The Soviets have invaded the USA!
The commies are here to take your freedom away.
What are YOU gonna do about it?
Uncle Sam might be down, but he ain't out;
the Resistance are recruiting willing Americans
It's time to fight the red menace and take back our freedom!
Movie poster promoting Red Dawn, the movie that inspires this RP
The commies are here to take your freedom away.
What are YOU gonna do about it?
Uncle Sam might be down, but he ain't out;
the Resistance are recruiting willing Americans
It's time to fight the red menace and take back our freedom!
Movie poster promoting Red Dawn, the movie that inspires this RP
TL;DR Summary:
- Alternate-History
- Modern.
- Provisional: The setting takes place in a resort town in Vermont; because the tourist season is usually on from summer through winter, lots of people have a reason to be in Vermont; this makes it easy for a character from Texas or California to wind up there somehow.
- The United States is no more; it is under occupation by the communist forces (see alternate history below).
- There are pockets of resistance, and the characters are part of this -- we probably start the RP as the Soviets are still consolidating their invasion and haven't quite taken over all of the US yet, but it's obvious that the US will fall.
- Moral themes will crop up, such as the efficacy of killing on the basis of suspicion and taking no chances with potential collaborators -- the KGB will be ruthless, taking friends and family hostage, using them against resistance fighters to make them into moles that provide them information.
- I am open to suggestions on where to place this RP geographically.
- The RP is meant to be psychological. Moral decisions, differences of opinion, expediency versus principle all come into play.
- I'm limiting the number of ex-military characters and am applying very stringent standards on them -- I'd rather see people playing civilians or police or something instead of their ideal of what a SEAL is.
- If you're female and you're reading this, yes, girls can play guerrilla too.
- See the below section for character background ideas, though you can certainly come up with your own, too.
- Politics discussions not germane to the roleplay are verboten; that's what Off-Topic Discussion is for.
- The John Milius Red Dawn is the only Red Dawn.
In Character
In 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power; he had alienated factions within the USSR's government that engineered his removal from office. His successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was a weaker leader, one that deferred to a stronger role within the CPSU (Communist Party, Soviet Union.) However, in the wake of the Kosygin Doctrine's failure and the Prague Spring of 1968, the hardliner Valentin Igorvich Sokolov, took and consolidated power from Leonid Brezhnev.
Sokolov, a younger man, turned out to be a much stronger leader than his two predecessors, and more stable than Stalin was -- he was cunning and calculatingly ruthless, a man hardened to necessity in the Great Patriotic war. Under his leadership, relations with Mao Zedong, of the People's Republic of China, were mended and the Soviet presence in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East were strengthened. Under Sokolov's leadership, the Soviet industrial infrastructure was modernized from its lamentably moldering state and reforms were made to increase efficiency without compromising the Soviet position.
In the wake of the US loss in Vietnam, Sokolov moved aggressively -- the mood of the American people was such that they had little to no tolerance for another confrontation with communism. An aggressive program of supporting insurgency in South and Central America yielded strong results against US-backed juntas in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and eventually the Soviets found themselves with strong alliances and popular support in the region.
Sokolov died, and new leadership, eager to push harder against the US to prove itself, emerged; the rhetoric flared hotter, and the US in turn elected men who were bombastic and eager to reverse the fortunes of previous 'weaker' leadership. Both sides wanted a fight.
Things came to a head in the middle east in 2015; Kuwait was caught slant-drilling Iraqi oil fields, which gave Saddam Hussein all the reason he needed to invade his smaller, weaker neighbor, it came to the point where the US went to war on behalf of Kuwait and found itself facing a similar Soviet force in Iraq, defending Saddam Hussein's position that the Kuwaitis were slant-drilling the Iraqi fields. When the two forces met in the desert, the US force found itself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers involved, because Soviet forces were allowed to move by rail line through Iran and into Iraq; the Ayatollahs hated the US for the Shah more than they hated the Soviet Union, who forced Saddam Hussein to return disputed border territory to the Iranians in return for the assistance of the Red Army.
Coalition forces were unprepared for the size of the Russian force in Iraq, supplied through Iran. In the wake of the terrible defeat in the battle of Hafar al-Batin and the evacuation from Al Mis'hab, known as "Dunkirk II", France, Spain, the UK and Italy, as well as many others, all made separate arrangements with the Soviet Union, leaving the US alone and defiant in the world. World War III seemed lost in the desert and even the US started to negotiate for a settlement that included the return of POW's held by Soviet forces. With the Gulf oil states left vulnerable in the wake of their strongest ally's defeat, they sought arrangements with the Soviets, hammering out price control agreements with the Soviet Union, hoping to negotiate a settlement that would keep them on their thrones in the face of the emboldened pan-Arabist states that wanted to knock them off.
During these negotiations, when the guard of the US was down and when the citizens were war-weary, the Soviets used an old trick; they invaded US air space with commercial airliners that dropped paratroopers, or landed other troops in a daring coup de main. Other Soviet allies, such as China and the Cubans, the South Americans and the Vietnamese, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations, mustered their strength and moved in to follow up on the initial Soviet invasion.
The US military, demoralized and way outnumbered, still in tatters from the Gulf War that they lost, melted away when it didn't surrender, unable to take the Communists in open battle.
DC fell, the president shot himself in the head and the Vice President was killed by Spetsnaz when he elected to go down fighting rather than be taken alive. The Speaker of the House surrendered, in power long enough to hand over the nation to the Soviets and then retired to Siberia.
A new president, a man by the name of Frederick Chambers, was installed as the president of the United Socialist States of America, but it was Che Guevara (yeah, he's alive in this) who delivered the keynote speech at Chambers' inauguration, gloating at the victory of worldwide socialism and the end of the Norteamericanos, that America was finished as anything but a humbled former enemy, a fine new addition to the likes of Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria...
In living rooms and bars, in garages and factories, in California, in Texas and in New York, Americans were saying, "The fuck it is..."
Sokolov, a younger man, turned out to be a much stronger leader than his two predecessors, and more stable than Stalin was -- he was cunning and calculatingly ruthless, a man hardened to necessity in the Great Patriotic war. Under his leadership, relations with Mao Zedong, of the People's Republic of China, were mended and the Soviet presence in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East were strengthened. Under Sokolov's leadership, the Soviet industrial infrastructure was modernized from its lamentably moldering state and reforms were made to increase efficiency without compromising the Soviet position.
In the wake of the US loss in Vietnam, Sokolov moved aggressively -- the mood of the American people was such that they had little to no tolerance for another confrontation with communism. An aggressive program of supporting insurgency in South and Central America yielded strong results against US-backed juntas in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and eventually the Soviets found themselves with strong alliances and popular support in the region.
Sokolov died, and new leadership, eager to push harder against the US to prove itself, emerged; the rhetoric flared hotter, and the US in turn elected men who were bombastic and eager to reverse the fortunes of previous 'weaker' leadership. Both sides wanted a fight.
Things came to a head in the middle east in 2015; Kuwait was caught slant-drilling Iraqi oil fields, which gave Saddam Hussein all the reason he needed to invade his smaller, weaker neighbor, it came to the point where the US went to war on behalf of Kuwait and found itself facing a similar Soviet force in Iraq, defending Saddam Hussein's position that the Kuwaitis were slant-drilling the Iraqi fields. When the two forces met in the desert, the US force found itself overwhelmed by the sheer numbers involved, because Soviet forces were allowed to move by rail line through Iran and into Iraq; the Ayatollahs hated the US for the Shah more than they hated the Soviet Union, who forced Saddam Hussein to return disputed border territory to the Iranians in return for the assistance of the Red Army.
Coalition forces were unprepared for the size of the Russian force in Iraq, supplied through Iran. In the wake of the terrible defeat in the battle of Hafar al-Batin and the evacuation from Al Mis'hab, known as "Dunkirk II", France, Spain, the UK and Italy, as well as many others, all made separate arrangements with the Soviet Union, leaving the US alone and defiant in the world. World War III seemed lost in the desert and even the US started to negotiate for a settlement that included the return of POW's held by Soviet forces. With the Gulf oil states left vulnerable in the wake of their strongest ally's defeat, they sought arrangements with the Soviets, hammering out price control agreements with the Soviet Union, hoping to negotiate a settlement that would keep them on their thrones in the face of the emboldened pan-Arabist states that wanted to knock them off.
During these negotiations, when the guard of the US was down and when the citizens were war-weary, the Soviets used an old trick; they invaded US air space with commercial airliners that dropped paratroopers, or landed other troops in a daring coup de main. Other Soviet allies, such as China and the Cubans, the South Americans and the Vietnamese, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations, mustered their strength and moved in to follow up on the initial Soviet invasion.
The US military, demoralized and way outnumbered, still in tatters from the Gulf War that they lost, melted away when it didn't surrender, unable to take the Communists in open battle.
DC fell, the president shot himself in the head and the Vice President was killed by Spetsnaz when he elected to go down fighting rather than be taken alive. The Speaker of the House surrendered, in power long enough to hand over the nation to the Soviets and then retired to Siberia.
A new president, a man by the name of Frederick Chambers, was installed as the president of the United Socialist States of America, but it was Che Guevara (yeah, he's alive in this) who delivered the keynote speech at Chambers' inauguration, gloating at the victory of worldwide socialism and the end of the Norteamericanos, that America was finished as anything but a humbled former enemy, a fine new addition to the likes of Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria...
In living rooms and bars, in garages and factories, in California, in Texas and in New York, Americans were saying, "The fuck it is..."
Out of Character
Right, so the concept is pretty simple. The characters in this would be resistance fighters in the occupied United States. We'll establish where in the country this takes place, though I tend to favor New England, and so forth if there is interest.
As a note, the alternate history thing is something I just thought up with minimal research, so it's off the top of my head. Details are missing; for example, exact information regarding what went on in this alternative Gulf War where the US got handed a defeat. I also omitted information on nuclear weaponry that may or may not have been employed, though I am leaning toward some sort of virus akin to Stuxnet that disables the tech to allow for a strike -- perhaps Russian capabilities in this field were dramatically underestimated (in conjunction with a couple key defectors/agents). I also didn't put much down regarding the economics in this timeline, though I am thinking that the US has been in a recession or at least in economic hard times for a while; maybe it never got back on its feet after the 1970's. (What would America look like without the optimism of the 80's, right?)
On the other hand, I want to keep the focus on the individual characters. In the end, if there are things that strike one as highly improbable and so forth...it's fiction, and it's an RP and this stuff is pretty much just background to set the scene. A second thing to note is that I avoided using real life names of US politicians and so forth, because I don't want to cloud the issue with partisan bickering -- and I'm taking the moment to say right off the bat that I put aside any political beliefs and just wrote this out. The point is to have fun, after all.
Anyway, I don't have specific ideas for the characters. I have basic ideas but nothing firmly set in place besides the idea that they're Americans caught up in events -- perhaps there's a reason why they go guerrilla, such as knowing that the KGB would go after them period as part of a class of people they automatically suspect as dangerous. I'd prefer to avoid too many characters that are all gung-ho military, particularly since I'd like this RP to focus on the people and how they deal with the problems from an everyday perspective.
The best thought I have for the plot is that the characters are somehow part of the resistance/guerrilla cell that has one or some of the bigshots of the US Government in it; perhaps an ex-US president or prominent senator, or similar, someone who managed to escape the KGB's net. That would make our characters close observers/makers of very high level decisions and so forth. It's just a thought, at any rate, for what direction we can take with the RP.
If you're interested, feel free to post. If you're here to just shoot holes in the plot, please don't.
As a note, the alternate history thing is something I just thought up with minimal research, so it's off the top of my head. Details are missing; for example, exact information regarding what went on in this alternative Gulf War where the US got handed a defeat. I also omitted information on nuclear weaponry that may or may not have been employed, though I am leaning toward some sort of virus akin to Stuxnet that disables the tech to allow for a strike -- perhaps Russian capabilities in this field were dramatically underestimated (in conjunction with a couple key defectors/agents). I also didn't put much down regarding the economics in this timeline, though I am thinking that the US has been in a recession or at least in economic hard times for a while; maybe it never got back on its feet after the 1970's. (What would America look like without the optimism of the 80's, right?)
On the other hand, I want to keep the focus on the individual characters. In the end, if there are things that strike one as highly improbable and so forth...it's fiction, and it's an RP and this stuff is pretty much just background to set the scene. A second thing to note is that I avoided using real life names of US politicians and so forth, because I don't want to cloud the issue with partisan bickering -- and I'm taking the moment to say right off the bat that I put aside any political beliefs and just wrote this out. The point is to have fun, after all.
Anyway, I don't have specific ideas for the characters. I have basic ideas but nothing firmly set in place besides the idea that they're Americans caught up in events -- perhaps there's a reason why they go guerrilla, such as knowing that the KGB would go after them period as part of a class of people they automatically suspect as dangerous. I'd prefer to avoid too many characters that are all gung-ho military, particularly since I'd like this RP to focus on the people and how they deal with the problems from an everyday perspective.
The best thought I have for the plot is that the characters are somehow part of the resistance/guerrilla cell that has one or some of the bigshots of the US Government in it; perhaps an ex-US president or prominent senator, or similar, someone who managed to escape the KGB's net. That would make our characters close observers/makers of very high level decisions and so forth. It's just a thought, at any rate, for what direction we can take with the RP.
If you're interested, feel free to post. If you're here to just shoot holes in the plot, please don't.
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