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.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Although these ideas will have to slot into how your war starts, I think it would be easy enough for US personnel to be stranded in Australia.

Some ideas for how they ended up in the Great Southern Land
1. They could have been separately in the country on holidays and met each other at the airport when trying to get back to the USA. Upon finding out nobody is flying anymore they stick together due to shared nationality. Alternately they could have been passengers on the same cruise ship and then find the ship cannot leave.
2. They could have been a group of friends on an adventure holiday and like No 1, find they cannot leave due to the war.
3. The PCs might have been embassy/consulate staff (or family of staff), stuck in the country when the world war kicks into high gear.
4. They could be a business group in Australia for work purposes and get caught in country when the world goes pear shaped. Alternately they could be from a defence contractor corporation sent to Australia to assist in Australia purchasing military equipment from the US (e.g. General Dynamics has subsidiaries in Australia).
5. If they are military they could have been in the country conducting peacetime training with Australian forces or been advisors for a training package for Australian forces.
6. They could from a group survivors of some war related disaster evacuated to Australia because it was the closest country that could deal with the refugees medical needs (or it was the nearest friendly country).
7. They could be remnants of a military task force that was sent to Australia to be reconstituted but as the world turned to crap, the reinforcements are never going to arrive and the commander turns them loose to make their own way back to the USA - Good luck, you're own your own...

As for Australia itself, it is a "bloody huge" landscape with many variations in terrain and vegetation. Everything from dried-out lakebeds to tropical forest/light jungle, mangrove swamps, dry forest, coastal cliffs, vast deserts and also mountain ranges that get cold and wet enough to have snow.
Here's the first website you should read
http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/overview.html
It's rather long (6 pages I think) but provides a better overview than most websites.

Threads from this forum that might prove useful for information
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ight=Australia
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ight=Australia
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ight=Australia
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ight=Australia
http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ight=Australia this is the "biggie", 8 pages long but well worth the read

[stg58fal]

Mercs or SF conducting a false-flag operation in a friendly country that wasn't quite friendly enough.

Alternately, they were operating with the permission of said .gov, either to rile up support for the war (when the attack was pinned on The Bad Guys), or to eliminate a Bad Guy cell that the friendly .gov COULDN'T take out for whatever reason (a PM/CONgressman/whatever was a member?).

In the campaign (T2013) I was running before life interfered, the PCs never got far enough to find this out but the war was basically started by one rich asshole who was in charge of a megacorp. Sort of like Clancy's "Rainbow Six", only instead of wanting to save the earth by wiping out people, he and his followers wanted the planet for themselves, with everyone else as their servants/slaves, amusement, and consumers of their products. If I was going to start a campaign set initially in Ireland or Australia, maybe the PC's would be part of a team investigating some of the goings-on of this megacorp. Rumors of human experimentation and such (which were true...I figured out a way to incorporate zombies into T2013, though they weren't truly undead, but people kidnapped by the corp and implanted with control devices in their brains).

[ZombieLenin]

The issue is making the countries a warzone with waring armies actually facing off. As far as the characters go, I've only got 2 American characters and 1 Canadian character.

[Rainbow Six]

I’m not sure if this is covered in any of the basic rule sets for T2K so apologies if I’m restating something you are already aware of (it definitely isn’t in the V1 initial material and I don’t think it is in the V2 Big Yellow Book, although I may be mistaken; the main reference to it is the V1 Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom) but in the original T2K timeline Ireland was a warzone. To cut a long story very short, after the 1997 nuclear exchanges the Republic of Ireland invaded Northern Ireland (I as a response to alleged British mistreatment of Northern Ireland’s nationalist minority, leading to two warring armies facing off against each other – on one side you had the armed forces of the Republic of Ireland (Irish Defence Forces, IDF) and on the other the British Army, primarily represented by the mainly reservist Ulster Defence Regiment, UDR . Whilst the likelihood of events transpiring as GDW wrote is debatable, I don’t think it is completely implausible, but it would need some serious reworking to fit a 2018 date (for one thing the UDR was disbanded years ago, and events in Northern Ireland have obviously moved on since the mid 1990’s) – just for starters you’d need the peace process to completely collapse in Northern Ireland and a return to the days of the Troubles.

I’m British and I’m struggling to think of anything else which would have two opposed armies facing off in Ireland, although we do have a couple of Irish members who may be able to suggest something.

As to the second part of your question, I have two answers. If I wanted to stay within my comfort zone and work with something that I am familiar with and have knowledge of, I would set a campaign in my own country, the UK. If I wanted to push the comfort zone I would probably go for somewhere in Africa – possibly South Africa.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by ZombieLenin

First, these are two countries I've never been too, or spent any time in.

If none of your players are experts or natives, they won't notice your errors. Don't sweat it.

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.

You don't need nuclear strikes to blow up one of those countries. High-altitude EMP will do the trick just fine, wrecking infrastructure and collapsing the supply chain that keeps the cities fed. Then your "warring armies" are different factions of refugees against loose alliances of rural villages, each organized around a particular charismatic leader.

As far as WW3, I think you need a major destabilizing event that makes a lot of countries hungry at once. One thing I suggested early in the 2013 design process was a massive volcanic eruption in the Aleutian Islands that triggered a Year Without a Summer-like event. The resulting global famine did the rest for me.

- C.

[ZombieLenin]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I’m not sure if this is covered in any of the basic rule sets for T2K so apologies if I’m restating something you are already aware of (it definitely isn’t in the V1 initial material and I don’t think it is in the V2 Big Yellow Book, although I may be mistaken; the main reference to it is the V1 Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom) but in the original T2K timeline Ireland was a warzone. To cut a long story very short, after the 1997 nuclear exchanges the Republic of Ireland invaded Northern Ireland (I as a response to alleged British mistreatment of Northern Ireland’s nationalist minority, leading to two warring armies facing off against each other – on one side you had the armed forces of the Republic of Ireland (Irish Defence Forces, IDF) and on the other the British Army, primarily represented by the mainly reservist Ulster Defence Regiment, UDR . Whilst the likelihood of events transpiring as GDW wrote is debatable, I don’t think it is completely implausible, but it would need some serious reworking to fit a 2018 date (for one thing the UDR was disbanded years ago, and events in Northern Ireland have obviously moved on since the mid 1990’s) – just for starters you’d need the peace process to completely collapse in Northern Ireland and a return to the days of the Troubles.

When my players came up with Ireland, this is roughly what I did for my timeline. Essentially, I had the campaign setting's history deviate in 2013 with a worldwide economic collapse brought on by the failure of the US congress to pass an extention of the US debt ceiling (US Bond default). A bunch of other stuff happens (like Putin dying in a shirtless sky diving accident) and you end up with a bunch of regional conflicts that sort of merge together... presto! Nuclear war!

In Ireland specifically though, I used the economic collapse as an excuse to bolster the popularity of the RIRA and the CIRA in Northern Ireland. I mixed this with global depression's ability to turn populations towards more extremists governments into a suitably reactionary response from the UK and to place a nationalist "One Ireland" government in control of the Republic of Ireland.

So, to make a long story short, my actual story line for the game became pretty close to the original that you are describing.

That all seemed pretty reasonable to me, except:

1. When I started to do the research necessary to give a realistic portrayal of the military situation in 2018 I noticed that the Irish Defense Forces has a total number of active duty members, for all branches of service, less than 10,000. When the reserves are counted, around 15,000. The Irish Air Force is composed almost exclusively of helicopters, and the Irish Army has nothing bigger than armored cars as mechanized support.

While I am sure that members Irish Defense Forces are more than capable in a fight, it just seemed incredibly unlikely that they would be capable of "invading" Northern Ireland, let alone dealing with the inevitable response from Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

Being from the UK you're probably at least tacitly aware of this, but for those who aren't, the Royal Army has 130,000 active members with another 130,000-200,000 reserves. Compare that with the Irish Defense Forces where the Irish Army, Navy, and Air Forces have 15,000 personel AFTER the reserves have been called up.

2. I wanted to put two multinational forces facing off in Ireland. The UK, The Kingdom of France (related to my 'history'), and the United States versus The Irish Republic, The Republican (and nominaly Marxist) forces (RIRA, CIRA) and elements of the Slavic National Bolshevik Union (National Bolshevik Russia).

I’m British and I’m struggling to think of anything else which would have two opposed armies facing off in Ireland, although we do have a couple of Irish members who may be able to suggest something.

I thought of using the UK actually, as my timeline matches the T2013 timeline slightly, and you have post-nuclear exchange internal conflict between England, Wales, and Scotland; However, I could find even less reason to include anyone but British and, to a limited extent, American armed forces on the ground.

As to the second part of your question, I have two answers. If I wanted to stay within my comfort zone and work with something that I am familiar with and have knowledge of, I would set a campaign in my own country, the UK. If I wanted to push the comfort zone I would probably go for somewhere in Africa – possibly South Africa.

This was my thought. I really do want to have the mixing up of beligerent forces that you got in the original T2000's Poland though, which means that using the United States--with the exception of Alaska and the Canadian Northwest--is pretty difficult to do. At least in a way that doesn't offend common sense.

I mean all WW3 stories like this offend common sense, but having Russians in Chichago or LA--or North Korea anywhere (Red Dawn remake)--just makes suspension of disbelief impossible.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by ZombieLenin

When my players came up with Ireland, this is roughly what I did for my timeline. Essentially, I had the campaign setting's history deviate in 2013 with a worldwide economic collapse brought on by the failure of the US congress to pass an extention of the US debt ceiling (US Bond default). A bunch of other stuff happens (like Putin dying in a shirtless sky diving accident) and you end up with a bunch of regional conflicts that sort of merge together... presto! Nuclear war!

In Ireland specifically though, I used the economic collapse as an excuse to bolster the popularity of the RIRA and the CIRA in Northern Ireland. I mixed this with global depression's ability to turn populations towards more extremists governments into a suitably reactionary response from the UK and to place a nationalist "One Ireland" government in control of the Republic of Ireland.

So, to make a long story short, my actual story line for the game became pretty close to the original that you are describing.

That all seemed pretty reasonable to me, except:

1. When I started to do the research necessary to give a realistic portrayal of the military situation in 2018 I noticed that the Irish Defense Forces has a total number of active duty members, for all branches of service, less than 10,000. When the reserves are counted, around 15,000. The Irish Air Force is composed almost exclusively of helicopters, and the Irish Army has nothing bigger than armored cars as mechanized support.

While I am sure that members Irish Defense Forces are more than capable in a fight, it just seemed incredibly unlikely that they would be capable of "invading" Northern Ireland, let alone dealing with the inevitable response from Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

Being from the UK you're probably at least tacitly aware of this, but for those who aren't, the Royal Army has 130,000 active members with another 130,000-200,000 reserves. Compare that with the Irish Defense Forces where the Irish Army, Navy, and Air Forces have 15,000 personel AFTER the reserves have been called up.

2. I wanted to put two multinational forces facing off in Ireland. The UK, The Kingdom of France (related to my 'history'), and the United States versus The Irish Republic, The Republican (and nominaly Marxist) forces (RIRA, CIRA) and elements of the Slavic National Bolshevik Union (National Bolshevik Russia).

Yeah, the topic has come up here a few times and conventional wisdom with regard to the disparity in numbers / equipment between the UK and Ireland has generally been that the IDF would not be able to successfully mount operations against UK forces unless UK forces were seriously weakened (for example by being involved in major conflict / conflicts elsewhere in the World...in the original timeline that vast majority of the British military was already committed to the fighting in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East before the Irish invaded the North, leading to the situation where for the most part the Irish were fighting British reservists. By this point the RAF and the Royal Navy had also effectively been taken out of the equation),
I would defer to the Irish members about the possibility of a pro Marxist Government in the Republic but I have to say the latter coalition strikes me as unlikely, particularly the idea of the Irish being opposed to the US...how about some sort of schism in the Irish Government that has created pro Western and pro Russian factions instead?

Originally Posted by ZombieLenin

I thought of using the UK actually, as my timeline matches the T2013 timeline slightly, and you have post-nuclear exchange internal conflict between England, Wales, and Scotland; However, I could find even less reason to include anyone but British and, to a limited extent, American armed forces on the ground.

How about the some of following...?

Russians (or other opposition forces dependent on your timeline) - escapees from POW camps / special forces types infiltrated into the UK before hostilities started to destabilise the country / shot down aircrew (possibly POW's, possibly not)

NATO / allied nationalities - withdrawn to the UK after serving elsewhere in Europe, for example perhaps NATO sent a composite force to Norway which was withdrawn to the UK after its mission was concluded (or perhaps because it suffered horrendous casualties); after arrival in the UK the unit broke up, leading to individuals and small groups scattering. You could adapt this slightly and make it a UN peacekeeping detachment that was withdrawn to the UK if you want to add non NATO nationalities into the mix (the UK still has a garrison on Cyprus and UN peacekeepers are based on Cyprus, so perhaps some blue berets could find their way to the UK that way)

Commonwealth forces - common for Commonwealth personnel to spend time on exchange postings with British units, so practically any Commonwealth (and occasionally more "exotic") personnel might be found in the UK. It was also common for foreign students to attend British military colleges, e.g. the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (and RAF and RN equivalents) and the Staff College Camberley.

Other options may be possible dependent on your own timeline.

Plus everything Stainless Steel Cynic suggested earlier...

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

If none of your players are experts or natives, they won't notice your errors. Don't sweat it.



You don't need nuclear strikes to blow up one of those countries. High-altitude EMP will do the trick just fine, wrecking infrastructure and collapsing the supply chain that keeps the cities fed. Then your "warring armies" are different factions of refugees against loose alliances of rural villages, each organized around a particular charismatic leader.

As far as WW3, I think you need a major destabilizing event that makes a lot of countries hungry at once. One thing I suggested early in the 2013 design process was a massive volcanic eruption in the Aleutian Islands that triggered a Year Without a Summer-like event. The resulting global famine did the rest for me.

- C.

All of the above +1
A general overview of the target country and a few bits of information for colour to illustrate what makes the country different to your own will be enough for most Players. If you really want to get detailed, borrow one of the Lonely Planet guide books from the library.

Modern societies, especially if they rely on a lot of administrative or resource "centralization", are surprisingly fragile and find it very difficult to cope with major disasters.
Take electricity out of the normal daily life of any North American, European or other 1st/2nd World country and the world is finished. We rely on electricity for nearly every aspect of our lives from fuel pumps at the filling station, to the checkout counter at the supermarket to keeping our food fresh and ourselves entertained at home.
All you need is one really big solar flare and you have "Nature's own EMP" to screw up the electrical system for a really long time. After that people will argue over resources like food and clothing at the local stores because modern living has made us all too materialistic and selfish. When it goes on for week after week, then you'll have communities fighting other communities for resources and after that countries against countries.

Everyone should research The Year Without Summer if they want another possibility for Nature to end the world. A series of volcanic eruptions close to each other would tip us into the abyss. The interruption to agricultural along with disruption of the weather patterns to cause "Katrina" like events and the lack of such things as air travel due to layers of airborne debris would screw us up worse than it did everyone in 1816 because most of us live and work in cities and have very little idea how to grow food, raise animals, collect/prepare wood for fires and so on.

[ZombieLenin]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I would defer to the Irish members about the possibility of a pro Marxist Government in the Republic but I have to say the latter coalition strikes me as unlikely, particularly the idea of the Irish being opposed to the US...how about some sort of schism in the Irish Government that has created pro Western and pro Russian factions instead?

Yeah, a Marxist government in the Republic of Ireland is unbelievable; the Marxists in this story are Northern Ireland Republicans, like the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA. These organizations, along with the "original" (in terms of 1969-1997) IRA have been, and still are as I understand them, in name "Marxist." Meaning only that they use Marxism and "Revolutionary Socialism" as part of the ideological justification for their rebellion.

In my time line, these would be only loosely allied with the Irish Defense Forces, similar to Communist and Nationalist Chinese forces during WWII.

And as I have it Irish get in the European war only when it seems that the United States will not be involved. This is when they're reinforced by Russia and before total nuclear war.

Russians (or other opposition forces dependent on your timeline) - escapees from POW camps / special forces types infiltrated into the UK before hostilities started to destabilise the country / shot down aircrew (possibly POW's, possibly not)

This is a pretty good idea. I would have to figure out how to write in the whole "final offensive," which I had planned to figure prominently in the first few games.

NATO / allied nationalities - withdrawn to the UK after serving elsewhere in Europe, for example perhaps NATO sent a composite force to Norway which was withdrawn to the UK after its mission was concluded (or perhaps because it suffered horrendous casualties); after arrival in the UK the unit broke up, leading to individuals and small groups scattering. You could adapt this slightly and make it a UN peacekeeping detachment that was withdrawn to the UK if you want to add non NATO nationalities into the mix (the UK still has a garrison on Cyprus and UN peacekeepers are based on Cyprus, so perhaps some blue berets could find their way to the UK that way)

This is a great idea, and one I was using for "Ireland." Most of the Americans will have served in Iran, and what's present at the beginning of the game is a lose allied mixed command including Brits, Canadians, Americans, and some French.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by ZombieLenin

Yeah, a Marxist government in the Republic of Ireland is unbelievable; the Marxists in this story are Northern Ireland Republicans, like the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA. These organizations, along with the "original" (in terms of 1969-1997) IRA have been, and still are as I understand them, in name "Marxist." Meaning only that they use Marxism and "Revolutionary Socialism" as part of the ideological justification for their rebellion.

In my time line, these would be only loosely allied with the Irish Defense Forces, similar to Communist and Nationalist Chinese forces during WWII.

And as I have it Irish get in the European war only when it seems that the United States will not be involved. This is when they're reinforced by Russia and before total nuclear war.

I suepct the best model for a post apoc conflict in Ireland is probably something that follows what happened in the Balkans in the 90's. If you look at the Nationalist and Loyalist sides you essentially have similar participants with similar rationales - both have numbers of affiliated paramilitary terrorist groups who may or may not form alliances with regular forces (I could easily see a situation where regular forces on both sides are split, with some treating terrorist groups as allies (perhaps not overtly) and others regarding them as marauders who should be hunted down). Where I think the scenario you've outlined starts to drift away from what is plausible is the introduction of a Russian force...it just strikes me as too unlikely. Also, I suspect the US would, officially at least, not wish to choose sides in a fight between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, although you may find US personnel fighting on both sides unofficially .

Originally Posted by ZombieLenin

This is a great idea, and one I was using for "Ireland." Most of the Americans will have served in Iran, and what's present at the beginning of the game is a lose allied mixed command including Brits, Canadians, Americans, and some French.

Would suggest the easiest thing might be to have a plane come out of Iran as things start to really fall apart...(A C130 would struggle for the range without refuelling, but I think an IL76 or a C141 would make the UK or Ireland comfortably). You would have a wide latitude as to who could be on it...British, American, Canadians, ANZACs, a couple of Iranians who have joined them, a Mossad agent they encountered in Iran, Russians who have changed sides, etc, pretty much anyone that had a valid reason for being in the Gulf. When they get to their destination just have everyone on board that you don't want / need head for the hills, keeping the core group of PC's / NPC's. Could always throw in a plot macguffin of someone / something important being on the plane that needs to get to somewhere else, maybe the US, but you've used the last of your aviation fuel getting as far as you have...

So if you stick with Ireland you've just landed at Dublin airport in the middle of a nasty sectarian conflict, with little chance of finding fuel for your IL76 (or someone has just blown a rather large hole in one of the wings), the place is full of armed gangs and you have no idea who the good guys are and who the bag guys are (or, indeed, if there are any good guys)...good luck, you're on your own...