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Old 11-07-2017, 08:40 AM   #101
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

Terrorism recruits from people who lack a reasonable alternative (in effect, it is a way for most people to give some meaning to their lives and/or deaths). If people can just gain everything that they need by colonizing another world, terrorist organizations are going to find recruitment very, very difficult. In addition, Homeline benefits from memetic and surveillance technologies liberated from other timelines, so I imagine that they minimize terrorism through memetic engineering and intelligence survillence (SEAL Team 6 can also use paratronics to hit terrorist camps from parallel worlds).
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Old 11-07-2017, 08:44 AM   #102
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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With all the foreign memes that come in all the time?
Exposure to foreign memes doesn't mean they'll necessarily all take hold. They'll have to compete in the marketplace of ideas for popularity or mindshare.
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Homeline's past is very similar to ours, and we have plenty of terrorism in our past.
As DJ2 said, it's been around for a while, but has only come more common since the end of the Cold War. I think Homeline diverges from our history in the 1990s? That seems to be when terrorism was temporarily waning (infograph).

But this isn't really a hill I'm going to die defending. It's there to serve as a justification to avoid terrorism in Homeline, but you can go with something else if you prefer.

But for the sake of argument, terrorist causes might not gain as much traction in an IW setting, or they might find other ways than bombing as being more effective vehicles for their message. Out-time plague releases or downtown dinosaur rampages might be more in vogue.
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Old 11-07-2017, 09:30 AM   #103
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
As DJ2 said, it's been around for a while, but has only come more common since the end of the Cold War.
It's been around, and unfortunately not uncommon, for much longer than that. It just hadn't turned into a big political issue in the West, and especially the United States, until then.

History of Terrorism (Wikipedia)

I believe the claim was that maybe nobody important seriously considers using terrorism to achieve political aims on Homeline. I think that claim presupposes that terrorism wasn't really a thing until the '90s, but that's not true. It might be true that terrorism is being seen as more and more effective in the post-divergence era, but that's not to say that it wasn't a common strategy before then.
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Old 11-07-2017, 10:11 AM   #104
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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We know that they have different limitations. Gate spells need to be tailored to the destination world, but they aren't bound by quantum levels.
This may be OT for this thread, but I'd love to see a citation for this. I've had a search and not come up with anything.

I seem to recall Rev PK strongly implying that he thinks gate magic, Jumper, etc., in an IW campaign should be limited by quantum levels.
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Old 11-07-2017, 10:49 AM   #105
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
I believe the claim was that maybe nobody important seriously considers using terrorism to achieve political aims on Homeline. I think that claim presupposes that terrorism wasn't really a thing until the '90s, but that's not true. It might be true that terrorism is being seen as more and more effective in the post-divergence era, but that's not to say that it wasn't a common strategy before then.
No, it was more a claim presupposing that Homeline was more divergent from OTL than it actually is. Since it's not, I went with a second face-saving claim that since terrorism in OTL has particularly kicked off since the 90's, maybe the opposite happened in Homeline.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
In addition, Homeline benefits from memetic and surveillance technologies liberated from other timelines, so I imagine that they minimize terrorism through memetic engineering and intelligence survillence (SEAL Team 6 can also use paratronics to hit terrorist camps from parallel worlds).
They also have precogs and fortune-telling magic, so until terrorists develop counters to those, they'll be at a disadvantage.
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Old 11-07-2017, 11:08 AM   #106
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
This may be OT for this thread, but I'd love to see a citation for this. I've had a search and not come up with anything.

I seem to recall Rev PK strongly implying that he thinks gate magic, Jumper, etc., in an IW campaign should be limited by quantum levels.
for world jumpers, the book actually discusses it. It increases the FP cost to jump between boundaries. It also gives limitation values for jumpers limited in how many quanta they can jump.

I had one GM in an infinite worlds like game who instead assigned penalties for jumping farther than normal. I think it worked out to be something like -5 to skill per quanta.
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Old 11-07-2017, 11:28 AM   #107
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
It's been around, and unfortunately not uncommon, for much longer than that. It just hadn't turned into a big political issue in the West, and especially the United States, until then.

History of Terrorism (Wikipedia)

I believe the claim was that maybe nobody important seriously considers using terrorism to achieve political aims on Homeline. I think that claim presupposes that terrorism wasn't really a thing until the '90s, but that's not true. It might be true that terrorism is being seen as more and more effective in the post-divergence era, but that's not to say that it wasn't a common strategy before then.
My emphasis was on "substantial" and "semi-competent" which I think narrows the field. What narrows it further is "wants a nuke". I mean seriously what would the IRA or the Red Brigade do with one even if they could get one? Terrorism was historically a tactic where the point was to wear down the other side with persistence while provoking over-reactions that build your support while undermining the support for the dominant party. There is no such thing as over reaction to nuking a city. And you will lose your own support if you nuke a city near your supporters. Terrorist groups are not nations. They can't use nukes as a deterrent the way a nation can. They can't just threaten with a nuke. They have to use it, and there's a reason why whole scale massacres weren't a part of terrorism until the 21st century. Nukes take whole scale massacre to a whole new level.
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Old 11-07-2017, 11:59 AM   #108
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Pretty much the only substantial semi-competent terrorist group was the PLO
The IRA is a terrorist organization either from 1922 or 1969 (for the Provisional IRA), depending on where you draw the line between guerrilla and terrorist. I can't really see how you can consider them significantly less competent or substantial than the PLO

I believe Hezbollah was also formed before the divergence point.
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Old 11-07-2017, 12:04 PM   #109
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
My emphasis was on "substantial" and "semi-competent" which I think narrows the field. What narrows it further is "wants a nuke". I mean seriously what would the IRA or the Red Brigade do with one even if they could get one?
I am not sure the PLO is any more likely to use a nuke, they can't nuke anything significant in Isreal without nuking themselves. All significant population targets in Isreal have substantial Arab minorities and you can't nuke the Temple Mount without destroying the Dome of the Rock. The IRA nuking London actually is slightly less fratricidal.

The IRA would almost certainly sell it, which I suspect the PLO might as well. Alternatively either group might try to use it to leverage legitimacy but that's risky.

In either case, they would be more likely to nuke Israeli or English interests outtime, than on Homeline.

Edit: Either one might be willing to use it on an Echo. I could see say the IRA nuking London in 1593, 1745, 1916, or 1922 or the PLO nuking Berlin in 1938 (bonus points because it won't be hard to shift suspicion to Isreal).

Last edited by sir_pudding; 11-07-2017 at 01:27 PM.
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Old 11-07-2017, 01:40 PM   #110
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Default Re: Centrum Light, Homeline Dark.

They could also sell the research and technology to nations in pre-1940s timelines. The technical capacity for nuclear weapons existed as early as the 1910s, it is just that no one thought of the military application of such weapons until WWII. Alternatively, they could go to post-1940s timelines and sell the technology to the equivalent of India, Pakistan, North Korea, etc. How many terrorists would really care if another Nazi Germany developed nukes as long as they got ten metric tons of gold in exchange?
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