Why would that be the takeaway? It successfully filtered out a group of retards, congrats.
I don't get the obsession with Cahokia, anyone that knows anything about it, knows that it collapsed long before Europeans arrived in the New World of their own causes.
Hence why Shadowrun reigns, whole damn countries with the governments detailed, politicians and whatnot.
One of the fun and understated things in Shadowrun's NAN (Native American Nations) when you wonder how you can end up with a resurgence of the tribes is that there's likely huge numbers of LARPer types with just a drop of ancestry or none at all making up their numbers. Every Caucasian with a tan declaring their name to now be "John Smoking Bear" and driving their RV over to the reservation. It's really quite hilarious to imagine it. Though it's not that hard to justify the level of success their leaders had when they are (nearly) the only people in the world with magic at that point. It's one thing for the US political elites to send others to their deaths in a war and scurry to their bomb shelters. Quite another to find a malevolent spirit waiting for you in that bomb shelter that none of your bodyguards or doors can stop. Or to play hardball with an enemy that you literally cannot find. Like, at all.
It's even mentioned in the OG novels:
This character isn't even doing it to live in the NAN either, although she is in an Amerind only street gang in Seattle.
I'd forgotten that. Was that first example from the original novel trilogy? It sounds familiar. From memory, the book order was "Never Deal with a Dragon", "Choose Your Enemies Carefully" and... blast. What was the third one called? They were good novels and a good intro to the setting and I recall being annoyed by the goofy line art inserts that would have been way more appropriate to a younger person's novel. Gah, they were good books at the time. The creepy doppleganger thing really stayed with me.
"The peoples of the Americas lacked the ability to develop technology" is not what I expected the woke take to be
Find Your Own Truth (that's the name of the novel, not a passive aggressive way to tell you to go google it :p ) Second quote is from House of the Sun, the second of the Dirk Montgomery novels, which were both awesome as well.
I originally found SR through a ROM of the Megadrive game, but it was the novels that really got me into it. I spent years scouring ebay trying to collect the full set of the FASA. Eventually I gave in and got electronic versions instead, and then during coof i came across someone selling an absolute shitton of SR stuff that included all of the novels, so now they're on a shelf in my new gaming room.
Ah, yes: "Find Your Own Truth". I remember it being the odd one out because the other two titles are from the three rules of Shadowrunning way back in 1st edition era:
Isn't rule 4 geek the mage first?
Yeah, having read through the 1st and 2nd edition region source books lately, they are very explicit that outside of the really racialist nations like Ute and Tsimishan (who don't like other natives anyway), they ahem "manufactured" some natives, or absorbed those living in the remaining UCAS. The Salish Shidhe Council being the most prominent as two of their big 5 tribes, Sinsearach and Cascade Ork, are made up of metas that hold to the culture and not natives necessarily. I do appreciate that they bothered to make all the nations very distinct in government and outlook, the two NAN sourcebooks are great for that.
It was. But that brings up one of the things I liked especially about the game system. It had some of the finest game balancing I've ever seen before or since, all the way up to and including 4th edition which was the pinnacle in my opinion.
I disagree, I think limits are actually good and prevent insane success bloat, but it is more of a personal preference of mine, since getting infinite dice on anything remains very possible regardless of edition.
So it literately is just a we have Wakanda at home Marvel rip of, I did not expect the "inspiration" to be this blatant and that bit about leaving things vague so players could fill in their own blank what a lazy cop-out.
This is like the least surprising thing, remember these are the same people that believe the giant green skinned monsters roaming the country side raping, murdering, and pillaging are a reasonable representation of black people.
A lot of it can also just be poor speccing. I had a 4e/20th game where the Force 8 water spirit our Shaman lucked out on summoning simply couldn't do jack shit in a combat because the two combat characters moved faster and hit just as hard.
Well the trade-off is that magic characters have spend weeks then months initiating, which means they need more time, which means more money, and they are absolute Karma hogs, and unless your GM allows you to trade money for karma, you are drek out of luck in that regard, do more runs retard. I think that the real terrifying potential is on non-combat applications, especially because I am playing an illusionist right now, take the right mentor spirits and a specialization to start and you are throwing out tons of dice on game start with far greater utility than your common combat street mage, especially if you invest in a rating 6 Health spell sustain foci to always have +6 reaction and +3d6 initiative dice, and then maintain a force 6 improved invisibility spell on yourself with the Illusionist quality.
If players can't even figure out such a simple point buy system, just give them a set of premade characters to pick from and fill in the customization blanks.
Page 288, "Variant Spell Points", under "Creating New Character Options".
Well how do you want the game to feel because I can see four systems that could easily support it:
Absolutely if it happens at a time i can join I would, as far as platforms is concerned unfortunately the only one I know is Roll 20 but I kind of hate the kind of people that run it