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Kesh
Second update is on the main SR site. Map of North America and a two-page character sheet!

(God, I love RSS. biggrin.gif )
Sabosect
Damn it! I was hoping for more text from the book! Not something that leaves me sitting here with nothing to change my mind!

Well, they might put on a couple more. I hope.
Starglyte
Looks like Salish-Sidhe annexed the neighbor to the north. PCC did likewise with the Ute. Yucatan looks to be a new nation. There is still no State of Northern virginia. Texas is still divided. Looks like its going to be a interesting 5 years.
blakkie
QUOTE (Sabosect @ Aug 16 2005, 05:19 PM)
Damn it! I was hoping for more text from the book! Not something that leaves me sitting here with nothing to change my mind!

Well, they might put on a couple more. I hope.

Well the PC sheet does suggest a similarity in rules dealing with Technomancers and Mages in regards to both the Magic/Resonance attributes and Spirits/Sprites.

The space in the layout for the Magic/Resonance value also suggests they don't expect a given PC to have both. So no Otaku tossing around Manabolts, if you were looking for that kind of thing. wink.gif
Starglyte
Just noticed, but what happened to Southern California?
blakkie
QUOTE (Starglyte)
Looks like Salish-Sidhe annexed the neighbor to the north. PCC did likewise with the Ute. Yucatan looks to be a new nation. There is still no State of Northern virginia. Texas is still divided. Looks like its going to be a interesting 5 years.

Wasn't the Yucatan the center for the RCC backed rebellion? I guess they made some headway.
hermit
Check out the Baja California. Someone NUKED SAN DIEGO OUT OF EXISTENCE. The peninsula south of California is now an island. Ute is pretty much absorbed into PCC along with most of California. SSC seems to have wrestled down Tshimshian (seems the Japanacoorps are gonna take quite a beating). Yucatan gains independence (about time). No Texas republic, though. Seems Patrick didn't get his way after all.

Seems there's gonna be quite the shakeup. I'd love to see a world map.
Bandwidthoracle
A big chunk of California is missing, Megaquake?
mmu1
Meteor showers and tidal waves, obviously.

"...learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona Bay!"

Sorry, having a flashback to HS days. nyahnyah.gif
hermit
QUOTE (Bandwidthoracle)
A big chunk of California is missing, Megaquake?

Remember how they said "some places are gonna be nuked out of existence"? Maybe Winternight had a test run with their nuclear weapons focus ...

I just wonder why everyone has it out for San Diego. It's not like that hasn't been done in Star Trek, Babylon 5 and a host of other systems and shows already.
Nerbert
Don't forget Jurassic Park II
Sabosect
QUOTE (blakkie)
Well, they might put on a couple more. I hope. [/QUOTE]
Well the PC sheet does suggest a similarity in rules dealing with Technomancers and Mages in regards to both the Magic/Resonance attributes and Spirits/Sprites.

The space in the layout for the Magic/Resonance value also suggests they don't expect a given PC to have both. So no Otaku tossing around Manabolts, if you were looking for that kind of thing. wink.gif

And, it appears that the number of damage boxes is dependent on the body stat and, therefore, variable instead of the 10 we are used to.

In addition, we also we have a few more items to take care of now. Like street cred. I wonder how big of a stat that is.
Ellery
Hahaha. Wow. And I thought that the ridiculously incorrect stereotypes in CFS was the silliest thing they could do to California.

Apparently in five years they've made about ten million years worth of geologic changes, many of which seem to have little basis in geology or geography. You get magnitude 8 quakes every 100 years or so. Apparently there were magnitude 8 quakes about every four hours for five years straight. Pretty cool, huh?

Japan must have been pretty irritated with the 10-meter tsunamis hitting its shore ten or so times a day, too, for that whole time. (Cause they'd be hit both by the south-of-LA and north-of-Santa Barbara quakes.) Maybe that's what happened to old Tokyo--all the tidal waves from the massive earthquakes in CA wiped it out!
hermit
I guess the authors read "hammer of god" and coupled that with winternight's nuke weapon focus (imagine, anuke you can g and whack spirits to oblivion with!). *shrugs*
Ellery
The damage caused there is about the equivalent of a hundred million large nuclear warheads, which would probably roast everything within a 1000km radius of the blast. This is mass-extinction-event-asteroid scale. Although I suppose one could set off a single nuclear weapon once a second for the entire five years. That would at least probably not make the planet entirely uninhabitable (except possibly from radiation fallout).
hermit
QUOTE (Ellery)
The damage caused there is about the equivalent of a hundred million large nuclear warheads, which would probably roast everything within a 1000km radius of the blast. This is mass-extinction-event-asteroid scale. Although I suppose one could set off a single nuclear weapon once a second for the entire five years. That would at least probably not make the planet entirely uninhabitable (except possibly from radiation fallout).

Not saying it makes perfect sense (and I guess somehow spirits were involved in this, they have to to explain this), I just interpreted the map and thought of a likely scenario. smile.gif

And I would not fancy living in SoCal after that blast anyway.
Ellery
Somehow I doubt that "spirits" is a good answer to managing an event with enough energy to cause the extinction of 90% of all species on the planet, unless spirits have gotten a few million times more potent while we weren't looking.
hermit
QUOTE (Ellery)
Somehow I doubt that "spirits" is a good answer to managing an event with enough energy to cause the extinction of 90% of all species on the planet, unless spirits have gotten a few million times more potent while we weren't looking.

Never turn your back to spirits, you never know what weird ideas they might get, like sinking landmasses. wink.gif

this mustn't nescessarily have come in a blast though. It's possible the SA rift just crumbled as a magma chamber emptied (for whatever reason and to whereever), and hence, we had 'only' massive land sinking. Add some angry earth spirits to that (a lot of them), and you can get this done without massive blasts. You'd still have to deal with impressive tsunamis, though.

I guess we should be glad Winternight didn't watch that documentary about the supervolcano below Yellowstone after having read "hammer of god".
blakkie
Kick-ass spirits with earth shaping powers? Then you don't need to worry about the messy, low efficency nukes tossing off wasted energy in radiation, heat, and dust.

Of course that is still only a slightly kinder shade of hokey.
Ellery
Maybe there was a riot at UCLA and ten billion protesting mages each cast move earth ten thousand times in a row!
hermit
While a nuke was detonated below them, eliminating all evidence. Heh.

Well, I still stick with the original "hammer of god and collapsing San Andreas rift" theory. It does make sense, if you check out what has been submerged. well, sense as in "it's a likely explanation".

Lucky us the rift didn't sink fully. Seattle lies on it's northern fringe.
Ellery
Well, the San Andreas is a fault, not a rift, and it's a right-lateral strike-slip fault. Strike-slip faults don't really sink like that; the Pacific plate is sliding northwards relative to the North American plate, not ramming into it (which one could pretend to get massive subduction from). Also, the photoshopped map doesn't match the fault line very well. The fault goes straight through the Bay Area, but the splitting just kind of stops in the middle of nowhere (and miraculously spares Santa Barbara--maybe the author went to school there?), and Baja seems to be just fine, and there's no explanation for that strange wedge (it's not as though it's all low in the now-watery area; there's a whole mountain range there, with 5500 foot peaks!).

Still, your theory sounds a lot like something that would be offered as an explanation. To someone who knows a bit about geology and earth science, the explanation is about as credible as the kid who is caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar, with cookie crumbs on his lips, and the cookies half gone, who offers as explanation, "Martians ate them!"

But even so, it's more credible than a nuke blasting all that material into...um...another dimension, or something, since I don't see mountain-sized chunks lying all over CA. That's only as credible as, "Martians brought Elvis down and he ate them!'
SL James
I somehow now don't regret not having System Failure.

Thank you for the wonderful insight into the massive lack realism and believability on Fanpro's part (And yet I had a freelancer call me unrealistic. How rich).

Also, it look like Antonio Popé definitely was betting on the wrong horse.

OBTW, it's worse than that. Los Angeles is an island, which is just fucking ridiculous.
Ellery
It is kind of hard to turn a basin into an island.
SL James
You think!?!

This is so retarded it's not even funny.
Nerbert
Ok now, this is a universe of sci-fi and magical fantasy. Science Fiction. There are trolls and elves, with guns, ok? The Awakening of Magic was brought about by tribes of indians... from canada.

Are we in the realm of the pulp? The cheese? I think we are.

Now everyone take a big step backward, take a deep breath, and try to imagine a world of Fantasy and High Technology in which there could be a good reason for California to be broken up. I don't care if you can't think of that good reason yourself. Just imagine a universe in which one is possible.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm imagining this one.
Ranneko
SL James, why are you still here? I mean, from what you say, it seems that you only expect that Fanpro are producing irrideemable trash, so why bother? Why not just find something else? Basically the only thing you seem to post is vitriol. Why not just move on? All you really do is make yourself look like an ass with this course of action.
SL James
Because I like this. It's cathartic.

QUOTE (Nerbert)
Now everyone take a big step backward, take a deep breath, and try to imagine a world of Fantasy and High Technology in which there could be a good reason for California to be broken up.  I don't care if you can't think of that good reason yourself.  Just imagine a universe in which one is possible.

Seeing as though I was called out by a freelancer for not adhering to a strong sense of realism and believability (which is ignorant trash, but that's an aside) I can't imagine any realistic explanation for this which doesn't involve a heavy does of handwaving and "... and then a miracle happens" storytelling.

Yeah, that's adhering to a strong sense of realism and a "demand for [sic] believeability". Sure. And I'm a man-sized purple bat.

It isn't physically possible. Parts of the L.A. basin can't just vanish into the ocean like Santa Monica, Long Beach, and the Beach cities have in this map. It's not physically possible, and not magically possible without a couple hundred or thousand Force 1000 Earth Elementals.
blakkie
QUOTE (Ellery)
It is kind of hard to turn a basin into an island.

But turn it into a basin on an island? I don't know all the faults in the area, but the SA isn't the only one. Whether or not they are all sliding past each other i'm not sure. But if there is a massive readjustment of the plate and directions so that the equivalent to Vancouver Island occurs, only farther south. Vancouver Island is currently still rising, something like a 3cm/decade (and it also periodically partially falls back every every few hundred years, and is due any time)

So in 2070 LA is sitting at the top of a sincline or on the top end of an a piece passing over (i forget the technical name for this).

Either of these, while total BS, is pretty much on par for SR.
Ellery
Oh come on, Nerbert, not the tired old "there's magic, anything's possible!" argument.

Shadowrun is set on a futuristic Earth, with people who behave the same way we do, and who live in the same type of society projected forwards in the cyberpunk direction. The appeal of SR is largely that anything is not possible, and because of that, you can use what you know about the real world to make the SR world a richer experience. Rivers don't flow backwards, apples fall from trees at 9.8m/s^2, it's colder at the poles than at the equator, people have finite lifespans, and you don't get tens of thousands of square miles of geography rearranging itself on a whim.

Of course one can still play SR if silly things like this happen, but they're still really silly, and don't fit the setting well at all except as a form of slapstick comedy.

It's about on par with all the anime series where people destroy the moon. It's the same kind of fantastic, ridiculous feel.
SL James
The problem is that the San Andreas fault line is pretty far to the east of downtown Los Angeles. The easternmost shoreline of the new California doesn't even reach the Fault north of Los Angeles, and the only place where it does is just east of L.A., and then has no direct connection to the rest of the new shoreline.
Nerbert
Could it be, perhaps, that the map is not 100% geographically acurate? That maybe the utmost scientific precision was not applied and that they just took a normal map and photoshopped off a piece with a stylus and moved it a couple of milimeters into the "ocean"?

Yes, you are correct, to the millions of tiny people living on that portion of california something miraculous has happened.

As for the "With Magic anything is possible" argument, if they had done this years ago just by inserting it into the Awakening, would any of you blink an eye? "Elves and Trolls and goblins started appearing! The Earth reclaimed vast tracts of real estate overnight! Magical diseases broke out everywhere! California broke off into the ocean!"

I'm amazed that you people can fit your heads in there, what with all the sticks already propping your spines upright.
SL James
Yeah, some jagoff thought it's be cool if Shadowrun was set in a world where Lex Luthor's plan succeeded in Superman.
Ellery
Well, there's water in between, which I can't really attribute to a photoshopping error or exaggeration, since that's a line of water that passes through 5000 foot mountains. Maybe gravity is messed up there, so it's actually underwater at 6000' above sea level. That'd almost make more sense.

Added in edit: Yeah, actually, I would have blinked a whole bunch of times if CA had fallen into the ocean. I'd expect a different type of game if geography wandered around like that. Something more like a satire website.
SL James
Pshaw. Geography, who needs it?
blakkie
Keep in mind that is where LA will be in 2070, not nessasily where it is. If the majority of the city was underwater the little bits there were left could be called LA.

Anyone have a link to a good relief map of current day SoCal?
SL James
Get the Satellite view of it in Google Maps.
blakkie
QUOTE (SL James @ Aug 16 2005, 08:22 PM)
Get the Satellite view of it in Google Maps.

What, are you saying you haven't fully researched this topic? That instead you are just firing of wild vitrol? Say it isn't so! cyber.gif

Anyway, satelite isn't so easy to pick off elevations. Better yet i found this. Hmm, those hills to the NW of LA proper have sort of the shape of that island in the 2070 map with the LA dot on it.

It looks like they just did a subsidence to the whole area (what, a 100m to 200m?), no inverted gravity involved.
SL James
Google's prettier.

I guess it also matters if you've been there. I've driven up and down the mountains into Los Angeles from the east (At 90mph. In rain. And fog. And with a couple thousand other cars. Good times). The incline is, IIRC, like 30 miles. And that's still a good 20-30 miles from even being in view of Los Angeles.

I'm just baffled as to how parts of the Basin could just sink into the Pacific. If it's going east past Apple Valley and to Antelope Valley (which is at point on top of the Fault), then that's not a small amount of land which is just disappearing while leaving downtown intact.
kylleran
If it will make anyone feel any better maybe you should come on up and ask what the deal is with the Cali map at Gencon. I'm sure someone there can fill you in.

Also I'd like to thank Adam for taking the time to post both the map and a kickass character sheet for all the good little boys and girls on DS.
Penta
Kylleran: You do realize that many, many people are generally unable to afford GenCon?

Nonetheless.

Thanks Adam! smile.gif
Ellery
Hopefully the history section of the SR4 book will 'explain' in character what happened to southern CA. I hope someone also asks at GenCon and posts the results here. If there's a reason deeper than, "We felt like it and it didn't seem like a big deal to us--we were redrawing political boundary lines and thought, 'Hey, why not change some geographical boundary lines too?'" I'd like to hear it.

The sheet looks pretty good. Even if I play SR4 (which is unlikely) I won't use it--I haven't used a pregenned character sheet since the old red D&D books. Customizing a sheet for the needs of the character works much better. But it looks pretty nice for a character sheet--hopefully as functional as the SR3 sheet, and a lot swoopier and prettier.
kylleran
QUOTE (Penta)
Kylleran: You do realize that many, many people are generally unable to afford GenCon?

Yeah I realize that but I figured that someone will come up and ask. And I'm too busy now to give the full explanation since I'm in the middle of packing myself.
Sabosect
I hope the in-character isn't like some I have seen.

"It vanished overnight and my girlfriend drowned on me."
Solstice
well apparently they haven't liked the reviews cause the site is down. nyahnyah.gif
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