Hello everyone,

I am about to start up a new Shadowrun 3rd game in the city of Nagasaki. Anyone have any suggestions? (And for the record, I've lowered the Background count of Nagasaki in the downtown areas)

Why did you lower the background count? Keep in mind that this fundamentally changes the operation of background count to have it not present (or not present to the usual degree) there.

~J

im guessing the background count isnt just from the nuke itself but allso from all the lifes that died in the blast.

remember that places like the nazi death camps still have a background count in 2060 or so (IIRC) and im guessing something similar is hovering over nagasaki.

of one then add that nukes seems to have an ability to generate background counts to it gets realy nasty...

No, that's not what I meant. Background count is a term borrowed from radiation contamination (or astronomy, I suppose... lots of uses, and all of them dealing with radiation). I was talking about either a radioactive background count or a magical one, which is what needs to be defined in the original post.

true...

but from recent reports the radiation level of those citys that got nuked at the end of WW2 are allready starting to normalize from the looks of it.

so most likely it will not be much of an issue in SR, but the magical background count from those attacks (as well as maybe the firebombing of tokyo and maybe hamburg, germany) should still be there for reasons i have allready stated.

I don't know muhch about Nagasaki in SR3 so if I'm just talking out of my butt please correct me. Background count is just the aspecting of mana toward an "abnormal" paradigm. It is reduced by the presence of "normal" life, which slowly returns the mana toward the namegiver-standard paradigm. Heavily populated areas of Nagasaki should, reasonably, have less background count simply because of the people living there. The greater the number of people living there the faster the mana is aspected toward life again.

By canon Nagasaki has a mana warp in it, same as any other nuclear blast site.

~J

Warp seems overkill. I suggest a background count (magical variety) not more than 6 or less than 3 in the majority of the area. To bump up the amount of resolvable hazards, include some chained spectres of those who died in the blast and had no living relative who tried to appease them afterward. In this case, their chain would actually be their living relatives, but in many cases the knowledge of such a connection would've been lost to both sides.

It seems like it can fit, and I liked the mental image of WW2 era populace materializing and harrassing the runners. Remember, most of the background count would be sustained by the angry dead so they face little or no penalty.

This is all fasscinating stuff. It makes me wonder, though. What other kinds of places would have background counts. I mean, I heard someone say that people living in normalicy reduces them, but what about more remote places, especially those that saw incredibly great bloody battles? Oakinawa? Iwo Jima? Normandy? Bastogne? Would they be any different than the major cities that saw the most incredible fighting? Stalingrad? Berlin?

There is no evidence that I have seen that people living in an area reduces any sort of background count other than that caused by lack of life (for example, space).

~J

It doesn't actually fit with it. We know of only one case in which life has decreased background count, and that's in an area with an absence of it.

Moreover, we've evidence to the contrary. As I mentioned, per canon Nagasaki and Hiroshima still have heavy mana warps despite people living in them. I'll dig out Target: Wastelands and try to find the reference.

~J

I haven't found my copy, but IIRC they were as big a warp in 2050 as in 2060, and in 2040 as in 2050, and in 2012 as in 2040.

~J

Heh, I love that line, Blakkie.


But how do you get rid of background count? I mean, it'd seem to me that by 2060 or 2070, there woulden't be anywhere that didn't have some really heavy background count, if not all-out warp. Especially given the fighting during WWII. I'd think that just about every city from Caen to Stalingrad should be about uninhabitable given all the hell that went down there.

there really isn't any precedent, like Kagetenshi said. Try the Nazi death camps for example. They've gotten worst! Auschwitz for example has a background count of 5, and they have to ward the whole damn palce to try to keep all the damn angry ghosts in. And they're starting to get through anyways. Really what it comes down to is that it shouldn't lower but if the GM wants it to for his game, it should.

Dayum...

That sounds like a good game. But why isen't the whole world infested with vengeful ghosts?

it is



but not all of them are strong. And not all of them have chains, and are therefor easier to get rid of. Also, not everyone that dies comes back as a ghost.


That being said. The world is infested with "vengeful ghosts". Haven't you seen Ghostbusters!?

Hehehe.

I used to wonder why no enterprising mage went in t obusiness as a 'ghostbuster'. So I had a character acutally do it. I decided that it was because spectres are mean! Who knew!?

Does Shadows of Asia give any more info on this? It would seem logical that it would but I have been wrong before. I have not had a chance to finish reading the book yet.

BlacKat

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Correction for title of book
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