Updating GURPS IST

[oldgringo2001]

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 Chinese units supporting North Korea are withdrawn and rushed south as uprisings spread through the Cantonese-speaking provinces of the south, with army units already stationed there either falling apart from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:

• North Korea's Fearless Leader gave the Deadly Dozen the nuke. Well he might if he had one, but 25MT is a huge nuke, much bigger and more sophisticated than we have been led to believe the North Korea of the IST or our own world is capable of making.
• China, or some faction or faction leader, organized the strike. China is more likely to have a big bomb somewhere, but why would any Chinese leader waste such a big bomb to take out a theme park, even if the President of the United States was in it?
• Dr. Radiation did it. He knows exactly how to build a 25MT bomb because he's done it before, and he's had four and a half decades to improve the design. But why? If his buddy Castro wanted to bomb Florida at all, why not take out Miami and all those die-hard Cuban-Americans who just won't quit making trouble for him?
• The Deadly Dozen did it on their own. Voltmaster wants to start another world war, and while he has no special nuclear expertise, he knows where to find it and has great organizational and leadership skills—and lots and lots of money. Electra and her lover really want to destroy America's government and maybe America, period; they could plan and carry out a suicide mission, and conceal its nature from the others except Voltmaster.
• The Deadly Dozen had nothing to do with it. Entirely possible and plausible; no witnesses for miles and no records of recent activity in central Florida. Maybe the mastermind took them out first, or afterward. Maybe some are still on the run. Or maybe the group just quit, either the supervillain life altogether, or their identities in and as members of the Deadly Dozen. Voltmaster certainly has lots of experience in preparing new identities, and it would be about time to take on a plausibly younger persona anyway.
• Was the real President really at Disney World? There must be quite a lot of Supers with Morph power by now, and odds are at least one-quarter of them were born in China. Or it could have been CGI or a realistic robot. The real Disney Corp possesses the best in both technologies, and the IST versions will be better. Even if Buchanan was really there, the broadcast might not have really been live.
• The President was really kidnapped! Rumors and headlines in the Midnight Sun will appear about a nanosecond after the broadcast stops and keep multiplying. But maybe one of these stories is true, at least in part. Just how valuable would be a President of the United States? And what happened to the nuclear codes carried by a guy who's never more than a few yards from the President? We changed them right away...didn't we?

[Davies]

... dayammmm.

If you haven't already shown this to Bob, you really should. It's brilliantly evil.

[robkelk]

I've shown it to Bob - see this thread on his forums.

[Mark Skarr]

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.

[martin_rook]

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.

[oldgringo2001]

Originally Posted by martin_rook

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.

Besides being a really fun way to twist the plot, Reality Quakes are really just a reinforcement of the Fundamental Rule of GURPS: THE GM IS GOD(DESS). So, change "history" without fear or hesitation. IT'S ONLY A GAME.

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.

[robkelk]

(blows dust off thread)

Originally Posted by Kromm

Unless, of course, Bob approaches e23 about a 4e update.

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.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by robkelk

(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.

Sweet.
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.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by oldgringo2001

[*]The Deadly Dozen did it on their own. Voltmaster wants to start another world war, and while he has no special nuclear expertise, he knows where to find it and has great organizational and leadership skills—and lots and lots of money. Electra and her lover really want to destroy America's government and maybe America, period; they could plan and carry out a suicide mission, and conceal its nature from the others except Voltmaster.]

If he wanted another world war he wouldn't claim credit.

[The Benj]

Hopes: raised. :)
I'm also in the DIY camp, but I loved reading the original IST and it certainly helped me shape my ideas for my own realistic supers setting.