[AlexanderHowl]

Path/Book Magic is much slower than RPM, and it is quite difficult to do direct damage. Giving traditional groups Path/Book Magic and Europeans RPM would just have resulted in our history, but with a magical twist, and would not have a Shadowrun feel. One of the principle aspects of the Shadowrun setting is the disintegration of the major powers as minority/traditional groups gained magical powers that granted them a massive advantage over their oppressors.

Now, you can have a situation where the USA takes a different tack with the Native American Nations after the Awakening occurs in 1816. Constitutional amendments that guarantee the territorial integrity of the Indian Nations within the USA, strategic alliances with competing Indian Nations against common enemies, and a reduction in European immigration could result in something similar to the Old West by 1870. The Civil War would have still occurred, with a Union victory, with the NAN (Native American Nations) not providing more than indirect support for the Confederacy because of their war with the Second Aztec Empire over California.

By 1870, Western North America could be the NAN, an alliance that had stopped the expansion of the USA in the 1850s. Seattle would be an enclave given to the USA by the NAN after it funded a northern transcontinental railroad at the end of the Civil War. Denver would be an enclave of the USA in the NAN, given to the USA as partial payment for its funding of a southern transcontinental railroad. California would have been its own nation under the dominion of the Second Aztec Empire until a recent invasion by the NAN in 1865 drove out the Second Aztec Empire and made California a part of the NAN (in exchange for military assistance, the USA would have received San Francisco as an enclave, allowing it to complete a southern transcontinental railroad).