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Old 07-28-2022, 10:26 PM   #1
Drop Bear
 
Join Date: May 2012
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What do folks think the IST world would look like today 30 years on from the original source book?

Due to the "Bolt Tech" Carbon pollution wouldn't be a thing.

due to them not playing nice China wouldn't be the worlds factory
Russia wouldn't be the Energy Tars of Europe again due to Bolt Tech

I think the US would have found their way around the "No National Super Teams" by in the mid 90's founding a national Disaster Relief Agency with a suspiciously high number of Former Military and Law Enforcement Supers, a move that would be followed by a lot of countries that signed the accords

perhaps as early as the late 90's but no later than the mid 2000's a string of African and West Asian (the Middle East) brush wars could of triggered WWIII, either by their own expansion or emboldening players in East Asia to have their go wile they think the West and the UN is busy elsewhere. provided some other Global Threat doesn't preempt it.

please have your say.
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Old 07-29-2022, 06:04 AM   #2
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I think there's a timeline for the 1990s on the net, where an increase in American nationalism makes the US spend money on their own fusion tech to break the UN's monopoly. And I think that that together with the attack on 9/11 2001 would cause the US to withdraw from the treaty. That makes for a much darker world where big elephants (US and China) are no longer members of the UN. Who replaces the US and China as permanent members?

Edit: Ha! Found it! http://accessdenied-rms.net/ist1990s.shtml (an IST timeline for the 1990s by M Schroeck).
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Old 07-29-2022, 06:46 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by Anders View Post
And I think that that together with the attack on 9/11 2001 would cause the US to withdraw from the treaty.
How much temporal inertia is in effect in this setting? The GURPS wiki indicates the point of divergence was all the way back in 1934 - that's a lot of time for the circumstances leading to the events of 9/11/2001 to change enough that said event never happened.
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Old 07-29-2022, 07:34 AM   #4
Drop Bear
 
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There would be some big missing events from out own history, no US Forces in Saudi Arabia because the 1st gulf war didn't happen due to the IST dealing with Iraq and Sadam, that means no 9/11 because AQ doesn't have the event that triggers it's rise.

no "World Factory China" and lower energy costs with improved automation will see the on-shoring of manufacturing to the Developed World, low skill low pay manufacturing jobs will disappear replaced with better paying "Craftsman" and Technical jobs in the developed world. less finical instability and continued rising standard of living with less international will see a more moderate US Political environment

I see a constant cycle of ethnic and religious violence throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Reforms and lower energy costs in post Soviet Russia may see "World Factory Russia" but they would not be as dominate as China is in our world due to resurgent first world manufacturing and competition from India and Vietnam. If we had Russia become the world factory when they tried to reforge the old soviet empire in the mid 20teens the UN could have turned off the lights and if there was on WWIII in the late 90's or 2K's there may have bean a short one in the mid 20teens.

with the Blitizen/Lighting Rod derived RPC and the Flare derived Fusion Techs by 1990 would have lessened Carbon Pollution and the resulting Climate Change.

No Gulf I means no stroung AQ, no 9/11, no War on Terror, no strongly coordinated Radical Islam and the Arab Spring may have brought about stable secular governments in north Africa and the Middle East along with a re-blossoming of a more moderate Islam.
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Old 07-29-2022, 03:49 PM   #5
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Over night I got to thinking, the US politics would look a lot different from the late 90's onward, assuming no WWIII or Extraterrestrial threat.

We still get Clinton in '92, some time late in his 2nd term there would be a War Scare, the Y2K election with no Global Warming threat would be between a Democratic Platform of Social Spending and International Aid Relations spending (in attempt to rebuild American Soft Power and stabilize world conflict) and a Republican platform of Defense Spending (to redevelop US Hard Power) Infrastructure & Industrial redevelopment (as one Republican would have said "We do pick Winners & Losses, but as long as the Finalists are all American we don't care who wins"), I see a moderate republican win in Y2K and an other war scare around the time of the '04 election sees a 2nd republican term. '08 the sub prime bubble is smaller and insulated by a still redeveloping American economy, but this alongside a socially regressive almost getting the republican nomination will see a democrat return to the white-house, we would see a rather "flat" two terms both economically and politically '16 would see a "Revitalize America" platform get the Republicans back in but socially regressive politicians in Congress would hamstring the president who would a failed primary challenge by someone from the fringe wing of his party. that and a split Republican party would return a milk toast Democrat in 2020.

2022 sees a slim (and weak coalition of) Democratic control of Congress opposed by a divided Republican party, a lukewarm (and likely floundering) Democrat in the White House a Conservative SCOTUS just as the world starts to heat up again. Republican leadership is about to self destruct and the democrats have a couple of more dynamic and slightly more progressive types milling around in the wings getting ready to primary or force aside an aging President Milk-toast in '24.
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Old 07-29-2022, 05:38 PM   #6
David Johnston2
 
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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
How much temporal inertia is in effect in this setting? The GURPS wiki indicates the point of divergence was all the way back in 1934 - that's a lot of time for the circumstances leading to the events of 9/11/2001 to change enough that said event never happened.
The inertia is pretty high. For example it still had a Challenger disaster despite a substantially higher tech base, the Exxon Valdez oil spill still happens even if was now the Texxon Valdes. Anwar Sadat was assassinated in the same year even though it was by bomb instead of by a group of men with guns. The truck bombing of American Marines in Lebanon still happens although it now produces a super. The Union Carbide leak still happens.

That being said, a lot of these things still happen but are dealt with by supers before they get too bad and it is getting increasingly divergent. Realistically IST's United States could deal with a set of coordinated plane hijackings far better than the real one. Of course who can say what happened to their history after the Reality Quake of 2001.
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Old 07-29-2022, 10:21 PM   #7
warellis
 
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Originally Posted by Drop Bear View Post
Over night I got to thinking, the US politics would look a lot different from the late 90's onward, assuming no WWIII or Extraterrestrial threat.

We still get Clinton in '92, some time late in his 2nd term there would be a War Scare, the Y2K election with no Global Warming threat would be between a Democratic Platform of Social Spending and International Aid Relations spending (in attempt to rebuild American Soft Power and stabilize world conflict) and a Republican platform of Defense Spending (to redevelop US Hard Power) Infrastructure & Industrial redevelopment (as one Republican would have said "We do pick Winners & Losses, but as long as the Finalists are all American we don't care who wins"), I see a moderate republican win in Y2K and an other war scare around the time of the '04 election sees a 2nd republican term. '08 the sub prime bubble is smaller and insulated by a still redeveloping American economy, but this alongside a socially regressive almost getting the republican nomination will see a democrat return to the white-house, we would see a rather "flat" two terms both economically and politically '16 would see a "Revitalize America" platform get the Republicans back in but socially regressive politicians in Congress would hamstring the president who would a failed primary challenge by someone from the fringe wing of his party. that and a split Republican party would return a milk toast Democrat in 2020.

2022 sees a slim (and weak coalition of) Democratic control of Congress opposed by a divided Republican party, a lukewarm (and likely floundering) Democrat in the White House a Conservative SCOTUS just as the world starts to heat up again. Republican leadership is about to self destruct and the democrats have a couple of more dynamic and slightly more progressive types milling around in the wings getting ready to primary or force aside an aging President Milk-toast in '24.
...Why do you lazily make it exactly the same as our time line when there are superheroes around!?
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Old 07-29-2022, 10:47 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drop Bear View Post
Over night I got to thinking, the US politics would look a lot different from the late 90's onward, assuming no WWIII or Extraterrestrial threat.

We still get Clinton in '92,.
Not possible. Either King wins re-election or a Republican beats him. Given how well the American economy is doing, the former is a more likely outcome But the odds are that King's successor will be a Republican, and if it isn't, it will be Dukakis, so Clinton misses the window in which he's a viable presidential candidate and so does Hillary Clinton.
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Old 07-29-2022, 11:23 PM   #9
Drop Bear
 
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with less climate change there would be no Gore insted the issues for the Dems would be Social Programs and International Relations and likely Bush II would have lost the nomination to a more moderate who had an economic vision to create jobs in the "New Economy" in Y2k after an almost GFC heading in to the '08 election instead of Obama the Dms go with a "President Boring" who gets things done moving America forward at a constant rate of yards (no major leaps forward just steady progress) for six years to see his legacy sabotaged by a hostile Congress in his last two years (it could have bean Biden/Obama instead of Obama/Biden). "President Vitality" who got in in '16 may not have had many of his own ideas trying to revisit the (Successful) economic agenda of the early 2000's and let his party Trolls in congress run the social agenda, with all the noise and bluster and the wheels threatening to come off society and the economy America voted in Milk-toast.

I can see one of Milk-toasts challengers being his Sectary for Meta-human Affairs, an interracial woman who had to leave the military when her latant powers emerged and worked in disaster management till her government contract was up, after a couple of years in the private sector she got elected to congress in '08 and the senate in '16, from her time in the House and Senate she has experience in Health, Education, Defense and Economic Redevelopment sub-committees.
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Old 07-30-2022, 07:44 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders View Post
I think there's a timeline for the 1990s on the net, where an increase in American nationalism makes the US spend money on their own fusion tech to break the UN's monopoly. And I think that that together with the attack on 9/11 2001 would cause the US to withdraw from the treaty. That makes for a much darker world where big elephants (US and China) are no longer members of the UN. Who replaces the US and China as permanent members?

Edit: Ha! Found it! http://accessdenied-rms.net/ist1990s.shtml (an IST timeline for the 1990s by M Schroeck).
I remember this update. There was actually an update to that somewhere which took the story through part of 2000. I remember I had a copy of it, but I can't find it anywhere. I vaguely recall that for some reason that the update was somehow on a server connected to Ohio State University. It had some out of left field cultural aspects, for example Rush Limbaugh had a show on CNN. It read like an AAR of a GURPS IST campaign.
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