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Dystopian Champions - Campaign Setting


TheQuestionMan

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I actually only read this for the first time last week! It is not a fantastic novel as far as writing goes, or an imagined world but it is a good vision of a possible alternate reality and probably reasonably chilling for anyone who lived through that era of what might have been...

 

 

Doc

 

 

Another Novel along the same lines.

 

 

Not This August (1955) by C.M. Kornbluth.  The novel starts with the President announcing the surrender of the United States to the invading armies of the Soviet Union and China, and a few hours later the Secretary of State announcing the President and Vice President has been executed by firing squad.  Billy Justin, a 37 year old Korean War Veteran and former commercial artist turned dairy farmer in upstate New York finds himself drawn into a plot to free America by completing a secret weapon that will force the Soviets and Chinese to surrender.

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Amerika was a 1987 TV Mini-Series that showed how things would have been in a conquered United States after it lost the Cold War.

 

In 1987 the Soviet Union was in such bad shape they decided to take a desperate gamble, and launched an EMP Attack on the  United States, shutting down all electricity in the United States.  Ten years later the Soviets are planning to break up the U.S. into more easier controllable parts, but a former Presidential Candidate decides to distorted those plans.

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The Divide (1980) by William Overgard.  In a world where the Nazi German developed V-2 Rockets, Jet Fighters, and Tiger Tanks five years earlier then they did in our time, and shared they with the Japanese, the Axis conquerers the World by 1946.  In 1976 Hitler and Tojo are planning to meet in the Divide, the center of the Former United States.  Cooper, the last America Cowboy plans on crashing the party with the Resistance, and a surprise from the Manhattan Project.

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Huh, sounds like Sixth Column without the satire. Probably the worse for the loss.

 

The secret weapon was a "Ghost Satellite" painted with black radar deflecting paint.  It carried a number of atomic bombs including two that would produced lethal fallout over most of Russian and China.  

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Me thinks that Dystopian is too strong a word for the campaign setting I envision.

 

Mayhaps given the examples I have made it should be A New Hope! Kidding just kidding.

 

A new thread coming near you for a new titled campaign setting.

 

 

 

Actually The Divide is more like the Sixth Column in a way.  The last American General under the orders of the last American President, Burton K. Wheeler, took the remains to the Manhattan Project to a secret bunker in the Rocky Mountains and over thirty years managed to produce a single Atomic Bomb.  

 

The backstory of the novel is interesting.  The Germans develop their V-2 Rockets, Me262 Jets, and Tiger Tanks five years earlier, and conquer England and Russia.  Because of the Axis Victory FDR looses the 1940 Election to Isolationist Senator Wheeler (a real life person), and the U.S. doesn't mobilize as German gives their Jets and Tiger Tanks to Japan.

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I remember.  I used to work for the Ministry of Truth.  Or did I?

 

I'm more Ministry of Plenty myself :)

 

You can often turn WW2 on a dime. Invasion of the UK in 1940 is a popular one, and not overly far fetched. A mild winter in 1941 would be all you'd need to justify knocking the USSR out of the war.

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I'm more Ministry of Plenty myself :)

 

You can often turn WW2 on a dime. Invasion of the UK in 1940 is a popular one, and not overly far fetched. A mild winter in 1941 would be all you'd need to justify knocking the USSR out of the war.

 

For a world like that you can see the movie Fatherland where Germany one because D-Day failed.  The movie was better then the book.

 

This is a Disaster at Dunkirk story in Peter Tsouris book Third Reich Victorious where Lord Halifax becomes Prime Minister instead of Churchill and he makes all the wrong moves leading to the invasion of England.

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The invasion of the UK in 1940 is an obvious turning point. The British army was wrecked after Dunkirk.

 

If you wanted to be historically accurate, however, the Royal Navy was in one piece, and any attempt to cross the English Channel would have ended in disaster. I'm not sure if they were still the biggest navy in the world, but you wouldn't want them sailing into the middle of your invasion fleet, especially when they had air cover from the land, and knew where the minefields were.

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The 'problem' with a lot of alternate World War 2s is that the authors to assume that the historical events of WW2 were the 'most probably'. That is, if we rewound time and let WW2 run a few more times, then the actual outcome of WW2 would usually look like the historical outcome. But I think that's pretty far from the truth.

 

As an example, I think the quick fall of France is probably an outlier, rather than an expected result.

 

The UK can't be invaded in 1940 or 1941 because Germany has neither the landing craft nor the ability to supply an invasion force. Even if Germany could have somehow landed

 

Winning WW2 is pretty much about boring things like how many ball bearings you could produce, and how much you can replaces horses with trucks so you can move more spam to the troops, not about how many Tiger tanks you could field, nor how quickly.

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Disaster at Dunkirk had Erich Manstein write up an invasion plan for England after being relieved of his command for commenting on the plan to invade France.  Halifax refused to allow foreign allied pilots to serve in the RAF, and in fear of a panic shut down the BBC leaving the British Public only German Propaganda for information.  The BEF  waits too long for a French counterattack and that lead to them losing half of Dunkirk and that only allows 60,000 British Troops to be evacuated instead of the 150,000 in our timeline.  The German invasion fails as a military operation but Halifax loses his nerve and is about to surrender when Churchill tries to take over the government leading to a shoot out in Parliament that leaves England under Chamberlain again.  He surrenders and Montgomery, 200,000 British Troops, the surviving members of the Royal Family (Queen Elizabeth was killed in an air raid), and what's left of the Royal Navy heads for Canada.

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The 'problem' with a lot of alternate World War 2s is that the authors to assume that the historical events of WW2 were the 'most probably'. That is, if we rewound time and let WW2 run a few more times, then the actual outcome of WW2 would usually look like the historical outcome. But I think that's pretty far from the truth.

 

As an example, I think the quick fall of France is probably an outlier, rather than an expected result.

 

The UK can't be invaded in 1940 or 1941 because Germany has neither the landing craft nor the ability to supply an invasion force. Even if Germany could have somehow landed

 

Winning WW2 is pretty much about boring things like how many ball bearings you could produce, and how much you can replaces horses with trucks so you can move more spam to the troops, not about how many Tiger tanks you could field, nor how quickly.

 

France has better tanks then Germany, but it's command and control was completely inadequate (it's main headquarters had no radio and only one phone line.)  They also committed all their mobile forces to Belgium and it was cut off by the German Thrust through the Ardennes.  There was a change of command after that but things were so chaotic 2000 planes of the French Air Force ended up at air bases scattered through France without anyway to organize them again.

 

Best book on the Fall of France is Collapse of the Third Republic by William L. Shire.

 

Fun fact:  Before the German Invasion in 1940 France thought bombing the Russian oil fields was a good idea.

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For my money the single biggest problem on the Allied side was the mismatch between the air forces. They were outnumbered there roughly 2:1 and while they still often gave a good account of themselves, it was no fluke or outlier that the Luftwaffe gained air superiority and kept it.

 

Rommel's diary for the period is a good read as far as the armoured side of things is concerned, especially for getting a perspective on how chaotic it was even for the German forces. 

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For a more complex version of WWII, you could always look at James P. Hogan's "The Proteus Operation". Rat bastard oligarchs in a idyllic 21st Century invent time travel to go back in time and make the 20th Century go along a more war-filled fascist path and help an obscure political party in 1920's Germany, the National Socialist German Worker's Party rise up and unleash terror on the world. An now isolated USA and Canada in the 1970s in this new timeline get their own time travel and attempt to go back and stop the original meddling. The world were the Germans are taking over the world and advanced science achieved through time travel could have plenty of possibilities. Throw in possibly a little of David Brin's "Thor Versus Captain America" with Norse gods taking an active part in the war and it sounds like any other comic book universe: Nazis, time travel, gods, advanced science, parallel universes... what more do you want?

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For a more complex version of WWII, you could always look at James P. Hogan's "The Proteus Operation". Rat bastard oligarchs in a idyllic 21st Century invent time travel to go back in time and make the 20th Century go along a more war-filled fascist path and help an obscure political party in 1920's Germany, the National Socialist German Worker's Party rise up and unleash terror on the world. An now isolated USA and Canada in the 1970s in this new timeline get their own time travel and attempt to go back and stop the original meddling. The world were the Germans are taking over the world and advanced science achieved through time travel could have plenty of possibilities. Throw in possibly a little of David Brin's "Thor Versus Captain America" with Norse gods taking an active part in the war and it sounds like any other comic book universe: Nazis, time travel, gods, advanced science, parallel universes... what more do you want?

 

Sort of the same plot of Guns of the South then South Africans from 2014 traveled back in time to give Robert E. Lee's army AK-47s changing history.

 

GURPS Alternate History 1 had a world where FDR was assassinated in 1933 and President Garner failed to end the Depression.  He lost the 1936 election to Charles Lindbergh who kept the country neutral when World War Two started.  Henry Wallace won in 1940, but was a complete disaster and failed to mobilize the country when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  Lindbergh runs in 1944 with American Fascist William Dudley Pelley as his Vice President, and when Lindbergh is assassinated in October Pelley is elected and the U.S. joins the Axis.  When Tom Dewey loses in 1948 in a stolen election it sparks a revolt in the U.S. lead by Eisenhower.  The Germans send forces at President Pelley's request, but the revolt ends when Werner Heisenberg invents the Atomic Bomb and five U.S. cities are destroyed.

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Hi QM

 

Funnily, I'm myself thinking about another dystopian world to continue my Mystic Champions campaign; a world were DEMON actually launched End of the World, where the Elder Worms and the Kings of Edom invaded Earth from Vibora Bay. Remaining defenders of humankind living in a post apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved, treated as food reserve, breeding stock or such.

 

So plenty of place for al sort of "heroes", including reforming villains, and too-old-for-that-shit heroes.

 

Not sure it is something you'd interested with, but don't hesitate to PM me if it does.

 

Opale

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Oh, you guys and your assassination fetish :)  FDR can just die earlier from his heath issues.

 

In February of 1933 Gisuppe Zangara attempted to assassinate President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami, Florida.  It was the basis for Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

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Hi QM

 

Funnily, I'm myself thinking about another dystopian world to continue my Mystic Champions campaign; a world were DEMON actually launched End of the World, where the Elder Worms and the Kings of Edom invaded Earth from Vibora Bay. Remaining defenders of humankind living in a post apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved, treated as food reserve, breeding stock or such.

 

So plenty of place for al sort of "heroes", including reforming villains, and too-old-for-that-shit heroes.

 

Not sure it is something you'd interested with, but don't hesitate to PM me if it does.

 

Opale

 

They had something like that in 4th Editions Champions in 3-D where a cult unleashed extra-dimensional demons who took over the world.

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Hi QM

 

Funnily, I'm myself thinking about another dystopian world to continue my Mystic Champions campaign; a world were DEMON actually launched End of the World, where the Elder Worms and the Kings of Edom invaded Earth from Vibora Bay. Remaining defenders of humankind living in a post apocalyptic world where humanity is enslaved, treated as food reserve, breeding stock or such.

 

So plenty of place for al sort of "heroes", including reforming villains, and too-old-for-that-shit heroes.

 

Not sure it is something you'd interested with, but don't hesitate to PM me if it does.

 

Opale

 

This sounds like a lot of fun as a campaign. Minimal support. Limited resources. Impossible odds of success. I am so there.

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