A British version of New America

[Rainbow Six]

Morning,

A little while ago RN7 and I were talking about a few things and he raised the possibility of a British version of New America. The attached is an attempt to expand on that idea. It’s not meant to be a clone of New America – motivations are different, and they don’t have large numbers of men directly under arms, don’t run forced labour camps, etc - the intention is to provide a group of “boss” level recurring villains that can be inserted into a UK based campaign and who can work in the shadows pulling strings and manipulating situations as the campaign develops, with PC’s not knowing who is – or isn’t – a member of the group.

I’ve tried to write it in such a way that it fits in with canon (if set before the BAOR returns from Germany), so I’m presenting it here as a stand alone piece separately from my own Alternative Survivor’s Guide (although it can be used with that as well, and will probably feature in the final version).

Feedback is, as always, welcome - oh, and some of the images used for the characters have been used in a slightly tongue in cheek way...

[Canadian Army]

Nice work! I found this the other day when researching David Stirling:

"During the social troubles of mid-1970s Great Britain, David Stirling became increasingly worried that an "undemocratic event" would occur and decided to take action. He created an organization called Great Britain 75 and recruited members from the aristocratic clubs in Mayfair; mainly ex-military men (often former SAS members). The plan was simple. Should civil unrest result in the breakdown of normal Government operations, they would take over its running. In August 1974, before Stirling was ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained and published his plans, and eventually Stirling - dismayed by the right-wing character of many of those seeking to join GB75 - abandoned the scheme.

[simonmark6]

I like the article a lot, thanks for sharing. One point about it is that it is very time specific: you state that they'll try to coup before the BAOR come home. That gives the article a fairly shot time frame. You might want to add GM suggestions about:
1) How they would try to make the coup work
2) What would their plans be if the BOAR did come home without them gaining power
3) What would a government they controlled look like (if it really was Cameron being controlled by Blair and I'd survived the war, I'd have to kill myself)

Or, you could leave it as it is and let us lazy GMs work out the rest for ourselves.

I really enjoyed teh article though, thanks a lot.

[James Langham]

Great article. From memory of the UK Survivors Guide wasn't the deputy head of MI6 about to launch an operation without his boss' ok to get rid of marauders - could this be linked? Maybe the idea has been planted in his head by the group.

I like the fact that unlike New America the group isn't inherently villainous. In some ways they are actually reasonable, maybe this could be played on.

[avantman42]

I haven't had a chance to read it properly yet, but it looks good, thanks

[Rainbow Six]

Cheers fellas, glad you like it. Inspiration was drawn from a range of sources, most notably a couple of episodes of Spooks and some works by Frederick Forsyth, particularly a novel called “Icon”.

Simon, thanks I’ll look at incorporating those ideas into an expanded version. I did actually start a write up of the Unicorn plan, but didn’t get too far with it, partly because I did want to leave it vague, so a GM could flesh it out to suit their own campaign needs if they wanted (and partly because I don’t want Special Branch knocking my front door down – of course I’m not paranoid - will you all come visit me when I'm in the nick?) My initial thoughts were something along the lines of a bomb taking out the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff while they're attending a meeting (similar idea to Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler), with some poor sod / group lined up to take the blame (haven’t quite decided who yet) giving the new leadership an excuse to start rounding up those deemed as “undesirables” left right and centre and interning them without trial.

I really like the idea of doing an overview of what the Government would look like (and how they intend to bring about the rebirth of the British Empire (if anyone’s read “Icon” that phrase is adapted from there)). I also want to use Samuel Johnson’s quote about patriotism in the intro as I think it fits well- “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”

James, that’s an interesting thought about the group being seen as reasonable. I hadn’t actually thought of them in that way, but I can see where you’re coming from, and I think one shouldn’t underestimate the attractiveness of an effective Government, which on the surface at least seems to be fully legitimate. Your memory serves you well - it's the head of Five who is planning to assasinate as many marauder leaders as he can without the PM's approval. I'd forgotten about that.

So...I’m going to do a bit more work on this over the next couple of weeks to try and expand it a bit...any suggestions for other things that could be included are welcome.

[avantman42]

Because I've got a Kindle and I prefer to read on that, I've converted the PDF to mobi format (for Kindle), and I've also created an ePub version (for other e-readers). Both files are in the attached zip file.

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

Cheers fellas, glad you like it. Inspiration was drawn from a range of sources, most notably a couple of episodes of Spooks and some works by Frederick Forsyth, particularly a novel called “Icon”.

Simon, thanks I’ll look at incorporating those ideas into an expanded version. I did actually start a write up of the Unicorn plan, but didn’t get too far with it, partly because I did want to leave it vague, so a GM could flesh it out to suit their own campaign needs if they wanted (and partly because I don’t want Special Branch knocking my front door down – of course I’m not paranoid - will you all come visit me when I'm in the nick?) My initial thoughts were something along the lines of a bomb taking out the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff while they're attending a meeting (similar idea to Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler), with some poor sod / group lined up to take the blame (haven’t quite decided who yet) giving the new leadership an excuse to start rounding up those deemed as “undesirables” left right and centre and interning them without trial.

I really like the idea of doing an overview of what the Government would look like (and how they intend to bring about the rebirth of the British Empire (if anyone’s read “Icon” that phrase is adapted from there)). I also want to use Samuel Johnson’s quote about patriotism in the intro as I think it fits well- “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”

James, that’s an interesting thought about the group being seen as reasonable. I hadn’t actually thought of them in that way, but I can see where you’re coming from, and I think one shouldn’t underestimate the attractiveness of an effective Government, which on the surface at least seems to be fully legitimate. Your memory serves you well - it's the head of Five who is planning to assasinate as many marauder leaders as he can without the PM's approval. I'd forgotten about that.

So...I’m going to do a bit more work on this over the next couple of weeks to try and expand it a bit...any suggestions for other things that could be included are welcome.

A really sadistic GM might even make them a more humane government that came to power by illegal means. Maybe the plot from MI5 could be carried out and these illegal assassinations bring down the government. I like moral dilemmas for PCs!