Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Indeed!
To our UK members, does v4 make the UK a more interesting potential campaign setting than earlier versions do?
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Honestly, if you put the Soviet invasion to one side I don't see that much different from V1, it's just been presented in a better written format and got rid of some of the awful cliches (I do sometimes wonder if the writer of the canon Survivor's Guide to the UK based his work on the UK Section of EPCOT).
HMG controlling an area of southern England but out of touch with the rest of the country? Check
Quasi independent Scotland? Check
Quasi independent Wales? Check
The situation in Northern Ireland is slightly different, but not in a good way - it's not plausible as presented without an armed intervention by the Republic of Ireland military
I'm puzzled by the reference to 'the ravages of war' being felt less keenly in the North. I find it hard to believe that the many of the big urban areas of the North - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, etc - wouldn't be in various stages of anarchy. I'm going to presume that they mean the more rural parts like Cumbria, but that represents a relatively small part of 'the North'.
They give no clue where the British Army is based (other than to say where they're not, which is near the Government in Reading. Oh, and as far as I know the Region Six bunker moved from Reading to Maidenhead in the 60's) so that one is left up to the GM. Ditto the Soviets and the Americans. FWIW the most logical places for the Army would be Aldershot (20 miles from Reading) or Salisbury (60 miles from Reading) or Catterick (240 miles from Reading). So maybe they want the Army in Catterick.
EDIT. Thinking about it more, I'm puzzled as to how the 'King and his Ministers' (I presume they mean His Majesty's Government) can control their area if they're out of touch with the Army. And to be honest, if the Army know the King is in a bunker in Reading they're going to be doing everything they can to get him to safety.
There's also no specific detail at this stage on nuclear targets (or if there is I haven't found it yet) So they're leaving a lot to an individual GM to decide (or, as I said earlier, maybe there's a sourcebook in the pipeline). That's not necessarily a bad thing - V1 filled in much of these sorts of gaps but filled them in with rubbish) but really I don't see V4 bringing anything substantially new to the table, it's just a reboot of V1 with some minor tweaks - even the Russian invasion isn't really new - as I've already mentioned a few times V1 had the Group of Soviet Forces England. I haven't read anything yet which makes me think of the 7th Guards AAD any different (disclaimer - I've really only read Chapter Seven in depth).
So really, the answer to your question is that as far as I can tell, V4 doesn't really change anything unless I was planning to game in Northern Ireland. To be honest, if I was going to run a UK campaign set around the year 2000 I'd use my own background / timeline (which is basically a lightly tweaked V1 timeline).
Really, this is part of the reason why personally I think Free League missed a huge opportunity by trying to reboot the classic timeline. As I've said to you and others in the past, I think it would have been far smarter of them to have advanced the timeline ten years and given us Twilight 2030 rather than go backwards and try and reinvent the wheel.
As far as I can tell, all they've managed to do instead is play around with things to try and achieve the same end result as the original (5th US Division is overrun somewhere in eastern Europe thus creating the 'Good Luck You're On Your Own' scenario) while alienating some people in the process (I've just looked on their own forum and it is not receiving universal love there either). I think the phrase I'm looking for is 'if it's not broken don't fix it'.