WHO’S IN ON MARCH MADNESS
“There is no such thing as bad publicity.” –
Brendan Behan
It looks like word is getting around about
March Madness. Talyman notes that it has exceeded the D&D challenge in
dullness of questions, and that the cool kids do not do blog hops anyway. I
never considered myself cool, ditto this blog, which besides being uncool by
nature, has been described as mixing “fantastic content with headache-inducing
graphics in a way rarely seen in this day and age.” LOVE IT! That was precisely the vibe
I was going for, so I am glad someone is paying attention.
Talyman’s comments have also inspired me to
make a list of blogs which have expressed interest in participating in the challenge:
If you plan on participating and want me to
add you to the list, drop me a line.
TWILIGHT 20XX REBOOT SEED
I’ve always had a soft spot for the game
Twilight 2000, not for the somewhat clunky mechanics, but instead for the tight
adventures and attractive portrayal of a non-fantastic apocalypse. No zombies
or rifts, just things falling apart and lonely soldiers trying to get back
home.
But the game had one major flaw – it was
dated incredibly quickly, both in terms of geopolitics and technological
advance. When it came out way back in 1984, no one could have predicted that
its US-USSR nuclear exchange scenario would become moot with the dissolution of
the Soviet empire a scant 5 years later. Similarly, the splatbooks of the
latest military gear look antique in a world where DARPA is rolling out power
armor, drones make daily strikes in the heart of Pakistan, and both the NSA and
Snowden showed us how laughble the ideas of privacy and security are in the age of Wikileaks.
In this light, I've whipped up a little transmission that would set the scene of a reboot of the game, Twilight 20XX, in a projection of our own dystopic world. A projection that (hopefully) will turn out to be as laughable as the original premise of Twilight 2000.
Enjoy.
United Nations Secure Transmission
Helmund province, Afghanistan
<<Begin Transmission:
We’re the last ones here at base, and we’re bugging
out. I’m not giving details, as all communications have been compromised. Another
group tried to get through by way of our ‘allies’ in Pakistan. They took the best APCs
and gear here and went last week.
Word is they never made it across the
border. So we are gone.
Our orders are to stay put, but that is a
death sentence. We’ve got a few locals on our side, thankful for some of the infrastructure
and education we provided. They’ve given us supplies and, more importantly,
hope of a way out. We’ve got some local translators who want to come, and some
stragglers from the UN office and independent contractors.
When the House of Saud went down, the world
as we knew it ended. We’ve waited long enough for evac, and it’s not coming. We
figure that although everyone has oil reserves, the way the climate has gone
out of whack they need it to survive the winters. Most of us are North
American, and we figure Alaska and northern Canada are OK
with woodstoves and an endless supply of wood. That is our objective.
In some ways, this place is better than it
was, in some ways worse. The locals burnt their opium fields to grow food,
but the Taliban muletrain hasn’t been affected. It just switched from hauling
arms and opium to potatoes and child brides. People either are too busy surviving to care about us or want our heads on a pike. Time to go.
We’ve all seen the news about how the
Muslim Brotherhood swept into the power vacuum created by the Arab Spring and
turned off the oil. They’ve restored the Caliphate, just as Hitch always knew
they wanted to, and plunged us all back into the Dark Ages. To tell the truth,
I think a lot of the hillpeople here won’t know the difference.
So we’re out. The goal is to get to some US
bases in Asia - that is if China
doesn’t roll over them with her oil reserves in the next few weeks.
Wish us luck, and hope to see you back home.
<<Transmission End
