Your Preferred T2K Timeline

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

As I've been playing the game off and on since it first came out I'm over the old timelines and prefer to play in a contemporary setting

I get it. I've toyed with updated timelines, to make the setting more familiar, feel more relevant, and to incorporate new weapons and kit, but there are issues with that.

I think newer timelines lend themselves best to those first two considerations (creating a game world that feels more relevant, more familiar and connected to today). I find the opposite to be true for weapons and kit, though. There are two reasons.

First, new weapons and kit kind of betray the T2k ethos of a general breakdown of civilization and technology. PC's with tablets (no internet, but still), e-readers, mp3 players (old tech, today), and photo albums on their phones? One of T2k's appeals for me is getting away from all that stuff, but yeah, that sort of tech doesn't feel T2k to me.

Second, newer weapons and kit tend to make the PCs overpowered. When most PCs are equipped with current gen NVGs, weapon sights, comms, drones, and body armor (or various combinations thereof), they essentially become superheroes, the equivalent of "Masters of the Realm" in D&D (5e). If the OPFOR isn't similarly equipped, it's like Level 15 D&D heroes going up against kobolds, goblins, and the occasional orcs. If you equip the OPFOR like the PCs, with all the latest bells and whistles, then it's not really T2k, is it? It's Modern Warfare, and there are plenty of outlets for that out there now.

It's a Catch-22: Include lots of modern gear, it feels less like T2k. Eliminate all that cool current-gen gear, then there's less of a reason to update the timeline.

I've experienced this a bit already in the T2030 campaign that I run. Some day, I hope to confront my players with OPFOR that are as well equipped as they are but PbP is so slow-paced, IRL, that I'm pessimistic that we'll ever reach that point.

For these reasons, I keep coming back to the alternative, Cold War never ended, v1.0 timeline.