HeySeuss — Roleplayer Guild

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Character Guide:

The important thing about this roleplay is this; it is not all action. And it is not meant to be all about military stuff, though military stuff is a huge part of the RP. There are a few things that I am trying to head off by writing down my character sheet expectations.

No Special Forces/SEAL/Force Recon/Etc without really working it and I'm going to nitpick these sheets way harder than anything else. If you aren't sure, or if you're basing it on a movie overmuch, reconsider.
Weaponry; the characters should have a plausible reason for having the weapons and accessories for said weapons that they have. This is the opening stage of a guerrilla movement, and weaponry is going to be a real hodge-podge; it's Vermont, though, where the laws are fairly loose, so characters can pretty much start off with some gear that'd be banned in states with tighter gun laws. All the same, hunting weapons are most likely.
Incidentally, the US Armed Forces isn't as experienced as it is in the real world; 9/11 never happened, because bin Laden was too busy fighting the Soviets to attack the United States. (Spetsnaz got him in a raid.) That means the GWOT/OEF/OIF didn't happen; we bumped back the Gulf War to 2011 or so because it took that long for the US to decide to bestir itself and actually intervene somewhere in substantial fashion. The US was involved in multinational missions fighting communist insurgency (unsuccessfully) in South and Central America. Small numbers of elite troops were involved in that.
Characters should have a diverse skillset. By diverse skillset, I mean mechanics, plumbers, engineers, cops, criminals, desk-jockeys, electricians, cooks, kindergarten teachers, pet store cashiers, librarians, college students, dishwashers, waiters...you name it. I'm sure that even with a very humble and 'normal' background, they have skills and hobbies that may come in handy.


That said, here's a list of character requests -- roles that I would like to see filled;

Law Enforcement - Law enforcement types are bound to be torn a bit on this -- some of their number are cooperating with the Soviets, who are maintaining local police forces (though they are carefully supervising them). For a guy with a family and so forth, there's a lot of reasons to shut up and do your job. Also, some guys just can't wrap their heads around the idea of going guerrilla or becoming criminals, essentially. On the other side of the coin, a lot don't show up to work and head for the hills. In the case of Federal Law Enforcement, the choice is probably also there.
An Action Movie Actor - Say what? Yeah, I thought it might be amusing to play a character that does action movies that is suddenly thrust into a real Soviet invasion. Maybe the guy made a living off anti-communist flicks (Chuck Norris, Sly Stallone, Ahnuld, Dolph Lundgren all come to mind...)
Medical - When you're in the wild and your medical supplies are limited, someone that knows what they're doing can really make the difference between life or death. Don't believe me? Note that Che Guevara's biggest influence in the Cuban Revolutionary War was this: he was their doctor.
Others - The gamut of Americans, basically. Normal folk, not superheroes. You can submit any character concept you like, but the above are suggestions/requests.

The Soviets have invaded the USA! 
It's time to fight the red menace on our own soil!

Movie poster promoting Red Dawn, the movie that inspires this RP

TL;DR Summary:
Alternate-History.
Modern, 2016 or so.
Discord Chat link for RP Discussion.
Looking for characters who are more like everyday folks than some sort of action movie type. See the original Red Dawn.
No, I am not like a freak about communism in real life and so forth. This is an RP and it's meant to be entertainment, not my political manifesto. Please take this as fiction with tongue quite in cheek.
Provisional: The setting takes place in a resort town in Vermont; because the tourist season is usually on from summer through winter, lots of people have a reason to be in Vermont; this makes it easy for a character from Texas or California to wind up there somehow. Otherwise, we can work on location -- should be a vacation spot.
The United States is no more; it is under occupation by the communist forces (see alternate history below).
There are pockets of resistance, and the characters are part of this -- we probably start the RP as the Soviets are still consolidating their invasion and haven't quite taken over all of the US yet, but it's obvious that the US will fall.
Moral themes will crop up, such as the efficacy of killing on the basis of suspicion and taking no chances with potential collaborators -- the KGB will be ruthless, taking friends and family hostage, using them against resistance fighters to make them into moles that provide them information.
I am open to suggestions on where to place this RP geographically.
The RP is meant to be psychological. Moral decisions, differences of opinion, expediency versus principle all come into play.
If you're female and you're reading this, yes, girls can play guerrilla too.
Politics discussions not germane to the roleplay are verboten; that's what Off-Topic Discussion is for.
The John Milius Red Dawn is the only Red Dawn.
Please post characters in the character tab for approval.


In Character Info:
In 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power; he had alienated factions within the USSR's government that engineered his removal from office. His successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was a weaker leader, one that deferred to a stronger role within the CPSU (Communist Party, Soviet Union.) However, in the wake of the Kosygin Doctrine's failure and the Prague Spring of 1968, the hardliner Valentin Igorvich Sokolov, took and consolidated power from Leonid Brezhnev.

Sokolov, a younger man, turned out to be a much stronger leader than his two predecessors, and more stable than Stalin was -- he was cunning and calculatingly ruthless, a man hardened to necessity in the Great Patriotic war. Under his leadership, relations with Mao Zedong, of the People's Republic of China, were mended and the Soviet presence in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East were strengthened. Under Sokolov's leadership, the Soviet industrial infrastructure was modernized from its lamentably moldering state and reforms were made to increase efficiency without compromising the Soviet position.

In the wake of the US loss in Vietnam, Sokolov moved aggressively -- the mood of the American people was such that they had little to no tolerance for another confrontation with communism. An aggressive program of supporting insurgency in South and Central America yielded strong results against US-backed juntas in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and eventually the Soviets found themselves with strong alliances and popular support in the region.

Things came to a head in the middle east; Kuwait was caught slant-drilling Iraqi oil fields, which gave Saddam Hussein all the reason he needed to invade his smaller, weaker neighbor. It came to the point where the US went to war on behalf of Kuwait, at the behest of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After initial successes pushing back against Saddam, the US military started to force its way into Iraq. After being warned not to proceed past Nasiriyah, US forces proceeded with their invasion anyway. The Soviets, it turned out, were not bluffing. When the two forces met in the desert, the US force found itself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers involved, as Soviet forces were allowed to move by rail line through Iran and into Iraq. The Ayatollahs hated the US for the Shah more than they hated the Soviet Union, who forced Saddam Hussein to return disputed border territory to the Iranians in return for the assistance of the Soviet Army.

Coalition forces were unprepared for the size of the Russian force in Iraq, supplied overland and prepared to In the wake of the terrible defeat in the battle of Hafar al-Batin and the evacuation from Al Mis'hab, known as "Dunkirk II", France, Spain, the UK and Italy, as well as many others, all made separate arrangements with the Soviet Union, leaving the US alone and defiant in the world. World War III seemed lost in the desert and even the US started to negotiate for a settlement that included the return of POW's held by Soviet forces.

As a result of the disaster, heads rolled politically and there was a shift in the White House and the Senate. The US and Soviet Union started to negotiate to de-escalate from the most recent conflict. During these negotiations, when the guard of the US was down and when the citizens were war-weary, the Soviets used an old trick; they invaded US air space with commercial airliners that dropped paratroopers, or landed other troops in a daring coup de main. Other Soviet allies, such as China and the Cubans, the South Americans and the Vietnamese, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations, mustered their strength and moved in to follow up on the initial Soviet invasion.

The US military, demoralized and way outnumbered, still in tatters from the Gulf War that they lost, melted away when it didn't surrender, unable to take the Communists in open battle.

DC fell, the president shot himself in the head and the Vice President was killed by Spetsnaz when he elected to go down fighting rather than be taken alive. The Speaker of the House surrendered, in power long enough to hand over the nation to the Soviets and then retired to Siberia.

A new president, a man by the name of Frederick Chambers, was installed as the president of the United Socialist States of America, but it was Che Guevara (yeah, he's alive in this) who delivered the keynote speech at Chambers' inauguration, gloating at the victory of worldwide socialism and the end of the Norteamericanos, that America was finished as anything but a humbled former enemy, a fine new addition to the likes of Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria...

In living rooms and bars, in garages and factories, in California, in Texas and in New York, Americans were saying, "The fuck it is..."

Out of Character Info:Right, so the concept is pretty simple. The characters in this would be resistance fighters in the occupied United States. We'll establish where in the country this takes place, though I tend to favor New England, and so forth if there is interest.

As a note, the alternate history thing is something I just thought up with minimal research, so it's off the top of my head. Details are missing; for example, exact information regarding what went on in this alternative Gulf War where the US got handed a defeat. I also omitted information on nuclear weaponry that may or may not have been employed, though I am leaning toward some sort of virus akin to Stuxnet that disables the tech to allow for a strike -- perhaps Russian capabilities in this field were dramatically underestimated (in conjunction with a couple key defectors/agents). I also didn't put much down regarding the economics in this timeline, though I am thinking that the US has been in a recession or at least in economic hard times for a while; maybe it never got back on its feet after the 1970's. (What would America look like without the optimism of the 80's, right?) 

On the other hand, I want to keep the focus on the individual characters. In the end, if there are things that strike one as highly improbable and so forth...it's fiction, and it's an RP and this stuff is pretty much just background to set the scene. A second thing to note is that I avoided using real life names of US politicians and so forth, because I don't want to cloud the issue with partisan bickering -- and I'm taking the moment to say right off the bat that I put aside any political beliefs and just wrote this out. The point is to have fun, after all.

Anyway, I don't have specific ideas for the characters. I have basic ideas but nothing firmly set in place besides the idea that they're Americans caught up in events -- perhaps there's a reason why they go guerrilla, such as knowing that the KGB would go after them period as part of a class of people they automatically suspect as dangerous. I'd prefer to avoid too many characters that are all gung-ho military, particularly since I'd like this RP to focus on the people and how they deal with the problems from an everyday perspective.

The best thought I have for the plot is that the characters are somehow part of the resistance/guerrilla cell that has one or some of the bigshots of the US Government in it; perhaps an ex-US president or prominent senator, or similar, someone who managed to escape the KGB's net. That would make our characters close observers/makers of very high level decisions and so forth. It's just a thought, at any rate, for what direction we can take with the RP.

If you're interested, feel free to let me know. If you're here to just shoot holes in the plot, please don't.

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