[Demon_Bob]

Just wondering how the Shadowrun North American countries got their shapes.

While, like the south and east borders of the SALISH-SHIDHE COUNCIL follow an obvious landmark.  (Highway 86 and 15)
The borders of the United Canadian and American States or the Confederation of American States seem to have far less rhyme and reason.
Why is Miami in the Caribbian League, while west palm beach is in the C.A.S.?
How did the countries lie claim to the land they now own?

[SlowDeck]

The answer to this is long and complex, given what I've seen in the Sixth World Almanac. Basically, pick that one up and be prepared for a long read.

But, here's the factors that contributed to it:

1. Treaties
2. What territory they could hold onto
3. Who felt like joining who
4. Land that was willingly ceded
5. Wars, invasions, etc.

It pretty much seems like the history of the world from the Great Ghost Dance up until the late 2070s is pretty much one massive answer to that question.

[Demon_Bob]

OK, I'll put it this way.
SR5 core book has zero pages of history, no map, and precious little setting text.
SR4 core book has a map, 12 pages of history, and slightly more text to set the feel for the game.
SR3 core book has 14 pages of history, a map, and gave me a decent feel for the world setting.
None of which are really enough to adequately answer the question.
Are there any splat books that give a history of the shadowrun universe that are longer than a handful of pages?
For real countries there are hundreds of books describing the 5 reasons for how they finally became the way they are.
I was hoping for something with just a mere 100 pages.
Why do some of the country lines not follow a straight line as often formed by a treaty or a natural boundry of some type, such as a river, mountains, lake, or large highway.
Why do some borders appear to be drawn by drunken diplomats with a map after a long negotiation?
What convinced some countries to give up their land to another?

So, Yes I am asking for as much history of the Shadowrun world from before the Great Ghost Dance War to 2070.
So, perhaps I should have named the thread something else, jez.
But for some reason I figured, the Secret History (of) North American Countries would be enough.

[SlowDeck]

Nothing I said was meant to be hostile. Unfortunately, I think you're going to need to hunt down nation-specific splatbooks from every edition released to date. Like real history books, the information in a general summary book loses more and more detail with the more history it has to summarize.

For example, the Seattle 2072 book gives a much more detailed summary of its history than Sixth World Almanac.

[Demon_Bob]

I should figure out how to restate my second post without it sounding like, umm, the way it does.
With the large community here I was hoping for a more detailed answer.
Cool Sixth World Almanac.
What would would be nice to see is a shadowrun fiction book that reads as if it was written by reporters, who had the inside scoop on various boundry negotiations.
I understand the governments that formed the native American countries had the upper hand having the equivalent advantage of the Atomic Bomb in 1945.
The map was still redrawn fairly quickly, telling me that several of the boundries should be clear and well defined lines and reasons just to avoid confusion.
Part of me has always wondered just what those were.

[Fizzygoo]

Generally speaking (and there will be many that can clarify my points and correct any mistakes I happen to make [it's late here]) for North America:

The Great Ghost Dance and resulting war splits the borders between Native and Non-Native countries. Internal to the NAN, other than roughly being the locations for the tribes that lived there...I have no idea as to the rhyme or reason to the divisions other than: SE PPC's border is that of western Texas and Oklahoma, N PPC's border with S-S is mostly the Snake River and other such obvious portions of the NAN borders. But portions like Sioux-PCC border, especially north from Denver to S-S border...

Most of the Sioux-UCAS border follows either river routes or county borders, though there are some exceptions where counties are cut in half. So to me this indicates where the military standstill by 2018 occurred...but I don't know of anything canon that fully supports that.

If I remember correctly; Aztlan originally increased their borders into AZ, and NM, in 2018 but then later invaded CA and Texas (in the 30s?). So Aztlan CA/AZ/NM borders with PCC would fall into the 2018 treaty vagueness of NAN border decisions. The Azttech...er Aztlan/Texas border is a result of invasion...where the war cooled to a simmer.

Carib-League/CAS...best estimates I have but the border at the Everglades Parkway (75), for the majority of the border. I'm not in any way an expert on Florida history/demographics...but a quick check on pg 170 of the Sixth World Almanac and there's three sentences at the end of the first main text-paragraph that answer the Miami spit from CAS in 2034 (12 days after UCAS and CAS sign the Treaty of Richmond which formally recognized CAS as a sovereign nation). It's not an in-depth explanation, but it's there.

Part of the reason why there isn't a detailed outline of how the borders were drawn is (my main hypothesis) because it would be a long boring read that would be very tedious and time-consuming to write.

Take for example the S-S / PCC border. It would read like

"The corner of S. Roosevelt St and W. Overland Road, in Boise, marks the tri-corner mark of Tir Tairngire, Salish-Shidhe, and the PCC. The S-S / PCC border then moves east along W. Overland Road until S. Vista Ave where it turns northward and then follows S. Capital Blvd. In the middle of the Boise River, on Capital Blvd Bridge, the border turns east, following the river until the Diversion Dam where then then travels, at 139 degrees from north, 45 miles southeast to some sage-brush covered spot of barren land where it then heads northeast for..."

Take a look at the Google Earth maps in the GM's Toolbox sub-forums, read the histories, and then anything that isn't canon is free for the GM to make up the reason as to why the border is that way in order to further what ever nefarious plot they have cooked up.

[Demon_Bob]

Thanks

[Tarislar]

IIRC, there is a 3rd Edition book,  Shadows of North America that might have some of the information your looking for.


Tangent Question but how much "New" info is in Seattle 2072 if you have "New Seattle" which was 2060 time frame IIRC.

Would 6th World Almanac be a better buy if a person wanted to catch up on North America,  or is the Almanac more global in perspective ?

[Crimsondude]

Just wondering how the Shadowrun North American countries got their shapes.

While, like the south and east borders of the SALISH-SHIDHE COUNCIL follow an obvious landmark.  (Highway 86 and 15)
The borders of the United Canadian and American States or the Confederation of American States seem to have far less rhyme and reason.
Why is Miami in the Caribbian League, while west palm beach is in the C.A.S.?
How did the countries lie claim to the land they now own?

South Florida had nothing in common with Florida, and when the Caribbean League offered it decided to secede rather than continue to be part of Florida/CAS. It's explained in detail in Cyberpirates!.

Some borders are planned out like the UCAS and CAS borders. SSC's borders are altered by having lost some territory when Tir Tairngire seceded, but it also now controls what used to be Tsimshian. But generally speaking, the NAN borders are a mix of tribal politics and conflicts altering the borders like Aztlan moving upward to claim parts of Texas, PCC, and California.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

To boot, the maps in the books are not in all that great of detail.  If you want to have a country border follow a river that happens to be within five or ten miles of where 'the line' is, then hell, go ahead - nobody's going to complain, and it makes more sense.  Otherwise, I'm pretty sure they didn't care so much to give that much detail - and straight lines have been drawn on maps before, for about as much reason.  Look at the current border of the US and Canada ...

[Demon_Bob]

Found this online  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/07/canada-us-border-video_n_3402435.html     

It lists some of the odd things about the U.S. Canadian border.

[Fizzygoo]

Thank you, Demon_Bob, for that video. It touched and tickled me as only a cartography video could.

[RulezLawyerZ]

I can't give much insight, except to say that the Sioux-UCAS border more or less follows the Mountain/Central time-zone border for a good chunk of its length, which is why it looks like the person who drew it was... let's say chemically impaired at the time.

[Fizzygoo]

I can't give much insight, except to say that the Sioux-UCAS border more or less follows the Mountain/Central time-zone border for a good chunk of its length, which is why it looks like the person who drew it was... let's say chemically impaired at the time.

Ha! HAHAHA! OMG! I cannot believe I never noticed that. I just uploaded a time zone kmz file and superimposed it over my SR nations in Google Earth and yeah...really close match...and most of where it doesn't match is well within my margin of error.

Which just destroys my hypothesis that the Sioux-UCAS border is where the front-line stalled at the end of the war and puts it as "Hey, we give up. Border at the Mountain/Central Timezone line?" "Yeah. Sure. Why not. You can have the flat part of Nebraska."

[Demon_Bob]

Blink, Blink.   Has  "History of the Sixth World"  been sticky from the start of this thread?  I hope I not quite that blind.