[Olefin]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

When the dragon can burn your PC to a crisp or swallow whiole, that's all the formal authority it needs...

The original Kalisz scenario using 5th ID requires a GM that enforces a party that is "realistic" in makeup - armor, infantry, field artillery, or cavalry units, and division or battalion support (engineers, cooks, MPs, Intel, etc.) No green berets, no seals, etc. If there are rangers, they're tabbed not scrolled and they are part of one of the 5ID units. Civilians could be locals. Govt agents could be CIA, DIA, locals, etc. Other nationalities would be German, British, etc. or Pact forces deserters. There *might* be 2MarDiv liaisons, but they'd likely be part of German 3rd Army or US IX Corps. All of the noncombatant support soldiers are gonna be in, FREX, the HHC of the applicablee battalion or division, not in one of the actual rifle companies...

It also requires work on the part of the GM to properly outfit the party. Which requires the GM to look at an ORBAT and TOE info.

The challenge is finding players who are willing to work within the bound of the rules and campaign. It is akin to a D&D game where one of the players wants to pick a class or race that isn't part of the campaign or wants a backstory that doesn't fit.

As to falling back to organized units - that becomes the goal rather than the adventure. In the core v1 campaign, you can spend months real-time adventuring in the areas surrounding Kalisz without the GM ever advancing the campaign into getting close to seeing another organized NATO unit.

Remember at the time it was released they didnt even have special forces yet, or at least ones that were detailed out - they were introduced with the RDF Sourcebook. People forget that because its been a long time since the game was originally introduced.

Now you can build special forces characters on day one. Given the original scenario especially as it builds into Krakow I could see a character being a Green Beret that either had got separated from the unit going after Reset or a survivor of the ambush - or was from a unit that was supposed to meet up with them and got steamrollered by the Soviet attack just like the 5th did.