What Happened in Your T2kU?

[Heffe]

Scotland beat England 3-0 in the final of Euro 96 at Wembley.

Oh, wait, thats not what youre looking for is it

Ive never really gone in for major deviations. As I think Ive mentioned before, when I first started playing many years ago we ignored New America because it seemed toooutlandish / cartoonishfor a group of late teenagers in Scotland in the 1980s. Thats kind of stuck with me throughout my T2K ~career so if / when I was to do anything set in the USA I wouldnt use New America, Id use some sort of home brew replacement.

Most of my alternate UK timeline follows the standard V1 one with some minor and non game critical changes - the Queen does NOT abdicate (whoever thought that was a good idea in the canon SGUK really didnt do their homework) but is killed when a ~lucky nuclear strike hits the UK command bunker. Same strike conveniently takes out Prince Charles and most of the Government making William King, although i do leave some wiggle room for Charles to have potentially survived but be incapacitated using the ~if you dont see the body trope

I have the French covertly meddling in UK domestic affairs, primarily by arming the Scottish Separatists - the Welsh were offered the same deal but are more isolationist so declined (in my game world the French want to keep the UK destabilised to give France a greater chance of emerging as the undisputed European power after the War).

I did at one point disregard the Irish invasion of Northern Ireland but I eventually came round to the viewpoint that it was a key part of the timeline so instead of ignoring it I tried to find ways to make it work and retconned it back into my alternate UK timeline.

I gave the RAF a couple of squadrons of F16's - the ones that were originally meant to go to Pakistan but were embargoed and ended up (I think) sitting at Davis Monthan for a while.

Theres been a couple of times where Ive done the same as the Gdansk game and decided that it didnt suit the game for a certain location to be nuked so I ignored the nuke strike.

Nothing particularly major though. And no Gulf War 1.

Out of curiosity, what seemed too cartoonish about New America, and what did you use for your homebrew instead

[Rainbow Six]

Cartoonish was maybe the wrong word - stereotypical is probably a better one. At the time the notion that there would be an organised covert far right movement in the United States just waiting for the opportunity to ~rise and take control of swathes of the country seemed to be somewhat absurd. I seem to recall that the rank / tier structure met with particular derision.

Where needed we replaced them with options that were probably equally stereotypical - biker gangs, cults, escaped cons, etc.

Bear in mind this was thirty plus years ago - Id never been to the USA at that point or studied politics and my exposure to American culture came from things like Miami Vice and the A Team.

[Targan]

As I've described a number of times over the decades, the biggest timeline-changing event in my last campaign involved Major Anthony Po and his unit recovering a SADM "backpack nuke" from beneath the Jazna Gora cathedral in Poland, returning it to functionality and with the enthusiastic support of the DIA station in Krakow, infiltrating the lines of Warsaw Pact Reserve Front HQ in Lublin and detonating it. It caused serious disruption to WarPac command and control in Poland and made evacuating US forces back to Germany somewhat easier at the tail end of 2000.

There is a rumour in a random table in one of the Poland modules that mentions the failure to detonate of one of several US SADMs when NATO forces withdrew from Częstochowa earlier in the war.

[Raellus]

Ripple Effect

Targan, did you ever tease out, even just behind the scenes, what the nuking of the Lublin Poles' HQ had on the situation in Poland and/or beyond

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[mpipes]

Cartoonish was maybe the wrong word - stereotypical is probably a better one. At the time the notion that there would be an organised covert far right movement in the United States just waiting for the opportunity to 'rise' and take control of swathes of the country seemed to be somewhat absurd. I seem to recall that the rank / tier structure met with particular derision.

Where needed we replaced them with options that were probably equally stereotypical - biker gangs, cults, escaped cons, etc.

Bear in mind this was thirty plus years ago - I'd never been to the USA at that point or studied politics and my exposure to American culture came from things like Miami Vice and the A Team.

I had a problem with New America for the same reasons. I have it, but it is not that large when all is said and done. However, they are organized, wide-spread, and able to communicate via CB radio. Biker gangs are DEFINITELY around and active including the Hell's Angels, the Mongols, the Cossacks, the Bandidos, the Iron Order, the Zulus, and the Grim Reapers. There is also a cannibal cult in southern California and western Arizona. I have a pagan cult worshipping the Norse gods (you really don't want to piss them off). Also, everyone should have a coven of good, old-fashioned Devil worshippers here and there. I also have that demon cult that was in my adventure short that I submitted.

As for Queen Elizabeth in my campaign, she had to abdicate due to getting Yellow Fever in May 1997 with long term liver damage (she made a state visit to Africa in May 1997). She is still alive, but pretty much confined to bed rest.

[Targan]

Targan, did you ever tease out, even just behind the scenes, what the nuking of the Lublin Poles' HQ had on the situation in Poland and/or beyond

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Well initially in the first few days and within fast horse ride of line-of-site to the mushroom cloud, there was general panic among the surrounding combatants and the populace. No nukes had been detonated in Poland in years. The PCs had deployed the SADM underground (in a sewer) so unfortunately there was a horribly dirty ground burst with a nasty fallout plume.

In the following weeks there was a pretty much total collapse in command and control among those WarPac units in Poland that had still been following orders. That was the PCs' main objective, as by this stage they were a thorn in the side of WarPac forces and had been actively hunted. The breakdown of C&C helped them and other American units in their efforts to get back to Germany to join the fleet heading back to CONUS. The DIA had enthusiastically supported the mission for reasons of the "war effort", but by late 2000 the thought that any side was going to "win" the war was obviously ridiculous.

Po and his band of murder enthusiasts had a relatively easy time of things heading back to Germany. They stopped being so careful about the use of hard-to-replace ammunition and ordnance and went full-overkill on any significant threats as they drove west. They weren't openly telling most of the people they talked to about the nuking, but they told the higher-ups as soon as they reached Germany (the DIA had broadcast coded notifications ahead of them anyway) and they were feted as heroes by the generals, also with some awe and suspicion thrown in.

Longer term their use of the nuke coloured their relations with the top brass back home in the US, and basically forced them into one side of a schism between factions of MilGov command back in Norfolk. The general officers with a special forces bent treated Po like he was a demigod.

[Raellus]

No Tit (for Tat)

Thanks for that rundown, Targan. So, no Soviet retaliation That Po was one lucky bastard.

On a related note, I figure that a nuking of the OMEGA evac fleet at Bremerhaven* would have a pretty significant impact on the game universe, especially events in the chronologically later CONUS modules.

*I used that threat as the major plot hook of Rook's Gambit. Not sure anyone's played that scenario out but, if so, I'd love to hear from them.

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[Targan]

Thanks for that rundown, Targan. So, no Soviet retaliation That Po was one lucky bastard.

As Po's group was withdrawing from Lublin with the clock ticking on the bomb, a Spetznaz team that had been tracking them for weeks gave chase. There was a running gunfight, but the Spetznaz unit didn't know that a nuke was about to go off. The PCs were of course extremely keen to put as much distance as they could between themselves and Lublin, and they knew exactly what time the detonation would occur. So they mostly ran for it (normally I reckon they would have stood their ground and duked out out).

When the timer hit zero, the PCs were all huddled in a ditch. They were somewhat protected from the blast wave, but they all soaked up some rads. The Spetznaz unit were out in the open and several hundred metres closer to the detonation. Any survivors gave up the chase after that.

[mpipes]

As Po's group was withdrawing from Lublin with the clock ticking on the bomb, a Spetznaz team that had been tracking them for weeks gave chase. There was a running gunfight, but the Spetznaz unit didn't know that a nuke was about to go off. The PCs were of course extremely keen to put as much distance as they could between themselves and Lublin, and they knew exactly what time the detonation would occur. So they mostly ran for it (normally I reckon they would have stood their ground and duked out out).

When the timer hit zero, the PCs were all huddled in a ditch. They were somewhat protected from the blast wave, but they all soaked up some rads. The Spetznaz unit were out in the open and several hundred metres closer to the detonation. Any survivors gave up the chase after that.

Maj Po Wasn't he that pacifist vegetarian type running around singing kumbaya all the time.

[Targan]

Maj Po Wasn't he that pacifist vegetarian type running around singing kumbaya all the time.

A practising Bhuddist, believe it or not

[Raellus]

That Po was one lucky bastard.

To clarify, I meant retaliation in kind. I imagine that one of the only things that stopped the exchange is fear that "just one more nuke" would continue the cycle to it's logical and tragic conclusion (i.e. extinction-level event). Nuking ComPol's military HQ seems like a guaranteed way to provoke a PACT nuclear strike against a major CnC target in NATO territory.

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