2300AD backstory?

[sic1701]

Never having seen the 2300AD backstory and history, but knowing that the setting takes place after the events of the Twilight:2000 game, does the backstory go into detail on what happened in the intervening three centuries between the events of the Twilight War and the game itself? Whether in the game rulebooks, or a Challenge magazine article, or anywhere else?

I'm interested in how they got from global nuclear war to colonising space.

[Benjamin]

The boxed set of the game had about eight or so pages of history which can be summarized as...France avoids total destruction, rebuilds its empire, not much happens, FTL travel is discovered, humans colonize some worlds, not much happens, big war fought in Central Asia, France becomes an empire, Kafers discovered, war!

Basically, the detail is so limited and contradicted in a few supplements that there have been some really nasty disagreements over canon within the 2300AD fan community. The new 2320 AD tried to fix a few of the most glaring problems but still has some major problems (including an untimely death because the company producing it basically abandoned it.)

There are a few fan pages, the best being www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/2300/Admin/Index1.htm , that have filled in some of the back story.

Hope this helped.
Benjamin

[sic1701]

Thanks much, Benjamin; just a quick drive-by of the forum tonight but look forward to exploring that link later.

[JoieRomero]

The boxed set of the game had about eight or so pages of history which can be summarized as...France avoids total destruction, rebuilds its empire, not much happens, FTL travel is discovered, humans colonize some worlds, not much happens, big war fought in Central Asia, France becomes an empire, Kafers discovered, war!

[Olefin]

Some of the backstory had major issues as well - they had CivGov and MilGov take over 20 years to come back together before they finally took on New America, which allows Mexico to keep Texas, southern CA, most of AZ and NM.

Not sure who thought that one up but there is no way that happens - MilGov has CivGov completely outmanned and outgunned for one - and once CENTCOM and the guys in Korea come home its even worse.

Basically at best CivGov could survive a few years before MilGov rings its bell - and I dont see MilGov letting the Mexicans keep all of Texas, southern CA, AZ and NM when they have 40K plus guys back from Europe and the Mexicans have basically about 15K guys spread all over the Southwest and arent even united.

Especially since they need the Texan oil to get aircraft and ships running again. With the US fractured as it is the only way to keep the country together is sea and air transport - and you need oil for that - and the Mexicans are sitting on an awful lot of it.

[unkated]

One of the things I always appreciated about the 2300 AD backstory is that when you wanted to turn and yell about "that doesn't make sense; that's ridiculous," they had a perfectly good reason:

"We played a game, and that's how it came out. Some players were better than others."

While you can choose to reshape 2300 AD as you see fit, it's tough to argue with that.

Uncle Ted

[Olefin]

A game that was pretty much heavily rigged for the French player once it was determined that country stayed out of the war

Hey lets give you all nations to play and with the exception of one major country everyone else is disorganized, nuked and half destroyed - but your country has a fully functional govt, power grid, army, air force and navy while the rest have at best remnants, giving you the ability to take over huge resource areas in Africa and the Middle East while the rest are still trying to get enough food to stop their populations from starving

all you have to is read the history of the 20th Century to see what that would do - why is the US a huge superpower and major powers of 1900 minor players at best (even Russia to a major extent) - because we didnt have whole generations of men destroyed on the battlefield let alone our nations ruined by the fighting on their territory

make the damage much worse to all the other players and let the French player have that kind of bonus and he would have had to have been amazingly bad to have lost that game

basically its like playing poker and giving one guy 10000 bucks and any three cards of his choosing for every hand while everyone else starts with 50 bucks and only gets four cards instead of five - sure someone might get lucky from time to time but I have a feeling Mr. 10000 bucks is going to win in the end