4th ed T2K

[puška]

Originally Posted by Raellus

To run my T2K campaigns, I taught myself Polish history and geography. I don't see how Free League's system can stop GM's from doing that sort of thing.

No one and nothing can reasonably prevent a GM or player from research.

My point was that numerous games in recent years actively discourage it. You taught yourself because the game encouraged—if not required—you to do so. Saying that kids today have so much more offered them so its a chore to do something for themselves is a disservice to the hobby, to education, and ultimately, to those people who look to be spoon-fed rather than to learn something for themselves.

Simple does not equal bad, but neither does asking for a little investment.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by puška

My point was that numerous games in recent years actively discourage it. You taught yourself because the game encouraged—if not required—you to do so. Saying that kids today have so much more offered them so its a chore to do something for themselves is a disservice to the hobby, to education, and ultimately, to those people who look to be spoon-fed rather than to learn something for themselves.

Simple does not equal bad, but neither does asking for a little investment.

I guess I haven't seen a game that's actively discouraged research and preparation. I admit that my experience is limited, though. My only practical experience with tabletop RPG's is T2K v1 & 2.2, Conan, and most iterations of D&D. The only one that fits that description from that list was D&D 4e. Of those listed- and to your point- that one was my least favorite of the bunch, by far.

I'm a high school history teacher. Education is my calling. I've been working with 13-17 year-olds for the past 20 years, so I have a pretty good read on the generations coming up. I'm just saying that it's pretty much a fool's errand to try and force someone to research and prepare. If a game requires too much of that sort of thing, it's probably not going to do well these days. I do believe that you can and should encourage it, though. That's my job.

Technically, I didn't need to do extra research to run Pirates of the Vistula. I could have run it straight from the module. But I'm curious, and I quickly learned that there were lots of cool places and encounters just waiting for someone who cared to dive in a little deeper to discover. I hope my players would agree but I think it was really worth it.

In that regard, the internet has been a huge boon to gaming. It would have been a lot harder to have learned so much about Poland pre-WWW.

So I don't disagree with your point about research and prep being a good thing in gaming, but I think trying to shoehorn players and GM's into that style of play is a death sentence for anything aspiring to something greater than niche-gaming.

[puška]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I guess I haven't seen a game that's actively discouraged research and preparation.
...
I'm a high school history teacher. Education is my calling.
...
I hope my players would agree but I think it was really worth it.
...
In that regard, the internet has been a huge boon to gaming. It would have been a lot harder to have learned so much about Poland pre-WWW.

Games that self-advertise as ready to play in a handful of minutes or literally "Can be played with no GM prep" are what I consider such. especially if you compare them with early rpg jewels like LBB Traveller or 1st-2nd ed CoC. The husband likes to tell folks with 90% sincerity and 10% sarcasm that being introduced to CoC at age 12 led to his going to university in his 30s and a PhD less than a decade later. Overshadowed by the fact the guy who introduced him to it had six PhDs and cites rpgs as what started him on his research path.

I've taught AP English and History for high school; husband used to teach at a snooty almost-Ivy university. We're both in a similar boat as you for education as a calling. We've both used rpgs and rpg-metaphors in the classroom. Like our players (and your comment), we'd like to think things like that can make the difference between just learning something to answer a test question and creating curiosity. The husband wrote on on his ¿syllabuses/syllabi? under "requirements for class" as being an active curiosity.

Which is what I wish—and my original point was—that when rpgs present themselves as being low-prep, the vast majority of evidence I've encountered is the equivalent to "mindless entertainment" movie compared to a prepped and invested game that may not be a Kubrick production, but is certainly more than an explosion laden SFX feature. Nothing worse in and of itself with mindless entertainment, but no entertainment has to be mindless, just as learning history doesn't have to be a monotonous chore of names and dates.

So I don't disagree with your point about research and prep being a good thing in gaming, but I think trying to shoehorn players and GM's into that style of play is a death sentence for anything aspiring to something greater than niche-gaming.

Doesn't have to be shoehorning. Just a game that encourages a bit of planning and checking of this and that that can lead to curiosity being piqued and everyone involved having a richer experience and maybe... just maybe, want to learn something above and beyond themselves.

And, not that I think you have, but I often say this in online forums since we aren't talking over coffee I'm debating the idea, not you personally... If I didn't think your points had validity, I'd ignore you.

[Southernap]

Okay, I got to ask about the timelines.

I only had owned V2.0 and its timeline seemed reasonable to me as a kid of the 80s. That is wall falls, communism is on the wan through out Europe, Germany is reunited. PRC and Soviets go to war. Poland and the Russians restart the Warsaw Pact. Germany accidentally invades Poland due to a helicopter crew misunderstanding where they were during an exchange of gunfire by border guards of Germany and Poland. The Pact goes west to teach the Germans a lesson based on a bad radio call. The Germans plead for help and NATO crumbles as the US/UK/CDN forces go east to help defend Germany, nukes fly and at least in the box set of 2.0 that I had, the only thing about how your players were in Germany was a one blurb on the summer offensive in the year 2000 at the bottom of a page right after the chapter on how to referee, basically this page was how to create a campaign. It wasn't even near the "World of 2000AD" chapter and a major fault in my mind in how V2.0 was setup. This blurb was that German 3rd Army with US 11th Corps and specifically 5th ID Mechanized ran across the last big bits of the Soviet armies in Europe. Now the Germans are in full retreat. The players are on their own if they want to play in Poland. It was maybe half a page of additional background about why the players should be for the European Campaign.

I have gotten V1.0 rules and V2.2 rules in PDF via DTRPG and love the fuller "Escape from Kalisz" module and background in V1.0 of the rules. I read the timeline there and there are major differences between V1 and V2. With of course talk about how East and West Germany conducted operations against the Soviet forces in Germany and then conduct a coup. The details here make better sense as to why NATO crumbles. As well as the interesting details as to how the PACT crumbles under politics. All of this filled in details that didn't jive for me with some of the V1 supplements that made references to the Germans going east, more details of how the combat in Poland went specific to help setup the Poland campaign trilogy of books.

Okay so reading V2.2 it seems that the major difference there is that the Coup against Gorbachev by the hardliners is successful and we see the return of the Warsaw PACT. Yet most of the folks that I am reading at a facebook page and here seem to have a bad taste for this background. What is the reason for that?

I also have T2013 rule books in my DTRPG collection. I have tried multiple times to read thru that time line and I just either can't stop laughing or going "it doesn't work like that" sort of comments. I had bought it based on the fact that it was there and it seemed when I bought it almost a decade ago, that this was probably going to be the rules going forward.

So all that said, if they are rebooting the timeline, background; which they have to and make this new edition jive with what modules in V1 and V2 have been released. Would it go all the way back to the "Red Dawn" style divide Germany sort of bit? Or would it work better like this mockumentary from ZDF. Where due to the East German government wanting to go hard line they don't have the wall collapse. Hardliners take over the Soviet Union just after Gorby visits East Germany for the anniversary of the GDR's founding. Just before Hasslehoff is up on the Wall singing for it to come down and it being pulled down. War breaks out because of mistakes by Bush foreign policy team and the Soviets leadership. Where it ends with full on SIOP on everyone. Basically Berlin crisis 1989.

Either the Red Dawn or the Berlin Crisis 1989 background seems to make the most sense to me as being playable timelines and not fully scuttling the background in what is mostly been published before for GDW modules. Which in turn ought to allow for the game to run well until the first series of errata get published and they start to see whether its worthwhile to pump out their own modules going forward.

2nd thought about this planned 4th Gen of T2K, the Merc 2k supplement. My friends and I played the heck out of this rule book and using V2.0 rules for most. We used the same characters we had for the core game but dropping the rads and having them all get out of active duty forming a private military corps that did operations around the world either "A-Team" sort of adventures or full on using the gazetteer and special ops book to have stuff like what was talked about the old Soldier of Fortune magazines we could find at used books stores near us for cheap.

I wonder how easy it will be to blend Merc 2k with this new planned rule set, since I could see that being a viable alternative time to come out so if folks don't want to do post-apoc. They could do a Great Depression/Great Recession style background with the same sort of characters and being guards to some archeology team in war torn ME and keeping the terrorists off them. Trying to pull off some hostage rescue of vacationers in some south seas island chain that pirates seized their cruise liner. If not something else from the news in the last decade.

Lastly, I cant remember where I read it if it wasn't in the designer notes of V2.0 Twilight 2000 or in the designer notes of 2300AD. That the folks at GDW gamed out WW3 thru to the 2300 time line. Said they used their own in house game rules, which I wonder if they used their own Third World War series of board games to play out the conflict. I wonder if the new folks would do something similar to game out the land conflict from when the war starts to when we end up on our own to help establish the background.

[Legbreaker]

I'm currently talking with a rep from Fria Ligan re the setting and how my work will integrate with what they're already done. It's still fairly early, but it's looking like the setting for 1st, 2nd and 4th will be basically compatible, especially outside the heavily detailed areas of Europe.
Now I don't know what they've kept the same and what they've changed as yet, but it appears they're sticking relatively closely to the 2.2 version where the Soviet coup succeeded.

Rule set is radically different of course, but that doesn't mean scenarios, background info, history and so forth won't be able to used with earlier rules, or even something totally different such as GURPS, Phoenix Command, D20 Modern, etc. I would think this would include Merc.

[Legbreaker]

This should answer a lot of your questions re 2300 http://stalexone.tripod.com/gg2/resources.htm

[Southernap]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

This should answer a lot of your questions re 2300 http://stalexone.tripod.com/gg2/resources.htm

Sweet. Thanks for that nice bit of history.