Olefin's Twilight 2000 Universe thread

[RN7]

Originally Posted by Olefin

And frankly the whole idea of New America was offensive to me and the people I played with. I have read and heard about a lot of stuff from various militia organizations but nothing as warped as New America. Could there be a way out militia group that could have believed that in one isolated area? Sure. But a mass of people all over the US - no that is just not possible. Not unless suddenly you have a huge outbreak of mental illness to make that many people believe that warped an idea as it was portrayed. So breakaways from the US and areas in rebellion against the central government - sure. Heck I would totally expect that - but New America? No that I dont. So how does that carry over to my universe?

New America doesnt exist as a nationwide organization. What sprang up in the Ozarks and in Florida in my universe are seperate groups, with seperate agendas, but both in opposition to both MilGov and CivGov, with the Ozarks group being flavored with ties to white supremacy and the Klan and the Florida group being tied more to criminal families who joined together with militia groups to seize power.

New America seems very far fetched indeed. Right wing militias and white supremist warlords in rural areas are certainly believable, but a nationwide conspiracy emerging after the nuclear strike and taking power is just not that believable. Also the ethnic undesirable element is also very negelected in T2K outside of the Seminoles in Florida and something about pro-Mexican gangs in California and a black dominated super gang fighting the mayor in New York. In the Los Angeles module the gangs that appear are just hilariously bad.

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by RN7

New America seems very far fetched indeed. Right wing militias and white supremist warlords in rural areas are certainly believable, but a nationwide conspiracy emerging after the nuclear strike and taking power is just not that believable. Also the ethnic undesirable element is also very negelected in T2K outside of the Seminoles in Florida and something about pro-Mexican gangs in California and a black dominated super gang fighting the mayor in New York. In the Los Angeles module the gangs that appear are just hilariously bad.

Depends how you view New America, if you see it as a group that pulls together elements already in place it seems more believable, the removal of Hughes seems to justify that view.

As to support, in the conditions in HW (I know that is contentious), how many people will just be concerned with surviving and worry about the morality later?

I like the idea of having a NA cell act sensibly and play down the ethnic part. How would the group react to a town where NA is in power but is the only reasonably civilized force in the area? Careful use of NA can give the group some tough moral choices.

[James Langham]

Also while many things in TW2000 are far fetched, let's consider the following from RL history:

* 1940 the Royal Navy issue and USE cutlasses in a boarding action in Norway.

* Syria sides with the US in 1990 over Kuwait and provides troops

* Israel supplied arms to Iran to use against Iraq

* Germany copies the Sten Gun in WW2 down to the British proof marks even though they have thousands of genuine versions and a production line of their own improved version

* The Crusaders reach the Holy Land and their first action is to attack their one Arab ally

* After World War Two the Soviets allow Austria to have democratic elections

* In 1982, the British sail half way around the world to take back a series of islands from Argentina

* After WW2 America cuts back it's army so badly that it does not have enough tanks to fight in Korea without pulling mothballed ones from storage

* The Soviets disguise their missiles on Cuba with a different type of tree than that grown on the island

* The Soviets shoot down KAL-007

* Matthias Rust flies a light aircraft to Red Square

* The Berlin Wall comes down without a war

If I wrote many of these into my alternative history I would be laughed at...

[Greylond]

The main problem that I have with NA is that it was supposedly a totally secret society that was totally unknown by the Federal Government.

The only other alternative is that it was a known cult, like Scientology or one of the other survivalist cults/groups known to have been popular in the '80s...

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I could recast New America as a Florida-only force, with elements throughout the southeast, but nothing like the nation-spanning insurgent "government" that springs up in T2k.

I would rather say that NA is, as I mentioned, loose in FL but the rest of the groups are just as disorganized as anything else is in the states - white separatists through the west-northwest (Montana, Idaho), Amerind supremacists in the Dakotas and possibly Kansas, gangs in NYC and the ruins of LA, with small pockets of all of those types throughout the nation.

I'm not sure how badly damaged Clearwater is/was after the MacDill AFB groundburst but I could see ol' Dave Miscavige stuck in the Ft. Harrison Hotel, blaring out proclamations to the city over a PA system, the "church" capturing survivors, "auditing" them and immediately forcing them on the "RPF" to rebuild the Scientology compound and scavenge fuel for the generators, and eventually scrape enough together to gas up the Apollo so he and the rest of the SeaOrg can try to make it to South America or around the horn to the west coast to the survival bunkers they've dug all over Hemet, CA.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

On the almost total destruction of the USN, I will say this: thanks to the Walker's treachery, the Soviets knew dangerous amounts of stuff about our Navy. Had there been a non-Nuclear (well, not immediately nuclear) shooting war we'd have been in for some horrible surprises vis-a-vis their defenses versus our technology. It isn't that they were technologically superior: they weren't. It's just that they knew so much about ours thanks to those pigs that they could have really crippled us out of the gate. That's one thing that I think needs to be taken into consideration.

We just didn't know until the KGB threw open their archives how badly we'd been compromised.

[HorseSoldier]

Couple thoughts on the game setting and how it interacts with the real world.

1) Twilight 2000 is predicated on the idea that the Soviets/Warsaw Pact were every bit as bad a threat as we believed they were in the depths of the Reagan-era Cold War.

So on issues like whether or not the real world Soviet Navy ever tracked an Ohio class boomer -- irrelevant. Apparently in the T2K universe they could, just like USN intelligence and planners were terrified that they could if the balloon went up.

2) Same sort of thing with New America -- ultra-Right Wing politics and nuke war survivalism were both on the map, in terms of public perception, in the 1980s. "New America" is just GDW repackaging William Pierce (aka author of the Turner Diaries) and his National Alliance political party, with a lot more money and success appealing to people than it enjoyed in real life.

Plausible? In a universe where Mexico can pull of the logistics of power projection outside its own borders and the Soviets can somehow drive armor/mech units from Nome to Fairbanks in Alaska -- we're way through the looking glass.

Of course, for campaign play, it's all down to what appeals/makes sense to the gaming group.

The GDW Drought is another one of them -- honestly it works for me on the (pseudo) scientific side of things that popping a bunch of nukes could result in unexpected climate outcomes. On the other hand, I think it dramatically has some problems -- basically I think it has some unsatisfying storytelling elements to follow the narrative arc from being dumped in the middle of Europe post-WWIII nuke, struggling all the way back to the US of A, only to find out that things aren't just bad, but they're about to get annihilated to a whole new degree.