Two more RFA, please!

[Ancestor]

So, I have all of the modules but lack the Challenge articles. I have the following questions.

1. Is there any canon material about what happened to West Point? The AFA got it's own BDE (as did Fort Sill, for God's sake!) and I think there is canon material that details what happened to both the Naval Academy and the Coast Guard Academy, but I could not find anything regarding the USMA. Any info or conjecture would be appreciated.

2. I have always struggled to understand the state of the nation in the roughly seven to eight months between the TDM and the Mexican Invasion. Since I started playing T2K in the 8th grade it's bothered me and now that I'm an old man and own Howling Wilderness I'm even more confused.

Is it "Alas, Babylon," "By Dawn's Early Light," (some semblance of central authority who's trying but can't be everywhere for everyone?) or is it something more akin to "The Day After/Testament/Threads (civil authority overwhelmed) leading into a poor man's Red Dawn (Mexican invasion/Red Star Lone Star)."

Any info/conjecture on this time period, specifically regarding conditions CONUS and replacements being sent into the ETO (especially size of the echelons and methods of transportation) would be appreciated as well.:confused:

[kato13]

2. I have always struggled to understand the state of the nation in the roughly seven to eight months between the TDM and the Mexican Invasion. Since I started playing T2K in the 8th grade it's bothered me and now that I'm an old man and own Howling Wilderness I'm even more confused.
ok

I have the exact same issues as you. Simply put the writers wanted the US to be in worse shape than the second most devastated region on the planet* (Poland) for game play reasons. The problem is real world facts and logic very much took a second seat to establishing the desired setting (chaos).

I understand what the writers were going for, and in any game which did not come so close to the real world, it would have been much easier to just accept the differences. In D&D for example you could always make some magical excuse for what ever the world's situation calls for.

For me, when looking at many elements it comes down to striking a balance between reality and gameplay.

Personally as far as the most controversial elements I threw out some, modified others and kept a few things as canon.

There are lots of discussions and potential modifications presented throughout this forum. They sometimes led to our most heated exchanges but there is a lot of useful information here.

I am sure some will follow up with opinions and links (I will add some myself as I see what direction things go).




* I consider Poland which has been crossed three times by mechanized forces and been targeted by a wide range or NBC weapons to be behind only the Sino/Soviet front line in terms of devastation. (1000 tac nukes will do that)

[Olefin]

I feel much the way you do Kato - for one the Mexican invasion that was depicted was so far beyond the capabilities of the Mexican Army itself (whose only tank in that time period was upgunned versions of the Stuart tank from WWII), especially since it would have brought nuclear devastation down on Mexico for sure - the US wouldnt have used nukes on their own soil but they sure would have on northern and central Mexico and yet where is that in the canon?

Also the US has been at war for over a year, seen the nukes flying for months and yet somehow doesnt have a clear designated successor ready to go if DC gets hit?

Plus the 42nd Infantry just goes on ships for Europe and leaves after TDM with NYC in barely controlled chaos - its a NY National Guard unit - most likely the governor would have told CivGov to get stuffed and kept the unit right where it was - the 78th is a US Govt unit but not the 42nd

[Raellus]

Although verisimilitude is very important to me, I tend to cut the writers some slack. Unlike D&D or other, purely fictional RPG'ing milieus where the creators can make everything in the setting fit the plot (and vice-versa), the T2K writers were dealing with real places and real units, and plausible geo-political scenarios over ten years out, and trying to create to merge the two in a near-future post-apocalyptic game world that felt real. This is an impossible task but they did a pretty darn good job, IMHO. Yes, there are lots of minor issues, and a couple of major ones, but on the whole, if it wasn't pretty amazing, we wouldn't still be talking about it 31 years later.

[Olefin]

I agree with you Raellus - its just that I wish in some ways they had thought things out a little more on the canon historical events to make them more plausible and explained

they went into a lot of detail on the game mechanics, vehicles, etc.. - but seem to have rushed the timeline a little too much - not just in the general release but in the game as a whole -

in many ways they might have been better off doing a more comprehensive timeline later and not having it in the initial game release and thus had more time to think it out - just have the Death of the 5th and where we are now in 2000 and thats it

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I guess it depends on what you want out of the game; I have straight up been told by people on this forum that if you don't have an utterly broken USA then it's just a game of GI Joe where the USA triumphs over all -

Like the US would be capable of mounting anything other than slowly and painfully building itself back up just because Belgium didn't fall or the US held off a Mexican invasion (snorting derisively at that one).

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I agree with you Raellus - its just that I wish in some ways they had thought things out a little more on the canon historical events to make them more plausible and explained

they went into a lot of detail on the game mechanics, vehicles, etc.. - but seem to have rushed the timeline a little too much - not just in the general release but in the game as a whole -

in many ways they might have been better off doing a more comprehensive timeline later and not having it in the initial game release and thus had more time to think it out - just have the Death of the 5th and where we are now in 2000 and thats it
The harsh reality is not in favour of those who want a detailed or more realistic history/timeline. Unfortunately the harsh reality is that the majority of players are not actually interested in the history/timeline other than a generalized overview because what they really want to do is just play the game. For them, the history just isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

[Targan]

No-one likes to think of their own nation as thoroughly beaten up. It must be even harder for US T2K players to swallow the canon timeline because you've all grown up with the idea of manifest destiny and knowing that you have the most powerful military forces on the planet.

I choose to find ways to make canon fit partly out of laziness (in that where possible I'd like to make use of all the published materials without having to comprehensively re-write them or ignore them), but also because it's a fun intellectual exercise and as a non-American it doesn't hurt my psyche so badly to imagine the USA post-Twilight War as described in canon.

I do think that the really violent rejection by US members here of the canon climatological effects of the Twilight War as described in Howling Wilderness is excessive, but I think the idea of human-caused climate change has been accepted as real by a much greater proportion of the populations of the rest of the western world than it has in America. From what I understand of climate change, I don't find the Howling Wilderness climate changes all that implausible.

[Olefin]

I dont accept human based climate change as being able to cause huge weather changes all on its own because of the past historical record of ice ages and warm times when humans had much less of an effect on the planet - there were agricultural settlements in Greenland and Labrador in the 1100's-1300's because the Earth warmed up and allowed them without emissions, pollutants and other factors to cause it -

As for Howling Wildnerness - that module has a lot of problems with it beyond the weather issues - if you follow it to its logical course the US ends up a dead nation that can never come back - the writers went way too overboard with it - half the population already dead and only enough food for a 1/4 of whats left means the US gets depopulated to 1/8th of its pre-war population - and thats if most of the remainder dont all die to typhus and cholera from a hundred million unburied bodies lying around in 2001 (people who are starving to death dont usually dig graves for others)

and MILGOV gives away hundreds of armored vehicles, jets, cannon, etc.. that are irreplaceable with whats left of the factories to bring home 43000 men and then apparently just let 40,000 plus of them leave the service with no plan at all while Mexico and the Soviets and a hostile rebel force occupy large parts of the US?

again no way that happens

and I agree completely with raketenjagdpanzer on his opinion - if you discount Kidnapped and HW you in no way have the US suddenly a world dominant power again - what you have left is a broken nation with three power blocs fighting it out, enemy troops, marauders and rebels still to be driven out, large areas of the country ruined by nukes, an economy in shambles and military forces that are a shadow of themselves

hardly the description of a military and economic Colossus that nukes the French and becomes a world power again by 2010

What HW and Kidnapped did was make sure that Twilight 2300 could not happen as described - rejecting those two modules in fact actually makes that possible as a canon timeline - embracing them makes any American Arm or US revival impossible by the dates given - you would be lucky to have a United States at all, let alone one sending faster than light ships into space

and a history where the US allows less than 20,000 total Soviets and Mexicans to keep Texas, half of CA, AZ and NM and never recover them (and where a Texian Legion strong enough to take on US divisions and almost destroy one of them but not destroy Mexican detachments a quarter the size of them to liberate Texas from Mexican rule)- I join raketenjagdpanzer in his snorting at that idea

and back to Ancestor's question - yes I wonder why they overlooked West Point and the various USMC training facilities when they did both the books on US forces - you would figure if the cadets and teachers were all shipped overseas that would have been mentioned - they didnt do it with the Air Force Academy after all or the School Brigade down in Texas -

the cadets and their teachers make for a rather large force of trained men and would have been used for sure, at the very least, to help maintain order in NY after the TDM

and they might have been reinforced by various ROTC detachments as well - RPI has a large ROTC detachment of various groups - enough to add close to a battalion all by itself to the West Point cadets unless the state government grabs them to help keep order in Albany

[Olefin]

No-one likes to think of their own nation as thoroughly beaten up. It must be even harder for US T2K players to swallow the canon timeline because you've all grown up with the idea of manifest destiny and knowing that you have the most powerful military forces on the planet.

I choose to find ways to make canon fit partly out of laziness (in that where possible I'd like to make use of all the published materials without having to comprehensively re-write them or ignore them), but also because it's a fun intellectual exercise and as a non-American it doesn't hurt my psyche so badly to imagine the USA post-Twilight War as described in canon.

I do think that the really violent rejection by US members here of the canon climatological effects of the Twilight War as described in Howling Wilderness is excessive, but I think the idea of human-caused climate change has been accepted as real by a much greater proportion of the populations of the rest of the western world than it has in America. From what I understand of climate change, I don't find the Howling Wilderness climate changes all that implausible.

Targan

To give you an idea of how bad HW would be lets simulate it on Australia - now I could give you a long description of disasters - or you could just go watch the latest Mad Max movie to get a good idea of what would be left of civilization there given an HW/Kidnapped type scenario played out there where maybe 1/16 of the population is left or less

and yes I highly recommend that movie if you are an action junkie but I miss Mel

[unkated]

To me here is the trick about Twilight: 2000:

In almost any case, the tactical set up for almost any of the scenarios is fine and dandy -

- your division was smashed by the Russians behind enemy lines in Poland
- you were asked to help this mission on a sub
- your friends in devastated Poland asked for your help
- your find yourself in a Thailand devastated by War
- your unit was tasked to help Kenya or Yugoslavia or the Middle East and things went downhill
- you are in a Texas or Alaska ravaged by a Mexican/Soviet invasion
- you are in a Minnesota ravaged by civil war due to Milgov/Civgov
- you are in a Belgium weakened by war fighting off nasty invading Frenchmen who pretty clean uniforms and tanks that work...

Any of these as a tactical situation is fine; your character the grunt (and on this scale, anyone below the rank of General is grunt to a degree - you are sent where you start from). On the player scale, you did not control anything else about the set up and you have to go on from the situation, however you got there.

It's only when we as players (or DYO scenario or campaign designers) stop to think how did this situation arise, or what other effects to I need to consider, since this is a more realistic setting than DnD or Runequest, that some of the major holes or illogic in the canon rears its ugly head.

Now, everyone has different aspects of canon that they object to or find completely unacceptable. And, yes, I wish that there had been a more comprehensive and better thought out overall plan/timeline by GDW that they could have then demanded that writers adhere to. But they did not. And we're not going to fix it in a way that will satisfy everyone.

While we can discuss (and rehash again) these issues, the best you can do is adjust as you see fit, and have your players concentrate on the issues at hand, tactically, in one corner of the world for the course of a campaign.

[Olefin]

and I agree with you unkated on the tactical level - in many ways the game is great for players but not so great for GM's if they have to try to explain things later if the campaign goes on long enough that you get to actually come home from Europe or if things progress to later in 2001 timing

the trick is to keep them playing until that point and then if you want to finesse the campaign go right ahead if thats what it takes to keep players from getting turned off by parts of the canon

they find the idea of a Mexican Invasion of the US ridiculous - then dont play Satellite Down and the Texas module- and ignoring HW and Kidnapped still leaves a very wrecked America with all kinds of ideas - heck New England and NYC alone could keep players going for years without ever bringing in the drought as a factor

and really - as each module says - you are free to change them as you see fit

[Ancestor]

Guys thanks for the thoughts. If I may, I'd like to drill the discussion down to the time period between the TDM and 1 June 1998. That way we can throw out the Mad Max HW element, the Mexican invasion, and even the deployments to Yugoslavia. I'm interested in your thoughts on the following, please:

1. What is the capability of central government (both purported and actual) to maintain law and order?
2. What is the availability of petrochemicals to the military, the local authorities (fire, police, EMT), and the average American?
3. How was planting the winter wheat and the spring crop accomplished? Rationed fuel at the direction of the USDA at the point of a gun? Independently using local resources? Trevor the Traction Engine?
4. At what point do the locals (neighborhood, urban skyscraper apartment complex, small town) say "F--k it" and start looting Costco and fortifying the local AO due to a loss of confidence in the local police, NG, military? At what point to the local police/NG/USAR unit join in?
5. A what point do militias (either for or against the government) start forming in response to the events in Item 5?
6. When does the power grid go tits up?
7. When does rail transport go tits up?
8. What is the priority of the civilian leadership (prior to the split)? Overseas or home?
9. What is the priority of the military leadership (prior to the split)? Overseas or home?
10. Anything else I'm missing?

I don't want you guys to be constrained by canon events post 1 JUN 1998. Let's start with the TDM and work forward. And thanks in advance for your help. I'm bugging you guys b/c (1) you're awesome and (2) I'm really trying to give my players one good post TDM CONUS adventure before shipping out for Europe sometime in mid-1998 as replacements for 256 BDE/5 ID.

[Ancestor]

While we can discuss (and rehash again) these issues, the best you can do is adjust as you see fit, and have your players concentrate on the issues at hand, tactically, in one corner of the world for the course of a campaign.

This is why I'm asking for you guys to help. The whole idea (at least according to my History Instructor at CGSC) behind the Prussian's developing a General Staff was to either negate the incompetence of or enhance the talent of a Prussian noble in Command. I'm the incompetent Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and you are my General Staff!:D:D:D

[Ancestor]

and back to Ancestor's question - yes I wonder why they overlooked West Point and the various USMC training facilities when they did both the books on US forces - you would figure if the cadets and teachers were all shipped overseas that would have been mentioned - they didnt do it with the Air Force Academy after all or the School Brigade down in Texas -

the cadets and their teachers make for a rather large force of trained men and would have been used for sure, at the very least, to help maintain order in NY after the TDM

and they might have been reinforced by various ROTC detachments as well - RPI has a large ROTC detachment of various groups - enough to add close to a battalion all by itself to the West Point cadets unless the state government grabs them to help keep order in Albany

I like the ROTC idea!!! I had my PCs, aka my teenage sons, create their characters according to their ideas - one was a West Point football player/track star from a rich Virginia family who became an Engineer and the other created a working class Irish immigrant/failed boxer turned bartender from South Boston who was drafted and ended up due to his high athletic skills in the Ranger Regiment. I had them meet (with several NPCs) in a battle in Iran in canon 1997 (our game timeline 2027) and then sent back to West Point, the officer as a DTAC and scout team football coach, the NCO as a combatives instructor. We then played several sessions in which they were on July 4th leave in Boston during the Dain Dangerous concert from Last Submarine, during which they aligned with an MA NG unit, the Irish NCO's uncle (who owned a bar and used to launder money and store weapons for the IRA, some of which were still in the wine cellar), an Irish gang, a black church, a Korean grocer and his sons, and an orthodox Jewish synagague to defeat several gangs during the rioting after the concert. I think I've beaten the east coast thing to death and I think they'd really enjoy having a Jericho-esque adventure in Kansas before I ship them off to Poland for Escape from Kalisz. KU ROTC, here we come!

[Targan]

Targan

To give you an idea of how bad HW would be lets simulate it on Australia - now I could give you a long description of disasters - or you could just go watch the latest Mad Max movie to get a good idea of what would be left of civilization there given an HW/Kidnapped type scenario played out there where maybe 1/16 of the population is left or less

and yes I highly recommend that movie if you are an action junkie but I miss Mel

I recall a thread probably a couple of years ago now where we talked about the devastating effects of literally a handful of ICBMs being targeted at Australia in the Twilight War. Because our major population centres and industrial areas are so geographically concentrated, Australia as a nation would pretty much cease to exist. I didn't like reading it, but the logic was inescapable. I think you'll find that acceptance of being the underdog runs strong in the Australian psyche. During WWII there were a couple of years there where we were staring down the barrel of a full-scale Japanese invasion and potential subjugation. Admittedly we never had to fight our colonial masters for our independence, but we've been living on the edge a long time.

Past episodes of climate change are a known fact, there's no disputing that, and human involvement in them was somewhere between miniscule and nil. What's happening to the climate now is mostly to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere rising very quickly. We know how much carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere and where it's coming from, and we know how the greenhouse effect works. Human-induced global warming doesn't require your acceptance or belief to be true.

I find it simultaneously amusing and deeply concerning that some of the most vocal deniers of human-induced climate change come from North America, and North America during the last century and into this current century was one of the greatest contributors to increasing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Having said that, on a per-capita basis Australians have been some of the worst contributors in recent times. Once again there are psychological factors at play for many Americans and Australians alike. It's easier to deny that we're the cause than taking responsibility, and to really meaningfully try to fix the problem we'd almost certainly have to dramatically hurt our industries and our lifestyles, with no guarantee that the up and coming major polluters like China and India will hold back at all.

Just finally, Howling Wilderness never explicitly states that the disrupted rainfall patterns over the US were permanent, or even long term. There's nothing stopping a GM having the rainfall patterns starting to normalize for the 2002 growing season.

[Ancestor]

My grandad served in the US Army in Australia in 1942-43. He jumped into New Guinea in 1943 and, after his unit won the engagement, he suffered malaria that kept him in bed until late 1944, sparing him from his unit's jump into Normandy and probably ensuring my existence. When he died shortly after I joined the Army he gave me a thin, grey wool blanket that he purchased in Australia in 1943 (as stated on the tag) and I've taken it every time I go TDY or have deployed. I can't decide if I want to have it wrapped around me when I die or if I want to give it to one of my sons. At any rate, he did not talk about the war much but he did mention the desperate straights that the Australian's felt in 1932-43 a couple of times.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Although the proposal for a Japanese invasion of Australia remained just that, the Australia government of the day feared that it was on the Japanese agenda and took steps to deal with it. They knew we could never hold onto all of Australia so one proposal for dealing with an invasion was to abandon everything north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Essentially, all Australians and removable assets would be brought south of the Tropic and everything else would be destroyed - as in "scorched earth". Although there's no official records of it (as it was never officially adopted), there was lots of talk. Later day historians appear to have downplayed it as a misunderstanding or something that was never proposed but they're wrong in one respect, it was definitely talked about at the time - my grandparents lived through WW2 and my maternal grandfather told me in the 1980s (long before the current trend for "revising" history became popular), about scorched earth and the plans to deny northern Australia if the "Japs" invaded.

So yeah, some of us do actually understand the idea of having our homeland devastated and it's just as distressing for us because it would have been by our own hand. While we wouldn't necessarily have had the USA as portrayed in T2k, we would have had something sort of like Red Dawn with a partitioned nation and the enemy right on the doorstep.

[swaghauler]

Although the proposal for a Japanese invasion of Australia remained just that, the Australia government of the day feared that it was on the Japanese agenda and took steps to deal with it. They knew we could never hold onto all of Australia so one proposal for dealing with an invasion was to abandon everything north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Essentially, all Australians and removable assets would be brought south of the Tropic and everything else would be destroyed - as in "scorched earth". Although there's no official records of it (as it was never officially adopted), there was lots of talk. Later day historians appear to have downplayed it as a misunderstanding or something that was never proposed but they're wrong in one respect, it was definitely talked about at the time - my grandparents lived through WW2 and my maternal grandfather told me in the 1980s (long before the current trend for "revising" history became popular), about scorched earth and the plans to deny northern Australia if the "Japs" invaded.

So yeah, some of us do actually understand the idea of having our homeland devastated and it's just as distressing for us because it would have been by our own hand. While we wouldn't necessarily have had the USA as portrayed in T2k, we would have had something sort of like Red Dawn with a partitioned nation and the enemy right on the doorstep.

US Army had several NG and Reserve Artillery units selected for Area Denial Missions. The 4/92 my old disbanded Reserve Unit was one of them. We used to practice the "Deployment of Nuclear Weapons" (20KT 155mm rounds) at Erie and Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland OH, and Buffalo NY to prevent occupation and use of resources by enemy forces occupying the East Coast of the US. It was a little unnerving to practice destroying those cities with Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

[Ancestor]

US Army had several NG and Reserve Artillery units selected for Area Denial Missions. The 4/92 my old disbanded Reserve Unit was one of them. We used to practice the "Deployment of Nuclear Weapons" (20KT 155mm rounds) at Erie and Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland OH, and Buffalo NY to prevent occupation and use of resources by enemy forces occupying the East Coast of the US. It was a little unnerving to practice destroying those cities with Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

That is amazing info! I wonder if, in the T2K world or similar timeline, those units/missions would have been brought back once the Soviets crossed into Alaska?

[rcaf_777]

There a Mint at West Point too not a large one but a mint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Point_Mint