ZOMO

[Raellus]

A Cold War Polish joke:

Q: "How do you help a seriously wounded ZOMO?"
A: "I don't know."
Q: "Good."

Poland's paramilitary riot police, known by the acronym ZOMO (Zmotoryzowane Oddzialy Milicji Obywatelskiej, or motorized units of people's militia), are pretty ideal baddies for any T2k campaign set in Poland (especially in the v1 timeline). The very first combat encounter I ever ran featured a squad of rogue ZOMO.

Interestingly, they are not mentioned nearly as often as the ORMO in canon. Conversely, in sources available during the late Cold War (around the time some of the v1 modules were being written), it appears that information about the ZOMO was more widely available than was info about the ORMO. For example, the ZOMO are mentioned in Osprey's Warsaw Pact Ground Forces (c. 1987), whereas the ORMO are not.

Tegyrius found this old article on the ZOMO from the Washington Post. It includes a couple of Polish derogatory jokes about the ZOMO.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-7df010ed094e/

If you've incorporated or encountered ZOMO into your campaign, I'm interested to hear about. I think it would be neat to play a PC that's ex-ZOMO. Could make for an angsty backstory, affect how Poles who learn of his former allegiance react to him, and set up a redemption arc.

Link to thread about ORMO:
https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread....highlight=ORMO

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[Ewan]

Really interesting article about the ZOMO and I particularly like this bit

The fate of any militiaman caught by demonstrators is unenviable. According to a Polish newspaper account of last month's riots in Nowa Huta, a crowd of demonstrators tried to use the bodies of unconscious ZOMO as battering rams to break down the door of the local Communist Party headquarters. The report, in the respected weekly Polityka, did not make clear what happened to the ZOMO.

[Raellus]

Big thanks to @Spartan-117 for sharing these photos that he took during his time in Poland. The riot van is a STAR 200.