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Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
Your annoyance is probably misplaced.
People have been reacting the way they have because despite whatever real life events occurred in 1991, the Twilight War scenario starts off with the Soviet Union versus China and NATO versus WarPac.
In that scenario, the Warsaw Pact does not make a magical comeback and spring fresh into life again because in the Twilight War scenario, the Cold War never ended and the Warsaw Pact never died.
Given that Free League have only offered snippets then yes, I have been one of those people that have probably "jumped the gun" - there is not a lot of information to be had at the moment but the one piece of information that has come from Free League is the implication that they would be following a timeline somewhat similar to the 2nd or 2.2 editions of Twilight: 2000 - the timelines where NATO versus WarPac is a "thing".
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Yep, I wrote this in direct response to your comments. I get the impression you're stuck in a mindset that the game can only exist with the Warsaw Pact intact and the way your complaints read to me, you think that Free League owes it to you to have the Warsaw Pact because to do anything else would violate your emotional bond with the historical. I wrote this to show that it's probably not the case. Simple as that. In the original game. I don't know why GDW kept the Pact when v2.2 came out in 1993. Maybe they wanted to get rid of it but couldn't figure out a way without completely redoing all the work they'd done to that point. Ask them.
I just now re-read the 2.2 lore and I didn't realize they killed off Yeltsin either. Where they go off the rails, IMHO, is Poland siding with Moscow. In hindsight, that's absurd, but maybe in 1993 it was plausible. I've never met a Pole who ever had anything good to say about a Russian, and I've never met anyone who would ever thing Russia partitioning Belarus with Poland would be a good idea. So the canon lore has problems of its own that I've apparently overlooked in my nostalgia. I hope FL smooths it out. But if I was coming to this game beginning with the 4th Edition, I'd walk away as soon as somebody told me the Warsaw Pact makes a comeback. In the hindsight of 2020, it's unthinkable. Also, I seem to recall that the entire Twilight War was wargamed out in the early 80s, which fed into not only Twilight 2000, but also the Traveller series. Maybe GDW wrote themselves into a corner where the Pact had to exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Thanks for sharing, hell-fish. It's an interesting premise, promising even.
Before I comment on your timeline, I'd like to address your philippic re the worry warts and timeline reactionaries. I'm trying to keep an open mind about the as-yet-unseen v4 timeline, but I understand others' concern. The timeline is a crucial component of the setting. If the setting doesn't click, the game is not going to get much traction. One could argue that Twilight 2013 was doomed by its timeline (I've heard mostly good things about its rule-set).
Regarding your timeline, hell-fish, how does the Soviet economy, which was verging on collapse c.1990 (IRL), survive several years of military rule and civil war? Furthermore, how does the Soviet military fight said pricey civil wars (with a busted economy) and still manage to emerge strong enough to tussle with China and NATO for a couple of years in the late '90s? This, I think, requires a plausible explanation, or a suspension of disbelief above and beyond that required for v1's "the Cold War never ended" premise.
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I honestly have no idea. I didn't read a word of Soviet economics while I wrote this. Do you have an idea? How did Stalin's economy keep chugging during WWII? How does any economy survive a war of national annihilation?
My only reference to anything of the sort is the Chechnya war - which was admittedly tiny by comparison. Lots of sources point out that the Russians never had much trouble recruiting for the war because it was the only real paying job in the ex-Soviet Union at the time. Guys joined the Army to fight so they could feed their families.
This excerpt from this amateur documentary of Chechnya, for example:
https://youtu.be/s6y4sxoJ2A0?t=212