[Ursus Maior]

I read your contribution on A Perfect Crime (which I did not know before, so thanks for that hint) and I could imagine a USSR-backed or at least USSR-tolerated anti-reunification campaign by former members of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS, Ministry for State security, i. e. "Stasi"). However, I have three remarks, bear in mind that I have not watched the documentary yet.

1) I get the impression that the documentary proliferated a hyperbolic story of the amount of discontent in the early years of a reunified Germany. There were demonstrations against the Treuhand, the government agency that mostly ran the economic transformation of the former GDR, certainly. However, riots were - as far as I know - not happening. Strikes did happen numerous times, though.

2) The Stasi was dissolved in 1990, a couple of months before reunification. While an underground network certainly was a possibility and mostly likely a fact, including agents starting to work for Soviet and later Russian secret agencies, the main operational body of Stasi was so utterly wiped out in the last months of the GDR that any major operations would have been unthinkable. It is important to understand that, even before reunification, the Stasi lost its central headquarters, when it was stormed by anti-government protesters and the main archives were looted, as others had been (these incidents happened between December 1989 and January 1990). All members of Stasi were dismissed on March 31st 1990. A few hundred were hired on temporary contracts in order to dissolve the agency proper. A full set of files on Stasi employees even made it into the hands of the CIA (i. e. "Rosenholz files"), most likely being bought from KGB operatives, who were entrusted with these files by Stasi in order to safekeep Stasi secrets in Moscow, as collapse was evidently imminent. The two KGB agents in questions were soon found dead "under mysterious circumstances", which - as we learned in the past decades - seems to hint at KGB revenge killings. This shows however, in what a desolate state of affairs even KGB and Soviet secret agencies weree by early 1990. The USSR really is in a catastrophic mess by that date.

3) My main point here would be that any major spiel by late Cold War intelligence agencies would need to be a major theme for FL's 4th edition of T2K, were it to be easily accessible and credible for players. The historical USSR was weak, derelict and so immensely corrupt, that corruption - i. e. personal relations of individuals for the means of personal gains - were probably the only thing that kept the political system somewhat going. Whereas the hoipolloi were heading towards serious lacks of everything (in 1992 there was a notable decline in calorie intake within the Russian Federation), future oligarchs and the political elite were filling their pockets. Neither this nor the collapsing state of the USSR is a theme in FL's edition; nor is any large scale intelligence coup or counter-revolution.

To sum this up, what I find most baffling with this new edition is its lack of a concise theme for the well known setting of T2K. This leaves many questions open for players that would be highly relevant for many groups, some of which I was already asked, when giving a short introduction to one of my players, e. g.: Who started the war and why? How do Polish people feel about the war, i. e. what do they think of NATO, Americans, Germans, Soviets etc.? How do Swedish people feel? Is their a strong anti-American stance? [After all, Sweden was attacked by the US and then beaten into an alliance; which alone is dumb and contradicts pre-war arrangements, since Sweden was clearly to side with NATO in the event of a war.] And how do other NATO countries feel about the war, e. g. Germany had a strong anti-war stance both in politics and the masses, how does this interact with the US attacking the USSR first (yes, over the USSR attacking Poland)? Would Germans really support triggering Article 5 after US installations were hit in Germany? I could see this go both ways in the 1990s actually.

That none of this can be answered from the core rulebooks is a major drawback for this product. Especially since it's already "niche". I don't know about FL's other products, but they seem to be thematically strong (Coriolis and Alien come to mind), but from riffling through their books, deeper narratives do not seem to be part of their publication strategy. I might be wrong here, though, as I did not read to deep in any of their games.