Realism vs Munchkinism

[Legbreaker]

It's not just players that can sometimes go down the munchkin route. GMs can be just as guilty of over doing things in the set up. Massive units, seemingly untouched by the war, fleets of warships floating about the worlds oceans, aircraft, seemingly unlimited amounts of resources which just happen to be in exactly the place they're needed at the time they're needed...

Care needs to be taken to keep game world balance, not just by limiting what PCs have available to them, but also what else is happening in the world. It's a POST-APOCALYPSE setting after all, not an "America crushes all resistance and the Soviets are just speed bumps" situation.

Twilight:2000 isn't another version of recent real world events. It's not Iraq, or Somalia, or Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan. It's dark, bleak, almost hopeless where the risk of disease, starvation, radiation poisoning, or "just" being shot is a daily, even mundane possibility. Just because somebody is in the military or organised settlement doesn't automatically guarantee their next meal or a safe place to sleep that night.

It's that danger and uncertainty which for me is half the attraction of the game.

[Olefin]

In the D&D world we called those Monty Haul campaigns - you kill three orcs who are carrying a +3 sword, two +2 shields and a fully charged Wand of Fireballs plus 10,000 gold pieces

However I have never heard of any Twilight 2000 game or scenario on this board that even comes close to what you just described unless I missed something

And the game itself has a huge case of Munchkinism as you call it, where the US somehow has its whole fleet destroyed, its whole air force apparently as well except in the RDF and can't even stop an Russian invasion of Alaska before nuclear weapons are used, let alone the deux ex machina of the drought that specifically targets the US

and the war, while being post nuclear war, is not as bleak as being post-apocalyptic - you still have intact governments in the US (even though there are two), France, Belguim, the UK, Grenada, Kenya, Australia etc.. - in a true post-apocalyptic event the only govt left would be strongmen and marauders - and that is not the case

[pmulcahy11b]

A lot of games I've been in, it's sort of anti-Munchkin -- you have just snuck out of a POW camp, for example, and if you're lucky, you managed to steal a bayonet or (gosh!) a pistol before you left.

I GMed a game that was basically munchkin once -- the players were part of an ad hoc task force to take back Europe, starting with Poland.

[Olefin]

depends on what you think a Monty Haul game would be - I know some people who think if you start with an M1 tank from your rolls then its Monty Haul, I know others who say if you start with more than a Hummer and an M-16 with five clips that you are Monty Haul

to me the game went too far into anti-Munchkin with HW and Kidnapped - took the fun out of it for most of the players by making things so bleak at home that they might as well have stayed in Europe where, by comparison, things were a lot better

[simonmark6]

I see your point, Leg, although I think it's overstated and also a not very veiled attack on certain other members of the board.

I see it less of a case of Munchkinism which is definitely a pejorative term but one of a difference in scope in a campaign. Some people like playing up the dirty, nitty, gritty feel of a very bleak TK2 environment whilst others like to play with a more sweeping effect on the game world.

Neither is right or wrong. I would prefer to couch it in terms of High and Low Fantasy play rather than Realism/Munchkinism as it suggests a different but equally valid way of playing rather than an I'm right and you're wrong stand-point.

I have played in a variety of High/Low style TK2 games and have enjoyed both equally.

I will be honest, Olefin's description of his campaign strikes me as very much on the High side of the High/Low spectrum but I have no problem with that.

As a gamer, I say as long as he had fun playing it it is as valid as any other game played and as a story-teller I applaud his group for telling a hell of a fantasy story. Which is after all, what we are talking about, a fantasy game set in an alternate universe designed for people to have fun playing.

If you genuinely want a debate, I'd suggest couching your proposition in less loaded terms rather than simply trying to score points through the back door.

[B.T.]

With the exception of the last sentence, I agree with Simonmark.
(And to be honest: I don't really understand the afforementioned sentence ...)

[Medic]

I thought about replying Leg right after he had posted his piece, but I held back for the reason, I didn't want to start another flame war on this forum.

But, as Simon said (no pun intended), the original post comes off as bit offensive even though there is a point. I don't claim to be a very objective writer, when it comes to the Finnish situation in the Twilight Universe - I probably fall in to the same trap many others do when writing about their own homeland.

The game, the universe we all love and have grown up playing in, is what we make of it. Yes, there is the canon, though many things are left hanging in the air and leave it up to us to resolve, how they really went. Some matters in the canon don't fit the image some of us have painted in our minds. Who is to say, it is wrong either? It is what keeps the game alive.

Let's not turn this in to another flame-war, please. We don't need any more of them.

Over and out.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Olefin

And the game itself has a huge case of Munchkinism as you call it, where the US somehow has its whole fleet destroyed, its whole air force apparently as well except in the RDF and can't even stop an Russian invasion of Alaska before nuclear weapons are used, let alone the deux ex machina of the drought that specifically targets the US

In part, the Soviet capabilities were based on what the writers thought we knew of their force strength at the time, when they were perceived as a much more serious global threat. Hindsight is 20/20.

- C.

[Olefin]

Even then the writers were very anti-US military in their viewpoint in general. They had US military planners make some very dumb decisions -

bring home 43,000 guys and do nothing with them with the country invaded when they should have stayed in Europe considering the Soviets were finally falling apart and leaving behind thousands of Americans cut off behind Soviet lines in the process?

send forces to Europe after the Mexicans and the Soviets had invaded instead of sending those forces to combat them - no way does the 42nd get sent to Europe for instance in that situation

American divisions refusing orders to drive the Mexicans out of the country and instead defecting to CivGov, who apparently doesnt mind that Mexico has taken over the Southwest?

wasting three US divisions in Yugoslavia - and how did they even get them there in the first place, let alone ever plan on supplying them?

allowing the Germans to cross the Soviet border when every competent US officer I have ever heard of knew that doing that would invite a Soviet nuclear response

plus no Spanish, Portuguese, French, Belgian or Italian troops ever defect and fight for NATO against the Soviets, especially after the war had turned against NATO and the Russians had penetrated into southern Germany?

the US allowing a successful Soviet invasion of Alaska prior to a nuclear war occuring with Pearl and Seattle and San Francisco and San Diego still intact and the naval bases therin?

and then the final insult when they inflict an uber drought on the US that even they had to realize after they released those modules was overkill - that basically such an event would have killed off almost all of the US population

any wonder why some of us have issues with the canon? So if having the US finally act rationally and start to actually use their forces correctly is "America crushes all resistance and the Soviets are just speed bumps" I think we can be forgiven

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Even then the writers were very anti-US military in their viewpoint in general.

So that would be in your opinion then? We've had at least one of the writers make appearances on this board and I'd be interested to see whether he would take offence to that assertion. I personally don't think that the writers of T2K were "very anti-US military". As a matter of fact I think such a suggestion is counter-intuitive. Why would a group of people who were "very anti-US military" sink lots of money and years of their lives into a project in which the US military (in their alternative universe) played a central part? I think that would be cripplingly depressing.

[kcdusk]

Originally Posted by Targan

So that would be in your opinion then?

I dont have a view on if the writers were anti-american or not. But I've always thought both sides (NATO and Soviet) were ground into the ground. And so the fall for USA was further than the Soviets would have experienced. So in that sense America could be seen as loosing more. But i also thought that was deliberate, because most of the gaming community would be USA based, so the USA had to be seen as a post-nuclear wasteland for that target audience to feel "a part of it".

As for an M1 tank being rolled up during character creation or being assigned to a PC party, I dont have a problem with that.

• M1 needs to be maintained, so creates work or breakdowns
• Some PCs need an M1 (driver, loader etc) for their roles
• M1 becomes a high priority target, so its a double edged sword
• The M1 is likely to have only half a tank of fuel, so it might be short term ownership (rental?) at best
• M1 might be low on ammo, making selecting targets a big decision

So i dont see an M1 for example, as being similar to a +5 sword. I think they can create decisions that leads to good role play.

[Tegyrius]

The entire story - whether 1.0, 2.0, 2.2, or 2013 - is a tool to generate a desired result: a post-WWIII world where nobody won. Do we care more about the "present" setting or the "past" that generated it? I don't know about you guys, but my PCs in Raellus' games are far more concerned with 2000 than 1997.

Someday I'm going to write a post-apocalyptic RPG with no canon history, in which you have to make up the timeline of the apocalypse as you build your characters. Then no players will be able to bitch at me for getting the total destruction of the world wrong.

- C.

[Olefin]

Just because you write about WWIII and have American troops in it doesnt make you pro-US military. And the US military, while playing a central part, except in a few modules that Frank Frey wrote (who by the way is not one of those I would consider anti-US military in any way of the writers) plays a very inept part of the story.

With the exception of the performance in the RDF area and possibly Alaska the US military has one long string of failures in Twilight 2000. Their offensives in Europe all ended in defeat and reverse, usually major ones. And while the individual soldiers are portrayed quite well, their commanders are not.

And you can be pro-individual US soldier while being anti-US military - Democrats have managed that for a long time here in the US, supporting the individual soldier while tearing down US military decisions left and right.

And frankly any US division commander that refused an order to be sent to support the drive to drive the Mexicans out of Texas like the 84th Infantry did in August of 1999 would be court martialed and shot by any US govt, be it MilGov or CivGov. Thats basically cowardice in the face of the enemy. And CivGov didnt sign a peace treaty with Mexico or the Soviets.

Reality - CivGov would have replaced the commander immediately and told him to get his division to Arkansas immediately and do its job.

And having military commanders writeoff a whole Corps and choose to go home and do nothing with those men - no US commander would ever give that order.

So are the individual stories pro-US soldier when it gets down to that level - yes.

The overall timeline however and pattern of behavior of the US military and government in Twilight 2000 with how the majority of the game's writers deal with them is definitely anti-American in many ways.

Frank Frey, however, does a very good job of showing that the US military command structure actually knows what its doing.