[Query] Unacceptable Bait/Switch and Alternate MP Campaign?

[Kilgs]

If you would like to play in a forthcoming PBP game on Rpol.net of the Morrow Project using T2K rules, then maybe you shouldn’t read any further.

Question: Is this a total Bait/Switch and is it unacceptable? (Questions at end)

This combined plot stems from a number of different issues I’ve been working on with my MP game.

First, I’m using T2Kv2.2 with TNE skills and careers added in for good measure.
Second, I love alien invasion scenarios and have always figured T2K would make a good system for it.
Third, the whole time-travel thing and future technology is thin for me.
Fourth, I don’t want 150 years in the future but something a bit more recognizable to make jury-rigged tech more plausible. My opinion is that 150 years would be more than long enough for Earth to recover to a substantial techbase.
Fifth, plausible explanations for mutants, critters and so on.
Sixth, a plausible human victory scenario for an alien invasion.

So, mashing a few things together, I created the following plot:

The Morrow Project exists as normal except for the freezing begins in 2007-2009. Edward Morrow recruits and supplies the Project with the usual fusion plant stuff from the future plus a few other goodies. Everyone is told that they are going to rebuild after WWIII. Freeze as normal.

SPOILERS NOT KNOWN TO PLAYERS















-- SPOILER - highlight text to view --
Bruce Morrow is an alien. The Fusion Plant and other techno-goodies are contemporary technology for his race. Morrow knows that an alien generation ship is coming to Earth and likely to arrive sometime around 2000-2020. His goal is to rebuild the world after they arrive and fight back against them. He resides in Prime Base which, as planned, will remain active during the invasion. That way, he will be able to monitor the war above and determine when MP should awaken (estimated 5-10 years).

The aliens are based on the Hiver/Ithklur from TNE. Commanded by the Hivers, with military being Ithklur, the ship is the remnants of a rebel organization from their parent society. So they have no support to fall back on (distant alien empire or allies) and smaller numbers than actually needed to take the planet.

Morrow determines their approach his technology and freezes his people. He enters Prime Base. The aliens slip a biological weapon into Earth’s atmosphere without knowledge of our governments. This causes a killer plague that wipes out 60-80% of the entire Earth’s population over the course of 2 weeks time. It is not transmitted by infection but weaponized application so it does not spread beyond the initial attack. Some percentage of the population is immune. The plague causes individuals to suffer complete degradation of organ activity over a short period of time. The entire world goes crazy with the “blame game” and China decides to lob some ICBM’s our way. We respond in kind and there is a limited nuclear war.

(-For representation, the T2K CONUS strike map would be used indicating some nuke strikes but nothing approaching an actual nuclear exchange by the world powers.)
The aliens sit this part out. A bit perturbed that there were still survivors, and now there is environmental damage to their new “home.” A few stealth recons indicate that the world governments are completely disabled and civilization has simply fallen apart. The nuclear exchange was just an additional topping for the extinction event of the bio-plague. The death of nearly 4.5 billion people in the course of a couple weeks shuts everything down. Everything. Food production, oil, society and everything else falls apart. Disease and food shortages, mass unrest and all the other projected activities result in humanity being decimated yet again and degraded to low tech as everything falls apart.

Except for the cities nuked, the metropolitan areas of the world have become massive graveyards and, once disease has run its course and the living have fled, become glassine skeletons. Some start on fire and burn uncontrollably, others just sit empty of life, as if everyone just got up and left one day. The survivors have retreated to compounds, villages, caves etc.

The aliens mothership moves in and begins scouting expeditions. Since the population is small, the mothership plans on founding a limited number of colonies. In doing so, they detect the pulse signature of Prime Base and nuke it off the map. They also destroy any satellites in orbit.
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UNDECIDED OPTION
a) The space shuttle and Intl Space Station are ignored by the aliens as a satellite. They concoct an ambitious plan to take it out. Using the shuttle, they maneuver the station and debris into one massive chunk of material, get it into an orbital pattern and swing around the earth in a “kinetic kill” move at 20,000+km. The resulting attack sends the mothership reeling and it crashes into the Pacific near Australia. The aliens are bereft of much of their material and personnel making them more vulnerable.

b) The Mothership is still in orbit throughout the occupation or lands in the Pacific Ocean as a mobile HQ.
-
Since Prime was destroyed, and the satellite system they were originally counting on is gone, the MP teams are not awoken on time.

The colonization begins in earnest. The Hivers reproduce by dropping larvae off to go survive in the wilderness. Since this method can result in serious overpopulation, they tend to seed colonies with natural predators for their own young. So the Hivers begin to seed the continents with some crazy apex alien creatures that tend to disrupt the eco-system for awhile before it settles down. Even worse, the Ithklur love predators and hate zoos or other confinement. They also enjoy hunting so they release apex predators from their homeworld onto the planet. This results in some dangerous fauna running around with no natural obstacles to their reproduction as they dominate the landscape of depleted Earth critters.

The Hivers are also extremely curious, scientific-minded, and completely amoral. They utilize the Ithklur to fight their battles for them. Hivers tend to congregate in like-minded groups for particular pursuits (occupations, hobbies, interests) and these Nests become the basis for their society. So several Nests spring up in places all over the world, although these Nests are relatively small. The Ithklur reproduce more naturally and begin to grow in numbers. From an original population of a few thousand, the new owners of Earth now number in tens/hundreds of thousands in various locations. The majority being Ithklur with the small Nests managing the military forces.

The reconstruction by humans progresses as indicated in canon materials. Technology begins further decline as materials become scarce and can not be replaced. Since the cities are feared, many of them are not scavenged thoroughly by the survivors and civilization begins in small villages and farming communities.

There will have been human societies that have obtained WW2 level technology but the Hivers generally destroy these before they get too large or impressive. Near the actual Nests, Hivers have enslaved humans for labor, allied with small societies, and genetically tinker with the human genome to create better workers or warriors. Inevitably, some of these escape and begin to reproduce naturally. Some might even accuse the Ithklur of letting them loose to make for a better hunt! The Hiver Nests are near rare earth deposits or places that are of interest to their studies. They ignore most of humanity except for keeping an eye on certain civilizations through moles and such. There are some civilizations that have banded with the aliens or, unbeknownst to the humans, trade and maintain relations with their covert intermediaries.

In North America, there are only a couple Nests in isolated locations. One in South America. Most of them are in Australia (first populated area) and the vastness of Asia Major and Africa. There are stories of lights in the skies, communities disappearing, and so on but there is not enough communication for humans to put everything together. Frankly, the notion of aliens has left the collective consciousness… it’s not something 3rd and 4th generation survivors really can comprehend. They have enough issues trying to figure out what the heck happened to their civilization on its own.

CAMPAIGN STUFF
-The MP was organized along regional Combined Operations Group (building off the fine work of others here). The main game area will be the UP and Midwest. There are no Nests nearby or in the Midwest.
-Krell is either a former MP guy or someone who figured out that Morrow was an alien. When the attacks came, he figured Morrow was in league with the aliens and declared them archenemies. The Krell contingent may not even have an Empire. They may be primarily resistance fighters with a limited domain but know about the aliens. The organization is not as large or sophisticated as it is run by later generations but they know about the aliens, fight against them, and hate MP for being in league with them. The idea is that Krell is the extremist-anti-alien group, the Sheriff Constantino, of the day. They will be involved in serfdom, slavery and other unsightly things to help them stay rich in resources and continue the fight against the aliens.
-Several large societies exist (Anishinabe Nation, Thunder Bay, Kentucky Free States and so on). Their technology is getting better but still hampered in high-tech applications. But, in those communities, weaponry has progressed to 1880’s, WW1 or 2 standards. Add in the large amount of scavenged materials available, there is lots of hardware still around although retrofitted etc. So vehicles will be a bit more common.
-The Recon Team is activated, accidentally, by a lightning strike on their hidden comms array.
-They do their usual Recon thing for 90 days and no contact with Prime. They either start rebuilding or set about learning about the rest of the MP. Then they get around to waking up the other teams through various means. (Maybe Damocles or something else…)
-Anyone who provides clear evidence of creating advanced technology is targeted by the Hivers if it’s pretty obvious but the point is that the aliens are not present during the first arc. Only their crazy wildlife, mutants and so on.
-Second arc starts with recon into more distant areas or they learn that something is abducting humans, destroying communities etc. It all depends on how fast they move getting the COG together, or reconoittering things… it would be fairly open-ended and dependent on how long the players wanted to keep playing it.

GAME STUFF
-The choice for Hivers/Ithklur is that they are pretty convenient and I know a lot about them. They work well but will not be exactly the same as from TNE. More amoral/sociopathic/NaziScientist.
-Advanced technology is scraped directly from TNE materials. No need to wing it.
-Creatures would be the same.
-Solves the technology and mutation thing.

-- END OF SPOILER --
CONCERNS

1) Am I diluting the premise of MP by adding aliens? Part of me likes the reconstruction part of the Project and just dealing with the human aspect but the other part likes the idea of a plausible source for devastation, technology and alien mutant critters running around. But if the focus of the players is all about building dams, fighting off marauders and so on, then I bait/switch to organizing a human resistance against aliens I’m concerned it will dilute the game.

2) Would people prefer to go it alone by not having the COG available? It’s not as much of a struggle to rebuild when you have the resources of a COG to help with things. Science and Medical teams.

3) By making the technology base a bit higher, with more vehicles, resources and 1900-1930’s weaponry, does that dilute the “rebuild” goal? I originally had some communities with electricity and foundries, gearing up for conquest or just subsistence tech, but I started to worry that with all that tech the MP does not have near as much of a pivotal role. Thoughts?

4) Am I pulling a huge Bait/Switch? I’m not planning on doing it right away, and maybe never depending on the campaign run, but am worried about it.

[mikeo80]

Kilgs, Interesting concept. I DID read the spoilers. I would still like to participate.

I would suggest some possible thoughts. Use as you see fit.

Air Force One lifts off from Washington, DC as the plague starts. No carriers on board. As AFO orbits the country trying to control whatever is left of US Military, the Secretary of Defense brings up two things unknown to POTUS.

1) Bruce was preceded by a crash of a "recon" alien craft. The resulting study of the craft brings about "Area 51". There are still surviving scientists working to understand what the tech can and can not do.

2) Sec Def has commo access codes to TMP. Bruce was worried about possible failure of Prime Base. Hence a VERY few highly placed govt officials know what TMP is. POTUS was just sworn in few days before attack. Had not received classified reports on TMP.

Just my $0.02!

Mike

[Matt W]

The "alien invasion" trope has been done so many times. If you're using the Hivers, why not go with Traveller's "we're here to help"? Say that the Hivers intervened during a Nuclear War, or ecological collapse, or whatever

Of course, they have ulterior motives...

[robj3]

Kilgs,

Made some comments about plot points over at the general Yahoo group.
Plague's onset is too fast; using the shuttle/ISS as a kinetic kill missile makes no sense (using ICBM/SLBM fleets and the Kessler syndrome to deny near Earth space to the intruder is a better option); introducing trophy rather than agricultural animals into the ecosphere requires some weird cultural justifications (space on a starship is precious).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Mike o80:

Air Force One lifts off from Washington, DC as the plague starts. No carriers on board.

Kilgs specified that

It is not transmitted by infection but weaponized application so it does not spread beyond the initial attack.

so there can be no carriers in the strict sense. Decontamination precautions would have been applied before the plane lifted off (everyone changes clothing into something more biohazardy).

Riffing off MattW's comment,
Perhaps first contact went well. Then some disgruntled separatist movement (human or alien) started a terrorist campaign which spiraled out of control.

So there's enough time for lots of alien infrastructure to be built on the planet, plenty of imported exotic flora and flora and you can be a bit more discerning with WMD targets.