Basically, I'll do what I always do -- read, modify, mine.

I could care less about "cannon" history but this idea from Frank has me scratching my head. Frank's history makes no sense.

1) WHY would the US need the French to supply vehicles to a US rapid-deployment unit? Everything they have is air deployable and even mobilization-only units have vehicles in storage at Bragg. This is especially "problematic" when you consider that the French needed NATO's help with airlifting the units for Operation Serval because they didn't have enough strategic lift capacity to do it themselves.

2) What in the H**l are the French doing in Kenya, a former BRITISH colony with a BRITISH MILITARY PRESENCE since the early 1980s? I can see the French in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Algeria, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and even the Congo. Kenya is a little too British-leaning (with actual US and British troops in the country) to ask for French help.

3) Why would the 173rd be wearing French uniforms and using French vehicles when they can just get a resupply from Manda Bay/Camp Tiger right in Kenya? Camp Tiger and Manda Bay were established in 1992 and have operated continuously ever since. They have both radar stations and radio intercept stations just like the US base (Lemonier) in Djibouti (which is just down the street from the French). Manda Bay and Camp Tiger have a large deep-water port/jetty, a large airfield, and permanent base facilities like housing, PX, and various training ranges. The African Union often trains there.

I just don't see Frank's reasoning here.

First off Rainbow - per Frank its HIS UNPUBLISHED MODULE - he never said he published it - but he sure gave us all kinds of details on it - more than enough to verify intent and purpose of the 173rd.

Ever done patent law - I have FYI - he came up with the 173rd being stood up in 1995 and then being sent to Kenya to guard the refinery and harbor at Mombasa.

He never got around to publishing it but he has stated both here and on earlier versions of the forum exactly what his intent was, what its general composition was and that it was originally going to be a reinforcement for CENTCOM - and then got sent to Kenya instead.

Nothing anywhere in any of his notes or posts on this forum or any other of the earlier forums about it going to Romania or that it would be posted anywhere by 1997 anywhere else than Kenya - and that it would still be there by the time the game timeline kicked off in 2000.

He was one of the canon authors who released multiple books about the Orbat of the major combatants in the Twilight War as well as the only two books released about CENTCOM - which included references to American forces in Kenya.

What he doesnt say is "I created the concept of the 173rd being in the game and you can have it posted in Kenya or maybe somewhere else if you feel like it". Pretty clearly in multiple posts spread over multiple forums, podcasts, etc. over a long period of years its location is always Kenya by 1997 - whether you or Raellus or Tegyrius agree or not - or you can ignore his notes, posts, podcasts, etc. and say so what who cares what Frank Frey said as to where the 173rd went.

Which is what the Romania module has done.

And yes you can argue details - i.e. I totally agree with Swaghauler the French wouldnt be there at all except maybe to make sure they get a share of whatever oil is coming out of the refinery - but the placement and existence of the 173rd in Kenya per the canon author who created the whole orbat for CENTCOM and published both V1 modules that took place in the area? I will go with Frank on that.

I purchased the sourcebook earlier and I am extremely impressed with the product. As an FS-01 career member of the United States Foreign Service, I found the U.S. State Department chapter accurate and well-researched. Kudos to the authors.

Oh, wow, folks, this reads like there is a discussion about what imagination is more imaginative. And I get the sentiment, but I think this community can raise to higher standards.

In my opinion, unless Marc Miller has canonized a publication for an edition, any material is non-canonic. That being said, we can all enjoy a well laid out book with interesting ideas, can't we? Aren't we all picking every publication for the juicy parts anyway?

Picking the 173rd for being in Romania flew in the face of multiple posts over the course of years by the multiple canon module writer who created the idea of the 173rd as part of the T2K canon. He made it clear over and over - and ignoring that fact is not how you come up with a new module or sourcebook. Especially when one of the writers of the Romania book had an extensive article in one of the fanzines about the 173rd being in Kenya.

Looks good!
 

Bought it this morning & found out that the ToC was hyperlinked by accident.

Me too. By the way guys, IF I post something in this forum, please feel free to use it or modify it as you see fit. The only thing I ask is that if you post it to another website, you note it was my work so someone doesn't come back and accuse me of plagiarizing my own stuff. And yes, this has happened to me in a Runequest forum.

Swag.

Couldn't we find Tegyrius an equivalent RL, NG, Reserve, or (presently) Inactive unit that could be slotted into the module in an update? Tegyrius, would you be amenable to that?

Gentlemen, I apologize for the derail you had to endure to get to actual productive discussion of the book. I thank you for your patience, and our host for his intervention.

Thank you! I have a couple of professional contacts in State and they, along with a copy of Inside a U.S. Embassy, were invaluable in helping me produce that chapter. I'm glad they didn't lead me astray.

Oh, no, that was no accident. The ToC is hyperlinked deliberately.

;)

It is (usually) fun to see the use to which people put my work. It's out there to be used.

(On the other hand, when I was on the Spycraft design team, someone applied to join the team and plagiarized my own fan work for their "writing sample" submission. That was a different kind of fun.)

Thank you for trying to be reasonable, Paul, but... no, not really. It's not my work. It's a shared, coauthored work between myself and Raellus, so I'm not going to make unilateral decisions without consulting him.

Additionally, this book is explicitly for first edition. Olefin's work is for second edition, as he takes great pains to point out whenever the issue of canon status comes up. One of the points of having different editions is that there can be... differences. (The first edition canon of the RDF Sourcebook suggests that the 173rd wouldn't be in Africa to secure a refinery complex anyway, as it clearly states that there are multiple functioning refineries in the RDF AO. So I see no factual conflict between our 1e non-canon sourcebook and someone else's 2e material.) If we're going to go there, we may as well pick another country because of how second edition's East Europe Sourcebook handles Romania.

- C.

Oh, no, that was no accident. The ToC is hyperlinked deliberately.

;)


My apologies! I didn't mean that it was hyperlinked accidentally. I DISCOVERED it accidentally. Clicked the mouse button while eating my breakfast, actually. Suddenly went to the page for one of the vehicles & I was surprised.

Extremely handy feature, thanks for adding that.

Nah, I knew what you meant, but I entertain myself by abusing the language. :)

I will try to figure out how to add bookmarks to the PDF, though (and if I do, I'll go back and do the same in Pacific Northwest). That's a usability feature I do feel bad for not including.

- C.

One could always use a unit name that fell out of favor after the mutiny in Vietnam, The Americal Division. Now raise some units and plug into the TO&E.

Individual referees are certainly free to change any detail of the setting to match their personal visions of the Twilight: 2000 universe or to better meet their tables’ needs. However, as this product’s creators, Raellus and I do not intend to rewrite it. We look forward to hearing about the stories people tell with the toolkit we’ve created.

- C.

As with "Pacific Northwest", I find stuff for T2K and DC already!

Alternative Americans
 

One of the main reasons we chose the 173rd Airborne for the Romania Sourcebook is that it aligned so well with the v1 timeline, assuming the unit was based in Italy, as it was IRL. Italy's rapidly souring relationship with NATO and Romania's declaring for NATO line up almost perfectly. If the 173rd is in Italy at the time (December, 1996), it makes temporal, spacial, and logistical sense for it to be sent there.

Second, we wanted an "elite-light" unit, nothing too big or hard to move via air (as Romania is landlocked), for the US contingent.

For Refs who'd rather not use the 173rd, for whatever reason, here are a few suggested alternatives. These are units that would likely be reactivated in the event of WWIII. AFAIK, none are mentioned in canon, but all existed, at one point or another, IRL.

36th Airborne Brigade
71st Airborne Brigade

Or, for Refs who want a slightly larger US presence in Romania, there's...

11th Airborne Division
13th Airborne Division

-

Great work
 

Just picked this up yesterday and read through it in one sitting. Really wonderful addition to T2K. The section on the State Department was particularly interesting and might have to feature in my next campaign (set in Korea).

Welcome, Drgonzo, and thank you! I think I can speak for Tegyrius in saying that we really appreciate it. If you're interested, I've also written a sourcebook for Korea (link in my sig).

-

Good of you guys to maintain composure in the face of withering -- if wildly ineffective -- enemy fire.

Excellent. Toolkit: functioning as designed. :)

I just checked and it is, in fact, bookmarked already. Looks like I had InDesign configured to automagically add every table of contents item as a bookmark too. So there ya go.

- C.

All I can say is WHO CARES! When I don't like something, I'll change it.
Just look at my forum posts for proof of that. :p

You need to lay off the large print criticism mister! A man can have perfect vision his whole life and then one day, after passing the age of 50, he begins to notice that his arms aren't long enough to read the morning paper anymore. When that begins to occur, that large print becomes more welcoming... at least until he breaks down and goes to WALMART and buys a pair of "cheaters." One day, you'll be thankful for large print formats! :p

I'm in reading glasses denial. The fact that I haven't painted a mini in five years is completely irrelevant.

- C.

Bet I have it worse: I wear contacts and still have to wear reading glasses! My nearsightedness and astigmatism have gotten so bad that the doctor had to overcorrect my far vision and short my near vision. My far vision's corrected to 20/15, but my near vision's only corrected to about 20/30.

Don't even ask me what my uncorrected vision is -- I can't even make out the top letter on the eye chart...

For Your Eyes Only
 

Ya'll know you can increase the magnification on PDFs, right? ;)

-

Bought it. Like it and anything I don't like, I'll just make adjustments. No big deal. Just like I've always have.

Purchased, and like The Pacific North West, excellent work.

I have not bought it yet, But I have to leave this comment from someone there.

Why the hell do we get the fun of having vampires as allies HOw in the bloody world did we get stuck with them Much less the bastards are british no less and if anyone says something about them needing tea....I am gong to shoot you.

Another mind lost to meth and bath salts. Terrible to see. Just say no kids. #justsayno

Also - I'd like to report someone threatening to shoot me. Thank goodness muggle weapons don't work on me.

Thank you, stilleto69 and Targan!

Ckosacranoid, welcome to the forum. Please feel free to tell your correspondent that this sourcebook's vampires are (1) entirely optional, (2) only allies if the player characters have particularly poor judgement, and (3) rarely British. They're definitely intended to be adversaries, but war makes strange bedfellows...

- C.

I have that covered. 12 gauge hardwood slugs at a reduced velocity. Those slugs are drilled at the front and then stuffed with garlic and soaked in holy water. I then coat the lower half of the slug with silver plating etched with gold-plated crosses for good measure. I then take them to an "open-minded" Episcopalian priest (think "Catholic light") who blesses them. Guaranteed to make your vamps cry!

Goes good with my blessed .40 +p silver hollow points stuffed with wolf's bane and holy water.

I love DARK CONSPIRACY!

A swage press, epoxy and silver wire cut up to replace the lead core and you have a suitable round that won't tear up your barrel! This time my DC stuff ports over to T2K!

Finally broke down and bought Tara Romaneasca along with some of the other new modules for v1/2 like Rook's Gambit and the Korean and East African sourcebooks. Yes I'm a cheap ass bastard because those were $2.99 comparing Korea and Rook's to Tara Romaneasca you can tell the writing has evolved do not get me wrong those were good Tara is just better. There are a page or two that make me cringe though but other than that, its still worth the money.

Thanks for the support, Shrike. May I ask which elements made you twitch? This hopefully isn’t my last project for this game line, nor Rae’s, so constructive feedback will make our future projects even better.

The price point for this (and Pacific Northwest) was my request. In terms of word count and page count, both books surpass the size of the original 2e sourcebooks whose PDFs now sell for the same price. Folks are free to disagree but I like to think Rae and I have given good value for the money.

- C.

Mărțișor Fericit!

Happy March 1st! If my new copy of Tara Romaneasca is correct, today I should visit a spring festival, eat porridge, and sabotage an oil refinery! ;)

https://romaniatourism.com/images/martisor1.jpg

You'd think it would be the 173rd being used. While I am in the camp that the Herd is roaming the African Savanna that really doesnt bother me all that much. What does bother me is the history of one of its subunits the 2-555th. Seemed to me anyways, that it was not well thought out so you could make a cheap easy joke on politicians that seemed out of place. While I get your precedent on it would be the ship naming process in the US Navy in the present day. It is much easier to put a politically favorable name on a nameless ship then it is to replace a regiment with a long history with the state and 100s of veterans associated with that regiment for a more politically in vogue one. While it may be possible I can't see doing that as tenable if that politician wants another term. Let's face it to make the Airborne battalion to work numbers wise in a small state like WV you would have had to reorganize one of the combat arms battalions (1/150th Cav or 1/201st FA). I also get the meta joke that goes beyond the surface with using the WV NG given that one of the former IRL US Senators for WV during the 90s was a former Klansman.
What I would have done is place the battalion in IL with their historic African American regiment the 370th Infantry Regiment and changed that to Airborne. the IL NG is bigger and much more able to absorb an additional battalion. The 370th has a great history going back to the Spanish American War compared with the 555th which has no combat history at all. The Germans called the 370th die Schwarzen Teufel. Let's face it Black Devils sounds like the nickname of an Airborne regiment anyways.Call the battalion either the 2-370th Airborne to still honor the 2nd Ranger Company or 555-370th Airborne like the 100th-442nd to honor the 555th and that way you get your NG Airborne battalion and honor African Americans at the same time with an actual attachment to the state it is placed in and a combat history to be proud of in that way it would have been far less cringe worthy for me. In the end its author's choice and I enjoyed the rest of the module.

That was a self deprecating joke wasn't meant as a comment on your price point. For example I dont buy video games when they first come out I will wait until the prices fall. Why? Because I am a cheap ass bastard who can wait six months for the prices to fall 50%. I usually dont need to be on the cutting edge of retail. Think of it as an honor that I bought it in the first week at all.

I'm glad that all these books (and some magazines and other books) are coming out in PDF format. My house is only 1250 square feet, and even the master bedroom (which is my bedroom -- it's my house!) is crammed full of stuff. I don't even buy books or magazines if they don't come in PDF format. I just don't have the room.

Ain't that the truth

Enh. User preference is user preference. For whatever it may be worth, we had some discussion on the 173rd in Romania a couple of years ago. You can see some of the seeds of this sourcebook in that conversation.

So... fair comments. I will say up front that I am not as up on Army heraldry and unit lineages as you are. This is one of the hazards of this line of work... there's always gonna be a SME out there, and I'm never gonna find a SME to consult with on every detail of a book.

It's a bit late and I'm a bit fried to reconstruct my precise reasoning, but my recollection is that we selected the 555th as a nod to its use in Frank Frey's original notes for the unpublished (and perhaps unwritten beyond notes/outline stage) Lions of Twilight.

Working from there, I needed to find a state in which to place our round-out battalion. My original thinking was Texas because of the ridiculous size of its National Guard component and because of its current real-world 1-143 Infantry. However, a couple of factors drove me away from that, chief among which was the desire to leave Texas alone in case another future author needs to reconstitute the 36th or 71st Airborne Brigade for another locale. I did leave myself an out for that in the writeup for 2-555, as well. I mentioned that three other states also received National Guard airborne battalions... so there's room for another author to use 1-555, 3-555, or 4-555.

(At any rate, I wouldn't have picked on the Illinois National Guard because someone might think I had it in for them. I already did a bunch of damage to their 66th Infantry Brigade as part of the 47th ID in Pacific Northwest.)

West Virginia appealed to me for a couple of reasons. First, because of its mountainous terrain, I felt like a unit coming from there would be vaguely suited to fighting a mountain insurgency in Romania. Second, when I was a kid, I read a factoid that West Virginia historically is the state with the highest per-capita rates of military volunteerism and Medal of Honor awards. I don't know if it's true, but that has always stuck with me.

The backhanded swipe at their congresscritter wasn't actually intentional, but I'll take it as a fortuitous coincidence because I'm snarky like that.

I agree with you 100% about the force strength of other WV NG components being affected by this, and I did note in 2-555's profile that it received a number of transfers from 1-150 Cav and 2-19 SFG. In an early draft, I did mention that those units had not yet recovered full manning and combat effectiveness by the time of the war, but I cut that during development. I trimmed a lot of unnecessary words to make the layout look good, and it wasn't really relevant to this sourcebook because they weren't in Romania.

It also was my intent - albeit never actually written down - that 2-555 was headquartered in WV but not 100% staffed by West Virginians. Again, that drew from real-world precedent (at least according to Wikipedia, which shows D Troop of 1-150 Cav based in North Carolina). As a Kentucky native, it was in the back of my head that 2-555 had one company drawn from the Ashland area, including some guys whose civilian jobs were at the Catlettsburg refinery, but that also was a level of minutiae that didn't make it into the manuscript.

Having said all of that, I like your analysis and selection, too. If I were going in that direction, I might go with the 369th because of Michael Longcor's Ballad of Esau's Sons, in which case I'd've made the battalion a NY NG unit headquartered somewhere in the Catskills.

- C.

I'll keep this part short. I can't argue with most of it although could come with better examples. The 369th has a fine history but I dismissed them because the NY NG was stretched putting 4 bdes together IRL. Also I go back and forth about using them as an ADA battalion for the 42nd ID since they also have a CA/AAA history as well.
Just as a point of fact, Frank Frey posted two orbats for the 173rd Airborne. The first in a series of posts in 2000/2001, the second in 2003 which that link has.

2000