The 173rd in Romania, a 1.0 Timeline Option

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Is a fait accompli even necessary? I mean, couldn't the 173rd simply declare for CivGov after the schism like everybody else?

Yep. That was my point. Their deployment was a policy decision of the prewar elected government, not a Milgov order or a Broward administration move (like the divisions that went to Yugoslavia). So they had to make that choice - it's not preordained by the canon OOBs or timeline.

Originally Posted by Raellus

To Rainbow's point, although I can see the attraction of adding another adversary/competitor to the Romanian sandbox, NATO-aligned characters are going to have sundry OPFOR as it is (Soviets, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Italians, pro-Soviet Romanians, and marauders, to name a few). Adding internecine conflict might be piling on a bit.

Ah. But if you design it as an espionage/intrigue-heavy setting, then you have the option of writing multiple playable factions that most players will still consider "the good guys." This also opens up the possibility of joint operations and shifting alliances, in which yesterday's friends are tomorrow's objectives. Those betrayals and uncertainties are the heart of espionage fiction because they make for good storytelling and human drama - something that I think is all too easy to lose track of in this game's focus on hardware and tactics.

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I'm not thinking full on internecine warfare so much as one small group, acting as a group within a group. Say you've got a DIA operation going on in Romania and somewhere within that is a three person team. Call it an Orion Team (Orion being the hunter in Greek mythology iirc). They're essentially ultra black ops, boss level opponents. Run into them and it's a serious challenge for a PC group. and if you like to give your players moral dilemmas, there are all sorts of shades of gray in a Milgov / Civgov conflict. And if it's a group within a group, the regular DIA might not even know that they exist.

I like this very much. It could be a hardcore band of survivors from 10th Group who were originally deployed in support of the 173rd but have since started pursuing their own agendas.

- C.