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Cynic project
Now, I know that a lot of what shadowrun has put into CFS is true. We have a lot of people who are right wing and act a lot like the way people in CFS act. But those people are a shrinking minority, and rarely see eye to eye within their own ranks. They also are people who tend not to live in the major cities.

San fran/Bay area. Boy was that a kick in the gut. Then Saito...Well let's just leave it at this, if there the number of troops in that they say in YotC then you have roughly 25,000 troops. Toping off at 30,000. If I am right there are more than that many national gourd in said area in times of peace.

Also I think that the idea od giving up LA for what ever reason is just well stupid. No one would willing give up a city that it make more money than most countries.

And the reason that the CSF has a weak Army is just laughable. Sorry we are in the midle of two hostile nations who have top of line militaries. Let's spend BILLIONS of dollars on basically nothing. I mean youw ould have to be so crupt that you would make Nero look good.
Mercer
I don't live in California and I've only visited it twice (three times if you count being stationed at 29 Palms for the better part of a month), so I treat it-- as most of the world does-- as a fictional place. I wasn't wild about how the NAGNA handled Atlanta (Futurama did a much better job of updating it, but no matter).

There were things I liked about CFS and things I didn't, but since I'm not familiar with California, I've never been able to pinpoint the books inconsistencies. Its been a few years since I've read through it in any detail, but this is what stands out in my memory.

Overall, in terms of plot hooks, it was okay. Redding, San Fran, LA all had lots of tie ins for runs (which is my main yardstick for a sb, how usuable it is in a game). Even though I'm the one that bought and read CFS, aside from a one-shot in Northern California the only other time we ran there was a module another GM ran for us in San Fran. (It was a run where the shaman and I developed rules for an alternate Skeet game using levitated Sec Guards as clay pigeons. Good times.) So, considering that I've used the book in two sessions in the past seven or so years, maybe it suffers a little by that yardstick. I did come up with a module that was basically the group chasing a lost computer programmer the length and breadth of the CFS, with an adventure in every chapter, but I never ran it.

I was never wild about the mutant critter table in the back of the book. Where I come from, exposure to radiation is generally harmful, and the idea that people or animals are deriving super powers from it seems more suited to comic books than my SR game. Beyond toxic shamans or spirits, having animals mutate in giant, monstrous versions of themselves is a little to 1950's B-Movie crappy. Why not have a mutation table where all your hair falls out and then you die?

The Anasazi (sp?) chapter never quite lit me on fire either. I didn't see where they were going with it. A lost tribe mysteriously reappears. All in all it looked like a place to run your Mad Max themed SRs. Or The Hills Have Eyes. In any event, it seemed like another step towards a "movie reality", which leaves me a little cold.

San Francisco. Here's my main problem with SF. I never liked them writing the Japanese as the new Nazis. It just seems in poor taste to pick a nation and make it evil. I mean, its supposed to be cyberpunk, aren't all nations and corporations hit with the same stick? And isn't there a better, more creative, less blatantly racist way of presenting the situation than, "Here's the Japanese, being evil, as they are want to do"? I have the same problem with the way the Azzies are frequently handled. It just seems like lazy plotting.
mfb
i dunno. yeah, the Japanese are often presented as 'the bad guys' in SR, but that's one of those leftovers from the 80s. think of it as cultural roots--and, hey, look at what they're doing with Japan now. it's not Japan that's the bad guys, now, it's Saito and the megacorps that back him. it's not even all of Saito's soldiers, either--he sunk two troop ships that tried to leave; you have to wonder how many others were intimidated into staying by that act.

and, more than that, it was never just the Japanese that were racist bastards in CFS. SF/Sacramento and Chico-Oroville were presented as racists bastard bastions, in the CFS SB.
Mercer
I don't disagree with you, and I don't think the game designers agenda was inherently racist. I'm just saying that if you present Chico-Oroville as a place that has some racists, and then Redding as a place that has some racists, and then Japan as one big evil country, it comes off as demonization (even if it wasn't what the writers were necessarily intending). Its like saying in California, people are bad because they are racist, but the Japanese are racist because they are bad.

Mainly, the use of the Azzies or the Japanese comes off as a sort of, "Who's the Bad Guys?", in much the same way the Indians were treated in early cowboy movies. Melodrama needs heavies, the Rebellion needs the Empire, Indiana Jones needs Nazis (Temple of Doom, anyone?). Its the type of things that works in more simplistic stories, black and white, good and evil and so on; but in a real world context (allowing that SR is "real world", which is a stretch, but hopefully it has more in common with our world than it does with say, Lucasfilm's universe) it just comes off a propaganda.

Also, I'll be honest with you, I never bought YotC, so I only have a vague notion of who Saito is (a notion gathered almost entirely from things people have said about him here on this board. He's in charge of San Fran, he's the Japanese Hitler and he's sunk two troop transports). It's possible they updated things in YotC and fixed some of the stuff I had a problem with, but not having read it I can't say. I'm just dealing with the way it was presented in CFS, since thats the last SB I've read that dealt with the Japanese.
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Mercer)
The Anasazi chapter never quite lit me on fire either.  I didn't see where they were going with it.  A lost tribe mysteriously reappears.

I only just realised, that's got such a very Parlainth-esque feel to it. That or some sort of weird spirit with the Astral Gateway power to the metaplanes.
Crimsondude 2.0
The Anasazi in CFS are a pathetic bunch of nomad poseurs, and I'm sure Pueblo military soldiers don't have any qualms about killing people who are denigrating the their ancestors' names.

Also, Temple of Doom was the only one of the three without Nazis.

One last thing for now-- CFS has been screwed up since SR1 and NAGNA, but it's funny how CFS opened with, "the neo-As got some stuff wrong" and continued to propogate a tremendous amount of nonsense over 160ish pages.

Whatever the perspective of the Japanese was (and, like I wrote elsewhere, the SR universe was developed in the mid-80s when FASA was competing with R. Tal to put out a "cyberpunk" RPG, and SR1 reflects the politics of that time), the interesting thing is that in California, the place to be was Los Angeles--specifically for the Japanese. They engaged in many of their real estate booms in the southland because it was a cool place to have property, it was a lot cheaper than downtown SF, and they could just throw money into Century City as easily as Downtown (boy, did they) or the Miracle Mile and get the same effect. The one thing the Bay Area has over L.A. that the Japanese would want was Silicon Valley, which is probably why they were willing to send Marines to an area already dominated by Ares Macrotech. But they didn't try to take over Silicon Valley or gentrify Oakland or some other area--they took over a city with a long-standing culture, rife with politics and ethnicities that don't have much historical love with Japan. Riiiiight. At least L.A. would be used to them, and it's a more important economy to ensure.

OTOH, the L.A. MSA sprawl is as large as a good chunk of Japan itself, and the areas they'd be most interested in already could afford good security for themselves.

But in the context of the state cutting ties with L.A. (which is just preposterous for the reasons given) makes L.A. even more inviting because canon L.A. needed the money and guns (but had the lawyers. wink.gif)

L.A. itself, is also built on a couple of false premises. One is ignoring the fact that it is not only one of (if not) the most diverse sprawl(s) in the world, but those different cultures do intermingle. It's not a feudal region of city-states, and the only parts of the city that are walled up and fenced are north of the 10. It makes no sense to do something so drastic and stupid as wall up El Infierno (which is made up of several small cities and large neighborhoods). I hate to break it to whoever wrote the book, but the gangs don't roam. It defeats the purpose of being territorial.

I mean, the concept is not without its RL supporters.
QUOTE
"The LAPD wants the City Council's permission to permanently seal off [Sepulveda barrio in the San Fernando Valley] and restrict entry to residents, while the owners finance a guard station, or 'checkpoint charlie'."
-- Mike Davis. City of Quartz.


I said it before, but the closest I can see is that they took the most dystopic imagery from Mike Davis' books and tried to expand them, kind of like looking at Cold War Berlin and saying, "If two is cool, six is even cooler" while ignoring key political and military factors involved in Berlin.
QUOTE
"The carefully manicured lawns of Los Angeles' Westside sprout forests of ominous little signs warning: "Armed Response!" Even richer neighborhoods in the canyons and hillsides isolate themselves behind walls guarded by gun-toting private police and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance. Downtown, a publicly-subsidized 'urban renaissance' has raised the nation's largest corporate citadel, segregated from poor neighborhoods around it by a monumental architectural glacis. In Hollywood, celebrity architect Frank Gehry, renowned for his 'humanism', apotheosizes the siege look in a library designed to resemble a foreign-legion fort. In the Westlake district and the San Fernando Valley the Los Angeles Police barricade streets and seal off poor neighborhoods as part of their 'war on drugs'. In Watts, developer Alexander Haagen demonstrates his strategy for recolonizing inner-city retail markets: a panopitcan shopping mall surrounded by staked metal fences and a substation of the LAPD in a central surveillance tower. Finally on the horizons of the next millennium, an ex-chief of police crusades for an anti-crime 'giant eye'--a geo-synchronous law enforcement satellite--while other cops discretely tend to versions of 'Garden Plot', a hoary but still viable 1960s plan for a law-and-order armageddon."
-- Mike Davis. City of Quartz.


I could drive through Compton or Glendale or the Black Hills or Echo Park or Rampart and not get hassled because I'm not bothering anyone. It's a cause and effect of L.A. being very insular to one's self and social spheres. The walls feed on Anglo paranoia, but... L.A.'s not very white anymore. They're all moving to San Bernadino county, and places like Rancho Cucamonga. Gated communities have no less crime on average than outside--it's just different. People do blow instead of crack, but burglary and vandalism still exist. But it is a way to delineate where a group of people have determined that they are goinfg to enforce social control, and your covenant to join the homeowner's association, pay dues and follow the rules under the penalty of law are what makes them attractive. That a group of people will tell you, this is the color of the house, the size, type, how often you mow your lawn, how many cars you have, curfew in the community, noise restrictions, private services you can hire, and can't, who your security providers are, and what they are allowed to do.

I quoted this the last time my venting about L.A. came up, but I will repost it. And consider, this book was written in 1991 before the L.A. riots. Things got better for a while, but they got worse once the economy tanked again.

QUOTE

"Within Los Angeles County, the security services industry has tripled its sales and workforce over the last decade. 'It's easier to become an armed guard than it is to become a barber, hairdresser, or journeyman carpenter."
-- Mike Davis. City of Quartz.


The best thing YotC did was break down all the damn walls and focus more on the actual RL activities described in that book while seemingly drawing inspiration for the natural onslaught from his other book, Ecology of Fear.
Mercer
I know, my point was that without Nazis to fight, you end up with Temple of Doom. Its just a horrible movie. Also, I find it weird that audiences will buy magical mumbo-jumbo as long as its based in Christian theology, but if it comes from some other source then its clearly ludicrous. Anyway, this is neither here nor there.
Crimsondude 2.0
Ah. I wasn't sure, so I erred... badly.
Cray74
QUOTE (Cynic project)
Now, I know that a lot of what shadowrun has put into CFS is true. We have a lot of people who are right wing and act a lot like the way people in CFS act. But those people are a shrinking minority, and rarely see eye to eye within their own ranks. They also are people who tend not to live in the major cities.

Y'know, once you accept the sheer BS of the Native American Nations secession, the Cal Free State situation looks relatively plausible. Cut off from the rest, run by typical US politico morons without enough checks 'n balances from the rest of the nation...sure.

Of course, once I null out the NAN situation in my alternate settings, the whole CFS situation goes away.
Adarael
Okay, here's my take on the subject. Now, just to set the stage...

California's a wee bit of a powerhouse when it comes to global economy and politics. Regardless of what anyone says about the state being 'just a state', California wavers between being the 5th largest economy in the world (September, 2004, by The Economist's reconing) and 7th largest in the world (the more commonly quoted figure (I've never heard anything smaller than that). California produces a little more than 65% of the food eaten in the United States, due to politics and government subsidies to the 'bread bowl' states. With an estimated population of about 38,500,000 (about 12-13% of the total US population), the state isn't exactly a slouch when it comes to size. With these in mind, I think it's extremely feasible to say that California could be its' own nation.

Now, what are my problems?

-California as a nation of slackers
One of the most common misconceptions about California seems to be that we're all a bunch of permissive jackasses unable to stand up for ourselves, because we all want to get along. Sure, we do want to all get along. But look at history - the civil rights movement, the Weathermen, the 1960s. Californians know how to fight for what they believe in, because the state at large generally marches to a different beat than midlands USA. One of the most common threads I've heard lately from people of widely varying ethnicities and beliefs is that if the current US administration tries to mess with our state, screw 'em. We won't listen.
Which is what this boils down to. Californians DO like to get along. We don't like to pick up guns like good ol' boys and rebels. But jesus, one of the most cardinal sins a visitor can commit in this state is insulting it. Because then NONE of us like you. We tend to be egotistical and regard California as generally... better... than other places.

-California's Perpetually Weak Military: The Tir Tairngire Invasion, The PCC, and Saito.
One of the problems California seems perpetually plagued by in Shadowrun is a military that's totally unable to do anything right. While I have nothing against saying 'CFS's military could be average', there are certain things that irk me about the way California's military is handled.
First: Aztlan took over San Diego with apparently no trouble. For those of you unaware, San Diego is one of the *largest military complexes in the world*. It is THE port for the US Navy, and is one of the major bases for all other branches of the US army. Regardless of if the UCAS cared about California at the time, I can see *no* way Aztlan could have just rolled over that city. That would be like suggesting Chechen rebels just 'borrowed' St. Petersburg, or France happened to snag Bonn while passing through. Ain't gonna happen, no way.
Second: The Tir Tairngire invasion. The Tir rolled over California, pretty much without incident until Hestaby got involved. Now, I know what you're gonna say - Immortal Elves, planning for decades or centuries, backing from the NAN, et cetera. While that's all well and good, how did Tir Tairngire manage to train their army in all that ordinance, equipment and tactics in the space of so short a time? MORE importantly, if they managed to do so well in training, why did California FORGET all of that training in so short a time?
Third: The PCC? Well, that doesn't bother me too much, honestly. LA being taken by the PCC makes sense, *given the current climate of the nation*. While I find it very hard to believe that the train of events leading up to the PCC's invasion is unlikely, the actual invasion is logical. I just find it odd that so large an area could be taken by the PCC so quickly, and with so little resistance.
Fourth: Saito. Saito, Saito, Saito. The topic has been done to death - you all know my feelings on it. Unless he's getting at least 50% of his power and maintenence from megacorps, it's utterly ridiculous.

-The Japanacorp takeover
One part of this setup makes sense - the Japanese presence in the state. In the Bay Area, the average population makeup is about 49.2% white, and about 32.8% Asian. While they don't break up 'asian' into nationality proper, there's a decent chunk of Japanese influence there already. But the mistake is in assuming that this influence is somehow 'foreign'. Growing up in the Bay Area, I've *never* felt like all those asians were somehow 'other' than Californian. And I've never seen any evidence that most of them feel themselves to be other than Californian either.
It comes back to the perpetual problem with Shadowrun's setup. Cyberpunk, as a genre, is fairly predicated on Japanophobia; in the 1980s, they seemed unstoppable, unable even to be slowed in their takeover of the world economy. So people were scared stiff of 'em. But really, the idea that they'd intern metahumans? That they'd become imperialist again, so swiftly after the shift *away* from it? Highly unlikely. I mean, the ideology of imperialism was removed in an *extremely* effective fashion from the Japanese mindset; despite the Boeicho Jietai being the third largest military in the world, all you have to do to see its' ideological limitations is look at how much flak they took for accepting the UN's demands that they deploy troops in Iraq.

My slightly more than two yen.
Adarael
BTW, Crimsondude?

Excellent post. I didn't echo any of your points because you said pretty much what I wanted to on the subject of LA.

Also, props to you for knowing City of Quartz.
Crimsondude 2.0
Thanks. I learned about him through my bro's Anthropology of L.A. class at USC, and used his books for my Political Science thesis paper in my "Evil" thesis seminar (the actual name of the class).
Mercer
I think there is a tendency to go "cartoony" in sourcebooks. The best and worst example of this that I read was Cyberpirates. I hated the four-color treatment of the Caribbean section, but I loved the bleak outlook of the Africa chapter.
Crimsondude 2.0
I'm probably one of the few people who, prima facie, liked Cyberpirates! and which I had the money at the time to get the original manuscripts and materials from PropWash just because Chris Hepler made the original treatment sound much darker.
Fortune
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)
I'm probably one of the few people who, prima facie, liked Cyberpirates! and which I had the money at the time to get the original manuscripts and materials from PropWash just because Chris Hepler made the original treatment much darker.

Examples needed! smile.gif

I too liked CyberPirates!
mfb
well, there was the massive crack rock that the Gingerbread Man was... what? sitting on, i think?
Mercer
Then he was absorbing through assmosis. smile.gif

I'm terribly sorry.
Crimsondude 2.0
The deck chair the size of Arthur Vogel he mentions (in a clearly edited sentence) only makes sense (otherwise, who cares?) once you find out it's a piece of crack rock.

They did list the prices of sex slaves, but they wanted to make them more... obviously prized smuggling goods. They also wanted to make the Philippines even darker.

Oh, and AFAIK all the quotes by Harley and Hestaby (which sit in their own little universe outside any other poster's notice) were clearly added after the fact.
Trashman
Have to admit a) I liked the California book (and most parts of the Cyberpirates too) and b) never been to the Fifth World equivalent of Cal. But then I'd be just another damn tourist between beach and Sunset Strip. So I'll gladly give that a pass until someone comes up with an alternative California. wink.gif

Adarael wrote:
But look at history - the civil rights movement, the Weathermen, the 1960s. Californians know how to fight for what they believe in, because the state at large generally marches to a different beat than midlands USA.

That's exactly my take on CFS for our campaign. Straight back to ye olden golden days of Zabriskie Point and all the other wonderfully freaky movies Hollywood never ever allowed to be made again ever since.
So, basically, I tweaked some of the information in the book to fit more into a sort-of 60ish style counter-culture with everything more to extreme. Drugs, music, Berkely, gov violence etc. I also checked out Steve Kenson's site and included his alternative piece on the alternative California, i.e. the gay underground of SanFran. Great fun (in all its social earnestness).
And, yes, as probably most of the posters here, I also toned down the Japanese and Saito thing. Saito is clearly a madman, something like Bokassa of RCA and Mobutu of Congo/Zaire. Only I suspect he won't last as long in California as those two nutters did in their countries.
Cynic project
here is a funny little note about japan.It can't feed it's own people,and is largely dependent on food from California.

But I have seen people who say they like what CFS is,but I haven't seen a why.
mfb
doesn't really have to be a why. the material is interesting, and many of the objections brought up by others just don't rankle me, personally.
Gyro the Greek Sandwich Pirate
Hm.

If you are fine with the NAN (seeing as how this is all quite a nice fictional bubble) then I would suppose California isn't going to cause one much trouble...

And if one has problems with the NAN, I would think that California would be more of a footnote to the larger ludicrous nature of concentration camps for Native Americans, followed by said Native Americans hacking off a chunk of the United States and establishing their own countries.


And now...

LOOK OVER THERE! It's maaaaaaaaagic!

wink.gif
Cynic project
Well, mfb that is true, but as noted they didn't go off and make Germany a Nazi happy go lucky fun land. They screwed the whole world up,and I like that, but they took time out of there day to make a point of the US fighting tooth and nail for seattle,and just letting the more important ports of California go... So I can understand why you may not think it need a reason,but I say if they let California go, why is Seattle part of the the UCAS?

LA makes more money than most nations. Hell, here is a scary thing the porn industry in LA is so big that is about as large as most the gross nation product of many countries.

As for the NAN, the best and only reasons why the NAN are there break down into two reasons. One the founding memeber of the NAN were willing to use WMD,and did so freely. Two, the area that the NAN have is largely a cash hole for the US as it is.It cost the US feds money to maintain that area.It costs more money than that land will ever return.
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Fortune)
I too liked CyberPirates!

Thirded. Although people keep giving me funny looks whenever I admit to it. smile.gif
Crimsondude 2.0
Well, I think it can be fixed (e.g., the L.A. Big One knocking down a lot of the walls, which should be smaller and less ubiquitous). I just think that the effort needs to go there. I don't have a problem with Saito, either, per se. I just think it would have been more interesting if San Francisco had remained a liberal bastion on the edge of the Japanese-controlled bay area--maybe gentirfying Oakland into Little Tokyo--while Berkeley sits right in the middle of it all.

It can be fixed.

What surprises me is how no one mentioned Aztlan's takeover of the second largest city in California.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
First: Aztlan took over San Diego with apparently no trouble. For those of you unaware, San Diego is one of the *largest military complexes in the world*. It is THE port for the US Navy, and is one of the major bases for all other branches of the US army. Regardless of if the UCAS cared about California at the time, I can see *no* way Aztlan could have just rolled over that city. That would be like suggesting Chechen rebels just 'borrowed' St. Petersburg, or France happened to snag Bonn while passing through. Ain't gonna happen, no way.

Crimsondude 2.0
Oops. Missed that.
mfb
cynic, i'm not sure what Germany has to do with this. yeah, the Japanese are taking over CFS--so? somebody's got to be the oppressive jerks in a cyberpunk setting. in the 80s, when cyberpunk was first starting out, the Japanese looked like they were going to be the oppressive jerks of the future; writers of the time--SR writers included--capitalized on and extrapolated from that. the fact that they're still the oppressive jerks in today's SR is basically inherited, not a dislike for Japan.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)

Oops. Missed that.

Firgured; it was a pretty dense post. It's also the only thing I don't get. I mean a light armored division takes the city? Obviously something was going on that's simply breezed over.
Crimsondude 2.0
Hand-waving.

mfb: I'd just rather have seen them take over L.A., turn it into Blade Runner land or whatever they were working on in the 80s before the Bubble burst.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0)
Hand-waving.

Pft, I prefer to say that the San Diego military went rouge (due to the stupid federal and state handling of the crisis) and Aztlan offered them "autonomy" with the now private forces contracted to the city as police and acting as a mercenary group. Then again, I have a fondness for rouge militaries. Mumm, Saito...
Cynic project
QUOTE (mfb)
cynic, i'm not sure what Germany has to do with this. yeah, the Japanese are taking over CFS--so? somebody's got to be the oppressive jerks in a cyberpunk setting. in the 80s, when cyberpunk was first starting out, the Japanese looked like they were going to be the oppressive jerks of the future; writers of the time--SR writers included--capitalized on and extrapolated from that. the fact that they're still the oppressive jerks in today's SR is basically inherited, not a dislike for Japan.

Because CFS is full of bad stereotypes of Califonians. Most of witch are wrong. You do not have people in the CAS being KKK, or humanis. You do not have Germans lining up for the forth riche.You do not have Aztlaners going all taco bell happy one you,wile they lay around and drink.You do not have Irish drinking. Your Russians aren't so drunk that you could get more vodka from them,than blood.

You have a world that takes pride in having areas written by people from that area until you get to California. I can see logical reasons why most of things happens in the world. For the most part there are things in the area that I may disagree with. I really disliked the UB,and the Deus. But I can see a lot of reasons why the UCAS acted in that way. I can see reasons behind why the NAN have there land. I can see reasons why Aztlan seized power.

I can only see two reasons why CFS has been so stupid. One, shadowrun was written by people who just hate it. I mean I went up north and I never been treated to so much anger because of where I was from. And two by making CFS a hell hole is it gives about the only reason for the UCAS to fight so hard to keep Seattle.

And MFB care to explain how the Suthern part of Califonia has anything to do with JAPAN going all uber alies,again?
mfb
uh, well, for quite a long time, Japan ruled much of southern/central Cali. there was a pretty big section in CFS about it, and the aftermath of their rule has been the subject of portions of both YotC and Threats 2. Japan's imperialistic tendencies were highlighted and exemplified by their control of the Bay area. besides that, though, you're right--Cali and Japan are two wholly seperate issues.

i also don't see how CFS is more of a hellhole than anywhere else. Tir Tairngire is run by a bunch of mouthbreathers masquerading as a sophisticated immortal cabal, the UCAS is a bunch of spastic nutjobs who eagerly jump on a new bandwagon every week, the NAN is desolate collection of 'racially pure' nations which whores out huge chunks of its land to non-indian settlements, Europe is still half a smoking ruin from the Great Jihad, Japan just got snapped in half and now has to deal with being run by a middle-school brat, Russia lost something like 80% of its land and resources to a hodgepodge bunch of spirits and critters--how, exactly, is CFS worse off than the rest of the world?

Mercer
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0 @ Dec 22 2004, 08:07 PM)
Hand-waving.

Pft, I prefer to say that the San Diego military went rouge (due to the stupid federal and state handling of the crisis) and Aztlan offered them "autonomy"

Something I thought of this morning when I woke up (and by morning I mean, like 8pm, which is less of a problem than why I always seem to think of SR first thing in the morning...)

Without actually looking anything up in a book, I imagine at the time Aztlan took San Diego the Azzies were more magically advanced than the military there at the time. The Azzies might have been using spirits to conceal themselves and confuse the enemy, and they might have also used Control Thoughts, etc on high ranking members of the military in San Diego to delay or otherwise screw up the response.

It seems like the "And So It Came to Pass" chapter never goes into any real detail on any of this; I get the feeling they drew the map and then came up with a history to justify it rather than scripting out what happened and then drawing the map to reflect it, and as a result a lot of things got dealt with very quickly and without any real detail into how it happened.

If nothing else, there probably would be an interesting story about how a relatively small force would be able to take a very well defended city using magic as a force multiplier.

I now return you to your scheduled debate on why or why not CFS sucks, already in progress.
Snow_Fox
I'm from New York. So Calli's in trouble? oops.
John Campbell
I like CFS, because it gives certain Californians such entertaining conniptions.
Cynic project
What one of these things is a lie.
A) CSF has the number 3 economy in North America(baring Aztlan, witch would put it at fourth)
B) CSF despite being surrounded by hostile nations on all side,and being nearly at at state of war for upwards of 23 years it did not make a military force worth notice.
C) The map makers of CSF have no idea where cities and geographic places are. Note how Santa Cruz is stated to be a free city and is the area clearly marked as part of Saito's lot....The Centeral vally seems to have moved east about 100 miles as well...
D) All the above....
Kagetenshi
Do you have a canonical source for the economy figure? If so, does most of it come from the Japanacorp-controlled area?

~J
Cynic project
The avarage wages that CSF has is 28,000. Only one country in North America has a higher pay scale. the PCC, with something like 29,500. By the way the PCC would have something like half the amount that CSF has.In fact all other nations in the NAN,barring the PCC make roughly the same amount of money as the CFS. With the numbers of people in the CFS you are looking at ~.5 trillion dollars yearly. All form the SONA.

Of you could reasounable see 150-200 Billion going into the CFS. This counting Land,Sale, Income and importing taxes.

mattness pl
My English isn't great so sorry, if I didn't understood topic properly.
Cynic asked us what we think about CFS in Shadowrun universe?
Well, I think there's two places in SR which are great to play: Germany and... Yes, you guessed right. California. I'm GMing my players to Orcland(once Oakland) and make it a street warfare place (I didn't read NAGNA or SONA. Only CFS smile.gif ).
My group saw corporate huntings in slums of Oakland and I think they were stunned by what they saw. Maybe that's not so close to the book, but - what the heck...
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