The Guns of Old John Brown

Ok, it looks like Plan Good Stuff won, by my count.

[] Downtime Machinery: Using the machine shop, we can get supplies for Brown and the abolitionist movement by making capital goods from around their time for cheaper than they could get elsewhere, as well as producing equipment that will be invented soon and giving them access to that. From the open-hearth furnace to ring-spinners to cotton gins (the idea of profits from planters going to their destruction has a delicious irony), there are many tools and techniques we could give him and our downtime comrades that would improve the funding they have available. (2 Resources per die, 15/40)
--[]1 Dice
-[] High-Quality Printing: We won't be able to do as much as we would like when it comes to printing, but we can still produce large numbers of high-quality pamphlets and posters to bombard people with (metaphorically) and win the propaganda war. (1 Resource per die, 0/50, small ongoing Resource cost)
--[] 1 Free Dice
-[] Drug Farms: To extend the supplies of medicine we can deliver, we can start constructing greenhouses to grow simple herbal medicines, painkillers such as marijuana, or perhaps harder drugs, given that they used as such downtime. With this, we will be able to expand the amount of medical aid we can give to Brown. (3 Resources per die, 0/30)
--[] 1 Free Dice
-[] Uptime Expertise: There are a plethora of socialists, anarchists, communists, and more at a loss now that they have succeeded, even partly. Some of them are genuinely lost, the scope of their victory overwhelming them. Some of them could be inducted into Radical Reconstruciton and sent on "special missions." (5 Resources per die, 0/20)
--[]1 Dice
-[] Specialist Weapon Purchases: While we cannot supply significant numbers of troops with modern weapons, we could acquire a few highly lethal weapons and small supplies of ammunition, which might allow a few men and women to turn the tide of battles. Purchasing sniper rifles, high explosives, and other weapons will not come cheap in any way, though. (10 Resources per die, 0/25)
--[] 1 Dice
-[] Good Guns: You don't need the best weapons to have a huge advantage over downtime soldiers. A few dozen hunting rifles will let you decapitate enemy armies with ease. The only limitation will be the amount of ammunition you can bring...that is needed for battles uptime as well. (2 Resources per die, 0/25)
--[] 1 Dice
-[] Reconstruction Aid: The most immediate way we can aid the uptime revolution is by repairing the immense damage done to the city. Between our mostly intact machine shop and our labor, we can provide significant support for the construction of new homes, the repair of shatter streets, and the supply of machine parts for factories. (1 Resource per die, 0/100)
--[] 4 dice
-[] Integrate the Radicals: The Radicals gang was founded as part of a deliberate split, but much of their membership are definitely not socialists. They are, however, interested in defending their new home in the factory and not getting massacred in the inevitable crackdowns should New Chicago fall. Integrating them properly into Radical Reconstruction will expand our manpower pool. (1 Resource per die, 0/40)
--[] 2 Dice

Downtime Machinery, 15+26/40

The machine shop avoided the worst of the damage in the bombings, and the invading armies never progressed far enough for their to be a danger of gunfire. So it takes barely any time at all for it to get up and running and making goods. There's metal everywhere now, excess steel and brass from discarded weaponry, scraps from shattered cars and buildings, resources dug up from the slowly-reconstructed mines around the city.

And all that metal goes in, and out comes tools. First there are saws and hammers made from steel better than can be found downtime, than more elaborate equipment and machinery. The time machine is constantly active as parts and pieces are delivered. The size of the machine imposes a limitation on what can be made, but what has been sent already has greatly expanded the capacity of the Troy Arms Factory and the attached chemical shop.

Result: Action complete, small boost to income, major boost to downtime industrial actions.

High-Quality Printing, 8/50

The necessity of the existential civil war going on uptime has resulted in computers and printers both being high-priority goods. Cut off from chip fabs, drones and advanced weaponry are using the chips from other electronic equipment while the disorganized, chaotic state uses whatever computers and calculators they can get their hands on to try and manage an economy and complete the transition to worker ownership.

As a result, the equipment that Radical Reconstruciton had hoped to use to create mass quantities of high-quality posters and pamphlets simply was not available. Some designs were sketched up, but little else was accomplished.

Result: Action continues

Drug Farms: 4/30

Similar problems affected the planned greenhouses. Seeds and cuttings of medicinal plants are in short supply, as is the equipment needed to turn leaves and roots into usable medicines. The machine shop was able to make up for some of the latter, and material gathered to actually begin constructing the greenhouses in a nearby, cleared away lot, but there is still much to be done.

Result: Action continues

-[] Uptime Expertise, 16/20

There are plenty of organizers and revolutionaries in New Chicago, ranging from the old hands to the new converts. They vary in experience, ideology, and expertise, come from eerie conceivable background, have every imaginable goal. There are ex-gang members and cops forced out of the force, rich children who went into radical politics to annoy their parents and poor adults who struggled for every scrap of food,

There are also more than a few who are willing to take up a special mission that will leave them isolated, in enemy territory, and forced to use primitive equipment and live in primitive conditions to avoid detection. It becomes a process of interviews and meetings, winnowing down those who are too essential and those who are too impotent, removing the untrustworthy, a slow, steady recruiting that is almost complete.

Result: Final narrowing down of the next set of operatives is almost complete.

Specialist Weapon Purchases, 10/25, Good Guns, 10/25

The workers of New Chicago are at war, and victory in it is the first priority for many. Factories are re-opened, trainlines repaired, soldiers recruited. The coming war will be a war of industry, of sheer weight of metal, and so the creation of weaponry is of utmost importance.

What this means is that guns and ammunition are at the same time very hard to find and very easy to find. In the organized chaos that is the preparations for war, there are discarded civillian rifles being distributed to militias and ammunition supplies in unneeded calibers being shared out. Radical Reconstruction bets plenty of both, but has rapidly become necessary to start removing some of these weapons and bullets, both for the sake of the capacity of the time machine and because .22 bullets aren't useful with .45 rifles.

Meanwhile, mortars and sniper rifles and other weapons are harder to come by as they are earmarked for the army, and only a few examples of each with utterly insufficient amounts of ammunitions have been sent over to Radical Reconstruction.

Result: Stockpiles are starting to be organized and created, action continues.

Reconstruction Aid, 10+44+54+42= 150/100, Integrate the Radicals, 93+82 = 175/40

The process of rebuilding the city and recruiting the gangsters of the Radicals into the organization are merged into one. For six hours every day (including the breaks and meals) they labor alongside party members, clearing rubble and setting up temporary housing, getting to experience the efficiency of socialism from inside the system. They do all the work you do, from standing guard against reactionary partisans to digging up gardens, and though the food is not always delicious and discipline is a problem, they do well nonetheless.

For the remaining two hours in their workday, they get introduced to theory. Members of Radical Reconstruction sit with them and facilitate discussions on everything from history (with lots of entertaining and impressive anecdotes, like the story of the Red Gundams during the Second American Civil War) to politics to social justice. They don't just learn, but take control of their learning, and from heated debates and hands-on experience they start to understand.

Committed cadres of socialists, anarchists, revolutionary pugilists, left-wing libertarians, Marxists, urban Maoists, and more start appearing in their ranks, and the Radical Reconstruction movement grows in influence and number, which in turns results in more resources that can be devoted to John Brown's struggle.

Result: Action completes, more dice and Resources

They had seen John Brown confused and uncertain, but no one could ever remember seeing him surprised. But when he heard the news about the New American Revolution, his mouth fell open and his eyes went wide. Then he laughed and clapped his hands and cried "Hallelujah!" and told his comrades to go fight their war.

And those comrades refused. They had a cause here, a battle that needed to be fought, a cause that had been abandoned for too long.

Something of an argument ensued, one that no one had expected as John Brown argued that Radical Reconstruction had done enough while Radical Reconstruction insisted they could still do more. But in the end, he would not force them to go against their will, and if they were around there was no reason not to accept their aid.

And a new one began, about what they would prioritize. As their organization grew in size and capability, and the endless struggle took its toll, some of the uptimers were feeling burned out, while others exhorted their comrades to keep going, to not abandon their work now. Some harsh words were said without thought, and harsh words thrown back.

And in the end, a compromise was forced. They would slow down for a time and let their downtime comrades take up some of the slack. They would not push themselves to exhaustion, not when things were at such a delicate stage.


Your downtime organization is currently Medium. This grants you a total of four organizational actions - you are almost entirely dependent on downtimers for many activities. Actions with the [Organization] tag can be granted the support of your organization and do not require an operative if there is an available organization action slot.

You have four Operatives available. Each operative can perform one personal action. Personal actions represent the sort of thing you can get an individual to do easily. They may also apply benefits to organizational activities as well. Your current operatives are Malcolm Miller, Rebecca Tillman, Floyd Olsen, and Alexander Franklin. Tag each action with who is doing them. Example -[x] Action [Alex], -[x] Action [Rebecca] [Malcolm] -[x] Action [Org] [Floyd]





[] Speak with Brown: Brown had questions, plans, needs...and your organization has the same. There's plenty of opportunities to get him alone and have a chat. Choose up to two topics.
-[] Ask for aid. Persuading people like Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass will be hard. Ask Brown's advice on how to approach them.
-[] Religious matters. Faith is clearly a thorny matter for Brown. Perhaps another's perspective might help him.
-[] Discuss theory. There's always more matters of politics and economics to discuss.
-[] New tactics. Between the gatling guns and the weapons that will hopefully be delivered from uptime, warfare might be transformed completely. Does Brown have any ideas for how to take advantage of that? He's not familiar with this kind of warfare, but no one really is.

[] Meetings to be Had. History is full of people of importance. Meet figures from the past, people you read about, and seek their aid in your struggles.
-[] Write-in who you are meeting with and the goal of the meeting. Note that they should be roughly a week from Brown's farm in North Elba if you want to have the operative be available for the next downtime phase.

[] All About Chemistry. The factory has a small workshop nearby, kept carefully away from the main buildings, for experimentation and chemistry production. Currently, all its produces is some thermite, but there are other possibilities worth exploring.

[] New Designs. Right now, the factory mostly produces rifles. Good rifles, better than anything else in 1859, but that is all, or nearly so. (There is a small workshop for Gatling Guns, and another for grenades, but both are slow.) The weapons made will be invaluable, but perhaps there are other types that could be produced.

[] Factory Theory. The workers at your Troy factory enjoy the benefits of being worker-owners and having the ability to manage their own hours, but while they will probably fight to defend those privileges, or extend them to others like them, they are still undeniably chauvinistic. Expose them to theory, see what comes of it.

[] Hired Hands. [ORG] It's beginning to be tricky to get enough radicals, but there are still some who can be hired to expand your downtime ranks. Perhaps it might be worth starting to look abroad?

[] Appalachian Contacts. [ORG] The mountains of Appalachia are full of potential allies against the planter hegemony, but they are unaware of your existence and are unlikely to enjoy meeting you if it starts with an army. So come down to make some deals and find some friendly faces among the folk of the mountains in advance.

[] Mounted Men. [ORG]. Cavalry are useful, as much for the mobility as anything else. It's hard to find abolitionists who have experience riding horses, and especially who have experience caring for horses, but perhaps some work on setting up a mounted company can be started.

[] The Railroad Below. [ORG] Harriet Tubman has joined your company and introduced you to some contacts among the Underground Railroad, although even she does not know the entirety of the network. Distributing small quantities of weapons, ammunition, and most importantly information will help the network prepare for when the upcoming war begins.

[] Businessmen Doing Business. [ORG] The more money you invest in your factory, the larger it will grow. Perhaps you could even diversify it to a degree, and start creating new products. Or you could create associated services, such as a cafeteria or daycare for your laborers. The new machines coming out of the time machine have already proved invaluable, but you will need some funding to properly set up the new divisions for different sorts of labor.
-[] Write-in any specific goals, methods, etc.

[] Good Steel. You have made the introduction of a rather brilliant young man who historically transformed the American steel industry. It might be worth cooperating with him to do so once more. He's willing to spend some time in North Elba for now, although he might leave to take what he has gleaned already if it ends up not being worth his time. He seems to have big plans...

[] Investing in the Community. [ORG] Community roots are invaluable for an organization with political goals. And despite your expectation of violence, you are unquestionably political in nature. Whether it is through deliveries of free medical supplies, small gifts, or other donations, you can win support through the simple act of doing nice things.
-[] Choose from North Elba or Troy for each action
-[] Write-in any specific goals, methods, etc.

[] Recruiting Meetings. [ORG] Aside from a lack of coordination and a few tactical errors, one of the major problems with Brown's original raid was a lack of manpower. Kagi's plan called for many, many men, but he had less than thirty. Extra funds will help reduce that problem, but perhaps further recruiting efforts can be organized. Perhaps there might even be some foreigners who could be recruited...

[] Letters and Telegrams. [ORG] Using the mail and telegram services is relatively simple. If you are looking for someone in the US or Europe, in any case. Contacting distant people is a good way to get their attention and hopefully set up a more fruitful meeting, or it might even have good results by itself.
-[] Write-in who you send messages to and the general gist of the messages.