Setting Questions:

[ZombieLenin]

Guys,

So I am well on my way to running my first game. I'm probably going to use the TW2000 2.2 rules, but have not ruled out TW2013 and the reflex system.

That, however, is not my question (though more input would be great).

In any case, I've boiled down losely what I'm doing with the game. The game is set in 2018 with my own timeline. As a professional Political Scientist I wasn't really happy with the TW2013 timeline--not to diminish the impressive work that went into it. Plus, I wanted to kill off almost everyone so that everywhere would feel isolated, lonely, and abandoned.

I intend, at somepoint, to introduce light supernatural elements to the game. I want the campaign to slowly take up a position somewhere between realistic portrayal of a post-apocolyptic earth and something like The Walking Dead (books) or Fallout. To further this, I downloaded the Dark Conspiracy 2e rules from drive through RPG.

In any case, my question is this: where should I set the game. I querried my players (all 6 of us are American) and they boiled down their "preferred" starting locations to the Ireland, Australia, or Japan.

Japan was out instantly. I eventually "picked" Ireland, but I'm have some serious problems using Australia or Ireland. First, these are two countries I've never been too, or spent any time in. Second, in both cases I find myself trying to bend over backwards to explain how beligerents ended up in either country.

Now the whole problem of "inventing" the end of the world in 5 years with todays date as your starting point, particularly via World War 3, stretches believability; However, really. really finding it difficult to invent believable scenarios where waring armies--and nuclear devistation--end up in either Ireland or Australia.

As a result, I'm thinking of hand waving a different starting location. What I had in mind to begin with was mainland Europe, Italy, Scandiavia, or Alaska/Canadian Northwest.

So my question is, I guess, is a two parter. First, can you think of a reason--that doesn't just smack of unbelievability--to have conflict in either of the "player preferred" locations? And second, where would you run this campaign? You need not use any of my presumed locations to answer this.

That's all I really need now is a firm location I can get behind. The first game itself is nearly written, and can be pasted into any location.