Bear's Den

[fact275]

My friends and I all played T:2000 as teenagers. Recently, we've thought of doing a module as a sort of "retro" activity for old times' sake. I've chosen Bear's Den. We're going to backdate the T:2000 history to 1990 to eliminate the need to update technology or weaponry.

I'd be curious to know if anyone GM'd this module and how you took your PCs through the various suggested courses of action. I presume my group will be anti-Chelkov.

[kcdusk]

This was the first module i ever bought, back in the days of "paper"!

I'd need to get it out to refamiliarise myself with it. But i'd play the weather card reasonably strictly. Biting cold, sever wind, whiteouts, difficult travel overland,no water, even simple tasks would be allot harder wearing gloves and fridiged stiff fingers.

[kota1342000]

Oh sweet. Bears Den is one of the modules I haven't run, but looks friggin awesome.
Ive got a group going through Last Sub so Id be willing to share details about what happens in each of the games...

(putting on my tv announcer voice)
"Last time.....on Bear's Den....."

[Legbreaker]

Personally I've never been all that keen on Bears Den. Don't really know why, perhaps it's because it's basically a stand alone and appears difficult to include in an ongoing campaign - how do you get the PCs from Warsaw to the Ukraine for example when you've got Omega happening a few months before, and the closest Nato unit is up in the Baltic (US 8th ID). Sure you could run a group of Pact soldiers with perhaps a Nato pilot or POWs, but...

[95th Rifleman]

Not keen on Bear's den but Twilight1990 is how I roll these days.

It does make allot more sense to have the timeline kick off in december 86 rather than 96.

[fact275]

My thought was to have the PCs play California National Guardsmen of the 19th SFG that somehow ended up with the 8th ID. They get to Lvov from Riga thanks to a rickety Mi-8, probably using the caravan for part of the travel. It's only about 1000 km between the two cities and Lvov is nearly due south from Riga.

The challenge is to accomplish some of the goals in the adventure. Some require you to enter Lvov and ingratiate yourself with the powers that be there. But the other is to help the 27th Tank Division and that requires you to go away from Lvov. Thus, Bear's Den can take on a life of its own and last many many sessions.

We were just looking to do a one time module so it served our purposes. Sadly, since I first posted, I'm afraid my plans have fallen apart. Some of the guys who used to play back in our teenage years were interested but now 40-something realities have set in and there's only one guy who still wants to do it. So we're on hold (permanently?) until I can find at least two or three more to make a viable team.

[Mahatatain]

As Leg has said the problem with the Bear's Den scenario is that it rather stands alone and is therefore problematic to integrate into a campaign with other pre-written modules. I think that the Ukraine is a potentially very interesting location for a T2k campaign however and so rather than running the Bear's Den scenario as intended I've used it as a starting point for a campaign that will eventually result in the characters leaving the Ukraine (they've been promised a place on a sub so I'll let you guess where that's heading eventually in terms of modules! ).

In the meantime they've already been involved in the Ukrainian civil war (one thing I've added) and are currently planning on how to destroy the Red Bear's SCUD as well as trashing (and possibly stealing) his air assets (another thing I've added).

[cavtroop]

Originally Posted by fact275

My thought was to have the PCs play California National Guardsmen of the 19th SFG that somehow ended up with the 8th ID. They get to Lvov from Riga thanks to a rickety Mi-8, probably using the caravan for part of the travel. It's only about 1000 km between the two cities and Lvov is nearly due south from Riga.

The challenge is to accomplish some of the goals in the adventure. Some require you to enter Lvov and ingratiate yourself with the powers that be there. But the other is to help the 27th Tank Division and that requires you to go away from Lvov. Thus, Bear's Den can take on a life of its own and last many many sessions.

We were just looking to do a one time module so it served our purposes. Sadly, since I first posted, I'm afraid my plans have fallen apart. Some of the guys who used to play back in our teenage years were interested but now 40-something realities have set in and there's only one guy who still wants to do it. So we're on hold (permanently?) until I can find at least two or three more to make a viable team.

Where are you? Maybe there is a forum member or two thats near you?

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by cavtroop

Where are you? Maybe there is a forum member or two thats near you?

Or if that doesn't happen then try something like RPOL.

[Tombot]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Personally I've never been all that keen on Bears Den. Don't really know why, perhaps it's because it's basically a stand alone and appears difficult to include in an ongoing campaign - how do you get the PCs from Warsaw to the Ukraine for example when you've got Omega happening a few months before, and the closest Nato unit is up in the Baltic (US 8th ID). Sure you could run a group of Pact soldiers with perhaps a Nato pilot or POWs, but...

I just love the sandbox-setting of T2k ; the option to do many different campaigns-settings/one-shot-scenarios in the world of T2k.
The authors (and fans!) provided a lot of different stuff to do just that. Your right - not all of it will fit into on ongoing campaign.

But there are so many different angels to show to your players the developments in the aftermath of a third world war... thats the most amazing thing to me.
I loved that (a huge, well developed background with many colourfull regions) about "Traveller" too. To follow a certain group of characters for a while - stop - and to create another one somewhere else in a different part of the world. Because the gamesetting has so many facettes... With all new options, locations, enemys and friends.

To me the trick is to end a campaign right after its peak - as long as the players want to do more with those characters (but had enough time to accomplish quite something within that setting).

And somewhere in the future, my players will have an adventure in the ukraine,too! After "Bears Den" the pc´s might stumble over a few inspirations from "stalker"... ?! Yeah, maybe

[Bullet Magnet]

Originally Posted by Mahatatain

As Leg has said the problem with the Bear's Den scenario is that it rather stands alone and is therefore problematic to integrate into a campaign with other pre-written modules. I think that the Ukraine is a potentially very interesting location for a T2k campaign however and so rather than running the Bear's Den scenario as intended I've used it as a starting point for a campaign that will eventually result in the characters leaving the Ukraine (they've been promised a place on a sub so I'll let you guess where that's heading eventually in terms of modules! ).

This reminds me of a thread I started several months ago, about what you like & dislike about T2K. One of the things I like about the game is that almost every module provides a basic framework for a whole region; theoretically a whole campaign could be built around a single module, if the GM is ambitious enough to put in the work. Bear's Den is certainly no exception.

An idea I had a while back was to have PCs be part of a team that infiltrated deep behind Pact lines after the brass got intel about a Ukrainian resistance movement. This provided an explanation for why characters from NATO countries were in the Ukraine. Too bad I never got an actual game going, or I'd have gone beyond just a basic idea.

[Tombot]

Within the polish adventures my group started to develop a second character for almost every player, to have a back-up if the first one dies.
Most of them were actually locals, cause the NATO-characters had a lot of difficulties with the fact that they did´nt know the language. And even the few who did were easily identified as western foreigners... (so KGB-agents had not a to hard time to track them down).

As long as i gave every "secondary" character his own background and specific goals for the scenario, the players really enjoyed "switching" beetween their PC´s from time to time.
F.e. one of our guys had an american seargent which had to heal up on a wound outside of krakow. A fighter which had to do a lot of killing, before the group arrived in the vincinity. But his second PC was a local smuggler, which was familiar with krakow, had contacts withhin the city, and so on. When the player switched to him, he had a total different gameplay. A bit like in some PC-games, where you can switch between different characters, with unique skills, background-information, etc.
I guess in "Bears Den" it would´nt hurt to have at least some local PC´s on your side, too.

PS: After reading through "Bears Den" again, i realized that the rumor-section includes a lot of "stalker"-like rumors (of ghosts, muties, and so on).
I never used the "twilight nightmares" and i do appreciate the fact, that T2k is a much more "serious" postapocalyptic setting (only humans and animals as enemies, instead of giant toy-robots and mutated bikini-girls with boob-lasers - i´ll keep those strictly to my machowomen-with-guns-sessions, i swear!).
But... the ukraine will introduce some hints of (mutated) horror.
Like with the sasquatch in the other thread - most things will never appear above the rumor-level, made up by superstitious people (zombies, vampires).. but there will be a chance of encountering some messed-up/mutated animals, and maybe even something really monstrous in a few desolate places. Since i never confronted my players with "Horror/Mystery"-elements within our long history of T2k-games, this will be good, as long as i do it subtly (meaning only a few, well-placed encounters, without giving the players too much information about possible "monsters".)
A bit like in a good cthuhlhu-campaign. Muhaahaa - iam looking forward to that!!!

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by Tombot

...but there will be a chance of encountering some messed-up/mutated animals, and maybe even something really monstrous in a few desolate places.

[kota1342000]

Originally Posted by Tombot

I just love the sandbox-setting of T2k ; the option to do many different campaigns-settings/one-shot-scenarios in the world of T2k.
The authors (and fans!) provided a lot of different stuff to do just that. Your right - not all of it will fit into on ongoing campaign.

Perfect territory for four-hour one shot convention stories Ive been building.

Originally Posted by Tombot

I never used the "twilight nightmares" and i do appreciate the fact, that T2k is a much more "serious" postapocalyptic setting (only humans and animals as enemies, instead of giant toy-robots and mutated bikini-girls with boob-lasers - i´ll keep those strictly to my machowomen-with-guns-sessions, i swear!).

A good friend of mine just ran a T2k story where the Soviets used a very exotic kind of biological weapon that created zombies. It turned into a good time and a huge laugh towards the end.
...AND MACHO WOMEN WITH GUNS???? YESSSSSS!!!!! FINALLY ANOTHER FAN!!!

[fact275]

We're in Northern California.

[Adm.Lee]

I never ran this one: as mentioned, it came out after my group had already left Europe. I have re-read it, and I remember having to work really hard to parse out what the planned sequence of events are between the 27th (NATO) division and the Red Bear's army, and how or why the PCs are brought into it, or supposed to care.

To my mind, this would have been a much better module to run in the winter of 1999-2000, before the NATO last gasp. That way, NATO could be running agents/advisors to the Ukrainians, in hopes of neutralizing the Red Bear lest he and his army become a problem to the offensive. (Of course, once the PCs and their handlers become aware that the Bear is going rogue, it opens up another can of worms.)

[Tombot]

Originally Posted by kota1342000

...AND MACHO WOMEN WITH GUNS???? YESSSSSS!!!!! FINALLY ANOTHER FAN!!!

Yeah, baby! I gotta admit that!
2nd ed & this:
http://maverick.brainiac.com/mwwg/index.html (nice additions to the original rules).

And for inspiration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edsp7AnwnFE

[Olefin]

We played it as a stand alone using new characters we rolled up as former US and British POW's who were part of the 27th and sent ahead to try to spring more POW's.

The GM had to come up with the POW camp, how big it was and how many were in it because while mentioned in the game, it wasnt described.

Not sure if others developed the camp - the way it was played by our GM it was a large facility with over 500 POW's of various types, most who were trained techs of various kinds who were being used on repair work and engineering projects.

We managed to make contact with the resistance and hit the camp and got most of them out, then caused a heck of a lot of trouble in Lvov - so much that when the 27th broke thru the pass the Bear's men were too busy dealing with us and they broke thru to the city.

Only four of the characters made it thru the whole thing but it was fun.

[boogiedowndonovan]

Originally Posted by fact275

We're in Northern California.

hey fact, what part of of Northern California? There's a few of us here.