Unfortunately

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

<Snipped quote by Unfortunately>The effect of nukes are somewhat overblown. We never came close to possess enough nuclear weapons to literally wipe out ourselves. At worst it'd have some negative effect on the environment and detonation zones would be like Hiroshima but otherwise?
Wrecking the planet or its ecosystem? No. It would be nasty but the planet had much worse.
Killing all humans? Not even close even if you include radiation fallout.
Nukes are also fail-safe which means destroying a nuclear missile won't trigger the reaction so intercepting nukes is rather safe in general.
Interception would of course reduce successful nuclear strikes considerably.
Nukes are terribly powerful but I often feel people are blowing their threat out of proportion.

Okay, excuse me my rant. It just bothers me that everybody treats nuclear war as it would truly result in the end of the world. Nope, even Fallout-like dystopias are unlikely.

Back to the point, sorry I misread your OP and thought your game would feature space travel and such from the beginning.
If you want a setting where we struggle for the "black gold" then 2060 is about right.
and nah, ww3 is indeed not necessary here, then.
Albeit the closeness of the timeline means nations would be mostly similar to what we have now. If you want to avoid this you have only one method: Alternate Universe
So UK exists in our world? Not this one! Welcome with loud cheers the Gaelic Federation!
Do you wish for an Egyptian nation which still believes in the ancient pantheon? You got it!
Alternate timeline would allow people to diverge from present politics and history by creating their nation from almost a scratch!
Maybe this would be the best solution you can get.
On the other hand this pretty much means you can just tke my tech suggestions from the Age of Rebirth 2 game. That should work as a starter.
If you wish to make people struggle for oil more, you may wish to nerf on alternative energy sources. Fusion powerplants may solve much or dependency on fossils for electricity. And advanced power sources may dodge the issue with the shortage of oil. So perhaps you limit these?
If explanation is needed the date could be also moved to the 2030s. Some predictions say that this is the point where the extraction of oil would have questionable economic gain.
With closer date technology will be less advanced and people can dodge the oil crisis less.
It all depends on what kind of game you wish to make.

@Willy Vereb

Looks like you're underestimating nukes a bit.
Yes, many would still survive, yes the Earth won't remain uninhabitable forever, but no, environmental effects would still have a major impact on humanity and no, people will still have a hard time after such a war.

Considering the setting where, global conventional warfare is adversely killing much of the population, the arms race has revived consequently, nuclear stockpiles are on the rise again (and I'm aware reaching Chicxulub-levels is still near-impossible), and much of the climate and environment is heavily wrecked by human exploitation, a nuclear war would be like both pouring lemon juice and rubbing salt on a wound at the same time. The conditions after, resulting from population and economic loss as well as hostilities between sociopolitical groups and environmental effects, would be a big struggle to recover from. Also, indeed there would be countermeasures, but then again there'll also be counter-countermeasures.

tl;dr It is true that it doesn't end the world as we know it, but it can still fragment human civilization to a big extent and reduce it down if it occurs at the current setting.
Excuse me as well for the rant.

Alright.

Oil would be nearly obsolete by the current setting, however, so people would likely fight for both supremacy and resources. But hey, if that's what people want, we'll set back the time to where fusion reactors aren't the norm yet.

And we're garnering more interest, so maybe it's time I've started writing an OOC.

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

I suppose the definition of a WW3 here is the full-blown usage of nuclear weapons and other similar weapons of mass destruction that would turn this into a mutant-less Fallout NRP, so the drastic event would be conventional warfare with a scale large enough to have a significant impact on human civilization.

Alright. That's okay, I guess.

Legends of Lavanya

I doodled a ghost while waiting for credit card renewal

ghosty

fun stuff

@NarayanK

spooky

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

Well, close to that, yes. Not quite WW3 yet.

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

-I suppose it's somewhere between semi-WW3, or pre-WW3. Previous nations have collapsed, but there is not yet too much hostile interaction between states to consider an ongoing world war.

-Pushing the date back is a possibility. I might retain the set date if something comes to mind, but for now I'll consider your idea.

-And yes, we'll have things like that. I'll elaborate further in the upcoming OOC thread.

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

Calling again. Anyone interested?

Legends of Lavanya

so yeah

my brain has essentially run dry

i need help finding motivation and inspiration atm

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

Alrighty.

I'm reserving Northern Europe, by the way.

Unless someone dares to challenge me, in which I'll be happy to fite irl.

Why are youtube comments such a bizarre hell

At least most of 4chan is more civilized.

On The Brink of Instability (Near-Future Earth)

The age of strife is returning.

Historically, it has always been that way. Thousands of years ago, as many as dozens of wars a day were fought across the globe in the name of conquest, riches, ideals and gods. Thousands, if not millions, suffer and die from their consequences in the span of a single year. Only as recently as the 1900's, the decade of the Great Wars, have they died out. While insurgencies and terror still haunt some parts of the world, the nations of the world have been peaceful, or so they claim.

That won't last long.

The year is 2060 CE.

Although much of the planet's resources have already been exhausted and nature has started to intensify its wrath after countless years of over-exploitation, technological advances have allowed humanity to adapt and continue thriving. This was not without consequences; in the years near the end of coal and oil and before the development of new generation techniques, nations struggled for control over the remaining black gold. Sociopolitical movements, global crises, economic issues, and hysteria regarding an impending apocalyptic war have brought down even the greater nations, but some have managed to survive, some have banded together to create bigger states, and some have resorted to occupy their lesser neighbors in the name of progress.

Difficult decisions are in their hands; choices that will decide their possibility of emerging as a significant global power and choices that will decide whether the war people long feared will come true.

---

Instability is set in a near-future world where the nations of mankind are struggling to hold together after a series of worldwide events destabilize civilization. Everyone plays as one of the states that compete for power and supremacy, while at the same time managing internal issues.

Technology can advance as time passes, and can even come to the point where FTL becomes possible if the RP lasts long enough, hopefully. Peaceful aliens may be met and consequently so will be the space menaces, but for the sake of simplicity the setting will mainly remain on Earth or on the Solar System. And of course, possibility does not spare said aliens being primitive or similarly modern instead of stereotypically overpowered as hell, so things can both be interesting and balanced with this. Let's be realistic too and avoid trying to terraform gas planets like Jupiter for God's sake, or even attain terraforming technology in just even 10 years and do it in just under a year. And yes, I've personally witnessed an RPer doing that once.

There is no set interval for a "year", it's probably up to my or the co-GMs' sake to advance it. Of course, I'll be asking if you want me to, but sometimes I'll do it on my own.

And of course, we have a map.

To avoid instant Russias, starting territorial limits will be based on a land area about the size of this circle. You can't fit a circle on most lands though, so this will be only a reference; the shape of your territory will be whatever you want.


Depending on how many are interested and how many are actually joining, there may (with less) or may not (with more) be NPC countries that won't compete much, but might be worth interacting with or may pose a threat.
_{(yeah because I totally didn't base this off Untold Empires)}