Plotting a War

I mentioned last time that I've spent four months plotting a war. The timing of the war is critical, as the date of the invasion of Earth is a fixed point in Strikeforce history. I had to start the war on a specific date to give the Krai time to get to Earth by the established invasion date (don't worry if this isn't making sense, I hope I'll clear it all up in future posts).

As that critical date approached in the Star Guard campaign, I was completely unprepared to run a war. To give myself the breathing space I needed to do it, I put the Star Guard on hold and switched to a different campaign (more on that later, too) for four months.

Four months later, I've got the strategic thrust of the war mapped out, and a number of potential scenarios planned. The idea is that the Star Guard (the player characters) will be sent on missions to worlds threatened by the Krai invasion—which is why I need to know where that invasion is on any particular date, which I why i needed to "play" the war in advance.

One week in and it's already gone wrong, as an event I wanted to happen didn't happen, thanks to player activity, so I've got to tweak my war strategy slightly. But I've got two or three scenarios lined up that can happen regardless of where the Krai front line is, so I think I'm ok.

I feel like I'm not explaining this very coherently.

Let's try this instead: this handout was given to the players to show them what their characters knew on the eve of the war (and refresh their memories after four months of not playing these characters). Now you know everything they know. I don't yet have an established place to put this file on the main site, so consider this a sneak preview of a new storyline coming soon.