Updating GURPS IST

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Some people like that sort of game, though.

And can be done with out ruining an existing setting for people... hell every point you made can be filled by playing many of Marvel's timelines

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

And can be done with out ruining an existing setting for people... hell every point you made can be filled by playing many of Marvel's timelines

An alternate world doesn't ruin the original world; it merely shows a parallel world. If a GM doesn't like the alternate, she's free to ignore it.

I wouldn't like this suggestion if if replaced GURPS I.S.T., but that isn't what this does. This suggestion creates a new I.S.T. while leaving the canonical I.S.T. as it is.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by robkelk

I like that. Would you mind if I copied it to Bob's forums, giving you attribution?

Go right ahead.

I've GM'ed this scenario - only with a Marvel/DC crossover, not IST - and the main thing to watch out for are players that see "one guy conquered the world and is no longer around" and don't see "left the infrastructure intact." Such players tend to look at this as a "Days of Futures Past" scenario, which it really isn't. It's just plot-device.

It's like Ivan Ooze said, "Taking over the world is one thing. Finding good help to run it for you; that's the killer." ;)

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

I mean you Don't Disband the CIA just because one Operative goes Rogue... what you do is simply make it harder for it to be repeated

The problem with the CIA analogy is that the IST organization depends upon the existence of superhumans. Remove the superhumans, there's no need for the IST to be in place. And once that's done, what do you do when they re-appear?

Plus, what was the major arguement in the UN for the creation of the ISTs anyway? And will circumstances be the same this time around, or do they want to take a hands-off approach and debate things for a few years before acting (like the real UN tends to do).

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

The problem with the CIA analogy is that the IST organization depends upon the existence of superhumans. Remove the superhumans, there's no need for the IST to be in place. And once that's done, what do you do when they re-appear?

Plus, what was the major arguement in the UN for the creation of the ISTs anyway? And will circumstances be the same this time around, or do they want to take a hands-off approach and debate things for a few years before acting (like the real UN tends to do).

Except you can't take the hands off approach, because one of the function of IST was to take down Super Villains... Sure there not much need for IST during the 10 year absence, though you almost guaranteed to talked about what went wrong. But as soon as the start show up against you don't have time to debate, you need people cable of dealing with the human element of greed and bulling that going to show up in the metahuman popular just like the rest of humanity, and you alread have a blue brint the most works and will work long enough to put in the needed chnages but will function in the mean time.

Just becuase Cops and Spy can go bad doesn't change your need for them

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

The problem with the CIA analogy is that the IST organization depends upon the existence of superhumans. Remove the superhumans, there's no need for the IST to be in place. And once that's done, what do you do when they re-appear?
.

There might not be a need for IST as such, but having become an actual power in the world, the U.N. would see a need for some kind of force of operatives. Once given power, an organization tends to resist being stripped of it.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by robkelk

J. Hunter Johnson isn't Robert M. Schroeck... but it's your game and you get to pick and choose what you want in it.

Technically, it's not Schroeck's world any more either, but, updates should either work with the existing materials or justify any and all exclusions. This update did neither. But I'm sure five minutes from now, this Q2 Supers world will have another rewrite of it's history.

[Bathawk]

First of all, IST is near and dear to me, it was the first RPG book I ever bought (I was such a geek at age 14, my parents "grounded" me by taking my comic books away, IST was a way I got around it)

In any case without IST I would never have gotten into RPG's

as for 9/11 I do think it would be slightly underplayed in the IST world, after all, wasn't Jerusalum nuked twice in that world?

9/11 could still happen, but doubt it would be with multiple highjacked airplanes. After the first building is destroyed, you would easily have a couple hundred superhumans mobilizing. As such any 9/11 attack woul ave to be orchestrated by metahumans themselves

Beyond that, with the capture of Saddam Hussien. I doubt the UN would vacae the mideast so quickly, in fact they probably would get to comfy in that region, ticking off more than enough fundamentalist groups to want to launch an attack, if anything the UN building in NYC would be a target more than the WTC

[oldgringo2001]

Okay, here's a modest proposal set just on the other side of The Wall, with no this-world political issues I can think of:

At 3:00 AM, EST, on January 1, 2000, a 1 kT nuke seems to destroy the Statue of Liberty. However, in the next three weeks, every person known to have been on the island and a few who were not turn up at various locations with no memory from various intervals before the explosion to the time they woke up in a new place. Various groups and individuals claim credit or deny blame, sometimes both, but as of 2004 the perpetrator is still a mystery, at least officially. The bomb wasn't "clean," but it wasn't as dirty as the typical nukes used by ISTs PLO.

[robkelk]

Intriguing... That does give the GM a wide latitude to decide What's Going On.