Multiple Settings Let's Do Strategy!

[Codex]

I've been thinking I'd like to run a strategic roleplay where one or more players guide their collective command through a potential combat situation. Depending on the story we end up telling (and player interest) it could be a battle, an operation or an entire extended campaign. The thing is, I'm fairly flexible on what sort of story we end up doing. Maybe we can work it out together? I only really need the one player, but the more the merrier (and since you'd be a sort of unified command council, it doesn't appreciably add to my workload as GM). 


For reference, I gave a (very brief) sample of SRPG here.


Let's start with settings and if we find one that captures interest (not necessarily a formal poll with restricted options) I'll pitch some ideas I think would be fun to run and we can feel our way to the final roleplay. Which will have a more themely title than this thread has. Promise.


@Pat, as promised.


For starters, let's look at settings I've done before (but if you really love one that I haven't mentioned, please chime in! I may need to do some research, but if it's popular I'll do it if I can).


Historical


Vikings!


Napoleonic Wars


American Civil War


World War 1 (NOT the Western Front in trench gridlock. Probably.)


World War 2


Vietnam War


Modern Africa


Fantasy


Game of Thrones (yes, really)


Futuristic


Terran Federation


Honorverse


Warhammer 40 000


So you know, let me know if there's any of those (or a brilliantly creative idea you have) you'd like to explore with me.


Let's Do Strategy!

 

[Pat]

I would like to do the American Civil War. Maybe, an alternative version of WW1 where the Confederacy was able to drain enough of the North's men, spirit, and resources to negotiate a peace treaty. So basically a second American Civil War, but with WW1 technology. I would preferably want to command some group of the Confederates.

 

[Codex]

I could roll with something like that, although I'll leave this open a bit longer to see if we get other ideas before we get stuck in too far to planning. 


To my mind there's two ways to look at the alt history of ACW with WW1 weapons: 


1. The historical ACW happened, and the South managed to hold out long enough and at enough cost to the North that President McClellan won the 1864 election with a peace mandate and signed an armistice later the same year. The US and CS have both walked a different path since then than historically, though tensions have built and "now" in 1901 the stage is set for a rematch between the two continent-spanning nations. 


2. It was close, but the South ultimately conceded on the point of slavery as not economically sustainable and the ACW didn't break out as it did historically. The greater federalization brought on by the war never happened, but the southern states remained resentful throughout the transition period and colored citizens remain very much second class citizens nation-wide. The ACW is now preparing to kick off 40 years late over increasing regulation emanating from Washington as the US Government works to Europeanize the country further. 


Both are immediately pre-WW1, but that feels right as it avoids getting pulled into a global conflagration with the local implications being lost.

 

[Pat]

I could roll with something like that, although I'll leave this open a bit longer to see if we get other ideas before we get stuck in too far to planning. 


To my mind there's two ways to look at the alt history of ACW with WW1 weapons: 


1. The historical ACW happened, and the South managed to hold out long enough and at enough cost to the North that President McClellan won the 1864 election with a peace mandate and signed an armistice later the same year. The US and CS have both walked a different path since then than historically, though tensions have built and "now" in 1901 the stage is set for a rematch between the two continent-spanning nations. 


2. It was close, but the South ultimately conceded on the point of slavery as not economically sustainable and the ACW didn't break out as it did historically. The greater federalization brought on by the war never happened, but the southern states remained resentful throughout the transition period and colored citizens remain very much second class citizens nation-wide. The ACW is now preparing to kick off 40 years late over increasing regulation emanating from Washington as the US Government works to Europeanize the country further. 


Both are immediately pre-WW1, but that feels right as it avoids getting pulled into a global conflagration with the local implications being lost.

Actually, how about the first one, but it takes place a few years later, during WW1 (the U.S. and the C.S.A. would be isolationist) but the main part of the RP takes place in a loosely settled West? The Confederates were allied with the Indians during the Civil War, so, stay with me here, if the South survived the Civil War, then what if they fought the North's westward expansion by secretly arming and training the tribes? There would be Southern plantations in Arizona and New Mexico, and California and Oregon would be fighting off Confederate-Indian troops when the Second Civil War and WW1 starts. It would be a huge guerrilla campaign.

 

[Pat]

Native Americans would have their own largely autonomous land and be close Confederate allies.

 

[Codex]

Given the nature of the Confederacy socially and geographically I don't see them expanding into Arkansas and New Mexico yet beyond a scattering of trading posts on tribal land - certainly not after the loss of life of even a successful 1ACW. 


If they did, I can't see them retaining their support among the natives anyway, so I'll let them digest Oklahoma but not the Indian Territory to the east or either of the two southern territories. I'm open to a great deal of collaboration with many of the Cherokee, Quapaw, Choctaw, Osage, Shawnee, Caddo and Delaware tribes, though there's a limit to how clandestine this could really be and it's likely to be a catalyst in spurring quiet enmities into the open for a new war, as the CSA sees the USA expanding across the continent ahead of them. 


Personally I'd prefer to maintain the dynamics of the confrontation as north and south - with possible outside intervention based on the flow of events - over getting embroiled in an initially global war, so I'd hold this one in the first years of the 20th century as more manageable (though I can probably shift it as late as 1910 to really get the storm-clouds on the horizon). 


No issue with putting the camera on Trans-Mississippi operations, and I believe I can source some reasonably useful maps for this area.