T2k and the Media

[dragoon500ly]

Sitting around, enjoying my vacation and thought I'd start a new thread QUIT YOUR CRYING!!!!! Sit back and enjoy!

Had this pop up at a recent FTF game...one of the players wanted his character to be an embed reporter from CNN, complete with his GI-issue camera man. Now, in true CNN-fashion, this player proceeded to annoy the ever-living $@$#@^#$#$^#$$*(!(%$ out of all of the other players, with his man-in-the-street interviews, and maneuvering to get the best shots of whatever combat that we were involved in. It was an intresting, if over-down treatment of a real-life situation, sooooooooooo...

Anybody else have this happen or any thoughts on how to game this one?

[Targan]

We've had a similar discussion in the past, about reporters in the T2K environment. I had a look through the thread map but couldn't find it. There is an interesting thread about the USO in T2K here: http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=1408 . Not exactly the same but a related concept I suppose.

[Adm.Lee]

I think there were NPC journalists in the Eternal Soldier #1 (there weren't anymore issues, were there?)

I can't remember any in T2k that I've seen, but I can remember one in a game of Supernatural that I sat in on. Two of the PCs were a camera-person and reporter, so they had fun pointing the camera at the police PC whenever he was about to do something action-y.

In the canon 2000, who is going to see any video? It's going to be print or nothing , I should think.

[dragoon500ly]

This particular ftf was set about a year into the fighting.

[natehale1971]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

This particular ftf was set about a year into the fighting.

We actually had a T2K setting where the devastation wasn't so total as in the main games, and the Sino-Soviet war that kick started T2K had started in 2000 with a slow build-up that had limited nuclear exchanges in 2005... and while the exchanges really screwed things up, there was still some civilian infrastructure left so that there was some communication going back and forth. Thus Embedded Reporters were still something that the soldiers had to deal with (which would you rather have to deal with, wiping with leaves or having a bloody camera shoved in your face after combat and get ask questions about how it makes you feel when you kill people whose only crime is that they're socialists?... yeah, i'd rather have to wipe with leaves too).

[pmulcahy11b]

You don't want to wipe with leaves -- you can get amoebic dysentery that way.

[helbent4]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Anybody else have this happen or any thoughts on how to game this one?

Lee,

I use this in my game, which is set in Vancouver, BC. The local government is based on a university campus, which has restored limited TV broadcasts, including a nightly news programme. The players therefore have a (volunteer) CBC news team following them around in a van as they do their thing. They are not strictly embedded and at this point are familiar enough to fade into the woodwork most of the time but they're there if you look.

Many of my NPCs are based on real-life people, so the main female reporter is a composite based on two real (local) reporters/media types I know personally. I hope I've managed to avoid the usual cliched whipping-boy stereotypes about the media. The lead reporter is smokin' hot (it's part of the job), is professional and personable, and keeps her politics and opinions to herself. I imagine fantasies involving this NPC do not involve extrajudicial killing.

Certainly the media could be a pain in the ass but the PCs have made an effort to befriend and cultivate the lead reporter, and in return she respects their feelings (not to mention OPSEC) and doesn't get in their faces just to be annoying. More importantly, the team has gained a valuable channel for disseminating information to a wider community, and this has helped reconstruction efforts considerably. Of course, the community leadership is backing the players (so far) and thus exert influence on editorial decisions, but people do understand there still is a war on and so the mood is more of cooperation than provocation. As long as the PCs don't do anything wrong, they'll be portrayed as white knights. If they don't, things could change.

Tony

[natehale1971]

We had something similar to this in our V1 timeline... the public broadcasting network set up in various state universities were used for the Emergency Broadcasting System to keep locals up-to-date on what was going on around the world and country. But even through this the average American citizen didn't know of a milgov/civgov split... both sides did everything they could to keep the average citizen (and average grunt for that matter) in the dark on the upper echelons fighting with each other. And because of this you'd see milgov and civgov reps showing up and having to work together at times when it came to dealing with "New America" (in our campaign it had always been a group called 'The Union for a Progressive New America' without the overt racist crap, but with the different levels of citizenship like the classic New America).

Of course this caused "New America" to try and take over the university broadcasts the best they could!

Originally Posted by helbent4

Lee,

I use this in my game, which is set in Vancouver, BC. The local government is based on a university campus, which has restored limited TV broadcasts, including a nightly news programme. The players therefore have a (volunteer) CBC news team following them around in a van as they do their thing. They are not strictly embedded and at this point are familiar enough to fade into the woodwork most of the time but they're there if you look.

Many of my NPCs are based on real-life people, so the main female reporter is a composite based on two real (local) reporters/media types I know personally. I hope I've managed to avoid the usual cliched whipping-boy stereotypes about the media. The lead reporter is smokin' hot (it's part of the job), is professional and personable, and keeps her politics and opinions to herself. I imagine fantasies involving this NPC do not involve extrajudicial killing.

Certainly the media could be a pain in the ass but the PCs have made an effort to befriend and cultivate the lead reporter, and in return she respects their feelings (not to mention OPSEC) and doesn't get in their faces just to be annoying. More importantly, the team has gained a valuable channel for disseminating information to a wider community, and this has helped reconstruction efforts considerably. Of course, the community leadership is backing the players (so far) and thus exert influence on editorial decisions, but people do understand there still is a war on and so the mood is more of cooperation than provocation. As long as the PCs don't do anything wrong, they'll be portrayed as white knights. If they don't, things could change.

Tony

[Canadian Army]

Originally Posted by helbent4

Lee,

I use this in my game, which is set in Vancouver, BC. The local government is based on a university campus, which has restored limited TV broadcasts, including a nightly news program.
Tony

Wouldn't the CBC based at the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunker at Nanoose Bay, British Columbia. All the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunkers had a CBC Emergency Broadcasting Studio and were to staffed by the CBC when activated.

[helbent4]

Originally Posted by Canadian Army

Wouldn't the CBC based at the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunker at Nanoose Bay, British Columbia. All the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunkers had a CBC Emergency Broadcasting Studio and were to staffed by the CBC when activated.

CA,

My game is based in the Lower Mainland, not de eyelun, mon! There is quite a long commute from the 'Mo to Vancouver, eh? The CBC's Lower Mainland "volunteers" are based out of UBC (designated as a pre-war "disaster recovery node", by the way) because they settled there after the bombs fell.

The Nanoose Bay facility is not specifically mentioned in Legion McRae's adventures "The River" or "Red Maple", but there could be some kind of surviving facility there housing the CBC. It seems a little far from the emergency Provincial capital at Duncan, and may have been destroyed/damaged by nuclear/non-nuclear strikes, etc.. If there is a surviving facility at Nanoose Bay, it could be in the process of coming on-line as civilian government is re-established. That is, they might not be able to provide more than minor technical support for anyone on southern Vancouver Island but may be able to broadcast local and national news, still a crucial step in restoring order and normalcy.

Along the lines of what has been said earlier, the local news team has had considerable success talking to the civilians who tend to see soldiers as being the cause for the destruction and chaos. Further, bad guys like the Hells Angels and New America could take an interest in taking out a "soft target" like the government's pet news team to disrupt nascent government efforts.

Tony

[weswood]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Sitting around, enjoying my vacation and thought I'd start a new thread QUIT YOUR CRYING!!!!! Sit back and enjoy!

Had this pop up at a recent FTF game...one of the players wanted his character to be an embed reporter from CNN, complete with his GI-issue camera man. Now, in true CNN-fashion, this player proceeded to annoy the ever-living $@$#@^#$#$^#$$*(!(%$ out of all of the other players, with his man-in-the-street interviews, and maneuvering to get the best shots of whatever combat that we were involved in. It was an intresting, if over-down treatment of a real-life situation, sooooooooooo...

Anybody else have this happen or any thoughts on how to game this one?

In the story I was attempting to write, the main character was a freelance photo-journalist. Even though he didn't have a means of sending his photos & print copy to any existing newspapers, he kept taking pictures and downloading them to his laptop, as long as the batteries were charged. He wasn't actually embedded, he just went where he thought he could get away with going.

[Legbreaker]

Laptop? Digital camera? 1997(ish) technology?

[weswood]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Laptop? Digital camera? 1997(ish) technology?

I didn't do any research, I'm way too lazy for that, but I'm pretty sure I got my 1st digital camera in '97. Paid way too much for it and I think my cheapy cell phone has more memory. As far as laptops, weren't the police using Panasonic Toughbooks by that time?

Just did a search, if you can believe Wikipedia, the first commercial laptop was available in Sept 1975.

[Legbreaker]

It's possible, but I doubt there'd be much storage capacity in it. Probably have to make some very tough decisions about which photos to keep and which ones to delete to make space. May also be constantly scrounging about for useable storage devices - 3 1/2 inch floppy's, Zip, blank CDs, etc. Could even have cobbled together a tape storage device. Of course finding this stuff after EMP hits could be problematic.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

My first laptop was a ca. 1996 Pentium 166 laptop with 64mb RAM and a 1.2gb hard drive. Nice screen, stereo sound...

I know the trend is to strip the convenience of a post TDM world but the fact is lots of things we think of as "here and now" were prevalent before then too. My Sony Mavica disk camera, for example, dates back to '97.

We weren't exactly whip and buggy technology in the mid to late 90s.