Opening Vid For New RPG Site by Me

[Cole]

He everyone, I made this vid for an opener on a new RPG site. Whata think? Don't be to harsh it's my first production.

A mash-up of some of the best post apocalyptic games to date

*UPDATE: Fixed read time and added Stik's new intro text with corrections

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P02soiwaVw8[/youtube]

[Crasez58]

looks great reminds me alot of fallout though minus the mutants as far as i could see

[Cole]

Yep, that's the feel I'm going for We will discuss adding mutates and whatnot once we get the core rules done and the site open again. The original version of my system had several mutant races, monsters etc. But that was 25 years ago... we'll see what people like nowadays

thanks for the props (just uploaded the final) as my wife complained about the lack of time to read the opener

[Stik]

Cole
You wouldn't ask if you didn't want honest feedback, so here goes.

My first thought was that the exposition text went by too fast.

Then I paused it and read it through and realized it needs some work. It kind of has the feel of something that was written in another language and translated into English. I wrote up some comments/questions on your version(in blue text) and wrote an alternate version for you to consider.


In the year 2076, Earth's global decline finally came to an end. [The decline coming to an end suggests things got better.]
The current world governments ["current" suggests current NOW] came to an unavoidable ultimatum. [An ultimatum is something you issue to someone else.]
All allied countries [allied with whom?] shortly [Why shortly? Hadn't this situation been developing for a long time?] ran into [??] many confrontations [With whom?] setting off a worldwide nuclear holocaust.
Leaving Earth utterly destroyed... [This is not a sentence on its own, even with the ellipses. It sounds like it was supposed to be tacked onto the previous one.]

Alternate version:

In the year 2076, the long, slow decline of human civilization and came to an abrupt and catastrophic end.
The world was a powder keg, owing to a tangled web of alliances between age-old nations, emerging states, powerful corporations, and radical religions, each with its own agenda.
A small confrontation rapidly expanded into a world-wide conflict, touching off global nuclear exchange which devastated the planet.

Also, is a world-wide nuclear holocaust between nations really a viable premise? The threat of global nuclear holocaust dominated the world political stage from the 50s through the 80s, but the fall of communism really cut that threat down. Large nations rarely look at each other as enemies these days, and when they do, everybody jumps in to calm the situation rather than fanning the flames.
Suppose North Korea got their hands on a nuke, and bombed the US. Would the US respond by immediately launching a full nuclear attack against North Korea? Probably not. A measured response, possibly using tactical nuclear weapons to disable their nuclear capabilities, would be more likely. And would our allies start launching their nukes in a show of support? Certainly not. In fact, they would probably condemn a US nuclear response, because everybody knows that nuclear weapons are bad news.
The other thing working against this premise is that the face of war has changed since Vietnam. One of the reasons why wars today are so difficult to win is that they are not being fought against nations anymore. You can't just capture the enemy capital and say: "Okay, we win. Now put down your rifles and behave yourselves."

[Cole]

AWESOME!

See this is what I wanted from you.

I just cut and paste that from one of my old books into the editor, my wife also complained about it, but I needed opinions from others too. We need to discuss multiple things about how things came to be. But I want to do that on the official site for this gaming system, not on PADND.com

For now, lets have a look at your proposed text

In the year 2076, the long, slow decline of human civilization and you mean eventually instead of and? came to an abrupt and catastrophic end.
The world was a powder keg, owing to a tangled web of alliances between age-old nations, emerging states, powerful corporations, and radical religions, each with its own agenda.
A small confrontation rapidly expanded into a world-wide conflict, touching off global nuclear exchange which devastated the planet.

Here is the main problem, to make this game make sense in modern times, we need to come up with a way to have a nuclear world war. Some feasible excuse. (This is where you come in). There are tons of reasons for global extermination (viruses, sicknesses, asteroids hitting earth etc.) I need an overview so that I can put a vid together and a synopsis for the game systems intro.

In your opinion, what's the best way to devastate earth, to get it to look like the video I made?

Side note: I don't take offense from you ever as your a reasonable person. I also don't take critiquing my work from 22 years ago with offense either. I was only only 16.

[Cole]

Cole
Also, is a world-wide nuclear holocaust between nations really a viable premise? The threat of global nuclear holocaust dominated the world political stage from the 50s through the 80s, but the fall of communism really cut that threat down. Large nations rarely look at each other as enemies these days, and when they do, everybody jumps in to calm the situation rather than fanning the flames.
Suppose North Korea got their hands on a nuke, and bombed the US. Would the US respond by immediately launching a full nuclear attack against North Korea? Probably not. A measured response, possibly using tactical nuclear weapons to disable their nuclear capabilities, would be more likely. And would our allies start launching their nukes in a show of support? Certainly not. In fact, they would probably condemn a US nuclear response, because everybody knows that nuclear weapons are bad news.
The other thing working against this premise is that the face of war has changed since Vietnam. One of the reasons why wars today are so difficult to win is that they are not being fought against nations anymore. You can't just capture the enemy capital and say: "Okay, we win. Now put down your rifles and behave yourselves."

I personally think nuclear holocaust is the most plausible outcome for human kind or perhaps disease. I honestly hope your statement is true, but I think if North-Korea sent a nuke to the US (if even possible), I think the US would hit em back with equal (but most likely more) force. Then China would back Korea and then the balls just rolls from there. Nobody in power (with power) is going to let their populations get wiped out without retaliating, or they won't have power any longer.

You haven't seen it yet, but I made a map of the world with the most logical nuke targets spread all over it, it shows where all the death zones are and how wide of areas these toxic areas spread to. This map is also ancient, made in the 80's, but I still think it's a great way to see what would be left of civilization IF nuclear weapons were ever used in a war.

With that said, I don't really care how we devastate earth for this new game system, I just want something VERY plausible and something that would leave a realistic amount of the population left to rebuild.

The more opinions people leave here, the BETTER! Because great games are great because they are well thought out

[Stik]

I'm glad you welcomed my comments. I had just gotten to thinking that I might have been too pointed, and was about to edit my comments a bit.

By the way - there was a typo in my text. There was an extra 'and'. I had started to write a bit about ecological damage, then tried to erase that. I fixed it (below).

In the year 2076, the long, slow decline of human civilization came to an abrupt and catastrophic end.
The world was a powder keg, owing to a tangled web of alliances between age-old nations, emerging states, powerful corporations, and radical religions, each with its own agenda.
A small confrontation rapidly expanded into a world-wide conflict, touching off global nuclear exchange which devastated the planet.

Mine is still a bit rough. I'll probably be able to polish it by looking at it again in a day or two.


You said you're rather discuss this in a dedicated forum. Do you have a forum up yet for that?

[Cole]

Yes, I've done the template for the new site as well, but the forum is already up and running for the most part

I'll PM you the link, as I don't want uninvited guests just yet

[Crasez58]

Gee thanks

[Cole]

Don't fret, it'll be open as soon as I get a few major posts created and there is actually something to do on the site