alt.WAR, Fixing War's problems by writing a new book Options

[Grinder]

I'm with Doc.. Argus, CAS Marine, Dawkins Group Intelligence (or Ares), Lagos Arms Bazaar

Good choices, imo. Like the outline too.

[hermit]

Argus is a German intelligence for hire firm, a subdivision of the MET2000. It'S a secret service that hires it's services out. One of the best, if not THE best in it'S business. Their tone should be as you expect from German military - very factual, a bit repetitive and absolutly plastered with ridiculously unspeakable Acronyms.

The Dawkins Group is Horizon's elite black ops people. they work mainly through cons, diplomacy, subversion, infiltration and agitation, and other 'soft' approaches, but are said to be very effective. They're also where all the data Horizon accumulates goes to.

On secon thought, they also have some nefarious purpose that Jason now is going to make up, so it might be they're run by underwear gnomes or something. We might better switch that to the Shiawase MFID or another socially oriented corp ... hey, what about SpIn marketing? They analyse potential markets for their new SpIn cyberware suites?

Also, just read that the German add-on will already feature Argus and the MET. So maybe we should stwitch the MET for another outfit?

Depends on how much we want this to be an add-on to canon. also, MET2K received a lot of coverage already, and the sample units have a bit of an Euro bias ... what about exchanging Einsatzgruppe 3 for a unit of the JIS Marines?.

Anyway. Updated Outline so far:

[ Spoiler ]

Alt.War Issue 1

0) Shadowland login screen. This is one of the touches that will make this document feel like an SR4 publication.

1) Introduction The Real Story Of The War (written up as a a classic in-game Shadowland writeup, maybe with some references to War!, but nothing contradicting it)
- An introduction to the war as we see it, and a short out-of-world writeup what this adds to War!, why it makes sense to own both War! And this and what our mission writing this is.

[meat 2 to 4: an overview of the entire Am/Az conflict as an Argus document that got leaked onto the shadow boards. They got hired to give a comprehensive overview of the war (probably by UCAS or CAS) - that'll let us give an objective view on everything without having to rely on making 'runners to tell the stories]

2) God’s Eye Perspective: An overview of the conflict
2.1 Aztlan: The only thing better than power is more power
2.2 Amazonia: Over our cold, dead bodies
2.3 UCAS/Ares: The enemy of my enemy still is my enemy (but seeing them kill each other is priceless)
2.4 Saeder-Krupp: War is business. More war is more business.
- Horizon: Food for the World, and pleased love us!
- Colombian freedom fighters: Viva Colombia!

3) The Front Lines! (What happened in the war, and who did what where. All the stuff we miss. This is where a timeline goes!)
3.1) Timeline of the war
3.2) Maracaibo (urban warfare in all it’s gory glory)
3.3) Caracas (If this isn’t the biggest mess in South America, it’ll do till the real biggest mess arrives)
3.4) Bogota (venture point, occupied city, dense atmosphere, but no massive battles)

4) Military Organizations involved
4.1) AZT - War on 5,000 Nuyen a soldier or less
4.2) AMZ - Magical guerillas
4.3) UCAS/CAS - High Tech, Low Numbers
4.4) Ares/S&K - Who do you think /makes/ the High tech toys
4.5) Mercs - A range of Merc units. From those barely better than a shadowrun team, to highly trained, highly equiped special forces mercs.

5) Modern Warfare 2073 (meat: a document compiled by the CAS armed forces for CAS Marine officer trainees at [whereever their Marines academy is].)
5.1) Different Strategies for different people (an introductionary essay on different types of armies in the 6th world and what that means)
5.1.1 The 6 Million Nuyen Soldier (High Tech, Low Numbers: Examples UCAS, CAS, Ares, SK, MCT; essay by one of these or maybe an analyst of another corp)
5.1.2 Do you want to live forever? (Quantity over quality. Examples: AZT, Russia; an essay by a former Russian or Aztlaner soldier)
5.1.3 The new ways of War (magic-heavy armies. examples: AMZ, TT, Yakut. An essay on fighting those from the perspective of a CalFree soldier?)
5.1.4 Down and dirty (Asymmetrical Warfare. Examples: African Armies, Terrorists and Insurgents. An essay by a veteran of the Polish freedom fighters)
5.1.5: Oh My God Is That A Dragon? An essay on what combat does look like when your air force faces Wyverns and Dragons. Probably an in-game
5.2 The Matrix on the Battlefield
5.2.1: The combat hacker. What does Hacking for the military look like and how does it differ from hacking for corps?
5.2.2 Digital Frontlines: What is fought in the Matrix in War and why. Securing commsats, encryption/decryption, infiltration/guarding of tacnets, recon, disinformation. How do Hackers work in the Combat Zone The HQ Hacker, the OpCom haker, the descendants of the comms guy, Rigger platoons and Cyberwar Brigades
5.2.3 The Resonant Side Of War: Combat Technomancers, AI and Sprites versus Tactical Hackers and Agents. Also an essay on The Military fighting AI and Sprites, possibly written up as a report from UN forces fighting to take back Geneva.
5.3 Magic on the battlefield (an Intro by a hardened Merc about Magic on the Battlefield and how it changed everything, a brief outline of magic in wars from the Ghost dance War to the Euro Wars to the Az/Yuc-War.)
5.3.1 to 5.3.3 Three essays on magic on the battlefield, each in-character: one by a member of the Tir Tairngire armed forces (magical combined troops), one by a Yakut shapeshifter (magical guerilla) and one by an UCAS combat mage (Magic in a technicised army). Each with it’s own flavor and varied use of magic)

6) Faces of War: Sample Units (meat: a collection of documents accumulated by the Ares' Inteligence Services, formerly part of the Seraphin network, who want to study how these militaries work to know more about their competitors, and as a for-sale guide for 'military counselors'.)
Aztlan Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas (Aztlan’s parachutist regiment)
La Legion Étrangère, 1er Régiment étranger de cavalerie, 1er REC (mobile light armored cavalry)
The King’s Own Royal Gurkha Rifles (formerly Royal Gurkha Rifles, British Gurkha regiment)
Henan People’s Liberation Army 19th Infantry Division (organised much like a Chinese PLA regiment from the Korean war)
MET 2000 Einsatzgruppe 3 (A heavily cybered combined arms troop)
The units should feature fully statted example NPCs as well as unit organization and rank charts.

7) Gear and coolshit (meat: an exposé by the Lagos Arms Fair, written for prospective customers; downloaded is the English version, but there could be others in all kinds of languages mentioned somehow)
- Revisions of the gear in War!.

8) Game Info Errata’d rules from War! That are not totally batshit.

9) Shadowland Open Forum. An open forum where we can have our talkers go nuts. good, old-fashioned shadowtalk, rumors, discussions drifung. We can dump anything that does not fit anywhere else here.

[Grinder]

Damnit, just realized the facts about the Dawkins Group... would prefer to leave them out of the book and to replace them with Ares intelligence service.

[Doc Chase]

We could just make their section an Argus datadump as well, if it comes down to it.

On the flipside, while we can make as much of this objective as we can, well, snagging a classified doc from the Dawkins Group to post on Shadowland might be a pretty big coup for whoever pulled it off.

Or what's left of him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[sabs]

I would like to avoid Horizon. Even though they're one of my favorite bad guy corps. Just because Horizon is CGL's golden boy.

Shiawase, Ares, and S&K would all have an interest.



Actually the Dawkins group is fine.. because we're 'stealing' it as a datadump.

[hermit]

I agree, see the new outline. Shiawase has this kickass MFID, right?

On the flipside, while we can make as much of this objective as we can, well, snagging a classified doc from the Dawkins Group to post on Shadowland might be a pretty big coup for whoever pulled it off.

They'd just MEDIABLITZ him out of existence with the power of Sue. ^_~

Nah, but it would indeed touch CGL's Golden Boy. As much as it would make sense for them to have such a document (and as much as I'd LIKE to see them bleed), best not touch this.

[Doc Chase]

All right. Leaving out Dawkins/Horizon...I would say Ares or NEONet.

IIRC, and I hate being AFB for these, CATCo pre-2064 had one of the best intelligence services in the world. Didn't Knight and Ares pick up the majority of CATCo's intelligence assets?

[hermit]

IIRC, and I hate being AFB for these, CATCo pre-2064 had one of the best intelligence services in the world. Didn't Knight and Ares pick up the majority of CATCo's intelligence assets?

Yep, they had the Seraphim, an angel-oriented weird-ass secret service where everyone had angel names and some kind of huge secret. It was probably intended to be a plot point once, but it never was solved and then they just poofed and vanished. I agree, Ares might have absorbed many of them (or, given it's Ares, assimilated).

NEOnet ... hrm! Always loved Transys. They had this Englisch Weird charm.

And for a second question: Shadowtalker Roster. We need:

- Regular Guys who always comment in alt.Shadowrun. Some old, some new. I'd recommend Arctic White as Merc expert, and other old shadowtalkers, for flavor. Also, new guys.

- Issue-specific guys. Locals, local interest people, whose posting may be limited to one issue or one issue and sporadic reappearances. Also, edited the outline again for 9: Shadowland Open Forum. An open forum where we can have our talkers go nuts.

[Doc Chase]

NEONet hasn't had a lot of spotlight, but Ares probably has more of a stake in the game. I think we could get away with using Seraphim assets to finish out that section of the document. Worst comes to worst and we don't like it, we can swap to another corporate intelligence service for future issues.

[hermit]

True. Okay, let's go with Ares/Seraphim.

The current outline.

[Grinder]

No need to hide it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Alt.War Issue 1

0) Shadowland login screen. This is one of the touches that will make this document feel like an SR4 publication.

1) Introduction The Real Story Of The War (written up as a a classic in-game Shadowland writeup, maybe with some references to War!, but nothing contradicting it)
- An introduction to the war as we see it, and a short out-of-world writeup what this adds to War!, why it makes sense to own both War! And this and what our mission writing this is.

[meat 2 to 4: an overview of the entire Am/Az conflict as an Argus document that got leaked onto the shadow boards. They got hired to give a comprehensive overview of the war (probably by UCAS or CAS) - that'll let us give an objective view on everything without having to rely on making 'runners to tell the stories]

2) God’s Eye Perspective: An overview of the conflict
2.1 Aztlan: The only thing better than power is more power
2.2 Amazonia: Over our cold, dead bodies
2.3 UCAS/Ares: The enemy of my enemy still is my enemy (but seeing them kill each other is priceless)
2.4 Saeder-Krupp: War is business. More war is more business.
- Horizon: Food for the World, and pleased love us!
- Colombian freedom fighters: Viva Colombia!

3) The Front Lines! (What happened in the war, and who did what where. All the stuff we miss. This is where a timeline goes!)
3.1) Timeline of the war
3.2) Maracaibo (urban warfare in all it’s gory glory)
3.3) Caracas (If this isn’t the biggest mess in South America, it’ll do till the real biggest mess arrives)
3.4) Bogota (venture point, occupied city, dense atmosphere, but no massive battles)

4) Military Organizations involved
4.1) AZT - War on 5,000 Nuyen a soldier or less
4.2) AMZ - Magical guerillas
4.3) UCAS/CAS - High Tech, Low Numbers
4.4) Ares/S&K - Who do you think /makes/ the High tech toys
4.5) Mercs - A range of Merc units. From those barely better than a shadowrun team, to highly trained, highly equiped special forces mercs.

5) Modern Warfare 2073 (meat: a document compiled by the CAS armed forces for CAS Marine officer trainees at [whereever their Marines academy is].)
5.1) Different Strategies for different people (an introductionary essay on different types of armies in the 6th world and what that means)
5.1.1 The 6 Million Nuyen Soldier (High Tech, Low Numbers: Examples UCAS, CAS, Ares, SK, MCT; essay by one of these or maybe an analyst of another corp)
5.1.2 Do you want to live forever? (Quantity over quality. Examples: AZT, Russia; an essay by a former Russian or Aztlaner soldier)
5.1.3 The new ways of War (magic-heavy armies. examples: AMZ, TT, Yakut. An essay on fighting those from the perspective of a CalFree soldier?)
5.1.4 Down and dirty (Asymmetrical Warfare. Examples: African Armies, Terrorists and Insurgents. An essay by a veteran of the Polish freedom fighters)
5.1.5: Oh My God Is That A Dragon? An essay on what combat does look like when your air force faces Wyverns and Dragons. Probably an in-game
5.2 The Matrix on the Battlefield
5.2.1: The combat hacker. What does Hacking for the military look like and how does it differ from hacking for corps?
5.2.2 Digital Frontlines: What is fought in the Matrix in War and why. Securing commsats, encryption/decryption, infiltration/guarding of tacnets, recon, disinformation. How do Hackers work in the Combat Zone The HQ Hacker, the OpCom haker, the descendants of the comms guy, Rigger platoons and Cyberwar Brigades
5.2.3 The Resonant Side Of War: Combat Technomancers, AI and Sprites versus Tactical Hackers and Agents. Also an essay on The Military fighting AI and Sprites, possibly written up as a report from UN forces fighting to take back Geneva.
5.3 Magic on the battlefield (an Intro by a hardened Merc about Magic on the Battlefield and how it changed everything, a brief outline of magic in wars from the Ghost dance War to the Euro Wars to the Az/Yuc-War.)
5.3.1 to 5.3.3 Three essays on magic on the battlefield, each in-character: one by a member of the Tir Tairngire armed forces (magical combined troops), one by a Yakut shapeshifter (magical guerilla) and one by an UCAS combat mage (Magic in a technicised army). Each with it’s own flavor and varied use of magic)

6) Faces of War: Sample Units (meat: a collection of documents accumulated by the Ares' Inteligence Services, formerly part of the Seraphin network, who want to study how these militaries work to know more about their competitors, and as a for-sale guide for 'military counselors'.)
Aztlan Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas (Aztlan’s parachutist regiment)
La Legion Étrangère, 1er Régiment étranger de cavalerie, 1er REC (mobile light armored cavalry)
The King’s Own Royal Gurkha Rifles (formerly Royal Gurkha Rifles, British Gurkha regiment)
Henan People’s Liberation Army 19th Infantry Division (organised much like a Chinese PLA regiment from the Korean war)
MET 2000 Einsatzgruppe 3 (A heavily cybered combined arms troop)
The units should feature fully statted example NPCs as well as unit organization and rank charts.

7) Gear and coolshit (meat: an exposé by the Lagos Arms Fair, written for prospective customers; downloaded is the English version, but there could be others in all kinds of languages mentioned somehow)
- Revisions of the gear in War!.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) Game Info Errata’d rules from War! That are not totally batshit.

9) Shadowland Open Forum. An open forum where we can have our talkers go nuts. good, old-fashioned shadowtalk, rumors, discussions drifung. We can dump anything that does not fit anywhere else here.

[hermit]

Just wanted to avoid the dreaded Wall Of Text effect. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

If I forgot something that was discussed and someone wants in alt.War, just drop it here and we'll see what we'll do.

[lokii]

Okay, I should stop with the ideas because I will not be able to really contribute substance, but they keep coming. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There is a lot of information about the military of Colombia and Venezuela, for example from globalsecurity.org

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor...mbia/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor...uela/index.html

But also from Wikipedia and the respective web presences of the different military organisations. Especially for Colombia the major commands and positions of the military bases and so on can be found. Since Aztlan probably used the infrastructure that was in place, this can be a layout for their own military presence in the region and could become useful if you want to produce maps of the war zone with supply lines and deployment routes, that is if you want to go to such detail. By the way if anyone can point me to a list of geographical coordinates of those bases I can easily add location markers for them to my map.

This also gave me the idea of a former Colombian military unit that was incorporated into Aztlan military after the takeover (20 years back) and that organised within the new framework to stack their ranks with Colombian nationalists. This unit basically fights its own private war (taking revenge, finding out what happend to places/persons, retrieving Colombian data caches etc.) once they enter the war zone. Undecided on whether they are actually going rogue or just try to accomplish there own goals while still following the overall marching order. They could be based on an existing unit, taking the original insignia that are available from Wikipedia in nice SVG versions. The whole thing probably shouldn't be more extensive than a side bar I think. At the very least it could be an adventure hook. So if there are any takers for the idea, be my guest.

Okay, the last thing on Azt/Am. What I personally find most appealing about Amazonia is this idea of former inland cities overwhelmed by jungle. Places that evoke the ruins left by the indigenous peoples of South America but are strangely familiar, rotten modernity. Some non-human Amazonian inhabitants may even live in them, but they use the old infrastructure in completely different ways that almost mock their original purpose. And you have this creeping nature that seems to have no respect for what man built. For me that's maybe the place I would most want to explore in such a setting. So I don't know if you planned on using fiction snippets, but that would be a good scene setter.


And finally on Southeast Asia, I'm refining my world map right now for a final release. What I want to do is a comparison - today's borders / new borders (Catalyst with Pegasus corrections) / new borders (my alternative version, basically state of SoA for Asia). I think it's actually easy to make a Southeast Asia extract comparing these three layers of borders. So I can make this to help the person reworking the setting to decide on which version of the geography to use. You just have to tell me which countries should go on the map. I would exclude the islands and concentrate on the continent because I think there are almost no alterations to the islands between SoA and Almanac.

[Grinder]

Give me a second to put on my Mod-hat: Ok, we had a discussion among the mods regarding the level of support DS is able and willing to give to this projct. To keep it short: as long as alt.War does supplement War! and is not trying to contradict or even replace its material, everything is cool. So far the first issue seems to be supplementing and expanding the official material about the Aztlan-Amazonian war and it's planned to fix the rules and the new gear, what all is totally fine.

[sabs]

To be fair, there's not much material there to contradict.

Other than the whole Bogota mess (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Or are you saying, we should avoid even mentioning Bogota?

[hermit]

While the first impule was to burn War! in a high temperature furnace so that no trace of it would be left, it's in our own best interests, and our project's, that we supplement, explain, expand and present the war in War! in a more accessible and usable way. Basically, if someone buys War!, and finds out what's up with it, we're there to take care of their needs. That's a broader potential reader base than "people who want to deviaate from canon", because as has been mentioned in the discussion thread, official stuff is considered almost sacrosanct by many fans.

Thanks for the hosting then.

[Grinder]

To be fair, there's not much material there to contradict.

Other than the whole Bogota mess (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Or are you saying, we should avoid even mentioning Bogota?

No, not at all. It has just to me make sure that stuff comes into the book that contradicts War!, i.e. Bogota being destroyed by a flying tentacle monster/ thor shot/ Godzilla/ blood magic ritual. Giving reasons for the war, detailing it's timeline and units involved (including their tactics and advances or retreats over the course of the war) is totally cool. Same for fleshing out Caracas.

[sabs]

I think the only real changes we were thinking about was cleaning up the Bogota setting. And giving a more realistic reason for the War actually happening.

Which reminds me, I probably need to pick up Ghost Cartel..

We're going with a slightly earlier start of war date? Or are we really going to let Caracas be in the middle of a giant shadow-war for over 12 months?

[hermit]

This also gave me the idea of a former Colombian military unit that was incorporated into Aztlan military after the takeover (20 years back) and that organised within the new framework to stack their ranks with Colombian nationalists. This unit basically fights its own private war (taking revenge, finding out what happend to places/persons, retrieving Colombian data caches etc.) once they enter the war zone. Undecided on whether they are actually going rogue or just try to accomplish there own goals while still following the overall marching order. They could be based on an existing unit, taking the original insignia that are available from Wikipedia in nice SVG versions. The whole thing probably shouldn't be more extensive than a side bar I think. At the very least it could be an adventure hook. So if there are any takers for the idea, be my guest.

Okay, the last thing on Azt/Am. What I personally find most appealing about Amazonia is this idea of former inland cities overwhelmed by jungle. Places that evoke the ruins left by the indigenous peoples of South America but are strangely familiar, rotten modernity. Some non-human Amazonian inhabitants may even live in them, but they use the old infrastructure in completely different ways that almost mock their original purpose. And you have this creeping nature that seems to have no respect for what man built. For me that's maybe the place I would most want to explore in such a setting. So I don't know if you planned on using fiction snippets, but that would be a good scene setter.

Do you want to do the Aztlaner unit? It doesn't need ot be the parachutists, if you have a colombian jungle fighters unit, that's even better!

We're going with a slightly earlier start of war date? Or are we really going to let Caracas be in the middle of a giant shadow-war for over 12 months?

Under the current minimal contradiciton policy, yes; that or Abs moves things up a bit so it's only a some 5 months shadow war.

[Grinder]

The current outline.

Who wants to write what? And at which estimated wordcount?

hermit, you should give out deadlines for both stating interest and the submission of a first draft then.

[sabs]

I'd love to take a stab at "Oh Em Gee Is that a Dragon?"

debriefing interview, obtained by Ares Intel, of an AZT Rigger/Pilot sole survivor of a Wasp Squadron that was doing an air patrol.

[hermit]

Word count ... Give me till tomorrow noon? It's not Christmas for anyone but us Germans then, and I'll need to think about this a bit when I'm sober (damn you, Aberlour Abunadh batch 30).

As for who will write what, I'm open for claims. If two or more authors want to collaborate on one batch of meat (and with the ARGUS report, this will be necessary), then a lot of coordination is in order and I'll probably be rather involved in their writing, trying to make it sound coherent.

Also, we now need the subforum, with subn-subforums fopr each section and at least one organisational thread, a sticky with deadlines, and discussion threads for every writer. Can we post documents on DS, or will we have t work with external hosters and links?

Ah, and I'll contact Neurosis (and any other Natives volunteering for editing duty?) because now we'll need them.

As for deadlines: what about drafts in a 12 days after Dec 26 - would be Jan 5, and finished writing to 20th of Jan? Doable? Too tight, too loose?

I'd love to take a stab at "Oh Em Gee Is that a Dragon?"

debriefing interview, obtained by Ares Intel, of an AZT Rigger/Pilot sole survivor of a Wasp Squadron that was doing an air patrol.

As this is a document compiled for the training of CAS Marines officers, it could be an engagement by CAS forces in the Carribean, or even an old account by an Apache pilot in the Ghost Dance war or the Brazilian War (you could mention the Na'Vi like Amazonian tribals riding them that way). Just remember it needs to be analysed and discussed, so a pilot recounting how he is barely alive, maybe, analysed by a slighly know-it-all CAS instructor on how this could have been done better (and THAT then commented by various Shadowlanders).

You cool with that? Sugestions, requests?

[sabs]

That might be pretty tight. Though there is amusement in having the deadline be the Epithany (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Grinder]

Would love to give chapter 2 a shot (for the Earthdawn tie-ins (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) ).

Deadline might be a bit tight. Give us until January 30th to submit the first draft.

[Grinder]

Also, we now need the subforum, with subn-subforums fopr each section and at least one organisational thread, a sticky with deadlines, and discussion threads for every writer. Can we post documents on DS, or will we have t work with external hosters and links?

That's still being discussed.