WIP Segira map, probably subject to change. I am awful at Inkscape.

I'm hoping to get Segira: 1985 out by the end of the month. It's an alt-history roleplaying game set in a fictional third-world country during the Cold War.
Segira is inspired by a number of things. First and foremost, I loved Twilight: 2000 when I had a brief opportunity to play it, so a lot of the gameplay is built around emulating the parts of that experience that I enjoyed.

However, it's also inspired by a broad range of stories about war. It aims to tell war stories that have real consequences, but also paint an image of the world beyond the war and the people who are stuck in the middle of global conflicts.

The full list of inspirations from literature, film, and TV would be too long to list, but definitely includes things like Heart of Darkness and "Generation Kill" near the top of the list.

Game Inspirations

In game terms, it's built on my Hammercalled system, which is a novel d100 system that has a bunch of streamlining compared to other games. The goal is to facilitate quick play, and while Segira: 1985 may tell war stories it focuses on telling about the moments outside of battle. Battles are fast and high-consequence, which evokes the feel of its original inspiration (Twilight: 2000), but also matches the tone of many of the source materials. Players who want to keep their characters alive will need to be both tactical and strategic, or avoid fighting altogether.

Setting Inspirations

Setting-wise, obvious inspirations include games like Metal Gear, Front Mission, and Command and Conquer. Some of this is because I like having powered armor in the setting, to give it a little extra zest but also add a fantasy layer to further dissociate any of the events of the game from any real events of the time.

Historical Inspirations

However, the historical inspiration is largely based on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, and the US interventions in Grenada and Panama.

Segira is modeled culturally after several countries, including Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Armenia. Its fictional history during the first-half of the 20th century is inspired by Spain (with a monarchy, no less), Greece, and a handful of other Eastern European countries. As a formerly neutral third-world country, a lot of its domestic politics are actually modeled after Egyptian politics, with a strong nationalist movement, but one that's open to playing both sides and not particularly dogmatic outside of a militaristic distrust of outsiders.

In 1984, and later 1985, the Segiran government collapses with the help of outside agitators, who are inspired by the Iranian Revolution (both in-setting and otherwise) and fears of foreign intervention from opposed parties, echoing events that followed both Russian and American efforts to broker power in the Middle East.

It's worth noting that as a decently powerful independent country in Eastern Europe, I treat Segira's geopolitical and economic role more like you would expect a Middle Eastern country to be seen at the time; they're not backwards, but they're not fully developed either. As a result, you have a large portion of the population dedicated to agriculture and relatively little industry, until the very early 80's, when Segiran industry picks up and the country becomes more significant on the world scale.
Segira is geographically situated on the Mediterranean in Eastern Europe, but the neighbors for Segira are never mentioned, nor are any foreign countries other than NATO and the Warsaw Pact, whose members aren't enumerated. If you had to place it on the map, it would likely end up in Greece or Turkey (or, perhaps, on the border between them), so I don't even try to do anything with it.

One of the things that went into designing Segira was creating interesting environments for a war-focused game, with players who want to play elite special forces, regular grunts, or civilians having plenty of opportunities for plot hooks.

To accomplish this there are some clear divisions geographically. Segira has a central mountain range and the country's borders extend a certain direction eastward and westward through more easily traveled campaign.

Likewise, the coastal nature of the southern parts of the country enable pitched conflicts for ports (which, naturally, are economic centers) and a distinction between agricultural northern regions and more populated and industrial southern regions in the country.

The purpose for this is to let the GMs and players of Segira have a fairly wide sandbox to work in without giving too much information overload. Military campaigns often really hinge on geography, and I've tried to include enough interesting features in Segira to allow for some interesting narrative strokes.

For instance, getting trapped on one of the islands south of Segira is an interesting potential plot-line for partisans or other forces who get cut off from their allies. This facilitates stories that focus on surviving impossible odds and overwhelming forces.

Likewise, the mountains in the north provide a great excuse for some partisan or special forces campaigns, since they allow the sort of hit-and-run tactics that would allow a small group of players to be able to accomplish missions as small, highly mobile, units. It also creates fog of war for games that draw more inspiration from Heart of Darkness (or "Apocalypse Now").

The more urban regions facilitate campaigns where players are part of large detachments, allowing for "cog in the machine" sort of games where the PCs are bit players in an important operation.

For civilians, these locations also present interesting situations; whether the goal is to flee the conflict, provide aid, or document events, the focus on challenges shifts as appropriate for the territory.

At least in theory. I may be tooting my own horn prematurely. We'll see what people think.