Serious [Pitch] This War of Mine

[BoB (Best of Boxes)²]

Spoiler: Music

~A War Without End, Republic of Dombezhen, City of Novozkov, Fall of 2023~

You awake with a start, it's dark, though that's normal, the power has been unreliable at best for weeks, your phone says it's 4:29 AM... You maybe slept for three hours, a low rumble shakes the walls of your claimed apartment, and you listen for a moment, the distant staccato of gunfire and explosions can be heard as you realize why you woke up. Combat's picked up again. You place your feet on the ground, fumbling away with the pink covers of the bed you've claimed, seizing for a moment as a demonic Cinderella looms out of the darkness at you. Her face has finally begun to peel from the walls of the bedroom, stained and running with dirty streaks now, as you think, just briefly, about the girl that once made this room her own.

Did she make it out? Did her parents? Would they come home one day? Would anyone?

You can make out another distant pop, and you realize that the fighting has to be further than you thought it was... That's strange, you wouldn't have thought you'd develop an ear for explosions. It's strange just how fast life in a warzone becomes just... Life... Heading into the kitchen, you try to work the coffee grinder for a few moments, confirming that the power is truly off. Not that you'd turn a light on even if it wasn't, a light in the darkness was a good way to draw mortar fire, and a moment of convenience wasn't worth the terror of incoming shells.

With shoes on your feet though, you remember, you've got shit to do, a quick trip down the stairs, and you'd almost consider popping in some headphones to listen to music while walking to the grocery store, but the distant pop of gunshots gives you all the incentive to decide that you'd rather have your wits about you this morning. As you cross the street, you notice a police APC, with a man at a mounted machine gun, watching you. The barrel of the gun is pointed in the air, but he watches you with a stern silence as you cross the street. You try to keep your head down as you ask yourself a question you haven't been able to find an answer to yet.

How did it get this bad?

​

The World:

The Cold War did not end cleanly, the increasing domestic terror of the United States was not forgotten, but only amplified. The Russian Federation's brutality in attempting to hold onto previous possessions only furthered strife in Europe, and following several wars in Eastern Europe, even the mightiest of the old guard of the west fall into infighting and factionalism. A fictional state, Dombezhen, finally experiences the wars that have driven so many people to it's lands. It is a fractious place of many peoples, and many nationalities, expats and visitors, buoyed by the oil and metal reserves it sits atop, and the war economy that booms around the world.

A place called by some a 'Little Eastern America', due to it's heavy immigration from the west, and relative freedoms for the area, or referred derivatively as a 'Oligarchic Dictatorship'. It lays where our own Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia meet, forming after all of those states had solidified in a conflict widely ignored by the greater powers at the time. Dombezhen is a land of contradictions that was previously kept aloft by a shared sense of suffering, of being many people who came together to form a better country than what they had left, who's divisions and cracks are wedged open by rotting great powers.

Mercenaries maneuver for unknown interests, pro-government militias enforce brutal measures to save their home, separatists traffic in fear and terror with foreign backers, the U.N. tries to enforce some safety for the citizenry, who all the while simply try to survive as their neighbor's apartment becomes a sniper's nest. This is not a war with good or bad guys, it is one stripped bare, with only the suffering left beneath, a sneering dark parody of reality.

The survivors will know no peace, no joy, only the sights and sounds of a dead city.

​

The Goal of the Roleplay:

Suffer.

Expanding on that, I find that this could be a very engaging set of circumstances to place characters into, to push them to their limits. While I would love for the focus to be on civilians just trying to make it, there's a lot of room for every side of the conflict in this. From the soldier unsure if they even want what they're fighting for anymore, the zealot intent on executing partisans, a bandit hoping to cobble together enough food or money to survive or escape, a conflict journalist hoping to draw attention to atrocities, the only question is who you experience the hidden part of war as. So much is made of the medals, the victories, the numbers, but never what lays behind the numbers.

Dimitri was a hero, he flanked a position that had held out for hours and was awarded a grand medal for it. Nothing is made of when his half starved frame entered the doorway, seeing another person, as scared, as starved, as dirty as he was, simply wearing the wrong colors. The hesitation, or the smell of dirt, blood and decay on that day. Emilee won a Pulitzer prize for her photojournalism of the conflict, her images captured the suffering of the populace, a suffering she only barely avoided herself, the cries of the dead and dying never fully communicated through her work, but always in her dreams.

​

Duration:

I think this would best span perhaps two weeks of life in the area, using a few days ahead of time as a runup to the event. A vague timeline of how the event would run is as follows.

• Day 1: The city of Novozkov is going about it's daily life, there are government troops stationed in the area, and some pro-government militias too. Electricity is relatively steady, and there is still food on the shelves, and the water runs okay. News of the war seems distant, aside from some errant shells or missiles that struck a few weeks back.​
• Day 2: The military appears nervous, a checkpoint is set up leading in and out of the city. For the citizens, this is mostly business as normal.​
• Day 3: Artillery rounds strike the city, it's random, unfocused, the government blames separatists, who in turn claim that a pro-government militia had captured an artillery piece, and used it to shell their own city to drum up support. Military men without clear affiliation are seen throughout the city, mercenaries moving through the area. Electricity flickers, and water runs in spurts.​
• Day 4: The military orders a withdrawal, framing it as a reassignment to a hotter area of the conflict. An occasional boom in the distance, or directed at the city reminds the citizens that everything is not as calm as it seems. Some soldiers stay behind, AWOL, worried for their families. Very little effort is made to evacuate any citizens.​
• Day 5: The police remain fully within the city, some may even staff the checkpoint, their loyalties are unknown, and the police chief has refused to make a public comment on what they will do if the rebels arrive.​
• Day 6: The separatists arrive, wielding mostly outdated AK's, an APC, and a couple of technicals. With them comes a new shipment of food, appreciated given the relative scarcity of supplies. The people driving the trucks are Russian soldiers, they refuse most direct conversation, but are better equipped, and relatively amicable.​
• Day 7: Pro-government militias launch a counter-offensive, with sporadic support, and the city turns into block by block fighting overnight. Food stores are seized by both sides, and individual insurgents appear all over.​
• Day 8: U.N. forces arrive, with a stated objective to protect civilians and civil infrastructure, the same water and electricity that is now supplying whatever side holds a majority of the city with life-giving resources. Quickly, they may become a target for bitter and less official armed forces.​
• Day 9-12: The city's ability to fake any amount of normalcy ebbs and flows with the waves of violence, and the lines of citizens and combatants is nearly ignored by some elements, wild allegations are everywhere.​
• Day 13: Rumors of a government or U.N. evacuation of the city abound, many begin to scrape together whatever they can to prepare to leave with, or further entrench themselves, untrusting of anything that may come of this.​
• Day 14: Day of the rumored evacuation.​

This could be lengthened or shortened as needed, with the above timeline really being just a proposal of events, given that I want participants to be the leaders of each faction in server, things could turn out entirely differently. Atrocities, peace, cease-fires, bombings, snipers, it's all on the table and up to each individuals neuroses.

Resources:

• TRP Server Models, SWEPS(No not the lasers)​
• ZRP Models(mostly clothes)​
• TRP/ZRP Vehicles​
• Pripyat(I think that frankly, this map will be all that would be needed for the server, and it's already in most people's content packs. Something less desolate could be chosen as well, but this one would have all the right ingredients and feel for the RR, if people have suggestions or better ones though let me know.)​
• A willingness to die and suffer (Not hard for an RR lasting two weeks)​

This really is pretty low effort as far as what would needed to be set on server for the event. A few faction colors and names, maybe some spawns, I don't know enough about the current state of Eternity to say whether it would be better to run on that script or on the old script, but it may be easier to provide weapon variety on the old script.

If anyone has something further for a map that would be better, other ideas to improve, or a heavy interest in seeing the timeline of the alternate world I plotted out ahead of time, let me know. This idea's been kicking around in my head for a couple of weeks and I had to get it on paper as it were. I'm also going to include some extra media below to give you an idea of what inspired this.

Spoiler: Extra Media

(This media depicts violence, war, and a conflict that is still ongoing. It is not included to portray a political message, endorsement, or glorification of the ongoing conflict. Viewer discretion is advised.)

​

 

[kiwi]

This is really similar to something I thought about posting a few months ago. I absolutely love the game, and there's something so raw and authentic about being placed in the role of a frugal survivor when just a few weeks before you were buying your groceries from a supermarket. Keeping the theme realistic but ambiguous gives us some room to maneuver too. From what I can tell, this sort of dynamic is what people enjoyed the most about our ZRP iterations.

 

[Sinclair]

lots of really cool ideas and concepts that would make for a really engaging story. but, i think you would unfortunately find many of these ideas difficult to apply to rp.

ppl dont really rp starvation, sickness, discomforts, etc that would come with war and upheaval of society on their own. a fair amount of individuals would, but id say a good amount of those would loosen up on that some time into the RR so you'd only have a small sect roleplaying the event's true intentions throughout

also seems like there'd be quite a lot of factions to fill/be played. police, separatists, soldiers, UN, militias, on top of all the misc civilian roles. and if groups are meant to be led by participants where they have independence/free reign things might get dysfunctional with certain groups having more players arbitrarily, some groups just dont play or have time to play, or even group leaders making decisions that unintentionally squash conflict/excitement, etc

and lastly id think itd play out very similarly to zrp, where the first section has the most activity and player creativity, but once the events start happening and society falls apart people lose drive to do their own thing and just look for the next event post. maybe with the shortened time span this wouldnt happen as quickly, but with that 'martial law' type setting people take the realistic option of 'i need to hunker down and wait this thing out to survive' when that really doesnt get people out and interacting in rp.

 

[Mongoose]

I'm a little iffy on scenarios based on real world events. With This War of Mine so heavily based on the Siege of Sarajevo and the Yugoslav Wars, it also feels like it would turn into a micro Stanford Prison Experiment depending on the factions involved, in addition to the above. This War of Mine was only a few steps away from "Receiving end of genocide" simulator as it is, and it was for good reason: you have absolutely no player involvement with the police, military, rebel factions or the international peacekeepers, because the only goal was essentially survival as the civilians.

 

[BoB (Best of Boxes)²]

lots of really cool ideas and concepts that would make for a really engaging story. but, i think you would unfortunately find many of these ideas difficult to apply to rp.

ppl dont really rp starvation, sickness, discomforts, etc that would come with war and upheaval of society on their own. a fair amount of individuals would, but id say a good amount of those would loosen up on that some time into the RR so you'd only have a small sect roleplaying the event's true intentions throughout

also seems like there'd be quite a lot of factions to fill/be played. police, separatists, soldiers, UN, militias, on top of all the misc civilian roles. and if groups are meant to be led by participants where they have independence/free reign things might get dysfunctional with certain groups having more players arbitrarily, some groups just dont play or have time to play, or even group leaders making decisions that unintentionally squash conflict/excitement, etc

and lastly id think itd play out very similarly to zrp, where the first section has the most activity and player creativity, but once the events start happening and society falls apart people lose drive to do their own thing and just look for the next event post. maybe with the shortened time span this wouldnt happen as quickly, but with that 'martial law' type setting people take the realistic option of 'i need to hunker down and wait this thing out to survive' when that really doesnt get people out and interacting in rp.

I’m fully aware that there are... Difficulties enforcing scarcity mindsets(tech-com is low on ammo), but I’m hoping the relative normalcy at first, and the rejoicing of a food shipment may help people enter the mindset for the brief area of the RR where it will get really hard on them. The biggest concern will be water for people, as normal survival wisdom says a couple days without water is death, but you can make it twice that or longer without food. I would assume that many people would have at least half or a quarter of a pantry, and the brevity of the RR will help alleviate some suspension of disbelief there, but with the probable scarcity of future food, still make people want to hold onto what they have. (Not that I want to have a bunch of can food scripts or something, though it could be a way to handle peoples possessions)

The factions will likely be trimmed of fat for interest, because as much as my grand minds eye vision for the event has a complex, multi-faceted and heavily factionalized server, that’d not likely to last. Groups that lose interest and fade away can just be written off as moving to other parts of the conflict, and the dwindling playerbase after the first few days might build the feeling of a city that is dying inadvertently. While some offscreen leadership can help here in guiding factions into creating roleplay, I want the experience in server to be focused on the common man, the soldier on the ground, with offscreen leadership stepping in mostly to mix things up or force conflict or roleplay even when decisions on the ground would avoid it. An encouragement to face heavy PK’s and a chance to experience them for those who may be normally too afraid to lose the progress of a character for it could alleviate this slightly too. There isn’t meant to be some grand reward for surviving, so it would be best to go and tell a tragic story and die, or to help others to tell one at least, after all, the server will only be up for a few weeks at best.

Hunkering down with a couple of trusted friends is absolutely something I expect, and I don’t even want to discourage it too heavily. Martial law will likely quickly become unenforceable, as the conflict takes priority, and I definitely don’t want to end up with a bunch of military people telling citizens not to RP while they have fun. They have bigger problems to worry about. Instead I want the militarized factions to encroach on the safety of the civilians, by fighting close by, or maybe even taking parts of their residence as a strategic foothold against their will. A wounded soldier pounding on the door trying to find shelter before their enemies sweep the area for survivors, a lone partisan firing at a patrol from a residential apartment, putting the civilians on the spot. Do the citizens try to take down the sniper themselves to sage themselves a shelling? Are they forced to flee as a government they nominally support fires on their homes? Some of this is going to require active management to avoid stagnation, but a little stagnation and peace here and there will also help to heighten these terrifying moments.

I'm a little iffy on scenarios based on real world events. With This War of Mine so heavily based on the Siege of Sarajevo and the Yugoslav Wars, it also feels like it would turn into a micro Stanford Prison Experiment depending on the factions involved, in addition to the above. This War of Mine was only a few steps away from "Receiving end of genocide" simulator as it is, and it was for good reason: you have absolutely no player involvement with the police, military, rebel factions or the international peacekeepers, because the only goal was essentially survival as the civilians.

I hope to separate this enough from reality with alternate history for the past twenty or forty years to avoid digging at real life wounds, but I do want it to resonate enough with reality to truly provide a harsh experience. There is some upsetting content in the very concept, and it all has to be very maturely handled to really hit home the way it should, but I want even those militarized factions to suffer in this setting. Soldiers wondering if their cause is worth the suffering of the citizenry, international observers feeling helpless to prevent the abhorrence they are being forced to see. Personally I quite enjoy torturing my characters, and I believe it’s a good way to see empathy in situations that one may never experience, and hopefully will never experience. I want to create an experience of mutual suffering that everyone can work through, and understand historical or current issues through. Keeping the server under a password available on the forums so that participants understand what they’re getting involved in may be a way to help stay mindful of what is meant to be conveyed.

Im torn on just how much like event characters the conflict participants should be, as they have a lot of potential for some great character conflict and development, but they also have the potential to be handled very poorly. I may be optimistic about the communities ability to handle it well, but I think in a short format, with the objectives out in the open for the experience, it can be well managed.

We can’t know if we don’t try though, and I’m ready to fail.

 

[Glassfunk]

Spoiler: Music

View attachment 18326
~A War Without End, Republic of Dombezhen, City of Novozkov, Fall of 2023~

You awake with a start, it's dark, though that's normal, the power has been unreliable at best for weeks, your phone says it's 4:29 AM... You maybe slept for three hours, a low rumble shakes the walls of your claimed apartment, and you listen for a moment, the distant staccato of gunfire and explosions can be heard as you realize why you woke up. Combat's picked up again. You place your feet on the ground, fumbling away with the pink covers of the bed you've claimed, seizing for a moment as a demonic Cinderella looms out of the darkness at you. Her face has finally begun to peel from the walls of the bedroom, stained and running with dirty streaks now, as you think, just briefly, about the girl that once made this room her own.

Did she make it out? Did her parents? Would they come home one day? Would anyone?

You can make out another distant pop, and you realize that the fighting has to be further than you thought it was... That's strange, you wouldn't have thought you'd develop an ear for explosions. It's strange just how fast life in a warzone becomes just... Life... Heading into the kitchen, you try to work the coffee grinder for a few moments, confirming that the power is truly off. Not that you'd turn a light on even if it wasn't, a light in the darkness was a good way to draw mortar fire, and a moment of convenience wasn't worth the terror of incoming shells.

With shoes on your feet though, you remember, you've got shit to do, a quick trip down the stairs, and you'd almost consider popping in some headphones to listen to music while walking to the grocery store, but the distant pop of gunshots gives you all the incentive to decide that you'd rather have your wits about you this morning. As you cross the street, you notice a police APC, with a man at a mounted machine gun, watching you. The barrel of the gun is pointed in the air, but he watches you with a stern silence as you cross the street. You try to keep your head down as you ask yourself a question you haven't been able to find an answer to yet.

How did it get this bad?

View attachment 18327​

The World:

The Cold War did not end cleanly, the increasing domestic terror of the United States was not forgotten, but only amplified. The Russian Federation's brutality in attempting to hold onto previous possessions only furthered strife in Europe, and following several wars in Eastern Europe, even the mightiest of the old guard of the west fall into infighting and factionalism. A fictional state, Dombezhen, finally experiences the wars that have driven so many people to it's lands. It is a fractious place of many peoples, and many nationalities, expats and visitors, buoyed by the oil and metal reserves it sits atop, and the war economy that booms around the world.

A place called by some a 'Little Eastern America', due to it's heavy immigration from the west, and relative freedoms for the area, or referred derivatively as a 'Oligarchic Dictatorship'. It lays where our own Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia meet, forming after all of those states had solidified in a conflict widely ignored by the greater powers at the time. Dombezhen is a land of contradictions that was previously kept aloft by a shared sense of suffering, of being many people who came together to form a better country than what they had left, who's divisions and cracks are wedged open by rotting great powers.

Mercenaries maneuver for unknown interests, pro-government militias enforce brutal measures to save their home, separatists traffic in fear and terror with foreign backers, the U.N. tries to enforce some safety for the citizenry, who all the while simply try to survive as their neighbor's apartment becomes a sniper's nest. This is not a war with good or bad guys, it is one stripped bare, with only the suffering left beneath, a sneering dark parody of reality.

The survivors will know no peace, no joy, only the sights and sounds of a dead city.

View attachment 18332​

The Goal of the Roleplay:

Suffer.

Expanding on that, I find that this could be a very engaging set of circumstances to place characters into, to push them to their limits. While I would love for the focus to be on civilians just trying to make it, there's a lot of room for every side of the conflict in this. From the soldier unsure if they even want what they're fighting for anymore, the zealot intent on executing partisans, a bandit hoping to cobble together enough food or money to survive or escape, a conflict journalist hoping to draw attention to atrocities, the only question is who you experience the hidden part of war as. So much is made of the medals, the victories, the numbers, but never what lays behind the numbers.

Dimitri was a hero, he flanked a position that had held out for hours and was awarded a grand medal for it. Nothing is made of when his half starved frame entered the doorway, seeing another person, as scared, as starved, as dirty as he was, simply wearing the wrong colors. The hesitation, or the smell of dirt, blood and decay on that day. Emilee won a Pulitzer prize for her photojournalism of the conflict, her images captured the suffering of the populace, a suffering she only barely avoided herself, the cries of the dead and dying never fully communicated through her work, but always in her dreams.

​

Duration:

I think this would best span perhaps two weeks of life in the area, using a few days ahead of time as a runup to the event. A vague timeline of how the event would run is as follows.

• Day 1: The city of Novozkov is going about it's daily life, there are government troops stationed in the area, and some pro-government militias too. Electricity is relatively steady, and there is still food on the shelves, and the water runs okay. News of the war seems distant, aside from some errant shells or missiles that struck a few weeks back.​
• Day 2: The military appears nervous, a checkpoint is set up leading in and out of the city. For the citizens, this is mostly business as normal.​
• Day 3: Artillery rounds strike the city, it's random, unfocused, the government blames separatists, who in turn claim that a pro-government militia had captured an artillery piece, and used it to shell their own city to drum up support. Military men without clear affiliation are seen throughout the city, mercenaries moving through the area. Electricity flickers, and water runs in spurts.​
• Day 4: The military orders a withdrawal, framing it as a reassignment to a hotter area of the conflict. An occasional boom in the distance, or directed at the city reminds the citizens that everything is not as calm as it seems. Some soldiers stay behind, AWOL, worried for their families. Very little effort is made to evacuate any citizens.​
• Day 5: The police remain fully within the city, some may even staff the checkpoint, their loyalties are unknown, and the police chief has refused to make a public comment on what they will do if the rebels arrive.​
• Day 6: The separatists arrive, wielding mostly outdated AK's, an APC, and a couple of technicals. With them comes a new shipment of food, appreciated given the relative scarcity of supplies. The people driving the trucks are Russian soldiers, they refuse most direct conversation, but are better equipped, and relatively amicable.​
• Day 7: Pro-government militias launch a counter-offensive, with sporadic support, and the city turns into block by block fighting overnight. Food stores are seized by both sides, and individual insurgents appear all over.​
• Day 8: U.N. forces arrive, with a stated objective to protect civilians and civil infrastructure, the same water and electricity that is now supplying whatever side holds a majority of the city with life-giving resources. Quickly, they may become a target for bitter and less official armed forces.​
• Day 9-12: The city's ability to fake any amount of normalcy ebbs and flows with the waves of violence, and the lines of citizens and combatants is nearly ignored by some elements, wild allegations are everywhere.​
• Day 13: Rumors of a government or U.N. evacuation of the city abound, many begin to scrape together whatever they can to prepare to leave with, or further entrench themselves, untrusting of anything that may come of this.​
• Day 14: Day of the rumored evacuation.​

This could be lengthened or shortened as needed, with the above timeline really being just a proposal of events, given that I want participants to be the leaders of each faction in server, things could turn out entirely differently. Atrocities, peace, cease-fires, bombings, snipers, it's all on the table and up to each individuals neuroses.

Resources:

• TRP Server Models, SWEPS(No not the lasers)​
• ZRP Models(mostly clothes)​
• TRP/ZRP Vehicles​
• Pripyat(I think that frankly, this map will be all that would be needed for the server, and it's already in most people's content packs. Something less desolate could be chosen as well, but this one would have all the right ingredients and feel for the RR, if people have suggestions or better ones though let me know.)​
• A willingness to die and suffer (Not hard for an RR lasting two weeks)​

This really is pretty low effort as far as what would needed to be set on server for the event. A few faction colors and names, maybe some spawns, I don't know enough about the current state of Eternity to say whether it would be better to run on that script or on the old script, but it may be easier to provide weapon variety on the old script.

If anyone has something further for a map that would be better, other ideas to improve, or a heavy interest in seeing the timeline of the alternate world I plotted out ahead of time, let me know. This idea's been kicking around in my head for a couple of weeks and I had to get it on paper as it were. I'm also going to include some extra media below to give you an idea of what inspired this.

Spoiler: Extra Media

(This media depicts violence, war, and a conflict that is still ongoing. It is not included to portray a political message, endorsement, or glorification of the ongoing conflict. Viewer discretion is advised.)

​

As an addict for all things cold war, this sounds incredibly interesting, it seems to capture the depression of soviet citizens and post-soviet citizens as well, a very good element to put in an RP scenario if that makes any sense.

 

[Robe]

absolutely loved this war of mine, i think this is a prime candidate for a setting. since the focus was more on the casualties of war more so than the military, id say let the admins play out the miltiary characters and go from there.

Mister Rogers was a real big fan of this game.

 

[BoB (Best of Boxes)²]

I will say that I think leaving some military slots open to being played by non-admins will be a plus, as it's not like war doesn't leave scars on those fighting it. Granted I'm not terribly familiar with how the administration works behind the scenes of an RR, but I would be worried about trying to press too many people into service as an admin, or making it feel exclusive to get to feel out how the setting would be for such a character. Maybe I'm too worried about being inclusive but people doing problematic things in character or being problematic out of character can be dealt with appropriately... After all, it's not too likely someone'll come down on you all that harshly if you frag the most hated guy of the squad in a stressful situation, and if someone is just squashing roleplay rather than creating it, that's also a dick move to be dealt with.

Perhaps an alternative way of enforcing some level of care amongst the guys who will usually have guns by having PK rules be incredibly harsh on them, and allow people to cycle through it pretty easily. Gives someone a chance to run out a character, experience something, but also keep anyone from ever feeling like they approach anything resembling true power in the setting. I fully expect sniper PK's to happen in this setting, as bad as they usually are, they will help the atmosphere intended. Of course, that sniper should just as reasonably expect that they could get blasted at any second. I'd love to see some Full Metal Jacket level things happen involving that, but maybe that's just a pipe dream of mine.