCP more than anything else.

Drop me a PM with your notes. I'm always happy to chat! (Note that there are possibly some NDA issues about things that I'll have to give a pass on, but, by and large, everything should be talk-aboutable. To invent a word.)

True, but on a different level. An illustrator used the Robocop gun design for the Ares Predator and an author put its headquarters in Detroit (first mentionned in Seattle Sourcebook I think) likely as a nod to Robocop. It's only much later down the line (Blood in the Boardroom ?) that the authors gave an in-game reason with the General Motors link. Anyway now, the old players know Ares all too well, and the new ones are less and less likely to have seen any of the Robocop movies (or TV show) and get the reference. At least, until the 2014 remake I guess...

Ares headquarters being in Detroit is a consequence of the Robocop reference. From a writer's point of view, Ares being linked to General Motors is a consequence of their headquarters being in Detroit. And Ares "relative weakness" in the CAS is also a consequence of their headquarters being in Detroit. But as far as the universe consistency is concerned, the nod to Robocop could be ignored while the General Motors link shouldn't.

For the people who think Shadowrun must stay true to its 80ies roots, the nod to Robocop ought to be preserved as well (and even be considered as more important than universe consistency). Regarding the CAS, I don't think someone would step in and say "Ares mustn't be too important in the CAS because people would no longer see the Robocop reference". That would be different if the topic at hand was Neonet taking over Detroit or Ares shutting down its Knight Errant subsidiary.

Well, basically, there's a teach English program there so two of our guys (Calgary here) have lived there, and I visited the place (was at an academic conference in Nice and knew a girl living there I wanted to visit). So it's been on our minds as a potential Shadowrun locale both familiar and exotic. The shadows of those cathedrals could make an impressive backdrop, you know? If the English translation isn't a thing yet, I'll see if I can't find a copy of SRF and get the one of the two that's half French to try and make some sense of it. I'd love a translation but don't kill yourself doing it, you know? Sounds like a lot of work. Either way, thanks bro!

Nath already translated it.

Also, here's my take on the Rio Gambit. Is that what you had in mind?

Close! It goes along the river, so this isn't "tall" enough, but that's about the right area.

Tis a sizeable chunk!

Oh, and for those playing the home game? In the Dirty South section of DIrty Tricks, there's a mention of the Tennessee-Georgia War, a brief bit of shooting over water rights between the states.

Today, Georgia just passed legislation demanding Tennessee turn over access to the Tennessee River. We don't discuss RL politics here of course, but, one of those "Predicting the future" bits. I had to bump the thread.

*Headdesk* We're not writing training manuals, people!!!

You don't? And I was just about to invade Belarus, the Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, and then Germany, Chech Republic, Hungary and Austria for no reason whatsoever!

Awh damn, I just converted to radical Catholicism and founded my own church with blackjack, hookers and battlecruisers.

Mind the oxford comma!

Three cheers for Oxford!

I'm personally inclined towards minimal punctuation.

Then why did you close with a period instead of letting the emote close the sentence? It's accepted practice among many on the Internet

I think this has not been covered yet: According to Dirty Tricks Oklahoma wants to become part of Pueblo Corporate Council. but since the secession they no longer have a border with PCC. How would that work technically?

They'd either A) be a sattelite state, like Seattle is now or California and Hawaii were, or they'd try to bring part of Texas with them. (Or, longer shot, they'd ask the UCAS government to give them their state 'sliver' back so that it could come too.)

It's not the most rational of choices, which is one reason why it's never been developed. Compare it to the 2013 Texas Republic movement: A handful of vocal supporters and a quiet "Yeah" nod from many people, but the majority don't embrace the idea. It's just been stewing around in their collective head for decades.

Ah, so it's much less concrete than I imagined it. That figures as becoming an enclave and certainly Texas going 'native' seem a bit far-fetched to be honest.

Hmm, maybe the CAS would trade PCC's newest acquisition for northern Texas plus Oklahoma just to spite Aztlan.

Recall that the section was written by a old-style CAS head as well. The idea of someone ditching his beloved CAS for some "Injuns" is laughable and he treats it badly. Were he a native, he probably wouldn't even have mentioned it aside from with an embrassaed sigh. "Oh, THOSE guys."

That said, the CAS and the PCC still have high-level diplomatic talks. They might find a peaceful solution to this yet.

Or they might start shooting one another.

Time will tell.

And that means work.

Well, Oklahoma was the "Indian Territory" at some point, right? Though I think that was connected to forced relocation, so maybe they wouldn't really want it.

A sudden outbreak of peace means work, too.

But which is more likely to occur. Peace would be nicer, but not as likely.