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Imperium Offtopicum XXI Prequel: Destruction of a World
The world was in the throes of celebration. Some were celebrating the new year, some were cleaning up and some were preparing for the party to come. But as the world transitioned from 2016 to 2017, something unthinkable happened. All those who were sleeping were suddenly awake, all those drunk or high were suddenly sober. Every person on the planet heard a voice, clear as day, in their head. But they knew it wasn’t them. All those living on the planet will remember these words until the day that they die.
Humans of Earth, rejoice as your freedom has come to an end. You are now all property of the Controllers. Our battle-thralls have been deployed to begin the transition of your societies to a more efficient form. Surrender to them for processing and you will not be harmed. You are already defeated, accept your fate as one of the countless species under us.
Minutes later, the sky began to fall…
What in the name of Saber is this?
This a worldbuilding exercise for an upcoming game IOT XXI. IOT XXI is a “reconstruction” of the classic IOT genre, where players take control of nations in a near future Earth after an unspecified apocalypse and lead them to glory. I was always troubled by this vague apocalypse that happened before the start of each of these games, it never sat with me particularly well. So, then I thought, what if I get the players to participate in the apocalypse? That’s exactly what this is. You, the players, will have a major role in shaping how this world ends and the new one begins. And then when we are done, we will begin IOT XXI proper. While players don’t have to participate in this worldbuilding thread to play in the game itself I would strongly recommend it, as the nations that survive or form due to the alien invasion will be the ones that people will be playing.
Rules:
This worldbuilding exercise is more casual than traditional IOTs. You don’t need to sign up in the thread or participate every turn. For that reason, this game will move far faster than the typical IOT, I will aim to update at least twice a week. In game, each update will represent a single month.
Each nation, resistance movement and Controller cell is represented by one statistic, Military Power. MP is an extremely abstract representation of the group’s fighting strength. The more MP a group has the stronger they are.
Every turn a player may take one action to influence the world. Please post all actions in the thread. Here is a list of actions that the player may take:
Controller Reinforcements: A pod of aliens loyal to the Controllers with an MP of 100 crashes into a province of your choice.
Nationalistic Surge: A country of your choice has a wave of patriotic citizens join the war effort. The country gains MP equal to 20% of their current MP. Every time you perform this action, you may write about a major geopolitical/cultural/military shift in the country. Please be sensible about these changes, you aren’t going to turn North Korea into a liberal utopia overnight. You may also direct the country to attack a specific target held by forces loyal to the Overlords when you perform this action.
Anti-Controller Revolt: A province occupied by the Controllers breaks out in revolt. A resistance movement spawns in a Controller-occupied province of your choice with MP equal to 1% of the Controller’s total MP. The resistance movement can be loyal to an already existing country/movement or could be an entirely new organisation. New resistance movements can be of any ideology you choose, due to the amount of faeces hitting the fan that will be occurring during the invasion all sorts of crazy ideologies can take root. Resistance movements can even be alien in origin, most of the Controller’s forces are slaves after all. If you wish to design an alien race to revolt against the Controllers, please talk to the GM (me) beforehand. Resistance movements function the same way as countries in game. In the case of them being loyal to a certain country they will immediately integrate themselves into that country.
When I feel like the world is ready, I will end this game and begin the transition into the proper IOT. While this game is fairly “gamey”, I encourage you all to write stories about what is going on as this will have a real impact on the main game. I am still working out the rules for the main game, I'll post them in thread when they are ready.
