Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: ChewyGranola on <10-22-13/1956:33>
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So, maybe its just me, but I feel like the world info does a somewhat poor job of telling us why the CAS left besides "something something economy not the CSA something something". When I read SoNA, the CAS section open with the whole "slavery was nit the civil war cause myth", then disavows the CSA, then talks about how similar the two countries are. They feel the same sabe for a few name changes.
So, here's the question: is there some sort if Secret History behind the CAS seccession? Or is it a case of "make the map look cool"?
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The CAS was originally very much the 21st century version of the CSA. It was retconned into a boring puddle of "meh" in SoNA.
But there has been some interesting stuff done to distinguish the CAS from the UCAS as of Dirty Tricks.
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The CAS was originally very much the 21st century version of the CSA. It was retconned into a boring puddle of "meh" in SoNA.
But there has been some interesting stuff done to distinguish the CAS from the UCAS as of Dirty Tricks.
Thanks!
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So, maybe its just me, but I feel like the world info does a somewhat poor job of telling us why the CAS left besides "something something economy not the CSA something something".
-- To be fair, it's not like the CAS had much of a distinctive flavor in NAGNA either.
-- But yeah, the "South Shall Rise Again" aspect was basically disemboweled in Third Edition. I don't think it's ever going to come back. Which frankly makes it a poor mans UCAS, and a bit of a third wheel in North American politics. Even worse, Texas has basically become the CAS as far as new material goes. And Texas isn't nearly as interesting or cool as Texans seem to think.
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Idaho's no great shakes, either, Ken.
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WOO!
Go, Oregon!
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This is why New York was threatening to secede...... ;D
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Idaho's no great shakes, either, Ken.
But you can have your own private Idaho.
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Idaho's no great shakes, either, Ken.
Salish Shidhe >>>> CAS.
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Or...
The STC and eventual NAN formation was a symptom of an eirler disfunction.
The Awakening was a situation taken advantage of first by the the STC members, allowing old disagreements (the civil war) to become recycled.... 8)
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Tír Tairngire Uber Alles.
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In my head canon the difference between UCAS and CAS is actually the former USA Blue State vs Red State divide finally coming to a head about disagreements about the nature of what the UCAS should be.
CAS: "Fine. You go be hippie socialist weasels, we'll make our own country."
UCAS: "Fine. We got enough problems in the Sixth World than to provide you with our socialist welfare benefits."
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Pretty much.
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In my head canon the difference between UCAS and CAS is actually the former USA Blue State vs Red State divide finally coming to a head about disagreements about the nature of what the UCAS should be.
CAS: "Fine. You go be hippie socialist weasels, we'll make our own country."
UCAS: "Fine. We got enough problems in the Sixth World than to provide you with our socialist welfare benefits."
Yeah that's close to how I have it. I figure the UCAS (which I renamed the FSA for fun) is a centralized, top down almost fascist state disguised as a representative democracy. The CAS (which I renamed the ASA) is a decentralized, states rights gone wild kind of place disguised as a federal republic.
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Yeah that's close to how I have it. I figure the UCAS (which I renamed the FSA for fun) is a centralized, top down almost fascist state disguised as a representative democracy.
Fascist, but toothless on domestic and economic affairs?
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Yeah that's close to how I have it. I figure the UCAS (which I renamed the FSA for fun) is a centralized, top down almost fascist state disguised as a representative democracy.
Fascist, but toothless on domestic and economic affairs?
I don't know if the board has rules against bringing politics into the threads.. but assuming they do all I'll say further on it is this:
As a dystopian future, the 'Red' CAS is what the left fears would ever happen, and the 'Blue' UCAS is what would exist in the right's worst nightmare.
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Yeah that's close to how I have it. I figure the UCAS (which I renamed the FSA for fun) is a centralized, top down almost fascist state disguised as a representative democracy.
Fascist, but toothless on domestic and economic affairs?
I don't know if the board has rules against bringing politics into the threads.. but assuming they do all I'll say further on it is this:
As a dystopian future, the 'Red' CAS is what the left fears would ever happen, and the 'Blue' UCAS is what would exist in the right's worst nightmare.
That's fair, it's just that governments in Shadowrun are, canonically, far weaker. I'm pretty sure the big ten each have bigger budgets than the UCAS.
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By the way, UCAS and CAS have been getting closer apparently politically, according to mission 3 of Firing Line.
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Not surprising, honestly. I'm certain there's plenty of people who realize that now, with the magical playing field leveled, if the CAS and UCAS joined forces, they could stand up to the NAN. There's always been certain influential people who wanted to rebuild the old USA.
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The makes me wonder what the UCAS and CAS would about Seattle and California if they united.
I think they'd absolutely leave Denver alone.
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That's fair, it's just that governments in Shadowrun are, canonically, far weaker. I'm pretty sure the big ten each have bigger budgets than the UCAS.
True, but between populations of the Sixth world being much lower than real life, and getting to ignore the needs of the SINless as well, the governments of Shadowrun don't have as much overhead anymore, either. They can cater to much more 'manageable' constituencies.
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That's fair, it's just that governments in Shadowrun are, canonically, far weaker. I'm pretty sure the big ten each have bigger budgets than the UCAS.
True, but between populations of the Sixth world being much lower than real life, and getting to ignore the needs of the SINless as well, the governments of Shadowrun don't have as much overhead anymore, either. They can cater to much more 'manageable' constituencies.
Populations are lowered true....
But 80% of the world is now unhabitable giving rise to food shortages.
Yet there are still the super rich and the super poor, even fewer individuals dominating the economic circle.
The budget doesn't matter if your whole country is dying...
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But 80% of the world is now unhabitable giving rise to food shortages.
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Uhm, am I missing something from 5th? Where are you getting that number from?
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But 80% of the world is now unhabitable giving rise to food shortages.
Uhm, am I missing something from 5th? Where are you getting that number from?
It might not be an untrue guesstimation. There have been a LOT of ecological disasters like toxic spills and powerplanets going nuclear since the awakening. And on top of that nature has made one hell of a comeback with awaken critters and plants and wild spirits now roaming around the wilderness trying to keep "civilized" folks out of it.
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I think more data is needed.
http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/unit/text.php?unit=7&secNum=2
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Yeah that's close to how I have it. I figure the UCAS (which I renamed the FSA for fun) is a centralized, top down almost fascist state disguised as a representative democracy.
Fascist, but toothless on domestic and economic affairs?
No...I didnt mean to imply that if I did. From how I take canon, governments are far from powerless, but they have a lot more to deal with in terms of magic, megacorps, etc so they are meaner and more desperate.
So, yeah, I personally don't interpret the UCAS as toothless domestically or economically, and I would not run the FSA that way either. Just my $0.02.
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But 80% of the world is now unhabitable giving rise to food shortages.
Uhm, am I missing something from 5th? Where are you getting that number from?
It might not be an untrue guesstimation. There have been a LOT of ecological disasters like toxic spills and powerplanets going nuclear since the awakening. And on top of that nature has made one hell of a comeback with awaken critters and plants and wild spirits now roaming around the wilderness trying to keep "civilized" folks out of it.
Was thinking about this, and did a little research...
At current growth rates, population IRL will hit an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050; SR had a couple of pretty serious plagues, but generally it's accepted that 1988 Shadowrun had 5 billion inhabitants in 2050, and current SR has roughly 7 billion - in other words, SR's population sticks with current RL numbers for convenience's sake.
Earth's land surface is only about 29.2% of its surface area. Of that area ...
Currently the total arable land is 13.31% of the land surface, with only 4.71% supporting permanent crops. Close to 40% of the Earth's land surface is presently used for cropland and pasture, or an estimated 1.3×107 km2 of cropland and 3.4×107 km2 of pastureland.
Therefore, approximately 11.68% of the current world is being used for cropland and pasture, with, I would guess, maybe another couple percent that's city and the rest - so let's be generous and call it 14%. That's already 85% of the world that's not lived on - and half of the land area (14.6% of the planet's total surface area) is either desert (14%), high mountains (27%), or other less suitable terrain. (Third paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#Human_geography.) So really, we're already living on less than 20% of the earth's surface. If you're talking 80% of the land surface, though, you're going from living/farming/growing on 14% to living/farming/growing on 5.8%.
Considering the disasters, plagues, etc. - yeah, from 14% to 5.8% is within (the top end of) the realm of possibility. Considering how aquaculture and high-yield protein 'crops' (mycoprotein, soy, etc.) is so important in the SR world, and even middle-class people eat it with moderate regularity ... y'know, going from 50% to 20% of the land mass lived on isn't too far-fetched.
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But 80% of the world is now unhabitable giving rise to food shortages.
Uhm, am I missing something from 5th? Where are you getting that number from?
It might not be an untrue guesstimation. There have been a LOT of ecological disasters like toxic spills and powerplanets going nuclear since the awakening. And on top of that nature has made one hell of a comeback with awaken critters and plants and wild spirits now roaming around the wilderness trying to keep "civilized" folks out of it.
Was thinking about this, and did a little research...
At current growth rates, population IRL will hit an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050; SR had a couple of pretty serious plagues, but generally it's accepted that 1988 Shadowrun had 5 billion inhabitants in 2050, and current SR has roughly 7 billion - in other words, SR's population sticks with current RL numbers for convenience's sake.
Earth's land surface is only about 29.2% of its surface area. Of that area ...
Currently the total arable land is 13.31% of the land surface, with only 4.71% supporting permanent crops. Close to 40% of the Earth's land surface is presently used for cropland and pasture, or an estimated 1.3×107 km2 of cropland and 3.4×107 km2 of pastureland.
Therefore, approximately 11.68% of the current world is being used for cropland and pasture, with, I would guess, maybe another couple percent that's city and the rest - so let's be generous and call it 14%. That's already 85% of the world that's not lived on - and half of the land area (14.6% of the planet's total surface area) is either desert (14%), high mountains (27%), or other less suitable terrain. (Third paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth#Human_geography.) So really, we're already living on less than 20% of the earth's surface. If you're talking 80% of the land surface, though, you're going from living/farming/growing on 14% to living/farming/growing on 5.8%.
Considering the disasters, plagues, etc. - yeah, from 14% to 5.8% is within (the top end of) the realm of possibility. Considering how aquaculture and high-yield protein 'crops' (mycoprotein, soy, etc.) is so important in the SR world, and even middle-class people eat it with moderate regularity ... y'know, going from 50% to 20% of the land mass lived on isn't too far-fetched.
Thematically, one of Gibson's quotes always sits in my mind when examining Shadowrun, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Unless canon clearly states otherwise I assume the is just as much X to go around as there is today, but there's far more inequality and disparity. I imagine the very wealthy live lives of security and luxury that would be the envy of today's billionaires. The middle class of Shadowrun live better than today's middle class , but there are fewer of them and they have less privacy. Everyone below that line is hosed.
Sure there may be less arable, uncontaminated land for agriculture, but agriscience marches on. Today's crop yields were unimaginable in 1913. Before the Green Revolution people were seriously proposing a Malthusian population collapse due to widespread famine. Fritz Haaber and Norman Borlaug alone have saved BILLIONS of lives through artificial fertilizer and plant breeding/genetics. I'm pretty sure the agriculture of 2075 is leaps and bounds ahead of today's farming.
I'm also sure that while we can project scientific and technological progress on an exponential curve into Shadowrun, we should also project cynicism, apathy, oppression, and greed into the future. There *would* be enough to go around if everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya, but that ain't going to happen.
Corporations and governments use the perception of scarcity as a means of control. Just as the governments of 1984 used the perception of perpetual war for the same purpose. The big players in Shadowrun make us little people beg for scraps by convincing us that the poor chumps beside us are out competitors and are the reason there isn't enough to go around.
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Thematically, one of Gibson's quotes always sits in my mind when examining Shadowrun, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Unless canon clearly states otherwise I assume the is just as much X to go around as there is today, but there's far more inequality and disparity. I imagine the very wealthy live lives of security and luxury that would be the envy of today's billionaires. The middle class of Shadowrun live better than today's middle class , but there are fewer of them and they have less privacy. Everyone below that line is hosed.
Sure there may be less arable, uncontaminated land for agriculture, but agriscience marches on. Today's crop yields were unimaginable in 1913. Before the Green Revolution people were seriously proposing a Malthusian population collapse due to widespread famine. Fritz Haaber and Norman Borlaug alone have saved BILLIONS of lives through artificial fertilizer and plant breeding/genetics. I'm pretty sure the agriculture of 2075 is leaps and bounds ahead of today's farming.
I'm also sure that while we can project scientific and technological progress on an exponential curve into Shadowrun, we should also project cynicism, apathy, oppression, and greed into the future. There *would* be enough to go around if everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya, but that ain't going to happen.
We do know that in the Shadowrun world agricultural output doesn't continue to improve. It takes a huge step backwards, actually. Most of the world no longer gets to eat 'real' food... the sort we find in grocery stores today is only available to the privileged and wealthy. Most of metahumanity subsists on algae, krill, soy, and chemical additives.
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We do know that in the Shadowrun world agricultural output doesn't continue to improve. It takes a huge step backwards, actually. Most of the world no longer gets to eat 'real' food... the sort we find in grocery stores today is only available to the privileged and wealthy. Most of metahumanity subsists on algae, krill, soy, and chemical additives.
I don't know. What you say is true, in that most people eat heavily processed cheap food products, but I suspect that the net productivity of agriculture is higher. The wealthy live much better than we do now, but the regular people fend for scraps. All it takes to create what you describe is decreased equity, not decreased productivity.
Of course, during the French Revolution the rioting peasants assumed all the rich people were hoarding food, so everything old is new again.
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-- We have a pretty decent* idea of Shadowrun world population by compiling numbers from the Shadows of X books and SWA. Nath also tried to fill in some blanks, and you can see his numbers at http://nmath.free.fr/onyx/depot/sr.population.xls
-- I've created a rough map showing known and Nath's estimated populations here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jf475nelqrg06tz/WorldPop.pdf
* Well within an order of magnitude :)
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That puts the North American population at a slightly higher amount than it is now. Not a terrible amount higher, but still. SoNA was written back in 2001, so you'd expect them to have put it at a lower number than their current population numbers, given VITAS and all.
Or they just could have slapped numbers together in a way that "felt right", I guess.
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Well, not exactly. Diseases always hit "Third World" countries the hardest; there's a lessened capacity (or will) to properly distribute any inoculation or cure. For two places with equal population, one that's First World (the UK, for example), one that's Third World (say, Ethiopia), you'll see a radically different impact of the disease.
Now, these are WAGs, but they're educated WAGs. Using the example of Great Britain and Ethiopia, a standard population of 58 million (which they shared in 1996), and the declared 25% global die-off from the two VITAS plagues being the average baseline, you lose a total, between the two countries, of 29 million lives. However, Great Britain would lose a third of that - call it 10 million, 17.24%, not quite one out of six people - while Ethiopia loses 19 million, 32.76%, or almost 1 out of 3 people. It may, in fact, be even worse than that; Great Britain might lose 10%, 5.8 million, while Ethiopia would lose 23.2 million, or forty percent of their population.
The US/Canada/UCAS? It's going to be the 10-15% benchmark. Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa? ... 50% might be generous.
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NAGNA put U.S. population loss from VITAS (1 & 2) at 1/3, and Cyberpirates! numerical death toll estimate for sub-Sahara Africa would be over 85% of the current population. VITAS was the Black Plague of the 21st century.
I don't know what to do with that.
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The numbers change depending on the writer. :-\
Cyberpirates, p. 92
* VITAS hit in 2011. Incidence in sub-Saharan Africa the highest known. 3/4 of population infected.
* Deaths from infection: 13.5 million in the Cote-d'Ivoiew and 16.8 million in Ghana. Secondary infections killed another 2.3 million coastal Africans.
* 10.5 out of 14 million dead in Madagascar.
* Quarter of the world population tied. 10% of that was in Africa.
* 750 million dead from VITAS in sub-Saharan Africa.
NAGNA
"From 2001 to 2029, the U. S. lost almost a third of its population to VITAS and more than a third of its territory to NAN."
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The numbers change depending on the writer. :-\
Cyberpirates, p. 92
* VITAS hit in 2011. Incidence in sub-Saharan Africa the highest known. 3/4 of population infected.
* Deaths from infection: 13.5 million in the Cote-d'Ivoiew and 16.8 million in Ghana. Secondary infections killed another 2.3 million coastal Africans.
* 10.5 out of 14 million dead in Madagascar.
* Quarter of the world population tied. 10% of that was in Africa.
* 750 million dead from VITAS in sub-Saharan Africa.
NAGNA
"From 2001 to 2029, the U. S. lost almost a third of its population to VITAS and more than a third of its territory to NAN."
That would be at least about 100 million in the UCAS and CAS. The world population shouldn't be to much above 3 billion. But theres no accounting for repopulation....
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That was my favorite excuse for why meta racism isn't so bad. After that kind of death toll, people were happy to have any children, even if they had pointy ears or whatever dwarf babies look like.
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Indeed. At the time, people (outside the Black Lodge, natch) were happy for ANY children. It wasn't until people started Goblinizing into orks and trolls that things got really nasty. Which isn't to say there wasn't meta-racism before then, but it wasn't at 'blow up Chicago' levels.
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VITAS 2 also struck around the same time as Goblinization, so I can totally see why trogs really got the shaft on that.
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Yeah. Whole world's going crazy, and so that fear and anger turns somewhere.
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And then there's the odd claims of VITAS-3 (and -4) being "in development" . . .
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Not many events in real world history have lasted over the course of a century without claims of willful vectors(people) carrying to spread. :(
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Not many events in real world history have lasted over the course of a century without claims of willful vectors(people) carrying to spread. :(
It would make more sense to blame dragons than a newborn baby with tusks, but it's like the old joke about leather.
Why do animal rights activists attack fur more than leather? Because it's much safer to throw paint on an old lady in a fur coat than a biker gang.
People seem to consistently blame the most vulnerable groups for their problems.
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Gotta agree with ya there.
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It would make more sense to blame dragons than a newborn baby with tusks, but it's like the old joke about leather.
While UGE only affected newborn children (about 10% of birth in 2011, before gradually stopping over the following years), goblinization affected persons of any age from 2021.
Not that it removes much reasons to blame them.
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Pretty much.
Since they have been the dominant race or at least close to the top of the order since the end of the First age....
And have been on the side of a diminished sapien presence often enough....
But to treat them as a cause of something like HMHVV or VITAS is not accurate. But then again who the hell cares.... :P
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I'm just saying that while it is unlikely dragons caused the horrible contagious disease outbreaks of Shadowrun, they're a more plausible cause than metas.
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Speaking as though I were racist ... you really think so?
Dragons aren't all over the place; many people in the world have never seen one in person. Many people HAVE seen a metahuman. Dragons are clearly a 'stable' form; compare to a Goblinizing troll or ork, who are clearly not. If it isn't even a stable form, then it could also give rise to a mutated disease, one to which 'normal' folk don't have a very good resistance, but against which the 'more durable' forms of ork and troll (and dwarf!) just as clearly do have a higher resistance.
Dragons don't pop up everywhere and anywhere; metahumans do.
So really - you think a dragon is more likely to cause a new disease? Or an unstable genetic freak like a 'metahuman'?
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Speaking as though I were racist ... you really think so?
Dragons aren't all over the place; many people in the world have never seen one in person. Many people HAVE seen a metahuman. Dragons are clearly a 'stable' form; compare to a Goblinizing troll or ork, who are clearly not. If it isn't even a stable form, then it could also give rise to a mutated disease, one to which 'normal' folk don't have a very good resistance, but against which the 'more durable' forms of ork and troll (and dwarf!) just as clearly do have a higher resistance.
Dragons don't pop up everywhere and anywhere; metahumans do.
So really - you think a dragon is more likely to cause a new disease? Or an unstable genetic freak like a 'metahuman'?
You mean the immortal, incredibly wealthy, super magically powerful Dragons from the land that time forgot, who run megacorporations, become President, have vast knowledge of everything weird that's been happening since before most people were born, and can also turn into seemingly ordinary people at will and dwell among us?
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Given their reputation, and their scarcity, it's not exactly a stretch.
Hell, prejudice decreases over time with familiarity. That has almost never been possible for dracoforms.
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You mean the immortal, incredibly wealthy, super magically powerful Dragons from the land that time forgot, who run megacorporations, become President, have vast knowledge of everything weird that's been happening since before most people were born, and can also turn into seemingly ordinary people at will and dwell among us?
Well, I think you're looking at this from an out-of-character, player perspective, as compared to an in-game Joe-Dirt perspective. At the time the two massive viral outbreaks happen - the first in 2010, when 'spike babies' are being born, through 2011, when the Awakening happens with LOTS of elves and dwarves being born; the second in 2022, roughly a year after Goblinization starts taking place - dragons are either unheard-of or at least rare, definitely secretive, and virtually nobody knows that they have metahuman forms. Nor are they 'fabulously rich', except by dint of legend. Of the Greats, Ryumyo, Dunkelzahn, Lofwyr, Kaltenstein, Feuerschwinge (killed), Lung, and Aden are awake, and at least so far as I can tell, none of them throw around their wealth for a while.
So in the mind of your common, ordinary bigot, who's more likely to be the cause of a worldwide disease outbreak in 2010? Weird little dwarf and elf babies? Or not-even-awake-yet dragons?
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You mean the immortal, incredibly wealthy, super magically powerful Dragons from the land that time forgot, who run megacorporations, become President, have vast knowledge of everything weird that's been happening since before most people were born, and can also turn into seemingly ordinary people at will and dwell among us?
Well, I think you're looking at this from an out-of-character, player perspective, as compared to an in-game Joe-Dirt perspective. At the time the two massive viral outbreaks happen - the first in 2010, when 'spike babies' are being born, through 2011, when the Awakening happens with LOTS of elves and dwarves being born; the second in 2022, roughly a year after Goblinization starts taking place - dragons are either unheard-of or at least rare, definitely secretive, and virtually nobody knows that they have metahuman forms. Nor are they 'fabulously rich', except by dint of legend. Of the Greats, Ryumyo, Dunkelzahn, Lofwyr, Kaltenstein, Feuerschwinge (killed), Lung, and Aden are awake, and at least so far as I can tell, none of them throw around their wealth for a while.
So in the mind of your common, ordinary bigot, who's more likely to be the cause of a worldwide disease outbreak in 2010? Weird little dwarf and elf babies? Or not-even-awake-yet dragons?
That's a fair point. I may be biased because when I look at real life conspiracy theorists (as opposed to proven real life conspiracies, like the Business Plot Gen. Smedley Butler ratted on) they tend to either blame the most powerless possible groups, or attribute semi-divine influence to groups with real power.
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You should pick up the Conspiracy Theories book...
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You should pick up the Conspiracy Theories book...
I need to get my hands on lots of the fluff splats. The Underworld book in 3rd was a thing of beauty.
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You mean the immortal, incredibly wealthy, super magically powerful Dragons from the land that time forgot, who run megacorporations, become President, have vast knowledge of everything weird that's been happening since before most people were born, and can also turn into seemingly ordinary people at will and dwell among us?
Well, I think you're looking at this from an out-of-character, player perspective, as compared to an in-game Joe-Dirt perspective. At the time the two massive viral outbreaks happen - the first in 2010, when 'spike babies' are being born, through 2011, when the Awakening happens with LOTS of elves and dwarves being born; the second in 2022, roughly a year after Goblinization starts taking place - dragons are either unheard-of or at least rare, definitely secretive, and virtually nobody knows that they have metahuman forms. Nor are they 'fabulously rich', except by dint of legend. Of the Greats, Ryumyo, Dunkelzahn, Lofwyr, Kaltenstein, Feuerschwinge (killed), Lung, and Aden are awake, and at least so far as I can tell, none of them throw around their wealth for a while.
So in the mind of your common, ordinary bigot, who's more likely to be the cause of a worldwide disease outbreak in 2010? Weird little dwarf and elf babies? Or not-even-awake-yet dragons?
That's a fair point. I may be biased because when I look at real life conspiracy theorists (as opposed to proven real life conspiracies, like the Business Plot Gen. Smedley Butler ratted on) they tend to either blame the most powerless possible groups, or attribute semi-divine influence to groups with real power.
I see your logic clearly and its a good motivation to base character interactions on....
Who would really take the time to know a being that may be 100,000 years old and suspend all belief in technology, written history, their own experiences to embrace magical knowlwdge? In 2075... ::)
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I see your logic clearly and its a good motivation to base character interactions on....
Who would really take the time to know a being that may be 100,000 years old and suspend all belief in technology, written history, their own experiences to embrace magical knowlwdge? In 2075... ::)
Not quite sure how you meant this, though I do get a sense of sarcasm, but that I don't mind. My point - in general - is that the 'X caused Y' (X being either 'metahumans' or 'dragons, in this case, and Y being 'VITAS I and II', since those have been the only big global disease outbreaks in the SR timeline) concentrates both on a) what you can reach, b) what you can 'do something about', and c) when the outrage began. Two different sets of metahumans came into existence right around the same time as each VITAS outbreak; it doesn't take a genius (and being not-a-genius helps) to link the actual disease to 'the metahuman disease'. Dragons, on the other hand, weren't even around at the time the first disease made it onto the scene.
So the VITAS-Metahuman link provides for a very real reason why Humanis and the Human Nation both exist and keep their membership strong. "Metahumans got bad genes!! Them bein' born caused VITAS-I back in 2010 an' 2011, an' them goin' Goblin caused VITAS-II in 2032!! What'll happen next time some damn metahuman type comes out? Izzat gonna wipe out civilization?" SURGE could have (maybe should have) been much worse, because it could have been very rapidly spun into 'kill ANY metahuman before we get a full-on VITAS-III outbreak.'
However, I do agree that in the Conspiracy Theory chatrooms, the thought that VITAS and maybe HMHVV are plots of a dragon (or dragons). Because that sort of person will ignore obvious 'fact' and say 'well, Nachtmeister COULD have left instructions that, when metahumans started to show up, his fanatical followers were to release a disease he'd given them five thousand years ago...'
Spin into your games as you will. ;)
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Dragons, on the other hand, weren't even around at the time the first disease made it onto the scene.
Um, point of order. People were not aware of them, but they were around.
VITAS starts in Mexico in January 2011, and Big D did his big reveal in January 2012.
People knew by the time their New Year's resolutions were forgotten that incredibly powerful dragons had been hiding in the world for a long time and they emerged from hiding roughly at the same time as all sorts of weird magical shenanigans. They SAID that they had nothing to do with it, that the world has its own natural magical cycles, but the potential for a conspiracy there is not at all unprecedented, especially given how blurred together events can seem from 63 years on.
Walt Disney died in December 1966 and was given a quiet, private funeral. A month later the first person was cyrogenically frozen with the intention of revival at an undetermined date in the future. Years later conspiracy theorists rolled the two events into one and found all sorts of spurious reasons to assume that Disney had himself frozen despite no supporting evidence and a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
Let me be clear, I am not saying that Dragons are responsible for disease outbreaks in Shadowrun; I am saying that given how conspiracy theories work it is inevitable that at least a minority of people believe that.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/info/wd-ice.htm (http://www.snopes.com/disney/info/wd-ice.htm)
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Dragons, on the other hand, weren't even around at the time the first disease made it onto the scene.
Um, point of order. People were not aware of them, but they were around.
VITAS starts in Mexico in January 2011, and Big D did his big reveal in January 2012.
People knew by the time their New Year's resolutions were forgotten that incredibly powerful dragons had been hiding in the world for a long time and they emerged from hiding roughly at the same time as all sorts of weird magical shenanigans. They SAID that they had nothing to do with it, that the world has its own natural magical cycles, but the potential for a conspiracy there is not at all unprecedented, especially given how blurred together events can seem from 63 years on.
Sorry, Imaginal, your information is incorrect. I do not disagree that conspiracy theorists will lay VITAS at the feet of dragons, but the 'merely extremely prejudiced', the people who would join Humanis, are going to blame it on metahumans. Let me timeline it for you.
1980's: Elf/dwarf spike babies have been appearing at least this far back (ref. Dodger, 'Secrets of Power' trilogy).
The closer you get to the Awakening (24 December 2011), the more spike babies appeared.
The rest of these are paraphrased from the Sixth World Almanac, specifically pp. 19-23.
10 February 2010: VITAS is discovered in India. It rampages across the planet within weeks, and over the following months kills 25% of the world population.
22 June 2010: French economy breaks under the strain of VITAS.
28 October 2010: Madagascar has lost 10.5 million of their 14 million inhabitants; the rest flee the island.
13 January 2011: Unexplained Genetic Expression (elf/dwarf births) gets into full swing.
14 March 2011: Newsweek becomes the first major media source to label UGE births 'elves' and 'dwarfs'.
24 December 2011: The Great Dragon Ryumyo emerges from hibernation, the first of his kind to do so. As the change in 'World' is marked by the first great dragon to awaken or the last to hibernate, his emergence marks the start of the Sixth World.
25 December 2011: Celedyr emerges, just missing his chance to be the early bird.
3 January 2012: Hualpa emerges.
27 January 2012: Dunkelzahn emerges.
So VITAS blows away a quarter of the world population between early and late 2010, and no dragon is seen until a year after VITAS settles down. However, UGE becomes statistically significant enough around January 2011.
I'm not saying that people conspiracy-theorizing in 2070+ aren't going to say 'dragons! dragons!' the way they always do; I'm saying that people at the time, before dragons even showed up at the end of 2011, would be saying 'it's those damn weird births', i.e. metahumans/elves/dwarfs. Thus, Humanis, the Human Nation, and all that jive.
Saying 'they were around' is pedantic; they were around in hibernation, yes, and 'we' know this 'now', well after the fact, but they were not around and active - only a very few individuals (immortal elves) even knew of the literal existence of dragons. To boot, it was two months short of two years from the time VITAS hit that dragons popped out of their holes; the massive increase of UGE happened mere months (if that!) after VITAS died down.
Again, I agree that many conspiracy theorists are going to lay it at the feet of dragons, great or otherwise. I (strongly) disagree that at the time, people would have had any such thought.
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And probably, theorizing that dragons were somehow involved with the appearance of VITAS would be part of the 'dragons are responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened to me... er, that is, the world' crowd. The sort of conspiracy theorists that even Plan 9 makes fun of.
In many respects, the source material underestimates the social impact that VITAS would have had on the Sixth World. Along with the economic impact.
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Just so, Bruce. IMO, a 25% kill record, wiping out entire villages &c., could have literally redrawn the maps. Civilization collapses - go take a read of 'Executive Orders' by Tom Clancy. One of the characters in the book explains it pretty well - civilization collapses, people isolate themselves until the plague burns itself out. This is real Black Death material, except that while the Black Death took three years to cull 30+% of Europe's population, VITAS was taking 9 months to reap 25% of the global population. (450 million in India alone.)
Saying that the source material underestimates the impact is a gross underestimation in and of itself. ;)
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To be fair, the global death toll wasn't equally distributed, and there WERE maps redrawn in the wake of VITAS.
Madagascar was wiped out by VITAS. The plague also destroyed the French economy, which let the new corp culture in. The destabilization played a role in Quebec being able to secede. Mexico disintegrated, giving rise to Aztlan. The US was weakened greatly, which helped SAIM get going. Indonesia disintegrated. It led to the breakup of China. And then there's Africa.
There was a lot of stuff that happened, but there was medicine that proved to be effective, and that medicine was spread through wealthy areas of the First World. VITAS may not have been big enough to wipe out most of the first world, but it leveled most of the third world, and put cracks in the foundation of the first world that led to many of the changes that came later.
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The Wyrm Ouroboros, thanks for pulling that timeline info! You're right in that the timing might make people much more prone to blame meta, but it's such a silly damn conspiracy theory. It presupposes a plan worthy of the Underpants Gnomes.
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This is real Black Death material, except that while the Black Death took three years to cull 30+% of Europe's population, VITAS was taking 9 months to reap 25% of the global population. (450 million in India alone.)
Not to mention that after the Black Death, populations did not recover until at least 1500 (population figures from that time are obviously hard to come by, but 1500 is generally accepted as the lower boundary). VITAS on the other hand was already compensated in the 2050s...
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This is real Black Death material, except that while the Black Death took three years to cull 30+% of Europe's population, VITAS was taking 9 months to reap 25% of the global population. (450 million in India alone.)
Not to mention that after the Black Death, populations did not recover until at least 1500 (population figures from that time are obviously hard to come by, but 1500 is generally accepted as the lower boundary). VITAS on the other hand was already compensated in the 2050s...
True, but in modern times the population boom after an event can be much more dramatic. Particularly as we don't tend to have as many contributing factors. Once VITAS was under control, the population experienced a series of extending baby booms, resulting in large families being common and most likely by 2075, a growing issue related to the aging population and economic stagnation. More people below the poverty line may have exabrated the population boom, and without a means to enter the shrinking corporate middle class, would explain the hordes of sinless living in the barrens.
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This is real Black Death material, except that while the Black Death took three years to cull 30+% of Europe's population, VITAS was taking 9 months to reap 25% of the global population. (450 million in India alone.)
Not to mention that after the Black Death, populations did not recover until at least 1500 (population figures from that time are obviously hard to come by, but 1500 is generally accepted as the lower boundary). VITAS on the other hand was already compensated in the 2050s...
True, but in modern times the population boom after an event can be much more dramatic. Particularly as we don't tend to have as many contributing factors. Once VITAS was under control, the population experienced a series of extending baby booms, resulting in large families being common and most likely by 2075, a growing issue related to the aging population and economic stagnation. More people below the poverty line may have exabrated the population boom, and without a means to enter the shrinking corporate middle class, would explain the hordes of sinless living in the barrens.
I think it is lack of Federal authority at the root of the problem. Without a dedicated effort to support growth(education, health,etc...) any disaster, and there have been plenty, will erode the effectiveness a nation. The profit minded corporate structure is not enough...
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Looking at the historical basis for the UCAS/CAS split, and then looking to the future, are there any plans for the re-merging of these two countries in SR5?
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Looking at the historical basis for the UCAS/CAS split, and then looking to the future, are there any plans for the re-merging of these two countries in SR5?
Have to wait and see... anyone who is in 'the know'... can't talk about it thanks to NDAs.... and Catalyst hires some of the best legal enforcers there are!
Their lawyers seem to be only average however ; p
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Looking at the historical basis for the UCAS/CAS split, and then looking to the future, are there any plans for the re-merging of these two countries in SR5?
Someone already tried that and failed miserably.
...
Or did they?
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Careful Crimson....
I heard Catalyst's legal enforcement team got shiny new bats for christmas and they are dying to test them out!!
:-)
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I heard Catalyst's legal enforcement team got shiny new bats for christmas and they are dying to test them out!!
Please someone distract them.
They've been eyeballing my good arm.
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Looking at the historical basis for the UCAS/CAS split, and then looking to the future, are there any plans for the re-merging of these two countries in SR5?
Someone already tried that and failed miserably.
...
Or did they?
I wasn't referring to The New Revolution coup'de'tat attempt at all.
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I heard Catalyst's legal enforcement team got shiny new bats for christmas and they are dying to test them out!!
Please someone distract them.
They've been eyeballing my good arm.
I got your back! A nice little cabin on a nice little lake. No cell or internet service (or electricity! ) surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains. ... a great place to hide from them and write the next great SR book!
P.S: bring lots of paper and pens.. no electricity remember :p
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Careful Crimson....
I heard Catalyst's legal enforcement team got shiny new bats for christmas and they are dying to test them out!!
:-)
Pfft. I'm crazy good at IP law.
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Careful Crimson....
I heard Catalyst's legal enforcement team got shiny new bats for christmas and they are dying to test them out!!
:-)
Pfft. I'm crazy good at IP law.
I would feel better if you were crazy good with a shotgun :D
I don't think those guys stop to discuss the finer points if IP law :p
Just ask CanRay! Sure, he'll tell you he broke his arm elbow dropping the world.... but we all know the truth :D
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I got your back! A nice little cabin on a nice little lake. No cell or internet service (or electricity! ) surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains. ... a great place to hide from them and write the next great SR book!
P.S: bring lots of paper and pens.. no electricity remember :p
So...basically Winnipeg
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I got your back! A nice little cabin on a nice little lake. No cell or internet service (or electricity! ) surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains. ... a great place to hide from them and write the next great SR book!
P.S: bring lots of paper and pens.. no electricity remember :p
So...basically Winnipeg
Don't you mean Canada? :P
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Don't you mean Canada? :P
Vancouver is right pretty
I am partial to Calgary but then I'm a midwest boy.
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Don't you mean Canada? :P
Vancouver is right pretty
I am partial to Calgary but then I'm a midwest boy.
The Cascades are gorgeous! Same with the Rockies.
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We have electricity in Canada!
For the most part.... its only when you get far off the beaten path that the grid doesn't go there (which was exactly what I was offering CanRay :P You need a plane to get to my cabin, or shoot the rapids and portage in. Love it there as the air is fresh and clean, only sound is of nature. I get to wake up, make breakfast and watch the wolves frolic along the opposite shoreline.)
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When I finally got back into SHadowrun after a decade of absence, I wanted to get my players to Little Rock, Arkansas. Most of us live in Little Rock, so the good GM thing always was send your players somewhere close to home. I found that the C.A.S. was the most underdeveloped part of Shadowrun's North America. Over twenty years, it is the only North American nation not to receive a sourcebook. Now, taken that the original writers had only rough sketches and conceptual ideas for what these nations would be and how they would work, I understand part of the reason why the C.A.S. was never covered. I have another theory about what contributed.
Originally, the AAAs were part of the world, but far from the only corporations that "mattered" to the game. The old adventures were chock full of AAs, As, and unrated corps that were not subs of the AAAs. As the game progressed, the writers started focusing more on the AAAs to the exclusion of the rest of the corporations. A side effect was that the C.A.S., a country with no AAA to call its own and no specifically important plot or world point like the NAN and Aztlan, was given shorter shrift.
Because I want to send my PCs through at least one campaign in Little Rock, I started jotting ideas down that has slowly become what will be a 50-60 page sourcebook for the LIttle Rock Metro area. I had to start working on the C.A.S. to figure out how, given the suspension of disbelief to create the SR world, the C.A.S. might function. It is fun, but can be tough. I have worked a lot on creating a feel of a more parochial setting, using Neo-@ Guide to North America and Shadows of North America as touchpoints. I think that the C.A.S. can be differentiated, especially early in SR history (2050-2065), by playing up the differences with the UCAS and expectations about how AAAs come into play. This thread is covering some of the exact quesitons that had been rolling around my head.
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... that's kind of a misrepresentation. In point of fact, there are five - maybe six - national sourcebooks: Tir Tairngire, Tir na nOg, Aztlan, the CFS, Germany (IIRC written and produced primarily by the huuuuge fanbase for SR in Germany, then translated into English), and maaaybe England (via the London Sourcebook). You could argue that Target: UCAS was a UCAS sourcebook, but it actually only talked about a few of its cities, so as a national sourcebook, it's a pretty weak argument. (I always practically forget about the CFS sourcebook; I'm not even sure I own a copy.)
Otherwise, all you have are chapters and portions here and there - the Native American Nation sourcebooks (1 and 2) talk about the NAN nations in general, but not even all of them get in, including the highly-influential Sioux nation. The first North America sourcebook talks about the CAS, the UCAS, the Carib League, but apparently not the specific part you want; be sad, but not mad - there's a lot of empty space on every map. Shadows of Europe, Shadows of Asia, Shadows of North America ... they tag a lot of countries, but none of them in intimate detail. This is pretty much inevitable, because there simply is so much world.
So what you've done is pretty much what plenty of others, myself included, have done - take a look at your home town and 'rebuild it'. Create AA and A and unrated corporations to complicate the local scene; make something spooky, and lots of cool things, and a Z-zone or three to run through when you just have to lose the cops. If you've done it well enough, and subtly enough, and smart enough, well - why not submit it to the Men In Black as a chapter or a web release for a 'Target: XYZ' book?
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I probably did overstate the attention given or not given over the years. I'll cop to that. I will admit to being biased since I live here and, like you also noted, in SHadowrun most of us want to send players someplace close to home and deal with the new world. I've been referencing the core books from all editions, Neo-@ Guide to NA, Shadows of NA, the Target UCAS portion that references the relations with other nations, same with Tir na nOg, 6WA, and other bits and pieces of Shadowrun flotsam. There is a lot of world out there. If I came off as mad, that was unintended. Shadowrun has a limited number of writers, a limited number of books, and a profit margin it needs to keep rolling. Everything can't, and shouldn't be the responsibility of the employees and freelancers with their own loads to work on.
I added only one AA corporation not otherwise in cannon because too many would, I think, overcomplicate things but have been building on a lot of the existing companies here and what we know from what has been published. One or two of the comments come from existing cannon personas, but the shadowtalk is 99% runners based on the character sheets I made when trying to understand 4thEd. I've been making a concerted effort to track existing cannon as best I could when putting together the relationships between companies and the future while also trying to make the C.A.S. have a feel of its own. It is a 2050 setting because when we got the group back together to play, we wanted to start there.
I've been lurking here for a while, but finally thought I would start posting. I still want to do another edit or two before letting others rip into it, but the ideas of how running in the C.A.S. were different and what sort of runners to expect are the most intellectually interesting parts to me. I may see about submitting it, though I'll worry about that some other day.
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You should definitely check out Dirty Tricks, which has a chapter on the CAS and gets into specifics about life in the Confederation circa 2074. There's only half a page on Arkansas, though. But that's a half-page more than was done in the previous 24 years.
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I need to add Dirty Tricks to my list. Looks like it may even preempt the work I did on "cracking, packing, and stovepiping." With 7000 reps, the C.A.S. always struck me as full of political intrigue for shadowrunners because of how easy it is to tip the balance of some of the scales. Was that one of your contributions CrimsonDude?
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The book was my idea. It was something that I wanted to do for a long time. But it went into development at the same time I couldn't (for multiple reasons) write anything for CGL.
That said, I think it came out quite well considering it had a lot of ground to cover. I think it could've gotten stuck deep in the weeds (or up its own ass. YMMV) because it's about politics, but it actually balances out those considerations quite well.
As I recall Kong Wal-Mart is still a big player in Arkansas.
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What I have gotten to absorb so far is great. I bought it shortly after posting that to start reading. I really am enjoying the anatomy of a scandal as that was my favorite as a player to pull off. I am pleased to see several ideas I had about the CAS in that section, like the absurdity of the 7000 reps and the state sponsored runs against other states for economic development actions.
Kong Wal-Mart is listed as an A Corp that is rebuilding itself after getting knocked down from its previous high place in the world when Shiawase waged corporate war to knock them down a few pegs sometime between 2000 and 2075.
Politics does seem to be one of the harder things to cover, but it turned out well and seems to give a good insight on how that interacts with the shadows in the 6th World.
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Heh
I love that Wal-Mart's computer center was so big the Crash Virus nested there before bursting forth like a facehugger to kill the Internet.
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A truly beautiful image and making a disturbing amount of sense. It also makes for interesting rumors for Acxiom that I was working on. One of the largest data mining and personnel data collation companies is headquartered in Little Rock. FOr my 2050 game they are their own company but post Crash 2.0, they are a prime Horizon acquisition.
They have to store that data somewhere and I had them come through Crash 1.0 mostly intact.