Need to Know Basis: The PCs

[natehale1971]

Originally Posted by M-Type

As the title might suggest, when the players are starting out in (v1) Escape from Kalisz, what information would they know? They'd know about the Summer 2000 push, because they just lived that. In Black Madonna it mentions the chance of some PCs being veterans of the Battle of Czestochowa, but I'm talking in a larger scale.

What would they know about CONUS, the war, the 'big picture'. I would hope they knew CONUS got nuked, but then it hit me that it'd be a bit of a downer for morale. Or it could make them fight harder...

It'd be something else when they finally pull into Norfolk and all they're greeted by is ruins and a pall of smoke hanging over the continent. Where'd the US of A go?

How have you spun this in your games?

In our game we had alot of things that the PCs knew or didn't due to their own experences...

Such as a member of our group who grew up on a farm, who along with three of his brothers all joined up when the war started... his mother wrote him letters non-stop and informed him ofthe CivGov seizure of their farm in the aftermath of the nuclear exchanges.

Another member of the group was a believer that the US had become a facist state where relious minoirites like him were being rounded up (he was a very vocal athiest), and that the letters saying that the farm had been seized and it was all just MilGov propaganda. of course the guy was an officer who felt his rank gave him the ability to do what ever he wanted, inculding making fun of and treatig anyone who believed in God (like the farm kid) really badly. The other PCs wanted to frag the asshat, but the farm kid kept them from doing it...

it's all up to what the character's own person background would have them know. be it family letters from home, or their own personal biases about what is happening back at home. did they have regular letters that kept them updated on the homefront? then they would know alot about what was happening back stateside until the mail service stopped.

are they someone who feels like a slighted miniority? then they have their worse nightmares going on back home...