Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock.
An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domes-tic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home. Already predisposed to defer to the primacy of civilian authorities in instances of domestic security and divest all but the most extreme demands in areas like civil support and consequence management, DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.
from Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development, Mr. Nathan P. Freier.
See also
Titled "Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development," the report warned that the U.S. military and intelligence community remain mired in the past as well as the need to accommodate government policy. Freier, a former Pentagon official, said that despite the Al Qaida surprise in 2001 U.S. defense strategy and planning remain trapped by "excessive convention."
"The current administration confronted a game-changing 'strategic shock' inside its first eight months in office," the report said. "The next administration would be well-advised to expect the same during the course of its first term. Indeed, the odds are very high against any of the challenges routinely at the top of the traditional defense agenda triggering the next watershed inside DoD [Department of Defense]."
Historically, defense strategy demonstrates three flaws: (1) it is generally reactive, (2) it lacks sufficient strategic imagination, and (3) as a result, it is vulnerable to surprise. The current administration confronted a game-changing “strategic shock” in its first 8 months in office. The next team would be well-advised to expect the same kind of unconventional and nonmilitary shock to DoD convention early in its first term.
The report cited the collapse of what Freier termed "a large capable state that results in a nuclear civil war." Such a prospect could lead to uncontrolled weapons of mass destruction proliferation as well as a nuclear war.
The report cited the prospect of a breakdown of order in the United States. Freier said the Pentagon could be suddenly forced to recall troops from abroad to fight domestic unrest.
i remember there were a few scenarios in Challenge that tied the backgrounds of Merc 2000 and Dark Conspiracy together. I think the idea was that they were set on the cusp of GDW's late 20th century timeline and the Greater Depression.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
That's very much how I run the game. Thanks for posting. This will give me a lot of new ideas. I never liked the "Cyberpunk" way the "Out-Law" was described in the core books. It was just too much of the funny and nice CP2020 style and not evil enough for my taste. I see it more like the 1990s Chechnya were the federal government has been forced out by armed insurrection or were local militias have sized power. The idea of a total power vacuum does not apply to me. I think if the central government withdraws there will be other power structures to take it's place.
Zvezda wrote: This will give me a lot of new ideas. I never liked the "Cyberpunk" way the "Out-Law" was described in the core books. It was just too much of the funny and nice CP2020 style and not evil enough for my taste. The idea of a total power vacuum does not apply to me. I think if the central government withdraws there will be other power structures to take it's place.
I think the notion of an Outlaw only really works for large land masses e.g. US or Austrialia. Britain seems too small and densely populated for it to be a credible option here, even if you did have a massive influx of people moving into the cities (which presumably are going to have to expand outwards into the...country).
Last edited by Linden on Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
I agree with you Linden, I had a few thoughts about exactly that when I was building up my DC-London campaign. I see Britain as having lost much of its rural population to the cities, but many of those rural areas are taken over by corporations for farming (either for food, pharmaceuticals or bio-engineered materials) or for power generation (or even discrete R&D facilities). The corps. will protect their assets with lethal force when necessary and they won't tolerate people wandering too close to those assets let alone an armed force of brigands basing nearby.
While I still see wanderers, nomads, hunters and the like traipsing around the rural areas, I have the 21st century version of the highwayman using those areas as temporary bases only. While it's still just gangs who attack convoys for whatever they can get, they ultimately lair in nearby cities (of course if an opportunity comes to prey upon a wanderer, nomad or hunter presents itself, they'll probably take it). Typically because it's easier to sell their ill-gotten gains in the cities but specifically because it's easier to hide a gang of 40 people in a city of 2-3 million rather than trying to evade modern technology as you grub about in a forest for some place to sleep for the night (particularly when as you mentioned, Britain is a much smaller area and so it's much easier for say a thermal imager equipped helicopter to search)
The police don't patrol the rural areas (because there's nobody officially there to protect and so it's a waste of funding and manpower) but those areas not controlled by the corporations or the government just aren't big enough to have the almost 'Mad Max' level of Outlaw that can be done in North America or Africa or Australia etc. etc.
ReHerakhte wrote:I agree with you Linden, I had a few thoughts about exactly that when I was building up my DC-London campaign. I see Britain as having lost much of its rural population to the cities, but many of those rural areas are taken over by corporations for farming (either for food, pharmaceuticals or bio-engineered materials) or for power generation (or even discrete R&D facilities).
Parts of East Anglia are already like that, and I've thought that intensive farming/prairie model would be more widespread in the Britain of DC world (UKDC?). I think there would still be villages where farm corp employees would be housed, plus a few self sufficient communes inhabited by Mother Earther types.
Julian Rathbone's novel Trajectories (set in a rural south of late 21st century Britain), features gated enclaves in the countryside and populated by the rich. All the work is done by machines and/or local wage slave types. Sort of like a rustic mini-dreamlands. That strikes me as an interesting possibility.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
ReHerakhte wrote:I agree with you Linden, I had a few thoughts about exactly that when I was building up my DC-London campaign. I see Britain as having lost much of its rural population to the cities, but many of those rural areas are taken over by corporations for farming (either for food, pharmaceuticals or bio-engineered materials) or for power generation (or even discrete R&D facilities).
Parts of East Anglia are already like that, and I've thought that intensive farming/prairie model would be more widespread in the Britain of DC world (UKDC?). I think there would still be villages where farm corp employees would be housed, plus a few self sufficient communes inhabited by Mother Earther types.
That's pretty much how I see it, particularly after recently reading a science journal report on the bio-pharmaceutical industry and how profitable it's likely to be (genetically modifying goats and cows to produce medical products particularly but also mentioned rabbits). That and chuck in a few out of the way (but almost self-sufficient) villages where the stubborn refused to leave and you've got small clusters of people scattered throughout the countryside.
Linden wrote:Julian Rathbone's novel Trajectories (set in a rural south of late 21st century Britain), features gated enclaves in the countryside and populated by the rich. All the work is done by machines and/or local wage slave types. Sort of like a rustic mini-dreamlands. That strikes me as an interesting possibility.
Now that I like, harks back to the days when the nobles had their country estates in villages on the outskirts of London in the 1700-1800s.
Last edited by ReHerakhte on Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ReHerakhte wrote:
Now that I like, harks back to the days when the nobles had their country estates in villages on the outskirts of London in the 1700-1800s.
It's also got sizeable areas of the country overrun with out-of-control GM crops which perhaps links to the first part of your post.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
So by extrapolation, what has everyone/anyone done with MERC : 2000 and DC?
ReHerakhte wrote:
That's pretty much how I see it, particularly after recently reading a science journal report on the bio-pharmaceutical industry and how profitable it's likely to be (genetically modifying goats and cows to produce medical products particularly but also mentioned rabbits). .
Oh yeah - saw this, figured that someone could take it into the GM livestock-out-of-control realm.
(NEWSER) – On the Spanish island of Minorca up to 5 million years ago, the rabbit was king. Researchers there have discovered fossils belonging to the biggest-ever member of the bunny family, LiveScience reports. Nuralagus rex, weighing in at some 26 pounds—about six times the size of modern rabbits—had largely lost the ability to hop, and had relatively small ears, researchers say.
Story wrote:So by extrapolation, what has everyone/anyone done with MERC : 2000 and DC?
I ran one of the scenarios "Things Got Weirder" - it was ok. A bit of a bog standard break-into-a building-and-blow-it-up-adventure. If anything makes it exceptional it's the surprise waiting on the top floor. There was another one by the same author, Craig Sheeley, which featured the PCs being engaged by an eccentric military officer to break into a research facility full of Moreau Weres. Found that one way too over the top to ever use in my DC game.
Some of the "pure" Merc 2000 scenarios that appeared in Challenge had an espionage flavour to them and I'm tempted to run one or two for DC but with an occult/horror spin. Or else use them in my Cold City campaign - they're sufficiently bare bones to convert to other rpgs fairly easily.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
There was also Goin' Up The Country from Challenge 71 where the PCs are hired to take out a rural drugs lab. One of the suggested variations was that the chief chemist wigs out and starts seeing monsters from another dimension and then decides to poison the town water supply, as you do. Only a tenuous connection to Dark Conspiracy really, added as an afterthought perhaps?
Never played the scenario. Looks like an open air dungeon bash, so not really my scene.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
Story wrote:So by extrapolation, what has everyone/anyone done with MERC : 2000 and DC?
I actually started with Merc: 2000 and asked my Players if they were interested in something a little stranger. Most said yes.
The first game was slightly modified from the Twilight: 2000 book 'Twilight Nightmares' and involved the PCs hiding out in a remote farmhouse in the backwoods after a mission had gone bad. During the night they were attacked by an apparently well armed and military trained foe. They thought it was the security force from the installation they had tried to infiltrate, hunting them down to kill or capture them.
The enemy were signalling each other with military flashlights with red lenses on them and using large volumes of automatic weapons fire with tracers. All the PCs were killed... or so they thought. They all woke up the next morning with headaches and nausea of the type usually associated with chemical poisoning.
They hadn't used any of their ammunition, there were no enemy spent shells outside the windows and doors, there were no bullet holes in the walls, they hadn't been killed, the enemy hadn't broken into the farmhouse and cut up their bodies.
They were all very relieved although a little confused.
Then they found one of the red lenses on the front step.
They left the farmhouse and never went back. They never spoke of that mission again but one of them who had apparently been beheaded during the night started wearing a bandana around his neck all the time (I didn't do anything for this specific set of events to occur, the Players sort of reached a consensus without actually even talking about it, it just sort of 'happened' that way)
The second game had no DC weirdness at all. The mercenary PCs were hired by a large, influential corporation to locate and kill a spy working for a second corporation. The spy was on the island of Minorca off the coast of Spain so although they could go armed they had to be very discrete. They located the spy and found the spy was a very attractive young woman, all of a sudden the hard-core mercenaries were squabbling over whether they really should "kill a defenceless woman". Their more noble aspirations were reinforced when an apparent assassination attempt upon the woman by a third corporation was foiled by the PCs.
At one point one of the PCs (can't remember who it was) spotted an armed light aircraft shadowing the helicopter they were flying back to the Spanish mainland on (Mi-8 transport) and another PC (John) decided this meant the corporation was going to shoot them down if they didn't kill the woman. A third PC (Tim) was still very unhappy about the idea of killing the woman as he had info that indicated that she may have been set up by a third corporation. Tim pulled his pistol on John but John had his back turned to Tim and Tim's sense of honour meant he couldn't just shoot John in the back. Lots of tension between the PCs especially when they lost sight of the aircraft.
The aircraft really had disappeared and the Mi-8 proceeded unmolested to a private airstrip where the CEO of the hiring corporation greeted the PCs. The woman was taken away and the CEO addressed the PCs to inform them that although they hadn't carried out their mission to the full extent, they had shown sufficient initiative, ability and judgement that they could now be accepted for the real mission.
The woman was innocent of spying but was considered expendable, the PCs had been bugged by the hiring corporation so everything they said was recorded, the second corporation didn't actually exist and the third corporation was actually an ally of the hiring corp. playing the part of the bad guy (using their own expendable personnel).
This first game introduced the PCs (and the Players) to the strangeness and the second introduced them to the hazy world of the corporations in the Dark Conspiracy world. From there it just got worse for them!
In most DC campaigns I have run so far the vast majority of the PC were ex-militaries since the GDW rules are not like any other rules and a student of geology has a hard time killing a bunch of Royal Marines. Whenever I could afford it I started my campaign with something mundane to lead the PCs slowly to the conspiracies. Over the years I came up with various super villains which often re-occurred. In one particularly long campaign (which started at the outbreak of the English Civil War) the PC were tricked into killing a leading police investigator who often spend his coffee breaks with a SPP Minister. With the police not being too popular at this moment they thought his death to be an acceptable collateral damage. Much later they learned that he was the actual target because of his investigations of the occult in England. The knowledge that they were actually used by the dark minions to do their work made this particular group very paranoid. Those who survived long enough thought of many ways to strike back at this organization.
In one campaign even longer ago we started with a classical Merc2000 group and played various scenarios for some time before we shifted to DC without prior notice. The change was very welcome by the players though unfortunately the PCs did not survive very long without Empathy and without Luck. Back in those days I had no problems killing PCs.
