Pyramid Review
Hot War: A Game of Friends, Enemies, Secrets, & Consequences in the Aftermath
Published by Contested Ground Studios
Written by Malcolm Craig
Cover by Paul Bourne
Illustrated by Paul Bourne
204-page b&w digest-sized softcover; $28
20.48 MB 204-page b&w digest-sized PDF; $13Winter 1963 and the war is over. The Cuban Missile Crisis unleashed both a nuclear exchange and Other Weapons. Disgorged from Soviet landing craft, Bayonet Troops viciously stabbed all in their path; maniacal ever-chattering Creeps attacked all indiscriminately; the giant spider-like Runners assaulted enemy lines; and Servitors -- alien black masses -- crushed all before them. The United Kingdom responded as best it could, but it was forced to drop nuclear bombs to stop not just the Soviet Other Weapons, but rumor says, its own.
London is now rubble, its reduced population placed under martial law and desperate for both work and food. The government, dominated by the military's rival arms, does the best it can, operating from the old Cabinet War Rooms (one of many underground facilities that the military, the populace, and the monsters have moved into). But when that fails, out wheels the aged Winston Churchill as a symbol of Blitz spirit. The now-armed police force maintains martial law in the face of the radical Citizens Defence Army, the influx of refugees, and Sir Oswald Mosley's increasingly popular Union Movement. Meanwhile the British Experimental Rocket Bureau tries to investigate Soviet . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: October 24, 2008
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