Tyler Do'Urden
Soap Maker
I've been flipping through the d20 Modern book lately, and to be honest, I'm a bit disappointed.
The system is fantastic... it's extremely playable. The layout is good, the artwork is nice, and the book is absolutely loaded with ideas... I just have one problem with it.
It's fantasy.
WotC filled the book with magic, monsters, psychic powers... and all three of the "sample" settings were, essentially, fantasy settings. There wasn't a single magic-less one in the bunch. My hopes for getting a good magicless setting for hard sci-fi were shattered.
But that doesn't mean that I don't like it... as I said, it's a great game, and a fantastic toolbox for building science-fiction campaigns. So, I decided to come up with a near-future, magic-less game that would present both an uncommon scenario for RPG's (I'm sure GURPS has done it before, but who cares about GURPS?)
American Revolution II: The Western Conspiracy
"1984" came fifty years late.
The year is 2034- and America ain't what it used to be. Under President Anthony MacDonald, well into his third term (after receiving 94% of the popular "vote" in the 2032 "election"), the millitary has become the de-facto police force in the massive, decaying cities of the US. Major floods are impacting the coastal lowlands, driving large segments of the population into inland shantytowns. Soil depletion throughout the midwest has driven crop-yields to levels unseen since the nineteenth century, resulting in famines across the nation, while the populous continues to suffer needlessly from diseases that could have been cured decades ago- if it wasn't for the fact that most of the nation's most prominent immunologists and biochemists (along with most physicists, nanotechnologists, and computer engineers of any ability) have been imprisoned or executed for security reasons. Guns are confiscated. The air, water, and soil is choked with carcinogens. All consumer goods and information are controlled by corporate syndicates with government connections. The US government has alienated all it's former allies by continuously creating new "wars" to justify massive defense appropriations and draconian security measures- Iraq, North Korea, Chechnya, Nepal, Kazahkstan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Columbia, Laos, Sudan, Indonesia- and finally, a protracted conflict with China, now dragged on to seven years, resulting in 39 million human casualties, with no end in sight.
Sound far fetched? This is the future.
Whether you're on the right or the left, this is not your America.
America is no longer the land of the free.
But it's still the home of the brave.
In this new American Revoultion, you play a group of agents working directly for the revolutionary triad- the governors of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, the last three states to maintain some semblence of free elections. You are the leaders of a movement to restore America to it's former glory- through any means possible. Assassinating politicians, blowing up power plants, sabotaging millitary installations, stealing munitions, making secret deals with megabusinessmen and foreign leaders- all in a day's work. You must turn a few thousand squabbling right-wing militiamen, left-wing ecoterrorists, and escaped scientists into an elite force capable of effectively waging a guerilla campaign against the most elite millitary ever created- one equipped with surveillance systems and artificially intelligent computer systems that know you better than you know yourself. Armed only with smuggled armaments and Yankee ingenuity, you've gotta find a way to turn the populous against the regime controlling their nation, wrestle their minds from the grasp of syndicalism, and rebuild a nation laid waste by war, mismanagement, and greed.
You've got work to do.
The system is fantastic... it's extremely playable. The layout is good, the artwork is nice, and the book is absolutely loaded with ideas... I just have one problem with it.
It's fantasy.
WotC filled the book with magic, monsters, psychic powers... and all three of the "sample" settings were, essentially, fantasy settings. There wasn't a single magic-less one in the bunch. My hopes for getting a good magicless setting for hard sci-fi were shattered.
But that doesn't mean that I don't like it... as I said, it's a great game, and a fantastic toolbox for building science-fiction campaigns. So, I decided to come up with a near-future, magic-less game that would present both an uncommon scenario for RPG's (I'm sure GURPS has done it before, but who cares about GURPS?)
American Revolution II: The Western Conspiracy
"1984" came fifty years late.
The year is 2034- and America ain't what it used to be. Under President Anthony MacDonald, well into his third term (after receiving 94% of the popular "vote" in the 2032 "election"), the millitary has become the de-facto police force in the massive, decaying cities of the US. Major floods are impacting the coastal lowlands, driving large segments of the population into inland shantytowns. Soil depletion throughout the midwest has driven crop-yields to levels unseen since the nineteenth century, resulting in famines across the nation, while the populous continues to suffer needlessly from diseases that could have been cured decades ago- if it wasn't for the fact that most of the nation's most prominent immunologists and biochemists (along with most physicists, nanotechnologists, and computer engineers of any ability) have been imprisoned or executed for security reasons. Guns are confiscated. The air, water, and soil is choked with carcinogens. All consumer goods and information are controlled by corporate syndicates with government connections. The US government has alienated all it's former allies by continuously creating new "wars" to justify massive defense appropriations and draconian security measures- Iraq, North Korea, Chechnya, Nepal, Kazahkstan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Columbia, Laos, Sudan, Indonesia- and finally, a protracted conflict with China, now dragged on to seven years, resulting in 39 million human casualties, with no end in sight.
Sound far fetched? This is the future.
Whether you're on the right or the left, this is not your America.
America is no longer the land of the free.
But it's still the home of the brave.
In this new American Revoultion, you play a group of agents working directly for the revolutionary triad- the governors of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, the last three states to maintain some semblence of free elections. You are the leaders of a movement to restore America to it's former glory- through any means possible. Assassinating politicians, blowing up power plants, sabotaging millitary installations, stealing munitions, making secret deals with megabusinessmen and foreign leaders- all in a day's work. You must turn a few thousand squabbling right-wing militiamen, left-wing ecoterrorists, and escaped scientists into an elite force capable of effectively waging a guerilla campaign against the most elite millitary ever created- one equipped with surveillance systems and artificially intelligent computer systems that know you better than you know yourself. Armed only with smuggled armaments and Yankee ingenuity, you've gotta find a way to turn the populous against the regime controlling their nation, wrestle their minds from the grasp of syndicalism, and rebuild a nation laid waste by war, mismanagement, and greed.
You've got work to do.
