https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news...r-23046423.amp

Not into 4th Ed myself but this seems like a fitting place for this. From the website of my local newspaper.

Mayday, Mayday, this tramp trader MS Kalisz... we are under attack... propulsion is gone... the Bofors on the fo'c'sle is gone... Mayday... taking water fast... calling anyone... please help... We're on our own...

Excellent, thank you

I'm quietly impressed by V4. I hope to share my thoughts and first few days gaming soon.

I've done what i normally do. I'm running a solo game, set in wherever the current hotspot is. This latest one is set in present day Ukraine.

I'm running my PC across the border into Ukraine, under a paper thin cover as being a journalist. I've met my first arranged contact on the ground, yada yada, stuff happened, and a few die rolls later I'm on foot heading east.

I've got a Woods encounter then a hills encounter to be played out. My game has been a mixture of two set pieces i thought would be good to play through some initial rules. And random encounters that i've been able to tie into the direction of the game. A bit of a story is developing.

I know one PC isn't going to impact the world in a big way. My hope is to play though some of the different rules, do some reconasonce, call in some off board artillery (or maybe mortar fire), generally be a nuisance, live off the land and make it back out. I'm using actual weather happening at the moment to impact my game world. We'll see how things go.

Now that sounds like the start of a good adventure

Current day pontoon bridge built across Pripyat River, tying in to 2TK because its on the Chernobyl site of 1986.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ess-to-ukraine

May or may not mean anything, just felt like the past and present intersecting.

Worth noting that the pontoon bridge was deployed on the Belarusian side of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, so it's still a bit up the road from the (former) town of Prypyat. It's interesting though that the Russians train river crossings in the Exclusion Zone proper, because they would need to cross it, if they strike from the North towards Kiev.

I think this is also just a natural reaction to the way the hobby has developed. Back in the day, "session zero" wasn't a thing anyone had heard of. These days, everyone putting a game out assumes you're going to houserule and poke at it -- so why not leave it wide open to do so.

Hell, it gave me the opportunity to publish an entire book on a very specific setting. You can definitely argue that stuff should have been in the core book (although it never was, in any edition of the game), but the fact that it wasn't left the door open for me to create an interpretation that made sense to me and was fun at my table... which probably wouldn't be 100% the case had it been in the core book, really! And I'd have a lot less sales. ;)

On the topic of "what's left of the USN?" ... well, it's the same thing. If your players want to sail home and you want to say that's going to be the adventure of a lifetime just finding a seaworthy ship and crew brave enough to risk it, then you can do that. If you want to play it that the war in Europe is still sustainable and there's just enough word and supplies coming from back home to make that viable, you can do that too. If you want a game where ships are still out there volleying missiles at each other now and then, you can do that too. You could of course always do all of these things, but now at least you're not contradicting the written word to do so.

Of course! I bought your book btw, it's great. :D

Like I said in the other worldbuilding thread, I get that maybe everyone just wants to do their own thing, and that's all fine. But I do worry that with so many content creators just making products, eventually there's going to be just a ton of discrete modules, none of which work together, and IMO that's going to hurt the game in the long run.

Any Ref that's looking to run more than one module with their group is going to be running the risk of those modules not working together, in which case they'll have to houserule, potentially extensively, in order to make it work for their players. In my mind, it makes more sense to at least try to flesh out the world a little more, at a really high level, just to help center the game around a default timeline. For example, knowing which countries are fighting which, and why, etc. Hell, even knowing which countries are still in existence (Yugoslavia anyone?).

As an example, say we have multiple modules be released for the US by various content creators over the next few years. One may have Russia and Mexico/Cuba invading as in the original games. Another may not, or may have some other group invading. Others may have no one invading the US, but perhaps New America has taken a bigger chunk of the country.

Each of those options is fine, and those Refs are free to determine their own games as they see fit. But it might help them if there was something to build off of *as an option*. And if a default timeline helps to ensure that there are multiple modules made inside the same cohesive "world", then all the better.

My little introductory solo adventure is progressing slowly but well. My PC is making his way across Ukraine towards the Soviet border, and its only over night my story arc has come a bit clearer.

Very sad to read about the Ukraine invasion. I have melancholy feelings about Russian forces taking Chernobyl. But, in my story line my PC is now making his way to Chernobyl. In my story the timeline is 2 weeks behind current day. I like Chernobyl as a location. I'm not sure what "happens" when my PC gets there, but it feels like worlds colliding!

Hey, thanks!

I just don't see there as being one perfect way of doing things. Too much detail and people crucify you for what you get wrong. Not enough and people complain on that. A heavy canonical approach ends up with unpleasant interactions like the one going on over in the Romania thread. The opposite leaves you with potential chaos.

One anecdotal example of my own is that someone bought my book, noticed I had omitted the canonical position of the 1st Cav, and wondered what was up. I think he believed my book was an official module, which is kinda nice but also indicates the problem you're pointing out. But, I explained my rationale/mistake, gave some ideas of how to resolve it, and we went on our merry ways without any unpleasantness. I will probably update the PDF at some point to fix this.

But fundamentally chasing perfection is a problematic goal, especially with how strongly some people end up feeling about the weirdest things.