Some thoughts on Stalin and his goals, by Lavrenti Beria's son.

 Some of the stuff I've been digging up for basic background stuff for the setting I'm working on - Cold war in Spaaaaace ! (intro here).

Lavrenti Beria was , by 1953, the number two man in the USSR, and had been in charge of the Soviet Atomic Bomb project.  Here is part of an interview  with his son on the subject of the beginning of the cold war and Stalin's goals (do visit the site, the whole interview is quite interesting).  As ever, it is just one mans report regarding two dead people, long after the fact, but.....jeeeeze.  That's some serious evil overlord stuff and it's real...

Q: Let us speak about the appearance of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union, in connection with the Korean War.

A: The war in Korea broke out on Stalin's initiative. When the Soviet troops came back to this country, Stalin began the new policy. He was of the opinion that on the basis of the communist development, we must organise small local wars in different places of the world. It was begun in Greece, then in China, then in Vietnam, and finally in Korea. That is one of the examples of these local wars. In two weeks, the Soviet troops managed to fight; they were very good. And at that time, Stalin wanted the Soviet troops to fight with rockets; that was the rockets against the ships. They had two types of heads: atomic head and trotyl head. Stalin wanted the Soviet fleet to destroy three or four American military ships; and they told Stalin that after that, the American side would fight with the atomic bomb. Stalin wasn't afraid of this atomic bomb; he said, "Then we'll give our atomic bomb, too." At that time we had very good military aeroplanes; that's why Stalin was ready to begin a very big war. But our military specialists told him that we had no equipment which could catch the American aeroplanes, and Stalin gave the order to build such equipment. And later on, this task was fulfilled. During all the sittings of the Government, he said that the third world war would take place, and that this war had to take place during his life. That's why the military industry in the Soviet Union was very much developed at that time. We got a lot of tanks and rockets and ships, and I think that if Stalin had lived five years longer, we would have had this third world war. (emphasis mine)

Q: Was it planned to use the nuclear bomb in Korea from the Soviet side too?

A: Yes, Stalin had such plans, and my father was very much afraid of these plans. Such a fact(?) took place, and maybe it's not very good that I speak about this now. My father was even against the preparation of this bomb, and he understood that if the Soviet Union got this bomb, nothing would be able to stop Stalin in his wish to conquer the whole world.(emphasis mine)

Q: The last question: if nobody knew that Stalin was so dangerous, and if people had some plans to stop Stalin.

A: Yes, of course, a lot of people understood that Stalin had such dangerous plans and that they must do their best in order to stop him and his plans. But Stalin was very clever, and he understood everything. He felt all these spirits of people who surrounded him. When he felt that somebody was dangerous for him, he immediately killed them. He protected himself from the enemies, and it was very simple for him to do this. (emphasis mine) And if he hadn't died in 1953, it seems to me that he would have killed all the members of the Politburo. Bulganin, Malenkov, Khrushchev and my father would have been killed - I am sure of this fact. There are even some documents in which it's written that...

(No more recorded. End.)

So.....1949.

So, I'm thinking on the whole retro-rockets red glare setting (cold war in space) .  The main difference (or POD as the alternate history hipsters call it) is this:  Stalin had access to something that he felt was a useful counter to the Allied A-bomb much sooner than the actual 1949 date that the Soviet A-Bomb arrived on the scene.  My assumption is that given an earlier counter, his actions 1946-1949 would largely be similar, or at least similarly motivated as his actual actions before his death in 1953.

So, this opens the question, what was his action plan for the USSR post WW-II ?

But first, a digression.

Well, in all truth, we have nothing but speculation about alternates.  Particularly so in this case, as Stalin played his cards very close to his chest, tended to have multiple plans that would be modified by real world changes, and never told anyone what he was doing.  And he lied. And used threat and intimidation.  And lied.  Plus, if you looked cross-eyed at him, you died.

That said, I'm not a historian, so I can take the luxury of making decisions about questionable issues with input from the game setting I want to describe rather than relying entirely upon documented facts.  So, while all the following is at least,  as I see it, possible, it is not necessarily likely.  In fact, the most likely possibility, insofar as we have no idea at all what the actual quantifiable probabilities involved were has to be exactly what happened in the real world.   Which, due to a lamentable lack of nuclear torch fighters duking it out among Jupiter's moons doesn't work for the setting I want.  So, I'll go with some other outcomes.

However, the "and then Nikoli Tesla/Albert Einstein/unnamed Genius/alien benefactors invented/introduced grav. drive in 1929/1939/1949" has been done before (did you notice ?) and tends to create a future Alt universe with what we think of as the future as envisioned by us, now.  Make sense ?  I suppose I'm interested in "what did the future look like in the 50/60's to those in the 50/60's", and how do we get there in a game ?

So, what defines that period for me ?
1. Cold war and global polarization
2. Inevitable apocalyptic conflict
3. Crap computers and the last generation of narrow access to information and communications.
4. Crew cuts, lantern chins: jocks and nerds, as opposed to slackers and geeks.
5. Less pesky information about the solar system.
6. BIG projects, engineering uber-alles. Skunk works.


More to come.

Quick plug for a rules lite RPG I love

So, given all the loving that the OSR community has for rules lite -or as I like to imagine them, concise rules, I'm surprised that I haven't seen mention of this nifty rules set: Dead Simple

http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/dead-simple-rpg-rules/

It does an excellent job of presenting what you need for a core RPG in one page, and has several additional one page settings ( from SciFi thru steampunk, historical, asian (yeah, NINJAS !), and lost of setting additions for bog-standards fantasy (you know, "orcs, elves and halflings, oh my !"), a town an adventure, city rules, all nicely presented in single page format.

Seriously, check it out.  NOW.

Phew. That was a lot of work for a hobby project. What next ?

So, Adventurer is mainly done.  My plan for the future  is to just drop the skyship rules and have the sorcery book as a standalone for campaigns that want to add magic to the characters in book one.  I'll probably add the skyship rules to a quick airship combat system and some chargen and careers specific to make a supplement for campaigns with flying ships: working title "Skyships and Swordsmen " or something like that.  But, I'm taking a break from Adventurer for a bit.

In the meantime.......I'm tossing around some ideas for some campaign settings specific to the Mongoose Traveller rules.  Previously, I've been writing up "Retro Rockets Red Glare" (new working title) the setting exploring the undeclared hot war beyond lunar orbit in an alternate 1980's cold war.  Some of the setting ideas are here and here.  Space travel with Orion spacecraft carrying Gemini or Soyuz interceptors. Early 1980's tech in weapons and computers, missiles and kinetic weapons, that kind o' stuff.  read "Blind mans Bluff" and substitute "spaceship" for "submarine". 

Another idea is a more classic retro space patrol type setting,  in the much cooler future science of the 1940's/50's. Tentatively called "Space rangers of Saturn"; set, unsurprisingly, in the raw frontier colonies of the outer gas giants, operating from the 53rd state, Titan. Yeah, space western.  Sue me. No...actually, don't.

The first is an unusual take on retro, but is likely to be more specialized in its appeal; the latter, more fun, but less original.  Not sure which way to go. 

Let me know what you think.  Likely I'll do whatever my whim suggests, but hey, suggestions are always helpful.

ADVENTURER is complete ! Book Three: Races, Realms and Riches is up and posted !

Well, here it is. Book three of three. It's done.

This one covers the equiv of the wilderness and underworld adventures for original D&D. Player and non-player races, animal and fantastic creature generation rules; map, city and dungeon generation rules, plus traveller style profile strings ! analogues for all the major traveller races ! Major geek fest !

All it seems to lack at this point are some easy combat rules for flyers, and a few careers for the same -or at least skills for them.  I'm not sure if I should add them to book two, or remove the flyer construction rules from it, and have a first supplement covering skyships.  The latter is easier, but would leave  book 2 a bit skinny, and entirely devoted to magic.  Any thoughts ?

So, except for the above, this is probably the final version of Adventurer unless I decide to go semipro and actually publish it via POD or PDF.  Or if major problems show up, obviously.....

So, I've got other stuff to blog about, but I've been forcing myself to  finish this off; it's been gratifying seeing the followers increase even in the face of seriously dense and specialized posts.  I hope you all enjoy this.  And I'd love to hear any comments or stories from actual play.  My local playtest has been a long time thing, but somewhat limited in scope and player headcount.  I know more input would be better, so........http://www.box.net/shared/gzu9dcs4c4r61nrx2zo4