10-10-2011, 07:32 PM | #51 |
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Silicon Valley
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
And here's a more ambitious scenario of how the crises approaching as the clock counts down at the end of Bob Schroeck's IST 1990's timeline might play out:
North Korea invades South Korea. They enjoy a day or two of modest advances, and do an outrageous amount of damage to Seoul, which really is in artillery range of North Korea. However... The Chinese push to take over Hong Kong fails as Cantonese-speaking units first refuse orders to attack, and then mutiny. Chinese units supporting North Korea are withdrawn and rushed south as uprisings spread through the Cantonese-speaking provinces of the south, with army units already stationed there either falling apart from desertion or joining the rebels. Instead of a military invasion, Hong Kong is flooded with refugees. US and South Korean forces push back the North Koreans. US forces stop before crossing the northern DMZ line, but the South Korean army pushes further until Seoul is out of artillery range. A cease-fire takes effect, but, as usual, North Korean rhetoric only gets harsher, and fighting flares up again. The cycle repeats: cease-fire, refusal to negotiate, fighting, cease-fire again. Each cycle ends with South Korean forces further north. By the end of May, Pyongyang is in range of South Korean artillery, although the North Korean capital isn't bombarded, yet. By now several nations have recognized the South China Federation. When the latest Fearless Leader flies to Beijing on June 1, he is "advised" to return to his country immediately. He does, and plays his final cards, his nukes. Only one of his missiles actually hits its target and the warhead fails to explode, but a suicide team blows up Tokyo Disneyland on June 3. Beijing issues a statement of sympathy for the people of Japan on June 4, and accepts the same Fearless Leader as a refugee on the same day. Pyongyang falls on June 7 after three days of fighting in the city between North Korean army and police units. On June 21, Beijing announces that the commander of the Peoples Army has died from a sudden stroke. His funeral is given little coverage, with no foreign reporters allowed "at the wishes of his family." Several other formerly prominent figures in Beijing's top leadership vanish from view. The next day Vietnam recognizes the South China Federation. Beijing immediately severs diplomatic relations with Vietnam. On July 4, President Buchanan makes a surprise address to the nation from the replica Independence Hall at Disneyworld near Orlando, Florida. His speech is cut off. A hydrogen bomb estimated to have a yield of 25 MT annihilates him and everyone and everything else for miles around. An email sent to a secret White House address arrives three seconds before the detonation claiming credit for the Deadly Dozen. There have been no confirmed sightings of the Deadly Dozen since. The email cites US imperialism in Korea. Some truths that might be out there:
Last edited by oldgringo2001; 10-11-2011 at 12:09 PM. Reason: Additional material |
10-10-2011, 09:14 PM | #52 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Edmonton, AB
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
... dayammmm.
If you haven't already shown this to Bob, you really should. It's brilliantly evil. |
10-11-2011, 12:12 PM | #53 |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
I've shown it to Bob - see this thread on his forums.
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Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
10-12-2011, 11:38 AM | #54 |
Forum Pervert
(If you have to ask . . .) Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Somewhere high up.
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
Oldgringo2001, those are very interesting, I may incorporate them into my existing IST game. My OneNote folder with my IST game is stored here.
My game is running in 2011, and we already would have some of those answers, but that would be interesting. Thanks for pointing this out on Bob’s board, Rob, I’ve been really busy and haven’t had a chance to really scour either one. |
10-12-2011, 01:05 PM | #55 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
I have played in and enjoyed the IST setting, but I had to ignore the timeline because some of it made no sense to me. Namely, the fact that one of the signature events that lead to International Super Teams and the ascendancy of the UN involved the UN Security Council voting in a way that was in direct opposition to the interests of the nations that made up the Security Council. So, it would be hard for me to extrapolate the timeline without wanting to make changes to what's already been set down, but...
It might be interesting if terror organizations saw supers as targets for attacks. They would probably try to recruit/create supers of their own, but they might also make conventional (non-super-powered) attacks on individual supers who are in the public eye. Given the increased authority of the UN and the genre's tendancy to look to super-powered authority figures to fix people's problems for them, you'd probably see some central authority trying to take control of the nation's economies in order to combat this global recession -- which might be playing into the hands of a Lex Luthor/Ozymandias sort of villain. |
10-13-2011, 07:04 AM | #56 | |
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Silicon Valley
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
Quote:
If I may blow some philosophical smoke, real history is just chock-full of examples where people seemed to act in not only unexpected ways, but ways that seem now to be obviously against their own interests. One of Barbara Tuchman's Very Thick Books, The March of Folly, details in parallel some splendid examples. The real-world U.N. itself continues to provide some splendid examples. Why does it exist at all? I think the most fundamental answer is that FDR really wanted it, Stalin let him have it, and Churchill couldn't stop FDR and knew it. The organization of the U.N. looks a lot like the organization of the New Deal to me: Lots and lots of agencies with theoretically broad powers that cancel out because they overlap. Sounds a lot like the American government, doesn't it? And in some ways, like Hitler's government, whose ever-changing organization charts look very much like original Illuminati games with more and more optional decks in play. HISTORY IS BUNK --Henry Ford Well, not really; Ford himself built a sort of proto-Disneyland celebrating the Good Old Days As They Should Have Been. Ford's assertion really means that the history you learn in school, and the history people cite when they want to prove this or that point, ain't necessarily so. The idea of objective history itself is exactly as real as the idea of a perfect sphere: Both are ideal forms which probably never occur in nature and, if they did, could never be proven to have occurred. THE BECKET EFFECT Why would U.N. delegates act in a way that their governments wouldn't want them too? Well, why did Thomas Becket, once the most reliable lackey Henry Plantagenet could ask for, become a thorn in his side after Hank II got him that gig as Archbishop of Canterbury? How about the discovery of real power to disagree with the master? How about the tendency of human beings to identify more and more with the people they see the most of? THE GODS AMONG US IST is a world of Supers, and maybe the really important Supers are the ones who don't don tights and chase fame, glory, and merchandising deals. One of the most interesting supers in Mixed Doubles is a guy no one living knows is a super, a U.S. Congressman with Precognition. With this power, he has little trouble being on the right side of any issue, right being whichever side will get him more votes, or keep him from losing the least votes. He has potential for being an incredibly useful lever to warp the flow of history to the "proper" channel, and since he keeps his power secret, the GM is perfectly justified if he or she never reveals his nature. Or her nature, if he gets a sex change. Heck, why not throw in a real god(dess) or three? Shapechanging gods taking human guise are all over the place in all sorts of mythologies (Odin, Loki, Coyote, Krishna, Madame Pele), as are heroes being promoted to gods (Imhotep the architect, Herakles/Hercules, Quetzalcoatl.) Gods as superheroes are part of the Supers trope anyway. Dust off those In Nomine books for more guidance on divine string-pulling. Last edited by oldgringo2001; 10-13-2011 at 07:13 AM. |
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06-07-2013, 07:22 AM | #57 |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
(blows dust off thread)
Those who are hoping for an updated GURPS I.S.T. might be interested in this thread on Robert M. Schroeck's forums, specifically posts 13 and 16. Sometimes all it takes is a deadline, no matter how specious the deadline might be... Please note that this is not a official announcement of anything... but hopes may now be raised.
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Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
06-07-2013, 08:51 AM | #58 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
Quote:
I never ran the setting but bought all the books for it and will do so with any that come out. It was a good setting, I just prefer to make my own.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
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06-07-2013, 10:31 AM | #59 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Updating GURPS IST
Quote:
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international super teams |
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