Pick your Apocalypse

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Targan

I hear you Paul and I have a lot of sympathy for your view but do you honestly think the world's most powerful nation-states (especially your own) would ever willingly allow their vast wealth and power to be more equally shared? It isn't going to happen any time soon.

Oh, I harbor no illusions; I'm quite certain most nations would not want to give up their sovereignty to a world government. But it would be the best thing for the world.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Oh, I harbor no illusions; I'm quite certain most nations would not want to give up their sovereignty to a world government. But it would be the best thing for the world.

I agree on both things. However, founding a world government is not a problem of having nation-states wanting it or not (IMO).

If someone designs the proper propaganda and can convinced people (anywhere in the world) that they are part of the same community it will be done and achieved in no time. Nation states being the best proof that all this lay on nothing serious outside faith (back on what Paul said in the first place).

I still wander how someone could convinced people in France or US that they belong to a same nation.

When a frenchmen refers to a stranger, he is not talking of someone from outside the country but simply of someone from outside his village (or community). For exemple, where I live you find nine villages in the county (I use county to make this more understandable to all). Seen from my village (and the elders would tell you exactly that), 3 are allied, 3 are ennemy villages and 2 can be considered neutral (in fact located too far to be either ennemies or allies). And I'm not even talking of regional particularism.

Nevertheless, in France as in US when you start to touch to the nation people become nationalistic.

Of course, for France it's normal as its history goes back for more than 2000 years. What a joke!.
- It's still well known that the "Gaulois" are our ancesters. it may be true for a few people in Britany but that's all. Hopefully it became so obviously false that we stop teaching that about 30 years ago. Any Algerian who had been in school before 1962 also learned the same thing.
- Then our first well known leader was Clovis, a guy who drove the Roman outside of France. Great but he was frankish (Germanic tribes). He was also a roman leader and administrator engaged in a civil war.
- After, we had a great emperor named Charlemagne (Carlus Magnus). The only problems come from the fact that he was born near Liege (Belgium), that his capital was Aachen (Germany), that he ruled over half of Europe and that he was Emperor of the Western Roman Empire (soon to become the Holy Roman Empire).
- Then the first time a slight idea of France came to existence was in 1181AD when the king ruling Westfranken dropped the title "King of Francs" (Rex Francorum) for that of "King of France". (Rex Franciæ).
- Finally, the country as it still is today starts to appear only after the hundred years war (1453AD). Only about 70 years before the first settlers in what is to become the USA and 150 years before the establishment of the 13 colonies.

The last amusing thing is the name "France" which is dirived from the "Francs" (a germanic tribe). Of course, for many frenchmen, Germans are still very foreign to them, so foreign that they remain the Teutons or the Schleus, but that is explained by the 1870 war and by 1914-1918.

If you dig a little more you'll find out that all this is probably also false but that is of course directed toward all Americans on this forum. Can you stop repeating that European countries have a long history (strange how Australians don't seem to be feeling that way). Yours is as long as ours and often longer than that of many European countries inlcuding Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland...

Sorry for that small digression. Nothing about Politics, it's only about History and Philosophy.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

- Finally, the country as it still is today starts to appear only after the hundred years war (1453AD). Only about 70 years before the first settlers in what is to become the USA and 150 years before the establishment of the 13 colonies.

Unlike most of my fellow Americans, I am quite grateful to the French -- without their aid, we probably would have lost to the British. And we thanked the French at the time by defaulting on the massive debt we had run up to France, which was one of the factors leading to the French Revolution.

But so far, it seems to have worked out okay...

[MajorPo]

I don't think that one day people of the various countries or even their leaders will wake up and say, "Enough of all this bickering, let's just all be one big country!". Of course for a unified world government to form that doesn't need to happen. We are seeing it grow around us now. The rise of Europe, the growth of international trade consortiums, and the moderating effect of the world bank and international monetary fund are all parts of the growth towards interdependence which will ulitmately see us all within one world government in substance if perhaps never in name. I think it will be a good thing, though it won't solve all our problems. At least it might allow us to waste a little bit less money on 'defense' from our neighbours

[Mahatatain]

I don't know if this is of interest to other people but I have a different variation on the Apocalypse options in this poll in a campaign I run.

In that campaign there has been an asteroid strike on the Earth but there is evidence that the asteroid was "directed" by some alien force and (the PCs haven't discovered this yet) there are now alien forces on Earth, who are also using terminator like machines to infiltrate survivor communities.

The aliens have also introduced a bio-plague to kill lots of humans and have genetically engineered plants to create "triffids".

Essentially the reason for my post is to consider combining multiple apocalypse options in your campaign - it's certainly got my PCs wondering.....

[copeab]

With a statistically significant number of votes it, it appears that the "consensus" apocalypse is a biological disaster and nuclear strike (probably in that order).

As a sidenote, while most people think of something like Independence Day for an alien invasion, The Thing (1982) would be far nastier ...

[Marc]

Mmmmmmm... A campaign based on the old UFO computer game and using the Twilight set of rules could be an interesting idea...

[MajorPo]

Originally Posted by copeab

As a sidenote, while most people think of something like Independence Day for an alien invasion, The Thing (1982) would be far nastier ...

Even more disturbing might be a Gremlins (1984) outbreak...

[lordroel]

i picked all because that would just be epic.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by lordroel

i picked all because that would just be epic.

Life with you as a friend or SO must be fun!

[copeab]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Oh, I harbor no illusions; I'm quite certain most nations would not want to give up their sovereignty to a world government. But it would be the best thing for the world.

Whereas I think a world government would be a terrible thing

[The Zappster]

Originally Posted by Marc

Mmmmmmm... A campaign based on the old UFO computer game and using the Twilight set of rules could be an interesting idea...

.

That's the game I'm running for my group.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by The Zappster

.

That's the game I'm running for my group.

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to refer to the UFO games by the title they were published under here in Australia (and some other parts of the world apparently). Here they were released as "X-COM" so for example, UFO: Enemy Unknown was titled X-COM: Enemy Unknown.
The reason I bring that up is because there was a British TV series from the early 1970s titled "UFO". Filmed in the early 70s, it's supposed to take place in the "future" 1980s however there's a lot of 1960s/1970s fashion used throughout and because it's an old series, nobody should expect amazing special effects!

I watched this show as a kid/teen when I was just starting to understand that I liked science-fiction a hell fo a lot. This show basically foreshadowed X-COM and is probably part of the reason I loved the early X-COM games (I wasn't so fussed on the later games).
Rather than try to explain the UFO series, I'd recommend a quick read through the wiki page for it: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)

But this fanpage is far more interesting in my opinion and would be better for a more indepth reading!
https://ufoseries.com/
This page from the fansite about a proposed 1990s revival of the series might be helpful in creating personnel & organizations as well as providing some "what if" type questions for your game: -
https://ufoseries.com/revival/proposal-text.html
This fan wiki for the show is also worth reading through: -
http://ufoseries.wikia.com/wiki/Gerr...7s_U.F.O._Wiki

The show had plenty of interesting vehicles such as SkyDiver. It is of my favourite sci-fi vehicles and consists of a submersible aircraft mounted to a submarine.
From the fan wiki: http://ufoseries.wikia.com/wiki/SkyDiver



I own the series on DVD because I'm such a fanboy for it but it's also available for watching via the Internet Archive. It's worth reading through the main page at the Archive because it sums up the series better than the wikipedia page.
https://archive.org/details/UFO.complete

While the X-COM games give plenty of information for running a game, the UFO TV series is just as good for inspiration. There's no claim that the developer of the X-COM game was inspired by the UFO series, they share a similar premise but that doesn't mean he ever saw the TV show or was even aware of it. But regardless of that, because of those similarities, the TV series does provide a lot of material for inspiration that can be used to compliment anything developed from the X-COM games.

[The Zappster]

Who can forget commander Striker, king of 70s cool. One of my favorite episodes is the one where ground forces move in on a downed UFO.
My game is based on the computer game, elite multi national special forces jumping off the back of a skyranger into a hail of plasma fire.

[Draq]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to refer to the UFO games by the title they were published under here in Australia (and some other parts of the world apparently). Here they were released as "X-COM" so for example, UFO: Enemy Unknown was titled X-COM: Enemy Unknown.
The reason I bring that up is because there was a British TV series from the early 1970s titled "UFO". Filmed in the early 70s, it's supposed to take place in the "future" 1980s however there's a lot of 1960s/1970s fashion used throughout and because it's an old series, nobody should expect amazing special effects!

I watched this show as a kid/teen when I was just starting to understand that I liked science-fiction a hell fo a lot. This show basically foreshadowed X-COM and is probably part of the reason I loved the early X-COM games (I wasn't so fussed on the later games).
Rather than try to explain the UFO series, I'd recommend a quick read through the wiki page for it: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)

But this fanpage is far more interesting in my opinion and would be better for a more indepth reading!
https://ufoseries.com/
This page from the fansite about a proposed 1990s revival of the series might be helpful in creating personnel & organizations as well as providing some "what if" type questions for your game: -
https://ufoseries.com/revival/proposal-text.html
This fan wiki for the show is also worth reading through: -
http://ufoseries.wikia.com/wiki/Gerr...7s_U.F.O._Wiki

The show had plenty of interesting vehicles such as SkyDiver. It is of my favourite sci-fi vehicles and consists of a submersible aircraft mounted to a submarine.
From the fan wiki: http://ufoseries.wikia.com/wiki/SkyDiver



I own the series on DVD because I'm such a fanboy for it but it's also available for watching via the Internet Archive. It's worth reading through the main page at the Archive because it sums up the series better than the wikipedia page.
https://archive.org/details/UFO.complete

While the X-COM games give plenty of information for running a game, the UFO TV series is just as good for inspiration. There's no claim that the developer of the X-COM game was inspired by the UFO series, they share a similar premise but that doesn't mean he ever saw the TV show or was even aware of it. But regardless of that, because of those similarities, the TV series does provide a lot of material for inspiration that can be used to compliment anything developed from the X-COM games.

If you love the original xcom games, may I suggest xenonauts it's essentially xcom in all it's glory, but a little updated, plus some balancing and fixes. It basically is xcom, just without using and copywritten material. All the game mechanics,
and fear you love, but new again. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...IPYUq8QQPWjx3t

[StainlessSteelCynic]

@ The Zappster. Ah I see I'm preaching to the converted then hehe. Loved the show then, still love it now even with the daggy 60s fashions and the purple wigs but yes Straker was cool, just like his car!


@ Draq. Yep, I bought Xenonaughts some years back and while I enjoyed it in the early stages, I got disenfranchised with the later stages when it pushed you to progress your tech levels so that you could compete with the increasingly harder enemy threat.
It wasn't the same as the older games (and yes I am very guilty of succumbing to nostalgia for those earlier games) where you could ignore the harder incursions for a little while to build up your resources.
My favourite will probably always be X-COM: Apocalypse

[Draq]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

@ The Zappster. Ah I see I'm preaching to the converted then hehe. Loved the show then, still love it now even with the daggy 60s fashions and the purple wigs but yes Straker was cool, just like his car!


@ Draq. Yep, I bought Xenonaughts some years back and while I enjoyed it in the early stages, I got disenfranchised with the later stages when it pushed you to progress your tech levels so that you could compete with the increasingly harder enemy threat.
It wasn't the same as the older games (and yes I am very guilty of succumbing to nostalgia for those earlier games) where you could ignore the harder incursions for a little while to build up your resources.
My favourite will probably always be X-COM: Apocalypse

I totally understand. Xcom apocalypse had some interesting new features.