Lead­ers of the World, Unite! Fight Ter­ror­ism! Bat­tle zom­bie hordes on the streets of Bagh­dad! Tonight, the True Bat­tle for Hearts and Minds… BEGINS!

The Story So Far

Decem­ber 2008

The Iraqi army and police con­tinue to be inef­fec­tive at quelling upris­ings in the coun­try. How­ever, eager to show that they are com­pe­tent and thus gain more inde­pen­dence from the for­eign occu­piers, they spin the truth so much that the Amer­i­cans are con­vinced. Led by an anti-war Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent, US forces begin to with­draw from Iraq.

Jan­u­ary 2009

Vio­lence in Iraq rises sharply as the US Army begins a major with­drawal. Eager to keep face with the pub­lic who elected her, the pres­i­dent secretly pays five bil­lion dol­lars of the US defence bud­get to secu­rity con­trac­tors Black­wa­ter to keep the peace in Iraq and keep very quiet about it.

April 2009

Dur­ing a spend­ing review, the details of the Black­wa­ter deal are leaked to the press. The news­pa­pers dub it “Black­wa­ter­gate”, caus­ing the dis­missal of at least three edi­tors. Nev­er­the­less, the name sticks. The admin­is­tra­tion is forced to with­draw sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of its pay­ment to Black­wa­ter, leav­ing the mer­ce­nary com­pany deeply engaged in Iraq with­out finan­cial backing.

The Iraqi gov­ern­ment, newly-rich thanks to an oil deal with the Saudi monar­chy that would never be fully inves­ti­gated by inter­na­tional courts, stepped in. They matched the pay­ment the Amer­i­cans with­drew, allow­ing Black­wa­ter to con­tinue oper­at­ing in Iraq under the con­trol of the Iraqi prime minister.

Octo­ber 2009

Faced with over­whelm­ing force of arms, local war­lords and ter­ror­ist cells slow down their overt offen­sive actions and con­cen­trate instead on a more covert plan to win over the hearts and minds of their peo­ple. Many of them slip under the radar.

Next, on “War on Ter­ror! The RPG”…

May 2012

A series of emer­gency elec­tions in the still unsta­ble Iraqi gov­ern­ment have seen many for­mer ene­mies of the gov­ern­ment slip into minor posi­tions of power within it. As elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple, decided by fair elec­tions (or so it appeared), they no longer had to rule their regions by force or by fear. The few upris­ings that occurred in 2012 were quelled almost imme­di­ately, and for the first time in nearly a decade, peace returned to Iraq.

July 2012

With no ene­mies left to fight, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued employ­ing Black­wa­ter to train their mil­i­tary and police, and to act as body­guards to diplo­mats trav­el­ling abroad.

Whilst the world wor­ried about the rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion of their youth, no-one saw or cared about a more dan­ger­ous rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion — that of the Iraqi gov­ern­ment itself.

Decem­ber 2012

In an attempt to be recog­nised on the world stage as a coun­try now free of unrest and ter­ror­ism, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment sent diplo­mats to all the world’s major coun­tries for meet­ings. At least, that was the offi­cial story.

In prac­tice, their emis­saries weren’t diplo­mats at all. But with diplo­matic immu­nity and Black­wa­ter body­guards, they got where they wanted to go.

They were sui­cide bombers.

The Game

The world’s cen­tres of gov­ern­ment lie in ruins, the cities around them rain­ing the toxic after-effects of dirty bomb explo­sions. The abused coun­tries of the Mid­dle East are out for venegeance on the West.

This is very firmly Your Prob­lem. They are your cen­tres of gov­ern­ment, your cities. You are the lead­ers of the G8 nations, the most pow­er­ful nations on Earth.

Oh yes, and you have superpowers.

Game Mechan­ics

Since the set­ting lacks any real plot besides the back-story, it’s prob­a­bly best off as a few-hour-long con­ven­tion game or something.

As for the sys­tem, some modern-day super­hero game should do the trick. I’m sure there’s some­thing out there.

Char­ac­ters

If it’s a con game, the char­ac­ters should prob­a­bly be pre­genned for great eas­i­ness. Here’s some char­ac­ter ideas that I scraped from the depths of my caffeine-addled brain. I might stat them at some point if I can be arsed.

Hilliary Clin­ton (America)

In April 2008, Mar­vel killed off Cap­tain Amer­ica. In Decem­ber 2008, Hilliary Clin­ton became Pres­i­dent of Amer­ica. A coin­ci­dence? I think not. A cover-up. Against all bio­log­i­cal and chrono­log­i­cal sense, Hilliary is Cap­tain America.

Vlad­mir Putin (Russia)

Re-elected to the Russ­ian pre­mier­ship in 2011 thanks to the well-funded assas­si­na­tion of all his rivals, the leader reveals him­self to be, in fact, Soviet Super­man.

Alexan­der Litvi­nenko (Russia)

The British and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments claim he died of Polo­nium poi­son­ing in 2007. Another cover-up. What the pub­lic needed to be pro­tected from was this: he is not dead. Not prop­erly. The radi­a­tion infused him with energy even as his body failed him, and he now almost-lives on as a radioac­tive zom­bie. He wreaked his revenge on the sup­port­ers of his assas­si­na­tion, and came to become the supreme dic­ta­tor of the New Russ­ian State.

Tony Blair (United Kingdom)

As the leader who entered Britain into the sec­ond Gulf War, the cri­sis causes the British peo­ple to rise up against their Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment and demand his return. Within days, Tony Blair is brought out of retire­ment. How­ever, a life­time of secret addic­tion to Rambo movies has given him quite the wrong impres­sion of what the mil­i­tary brings a guy out of retire­ment for.

Sil­vio Berlus­coni (Italy)

Tak­ing the term “Ital­ian Stal­lion” rather too lit­er­ally, Sil­vio uses his skills as a Shapeshifter to turn into horses, bears, stoats, cyanobac­te­ria and all man­ner of other organisms.