Global Warming
I felt like the map in the
Earth in the 25th Century supplement didn't quite reflect the effects that global warming could have on the Earth and so I did a little research in that area. So, we can say goodbye to Southern California, The Gulf Coast, at least half of the South, and a lot of the East Coast.
I got to thinking that losing those big cities would kinda suck from a game aspect, but a couple of things occurred to me. First off, Earth and the US aren't the only settings in XXVc (far from it) so it isn't like I'm losing out on much. Plus, it's 500 years in the future- just what of today's cities are going to remain by then, anyway? They're going to be completely different, even without the devastation that occurs in XXVc's future history.
The other thing is that SoCal, Texas, and the South can go eat a radioactive dick. Fuck 'em. Good riddance. There's a nice irony to a post-nuke Southern California- the sea level may rise, but their source of fresh water will have long been cut off to them. No point in moving inland, because there's even less water there, and since they've been stealing water from their neighbors to the north for decades (and probably for another few decades to come, if not longer,) their gravy train will most likely come to an abrupt halt once the Big One hits.
The Return of the Han
I'll bet Flint Dille and Mike Pondsmith were kicking themselves for dropping China as the Earth's main aggressor in favor of the Soviet Union. Just one year after the game was published, the Soviet Union collapsed. Of course, like most folks, I'm sure those guys had better things to do than keep tabs on the state of Mother Russia's governmental health. And so, like Twilight: 2000 we're left with something of a relic of old Cold War thinking.
Obviously the same thing could have happened (and still can happen, I suppose) to the United States and the People's Republic of China, but it hasn't and so we get to do with them as we like.
So, what I'm thinking is China, having bowed to the might of RAM (but still one of the biggest dogs on the block,) was granted the western half of North America and control was given to the Han Chemical Group
, a vast and ancient conglomerate, to oversee the bleeding dry of the old US of A.
The Han, as they are commonly known, has their own agenda, of course. This is most visible in the Americas in the form of Han Intercontinental Airlines (aka Han Air and, of course, "The Han") who provide luxury aerostat (dirigible) services almost exclusively to the arcologies (and one or two orgs) and also provide "hunting parties", wherein wealthy patrons can pay to fire high-energy weapons at "wild Americans" in the sprawls and wasteland. Sometimes they will act on orders from RAM to go on bombing raids over orgzones that RAM has deemed "uppity."
As a result, most of the inhabitants of these areas have a genuine fear of airships and will flee like rabbits whenever they think one might be overhead.
Why Dirigibles?
Because resources on Earth are rare, in particular oil, of which there is simply
none. Oil reserves would have been long gone by the time 2456 rolls around, something I think even the most in-denial, dumbshit "Conservative" Republican would have to admit. The successor to XXVc, the High-Adventure Cliffhanger game, based directly on the Buck Rogers strip, reasoned that the appreance of crappy old biplanes in the 25th century was attributed to their general ease of use and simplicity of manufacture, but I just can't see crop dusters running on solar or atomic power in this particular future.
So, balloons it is. Before the Hindenburg disaster, hydrogen balloons were all the rage. Clean, efficient and... okay,
slow, I can easily see their return in a post-nuke Earth. Thanks to a program I saw on just why the Hindenburg blew up, we now know it wasn't because of the hydrogen gas cells igniting, it was because of the peculiar formula of the paint used to coat the envelope (the gas bag.) According to the guy that was investigating the disaster, those brilliant Nazi bastards covered the thing in what amounted to rocket fuel. I kid you not.
In any case, whatever problems may have plagued hydrogen dirigibles in the past would have been long overcome in 2456 AD. So, we have a cheap, eco-friendly, cheap and easy to produce (also safe) mode of transportation. 'Nuff said.
Eight Trillion Chinamen Can't Be Wrong
I wanted to bring the Chinese back into the setting because 1) I'm a traditionalist and 2) it just didn't make sense to me that the "sleeping giant" would still be asleep after all this time. Also, Firefly had more than a little to do with it, in particular giving me some nice visuals to go with and the notion that Chinese would be the
lingua franca of the future. Just makes sense to me.
Concerning the term "mongol" as it was used in the comic strip- it's kinda hard to tell if it was ever meant as a racial slur or if that was what they called themselves (in addition to "Han," of course) or what. the protagonists also threw around the term "halfbreed" a lot, which may go back to the original novel, where the Han are possibly the product of alien/human breeding. The thing is, it never really goes beyond "Look! A halfbreed!" and it's not too long before the reference is dropped entirely. I guess the brisk pace of the strip didn't allow for much explanation of little details like that or maybe Phil Nowlan just assumed that people had read his two short novels and it didn't need to be explained.
In my XXVc game, a "mongol" is a Terran who works for the Han. A traitor. The word has no other meaning to Americans in 2456 and the original meaning is long gone. In my first adventure, the players are hassled by a few mongols and will most likely encounter a lot more as the game progresses.
