New Reality Seeds

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I don't think you set up a game here as much as it is scenery and a possible location for an adventure in a series of adventure. It might be a great place for a centrum agent to hide out behind enemy lines. Or to recruit a sympathizer.

I'd certainly not put these folks in the same town. I probably wouldn't give them their own world. If I was running miracle workers (you know they did the relocation), I'd stick them as one more settlement on a refuges world, probably among folks who spoke their language and hope for assimilation.

Another gaming idea is making the PC's do the rescuing. They have to find the nuclear shelter and get highly arrogant politicos out of it without getting shot. There are a variety of reasons to run rescue missions: perhaps you want to replace a high ranking USSR official on an alternate and need a clone who thinks of you as a benefactor. Perhaps PR demands that you save Jimmy Carter.

The empty world also has potential for those seeking to go looting. Or those stopping them. Or those policing them and rescuing the idiots who get stuck there.

Now, any of those ideas are good. :)

[fchase8]

I had an idea very similar to this Ragnarok (even had the same name, but that is a very good name for an apocalyptic world). It came from the mention in GURPS of Miracle Workers transporting wholesale the Arctic & Antarctic survivors of a global thermonuclear war.

In mine (in a nutshell), Mao died early, China remained allied with the U.S.S.R., Nixon failed in Vietnam, McGovern failed in the withdrawal, Reagan was elected in 1976, everyone geared up for WWIII (including building polar refuges), and it happened in 1984.

There were eight remaining communities, and they were all moved to different spots on a new, uninhabited world: 'Terranova'. Alaskan refugees to 'New California', Arctic to 'New America' (Virginia), Greenlander (Western European) to 'Nova Europa' (Rhine), West Siberian to 'Nov Rus' (Ukraine), East Siberian (Chinese) to 'New China' (Yangtze River), post-South American to 'Nova Parana', post-apartheid South African to 'New Africa' (South Africa), and post-ANZAC to 'New Australia'. Now all the communities are a mix of high-tech and low-, dependent on Miracle Workers/Infinity/Homeline, but also conflict with their paternalistic saviors.

It all happened on Quantum 4, as Miracle Workers' first big move. But the world also has low-tech survivors from other worlds in Africa and other parts of Asia.


If Miracle Workers/Infinity is moving survivors to a new world, they're gonna keep the communities separate.

The survivors would be separate on Ragnarok, so there would be no reason to put them together - especially with a whole new planet to inhabit.


Such an idea of 'everyone put together' could maybe happen if it was some sort of disease that caused the end of the world. Infinity would save the inhabitants (maybe through some sort of automated parachronics), but would want them restricted to one place on even an uninhabited world (probably an island).

[PTTG]

Ragnarok is actually one of the Hell Parallels mentioned on B528. It just occurred to me that there would probably be some serious tensions going on, and not a lot of good ways to handle it.

Splitting the two factions will only give them both time to fester. It may be better to let the two groups of survivors get to know each other while they're too weak to fight, and force them to cooperate to survive. Later, when they're stronger, hopefully they'll have a better shot at not destroying each other.

[patchwork]

Dunno how much other people like cloak and dagger stuff back on Homeline's UN, but...I would have fun giving my players an aneurysm by making them deal with this Ragnarok and Comunite at the same time. To refresh the memory, Comunite is one of Homeline's intentional colonies on empty worldlines, nominally sponsored by France, where 50,000 Homeline Communists (mostly Trotskyites) have been handed a world to set up and create their worker's paradise over there. And...it's going about as well as anyone but smurf expects 50,000 Trotskyites in one place to go.

So...Comunite offers to take in Ragnarok's good comrades. Everyone will have an opinion, and many will want to express that opinion with explosive devices. Infinity notes that 20k people are enough to change the balance of political opinion in Comunite, and are terrified of the Dr. Strangelove potential these guys would have with TL8+ Homeline colonial equipment and the legal right to transit to Homeline France. Some of them think that ceding the world to the capitalists is unthinkable cowardice, no retreat! Opinion is not going to be unified among the Rags first-worlders or Rags second-worlders. And telling Comunite that it isn't allowed to grant those people asylum (especially when the libertarian one, Leonidas is it? can and does let in anyone) will go...badly too. What's a diplomat to do here?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Ragnarok is actually one of the Hell Parallels mentioned on B528. It just occurred to me that there would probably be some serious tensions going on, and not a lot of good ways to handle it.

Splitting the two factions will only give them both time to fester. It may be better to let the two groups of survivors get to know each other while they're too weak to fight, and force them to cooperate to survive. Later, when they're stronger, hopefully they'll have a better shot at not destroying each other.

Indeed. Actually, I'd have thought that a better bet would be to give them two different worlds. There isn't a terrible shortage of timelines, and whatever you do, you've got two or more communities who are going to develop a historical tradition of blaming each other for the deaths of billions. Perhaps Miracle Workers had a tight budget, but still.

Actually, there are known colony worlds with two or more very distinct populations - Bhuvarlok/Tecumseh, for example. You do have whole uninhabited planets to play with. So, just find a couple of worlds where the chartering government will hand back a county-sized area in a fertile but not overly-valuable area distant from their own capital, and agree to keep a benevolent eye in case of emergencies, and put the survivors there. (The cost to the government would be small, and the PR boost would be nice.) Accept that a few decades down the line, the survivor colony will need to make friends with their neighbours, and plan accordingly. There's still scope for problems, but it's surely safer than expecting 10,000 traumatised war survivors to build a new world from scratch on their own.

[RogerWilco]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

There's still scope for problems, but it's surely safer than expecting 10,000 traumatised war survivors to build a new world from scratch on their own.

I would think that those 10,000 survivors would have a problematic list of skills to do exactly that. It would probably be politicians and generals, not farmers and carpenters. And quite a few of advanced age.

[PTTG]

A soviet victory in WWII. Germany doesn't declare war on the US following a more devastating Pearl Harbor in which Japan destroyed fewer battleships and more aircraft carriers. The US enters the Pacific War even weaker than it did in OTL but stays out of Europe.

Stalin is replaced with a less genocidal leader.

As a result of these two changes, the war becomes the inevitable march of the Red Army west to the Atlantic and maintains the tactical capacity of the soviet army.

The US war in the Pacific is substantially more difficult because aircraft carriers were foisted upon them through the loss of battleships- it takes longer for them to adapt to their use in this TL. However, the US does eventually win. In a world where the Soviets now control Europe unabashedly, the US may force Japan to surrender as a territory, putting the conflict point between the free and communist worlds in the far east.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by RogerWilco

I would think that those 10,000 survivors would have a problematic list of skills to do exactly that. It would probably be politicians and generals, not farmers and carpenters. And quite a few of advanced age.

After 20 years any surviving survivor community is going to be able to take care of itself. The politicians and generals probably purged each other out of the gene pool in the first decade or so. And right about now there is the new generation coming into their own, that didn't know the old world, only this one.

I'm not sure they'd be too keen to give it up.

[PTTG]

The new generation was raised in a series of bunkers and spent their entire lives hearing about how the (capitalists/communists) killed the world. They are probably more likely to demonize the other side because they were never in a situation to see both sides contributing to the destruction.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

A soviet victory in WWII. Germany doesn't declare war on the US following a more devastating Pearl Harbor in which Japan destroyed fewer battleships and more aircraft carriers. The US enters the Pacific War even weaker than it did in OTL but stays out of Europe.

Stalin is replaced with a less genocidal leader.

As a result of these two changes, the war becomes the inevitable march of the Red Army west to the Atlantic and maintains the tactical capacity of the soviet army.

The US war in the Pacific is substantially more difficult because aircraft carriers were foisted upon them through the loss of battleships- it takes longer for them to adapt to their use in this TL. However, the US does eventually win. In a world where the Soviets now control Europe unabashedly, the US may force Japan to surrender as a territory, putting the conflict point between the free and communist worlds in the far east.

If the US still develops the A-Bomb first, and proves it will use it, the soviets might try Containment. The USA in a very much worse situation might simply try to ride the mess out. You'd get a long Cold War.

Given that Soviet Style "Socialism" (which, because it isn't democratic, I don't even count as socialism.) is a bad idea. The Communists still collapse.

An America trying to deal with the vast wastelands that need their help and see them as Capitalist exploiters, would be in a rotten position. Add in centrum trying to take over America and grind out the last inklings of Freedom, this could be a dark world to adventure in.