CS: Modern Day

Zero-Hour
The campaign setting is the world as it is.

Grab a globe and pick a spot. The more you know about history and current events, the more realistic your scenario will be.

The only limitation here is your ability to play through a current-events situation before the real-life actors change. Whether a scenario is "safe" (valid) depends on the stability of the actual location. In some cases, that's political stability. In other cases, like running Search and Rescue scenarios, one can only approximate based on disaster projections – because the minute it actually hits, details will change.

Fortunately, the Ref can tweak the clock...

If real-life timing is an issue, as a rule, it's better to lean on scenarios that fit a profile rather than a specific event that's currently unfolding. Why? Because in two weeks, you'll hear new intelligence that changes what the parameters – and that will skew the expectations and mindset of the deploying team.

Want a truly epic campaign? Place a scenario in the recent past, like East German vs West German. That locks in known cold-war players but still allows wildcards (like Palestinian terrorists in Munich). Depending on how that covert mission turns out, now you've got your own secret history for a modern day follow-up, fifty-odd years later...

Or maybe you're looking to table-top the role of US Army Rangers in modern-day Afghanistan. The specific political players change season-to-season, maybe faster than the players around the table. It could be completely peaceful in town with most fighting in the deep mountains on the Paki border... or the Taliban could be in the middle of a resurgence.

Maybe it starts in Seoul, with South Korean and US agents playing cat-and-mouse with Chinese and Russian agents, before the action crosses the DMZ into North Korea.

Tools of the Trade
Make Google work for you. Sign in to "My Maps" and make the world your map: you can create a layer for your campaign map that's limited only by what you dare pronounce in front of your friends.

Check Reuters for current and recent events, sprinkle in some consensus-scholarship background from Wikipedia, and plan away.

Exercise: the ShakeOut Scenario
For a truly technical game, we're presenting an example Scenario based on the Great California ShakeOut, a yearly exercise that simulates a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault. Designed as a walkthrough for CERT members, this addresses risks, threats and hazards to a volunteer CERT team deployed in the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake. The regional setting, in this case, is Burbank, California – but once a Ref has familiarity with the scenario, they can adjust locations and follow the timeline for landmarks more familiar to the Players.

As the saying goes: it's not if an earthquake will strike, but when. While the ShakeOut isn't quite a "worst case scenario" – it's both significant and challenging enough that it's a reasonable mission profile of what CERT members may be asked to perform.

In this Scenario, Players will create characters that are approximations of themselves. Starting with a generic template provided, they may tweak as appropriate. Once their alt-selves are ready, they'll go through the steps of reporting, gearing, orders, deployment, operations, relief and demobilization.
 * CERT: The Burbank Activation.