HeySeuss

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

Possibly interested as a secondary power, preferably something like notChina or notJapan not to anyone's surprise.

@ClocktowerEchos

Honestly, we've never gotten good NotAsian nations played in the past, so that would be good.

Spiritum

Mike, take it from me, hit Little Italy, Harbor East and Fells Point. The food is better value.

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

I won't mind taking control of either a world power (that's an economic and industrial powerhouse) or a secondary power.

@The Spectre

Definitely need to talk on Discord before going there. Mostly, it's a very important role and we want a sense of how you will play it.

Mutually Assured Destruction [Post World War 2/Cold War in Fictional World]

RP Chat - No account needed, web-based.

_{The "Baker" explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military
Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, July 25th 1946
A massive version of the above photo is here}

TL;DR Summary

• GM's are @HeySeuss and @Sini.
• Late 1940’s, Cold War, era.
• Alternate World and fictional nations.
• A world war just ended. There is a surplus of weaponry and the victors are now dividing the spoils.
• Economies are in tatters, empires teeter precariously.
• Ideological conflict by proxy rather than epic world war; largely because epic world war = radioactive, lifeless rockball.
• There is a UN-style group called the World Conclave; it is structured similarly to the UN, with the veto system.
• Players should realize that open conflict between nations is going to be stopped, with the exception of internal (colonial) conflicts.
• The RP is not about your unproven strategic genius/e-peen. OOC needs to be civil.

IC Info

In Character Info

The world is a scarier place than it used to be; it is smaller and more deadly. The advent of the nuclear age leaves the entire world under the shadow of the Sword of Damocles, and there is the heightened terror that some dictator, demagogue or madman might decide to press the button and start a conflict that would destroy all. The big players eye each other warily and jockey for improved strategic position, trying to deny each other assets and contain each other's power, but it is an indirect process of using proxies, spies and playing diplomatic games. The World Conclave is proposed as an idealistic attempt to mediate disputes that has become, in the eyes of many, a joke, or a pawn of one power or another. Nonetheless, the first meeting is about to start, in 1946.

Very rarely do they actually agree on anything, but when they do it is often a measure to keep smaller countries from becoming rivals. The World Conclave has yet to hold its first meeting, but the Executive Chamber is already created, and has strong veto powers over what the General Assembly comes up with.

Meanwhile, smaller countries are caught in the wake of the movements of greater powers. As one era ends and another begins, these smaller nations often find themselves still formally as colonies of the mother countries, not yet sovereign. They have to liberate themselves somehow, and are presented with choices; revolt or negotiation. They are often the battlegrounds of the era, where ideological conflict by proxy between factions supported by the main superpowers tear these smaller countries apart. Nationalists, communists, royalists, colonists, natives, theocrats, terrorists, guerrillas, rebels...the works, supported by this power or that, with the partners giving lip service to the values of their patrons, or worse, perhaps holding with the often-extreme ideologies.

OOC Info

Out of Character Info

Players are basically thrust into this highly delicate political situation as either the superpowers (I'm limiting that to three or four player-controlled ones) and many smaller powers -- this isn't about e-peen size, and the reality is that the smaller nations are going to get to have more of the action.

On the other hand, there will be no WWIII without a lot of groundwork and escalation involved. The typical war of the era is a low-intensity conflict, an insurgency or 'police action' type of war that involves limited objectives and attempts to win the hearts and minds of the people living in a given country. It involves diplomacy and deception, the providing of aid in its various forms to win over against the enemy, whose proxies are receiving the same. Invasions by nations are stymied by the World Conclave's Executive Chamber without a good reason; not that this stops foreign 'interventions' and 'occupations' of destabilized regions in order to 'promote security.'

Technology should be late 1940’s technology; it's highly transitional because technologies developed hastily during the war are now being refined and studied at a more leisurely pace. Computers are just getting started, rocketry is still being developed, jets are being cranked off the production line and then being taken out of service as better jets suddenly come off the assembly line. Nukes, of course, were just used to end the last war. Weaponry is a mix of the old and the new as armies upgrade and learn new lessons. So much is untested theory at this point that it's unclear how effective things are until they've been tried. That means stuff might fail in combat, or doctrines come up short. This is going to be known as the 'Shit Happens' factor in this RP. ;) It will be a random factor as well as a regulatory measure to keep people from getting too overconfident that everything will go off with a hitch; the big lesson of this period in history is, after all, that nothing is terribly certain.

There's also the fear of nuclear annihilation; Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that makes powers tentative about fighting; a smaller power knows that to provoke a larger may well elicit a nuclear response, whereas the larger powers are loathe to use the weapons, even on a smaller power, lest the enemy misread the intentions and respond in kind with a world-destroying counterstrike.

To make things interesting, we're using a random roll system to determine certain essentials about people's nations -- we will roll on a random table to determine the makeup of a nation's military and its economy. That means that people have to work with what they get rather than what they wish they had, which makes for a more interesting simulation RP. We like to think that this challenges people on a whole new level to expand their horizons in playing a nation. You work with what you have, not what you wish for.

Requested Roles

Requested Roles

– 2 World Powers, one of which needs to be an economic and industrial powerhouse and the other should be deeply concerned about its security. Yes, we need a US and a Soviet Union.
– 4-6 Secondary Powers, including nations defeated in the war or just bled white during the war. Countries that have a lot of rebuilding to do.
– Regional Powers, including prosperous colonies. This also includes national liberation movements that are, in all likelihood, going to probably achieve their aims either through negotiation with their imperial power or by a guerrilla war of national liberation.

Other Images of the Cold War

<sub>Three B-52Bs of the 93rd Bomb Wing prepare to depart for Castle Air Force Base, Calif., after their record-setting round-the-world flight in 1957


Soviet tanks in Budapest, Hungary, during the 1956 uprising.


Soviet and American forces face off at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, 1961


Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other members of the July 26th movement right after Batista is overthrown in Cuba, 1959</sub>

Map

_{src; – Thanks to GeneralHelghast for making this available for use.}

Spiritum

Unloading and setting tents up was second nature and the whole process was kept well in hand. There was firewood stacked in the ruins themselves, because the ruins provided some shelter from moisture, and that was covered in a tarp. Gideon was probably the guy that had some of the best marks in the survival courses and was able to take an e-tool and quickly dig a pit, assemble the firewood and get it going so that it wasn't easily obvious. It wasn't hard when the firepit was the same one that family dug in the past. It was just basic operational security, ingrained into them.

Actually, it really wasn't -- any fire whatsoever would draw attention, but they were taking smart precautions to hide theirs and they were well away from where the fighting was...and there were no juicy targets for any Vangar raiders out there. In essence, the fire was a safe bet and they'd all frozen their asses off in the cold plenty times in training before earning the beret. They could do with just one night of fucking around like normal kids and not worrying about drawing sniper fire or some shit.

It was a point of pride that he could set a fire without having to resort to the mist; though when he did pull it down just to take a look at things, to see what the magic looked like around here, he saw multicolored clouds of mist with lights glowing, flickering, within. They could be seen through, but they were still there, overlaying various areas. It was as natural as blinking to flick back and forth. He called that astral overlay of the area 'peyoteland' to the irritation of more serious mage types. But Gideon was a devious and inventive user of the mist, and therefore felt entitled to work up new names for things. It was his bend of mind.

In any event, with a few matches and his body shielding it from the wind, he got the fire going, mostly by rubbing some of the kindling in cooking oil and setting it all alight. "Gather round and bring the drinks, training's over and there's no sense freezing our dangly bits off in this fucking cold!"

He always enjoyed the cursing; it was decidedly unroyal, and of course those stupid press types that were royalty experts would go, "pooh-POOH" at the concept. But he'd picked up some doozies in his time in academy life.

"Someone bring something with a little kick? I think Country and Trent drank the Alpenbitter all by themselves." Not true, Zimmy probably killed a third of it on her own.

Spiritum

By the way, (green) berets at graduation, Y/N? Jussayin'.

Spiritum

Gideon was drinking. He'd smuggled in a bottle of Schalberg Alpenbitter and passed it around to the others in the truck bed. It was a good way to stay warm in the early spring. He knew the place they were going and knew to dress warm for the early spring chill. Of course, he had a military poncho on because he knew that the wind could cut when it got darker, and the poncho...well, he could sleep in one if he had to. It was essential equipment for any sort of camping and like all his other cadet field gear, it was beaten. Under it, he was wearing a fleece pullover, a fleece cap over his blonde hair and a pair of faded jeans, along with his favorite pair of boots, well broken-in. The memory of winter clung to the place well into spring, and the nights got cold.

"Yo, Setzer, you think you can hit all the bumps in one pass or what?" he called out sarcastically.

Still, getting rattled around in the back of an old truck, creaking axles and grinding transmission, and the prospect of camping in the cold night was vastly preferable to the fate that would have awaited him if he hadn't agreed to slip out for a party among friends. There weren't any reporters back here.

It was just as well the Vangars decided to push peace talks now, it meant that he got to dodge the bullet of going to the obligatory visit to Orestia, pose for the obligatory photos...and answer the obligatory questions. The pomp, the circumstance, the PR hacks circling like vultures. The family obligation, and all that rot. He had a contentious relationship with the press corps that covered the Royal Family, particularly as there was a war on and these parasites were clearly the leftovers of the press corps, but they were still annoying. He somewhat hoped a few of the reporters, busily covering the war rather than contributing in a meaningful way, would eat a Vangar sniper's bullet. Maybe they had some common ground. Make peace and hunt the reporters down after the war.

If only.

But it wasn't worth getting upset over or even worrying. Whatever was going on in Orestia, he was forgotten and therefore able to smuggle himself out in this truck with some of the other squadmates. It didn't bother him that Zimmy invited an entire company's worth of people, but most everyone else found somewhere else to be. They would have had to boost a lot more trucks to move that many people...and would have been noticed. This was better, really.

They were in the truckbed with the beer and the camping gear, which was to say good field boots and the other necessities of roughing it. There were elk and some streams with fish here. They'd run out of alcohol long before they ran out of food in what was a typical alpine vista of beauty; meadow, forest and mountain, everywhere one looked. Rough terrain, but Fenris and his father liked to hunt up here, and he'd learned some of the terrain pretty well, for a kid. Even with the hunting lodge torched, it was family tradition to hunt up here.

Rudolf Blackeye, the most infamous of the rebels, torched this place with Crown Prince Petrus in it. The nature of the murder made the Nationalist cause unpopular. Rassvet's two sides came to the table, perhaps shaken by the callousness of the killing, and negotiated settlement. Old story, old news. Rudi's story got trotted out when politics got too partisan in the Kingdom as a cautionary tale.

Rudolf was hanged some ways away. Even by daytime, that particular acre of the wood was an unpleasant place for a magic user to linger. Luckily, it was far enough away and he knew exactly where that was. It was said the ghost still haunted the site of his execution.

Another slug of the bottle meant the spread of a little warmth in his belly, but he was just sipping at it. Once they got to the campsite, it wouldn't be hard to build a fire, since they had firewood piled up from the last hunting trip, and get this whole thing underway. It felt good to slip the net for what was, undoubtedly, the last time.

He tilted the bottle toward Trent, "Vorslav winter coat."

He didn't always say much to Trent, because the guy was sometimes a little overawed by everyone else's story, but they were going to war after this, and it was best to settle everything on a good note. That wasn't necessarily fatalism, but a realistic assessment that things could go wrong.

Once the bottle was handed off, he moved through the door and into the cab, wriggling through the space to get himself settled into the seat. That took talent, because he wasn't a small guy, even if Setzer had a couple inches on him. He peered ahead into the darkness once he was settled in.

"Yeah, there's the spot. If you turn left there," he pointed, "That's where the firewood is. We laid some down after last trip." The royal "we" perhaps, or he just meant, he and his family. It was one and the same. But at the same time, royalty had one perk -- this wasn't land that anyone else was supposed to be on. What he didn't tell them was that this was land that even they weren't necessarily supposed to be on. It's not like Gideon asked permission.

The gravel crunched under the wheels of the truck, and there were the skeletal ruins of scorched stone for the curious to gawp over. The jutting spurs of the lodge's remains, scorched by magic, stood mutely, long since overgrown with moss and grass.

More importantly, they stored wood in those ruins, covered in a tarp and stacked against the remains of a wall. Dry, well-seasoned.

Blackshields [Warhammer 40K, Horus Heresy]

At some point, the auto-turrets came on; twin-linked heavy bolters, laying down a high volume of fire in support of the security troops; there were columns, lifts and open-landing floors, and turrets hanging from the ceiling, on tracks, positioning themselves and cutting loose as it detected Astartes.

The Argyosians were putting up a stiffer fight now, too. Autoguns in the hands of some, but more and more had lasguns and were laying down an extreme sort of fire. Prodigal Son took stock of what he had to counter the weaponry. There were grenades in the launcher, but nothing of use to foil the sensors of the turrets. There was the boltgun, but the shot would have to be perfect or the heavy bolter fire would probably shred him. He returned fire with his boltgun, conserving ammo, using single shots to make every one count. Now was the time for cool calculation, rather than being cut down. Now was the time to figure out a way to make it work, however one could.

There was, also, of course, the cannon and its ammunition.

For the first time, deeming it alright to do so in dire circumstances, Prodigal Son spoke. His vocal cords were rusty from a long period of enforced silence. But, he deemed, it was better to speak up in battle than die silently and the duty to the Emperor, the penance, be undone.

"Iron Warrior. The ammunition. Do you have anything to set it off with?"

Straight for the throat. He kept up a steady pattern of accurate fire, of lives measured and cut precisely according to the fine hand of a Space Marine. But the ammunition was finite, and there were more traitor lives than bolter rounds. They needed to kill as many troops as possible with the minimal amount of resources wasted. By the same token, he aimed for the enemy officers; when he saw one that looked like they were giving orders rather than merely carrying them out, he loosed a bolter round at them. It was a way to sow confusion and a favored tactic of his Legion. They liked to kill the leaders and herd the sheep.

But this little play could not go on forever. They had a mission. The governor had to die.