Timeline to war - how much to reveal?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

By the time the PCs are where they are in T2k (v.1 ruleset), even if they're Russian/Soviet or WarPac and have their own spin on things, there's still a question of asking the players to read four or five pages of pure text to get the timeline down.

I was thinking of re-writing the 1995-to-you're-on-your-own moment as vignettes from popular media - a small NYT column noting "heightened tensions" along the Soviet/Chinese border, a BBC piece about reports of active fighting on a brigade level (but unable to confirm), an ABC News piece explaining the ongoing conflict, etc.

How do you guys introduce the timeline? T2k starts on the cusp of an internet era, so everything we have now isn't readily available (for example, there was no "CNN.COM" until 1999: it was "CNN Interactive" which was a one-headline/one-article front page that began in 1996)...

[The Rifleman]

I just work with the story line as is. Because of the different backgrounds of players, they entered the war at different times so would have learned about it piecemeal. A career soldier stationed at Fort Benning as a drill sergeant would probably keep a close eye on the news about a border war with China by reading the paper or watching the news. Then, during the big deployments he would have friends going over in the big deployment before his turn came. Pre war active duty soldiers would mostly be scooped up early in the fight and wouldn't need a story because they would have lived it.

National Guard soldiers would be reading the paper, watching the news, then when the units got activated, probably returning veterans from the front would be at their brigade and battalion level exercises as evaluators. The evaluators would be telling them first hand "lessons learned" about the fighting.

Civillians who are later drafted are a different story. They probably would fit very neatly into your idea. Regardless, I think that creating some neat "vintage" articles to read is a fun idea.

[Legbreaker]

Most PCs are likely to be aware of most of the history up until 97-98. They're likely to have had access to televisions, radios and later newspapers and newsletters.
Given the long lead time to the 2000 offensive, and (in my experience at least) the military's usual desire to give a general description of the overall situation to soldiers (not to mention just plain rumour) PC's are likely to be aware of many major events up until the last 6 months. Naturally, the further away something happened, the less relevant to their situation, and of course security issues, the less likely specific information will be known.

And then there's the whole disinformation/wild rumour issue....

All in all though, it's my opinion that players should have knowledge similar to that presented in the published timeline(s). http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=3109

[HorseSoldier]

You could always make it organic to the first couple game sessions, with a "Murray the explainer" NPC providing some exposition about the 600 million screaming Chinamen who're on our side and such.

[Hybris]

I will start with this one:)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO-BLggwqRU

[Neal5x5]

Hot War did a great job of showing the collapse of order in London via a series of "posters" placed on walls on a month-by-month or longer period. While this is set it 1962, it wouldn't be hard to replicate a 1990s era CNN or other broadcast screenshot. As a matter of fact, I'm working on some for a separate project and may post them to the art thread when complete.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8466/8146072097_7705bf841b.jpg

[bobcat]

You could always make it organic to the first couple game sessions, with a "Murray the explainer" NPC providing some exposition about the 600 million screaming Chinamen who're on our side and such.

there were 600 million. now theres six.