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From: Erik_Jameson@*****.COM
Subject: RE> Re: NAGTW Iceland
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 09:39:28 -0800
RE> Re: NAGTW Iceland part
To Net Enhancements for Roleplaying Shadowrun<NERPS@********.itribe.net>


How can you say that America got left with the best vision
of the future from FASA? Or that it is the only remaining
superpower in 2057? I was downright pissed to see how the
US had fragmented, how pitifully inneffectual it had become
and how much less of a world power it had become. Yes, the
UK and Germany (the only, for the record, sourcebooks on
Europe with the inclusion of Tir na nOg) had been pretty
screwed over. But the Germans did it to themselves! And
the rest of Europe has been left rather vague. We know
Italy has fragmented into city-states. France is still
around in some form. But that's almost it from FASA.

I have actually had a number of conversations, mostly with
Steve Kenson, but a couple with other FASA people and they
are reluctant to define those areas yet. They don't want to
make a statement "The Netherlands has been flooded out and
remaining territory has been annexed by Imperial France,"
(hi gurth!) because they don't want to contradict any future
book or supplement. I have begged Mike and Steve to give us
something about the rest of the world, even just a map or a
globe, and they steadfastly refuse. Because they don't want
any future conflicts.

Basically, FASA has set things up so that no one government
fits the 1980s description of a superpower, ala USA or USSR.
The Big 8 megacorps run roughshod over everyone.
Governments, while many still retain a lot of power and
influence, are nowhere near what they are in 1996.

And why has FASA concentrated on the US? Maybe because that
is where the vast majority of it's customers are. It's
where the money is. FASA has also shown a reluctance to do
what Talisorian has does, which is let Americans write
foreign sourcebooks. FASA seems to have an unofficial
policy of letting the locals write their own books. Which,
for the most part, seems to work (except for those idiot
Californians who wrote CalFree. You can tell _I_ didn't
play a role in that one.).

Don't like FASA's view? Okay, play your own version of SR.
There aren't any game police after all. But I think we are
trying to write something here that will at least fit in
with most of the current FASA canon. This also means that
no country should be full of shiny happy people everywhere.
There are going to be problems. Take England for example.
If you just glance at it, from the outside it seems like a
model nation, on the verge of reclaiming it's Victorian-era
empire. Look beyond the veneer and the gleam and you see
something much closer to a fascist regime. Gee, that's true
for a lot of nations today...

Ah well. Let's just write this thing.

Erik

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.