4th ed T2K

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Wait, are you suggesting that the UK nuked its own territory (or allowed NATO to do so) to destroy the Soviet invasion force?

Well, per page 148 of the Player Manual, someone definitely did. Granted, it could have been part of the Soviets' invasion strategy but the reference to the use of tactical nukes comes right after a sentence about UK and US troops staging a desperate defence. Nuking UK territory sounds like a pretty desperate form of defence.

And somehow or other the invasion force has been reduced to a solitary Air Assault Division by 2000.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

Nuking UK territory sounds like a pretty desperate form of defence.

Indeed!

To our UK members, does v4 make the UK a more interesting potential campaign setting than earlier versions do?

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[comped]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Indeed!

To our UK members, does v4 make the UK a more interesting potential campaign setting than earlier versions do?

-

Only when compared to the train-wreck that was the Survivor's Guide To The UK... Which is itself not as horrible as the UK Shadowrun supplements and books.

[mpipes]

Guys,

Don't necessarily look at what the designers put out as gospel. You can scan it to pdf, convert to Word and then re-write it as you wish.

Essentially, that is what I did. I didn't like the second Dark Ages flavor GDW came up with and rewrote huge swaths of the background. While I did not invade the UK, Japan and Alaska were invaded. The Soviets actually penetrated all the way to Montana. The Airborne and Naval Infantry units in Japan were eventually captured, and the Soviet were so weakened in their Far Eastern forces that Japan backed by US Marines, ANZAC, Filipino, and S. Korean troops capture the Kuriles.

I could go on, but I hope everyone gets the point. If you don't like it, change it. After all, a zombie campaign might be fun.........

[mpipes]

Rainbow Six....you might want to do something about your files link.

As to those that like Chinese porn or gambling (it seems to have both) or just a good chuckle; click away!!!

[Rainbow Six]

Bugger. Thanks for the heads up. My hosting company stopped offering hosting a while ago and I never got round to updating my sig. Have amended it.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Indeed!

To our UK members, does v4 make the UK a more interesting potential campaign setting than earlier versions do?

-

Honestly, if you put the Soviet invasion to one side I don't see that much different from V1, it's just been presented in a better written format and got rid of some of the awful cliches (I do sometimes wonder if the writer of the canon Survivor's Guide to the UK based his work on the UK Section of EPCOT).

HMG controlling an area of southern England but out of touch with the rest of the country? Check
Quasi independent Scotland? Check
Quasi independent Wales? Check

The situation in Northern Ireland is slightly different, but not in a good way - it's not plausible as presented without an armed intervention by the Republic of Ireland military

I'm puzzled by the reference to 'the ravages of war' being felt less keenly in the North. I find it hard to believe that the many of the big urban areas of the North - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, etc - wouldn't be in various stages of anarchy. I'm going to presume that they mean the more rural parts like Cumbria, but that represents a relatively small part of 'the North'.

They give no clue where the British Army is based (other than to say where they're not, which is near the Government in Reading. Oh, and as far as I know the Region Six bunker moved from Reading to Maidenhead in the 60's) so that one is left up to the GM. Ditto the Soviets and the Americans. FWIW the most logical places for the Army would be Aldershot (20 miles from Reading) or Salisbury (60 miles from Reading) or Catterick (240 miles from Reading). So maybe they want the Army in Catterick.

EDIT. Thinking about it more, I'm puzzled as to how the 'King and his Ministers' (I presume they mean His Majesty's Government) can control their area if they're out of touch with the Army. And to be honest, if the Army know the King is in a bunker in Reading they're going to be doing everything they can to get him to safety.

There's also no specific detail at this stage on nuclear targets (or if there is I haven't found it yet) So they're leaving a lot to an individual GM to decide (or, as I said earlier, maybe there's a sourcebook in the pipeline). That's not necessarily a bad thing - V1 filled in much of these sorts of gaps but filled them in with rubbish) but really I don't see V4 bringing anything substantially new to the table, it's just a reboot of V1 with some minor tweaks - even the Russian invasion isn't really new - as I've already mentioned a few times V1 had the Group of Soviet Forces England. I haven't read anything yet which makes me think of the 7th Guards AAD any different (disclaimer - I've really only read Chapter Seven in depth).

So really, the answer to your question is that as far as I can tell, V4 doesn't really change anything unless I was planning to game in Northern Ireland. To be honest, if I was going to run a UK campaign set around the year 2000 I'd use my own background / timeline (which is basically a lightly tweaked V1 timeline).

Really, this is part of the reason why personally I think Free League missed a huge opportunity by trying to reboot the classic timeline. As I've said to you and others in the past, I think it would have been far smarter of them to have advanced the timeline ten years and given us Twilight 2030 rather than go backwards and try and reinvent the wheel.

As far as I can tell, all they've managed to do instead is play around with things to try and achieve the same end result as the original (5th US Division is overrun somewhere in eastern Europe thus creating the 'Good Luck You're On Your Own' scenario) while alienating some people in the process (I've just looked on their own forum and it is not receiving universal love there either). I think the phrase I'm looking for is 'if it's not broken don't fix it'.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Indeed!

To our UK members, does v4 make the UK a more interesting potential campaign setting than earlier versions do?

-

You got rid of the football hooligan gangs, so that's something.

[comped]

As much as it might sound ridiculous, and the past several months not withstanding, at least the UK pavilion at Epcot has British workers...

Somehow the few that are left are migrating between there and the Canadian pavilion, depending on what they feel like, at least according to the ones I talked to on Sunday. Some kind of strange Commonwealth exemption Disney gave them for manpower purposes, right now it's supposed to only be Americans staffing non-american pavilions if there aren't any people from the actual country.

I have no idea if the author of the particular section is British but he is getting torn apart to shreds on the official FL forums...

[Raellus]

I think it's interesting/curious that in v4's The World At War some of the SSR's cleave off the Soviet Union and some don't. For example, the Baltic states do, but Ukraine does not. How about the Caucuses republics and all of the 'Stans?

There's no explanation given, that I've found, so I suppose they're leaving it up to Ref interpretation.

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[comped]

Sorry to double post, but I just wanted to give an example of what is being said about the UK situation, by the official author of said section, on the official forums...

In Northern Ireland, I didn’t bother calling the IRA the Provisionals because there was no need to confuse the various Irish Republican movements at that time (INLA, the Continuity IRA, Real IRA, Oglaigh nah Eireann, Clann na Gael etc) when most readers get what we mean by the IRA (and in fact PIRA had two ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement in that time so arguably either CIRA or RIRA could have taken advantage and led the Irish Republican movement in that moment (accepting that the GFA probably didn’t happen in this timeline, but PIRA was still on ceasefire). In a longer piece, with the space to expand, it would be potentially interesting to delve more deeply into this, but for this short piece there just wasn’t the space.

The Good Friday agreement was not agreed to until 1998. As far as I have read, there is no mention of the Good Friday agreement in the timeline. That is a basic googleable fact. The timeline diverges in 1991, there is seven years difference between them. Also it is fairly important to mention, at least to someone who has a grasp of Northern Irish politics and history like myself, that there's a huge difference between the PIRA and many of the other groups he mentioned, and that kind of detail is absolutely necessary if you want to have a game with Northern Ireland even acting in the periphery, so a game set in Wales or Cornwall or Scotland, or even the republic. never mind that there's no reason why they would reasonably uphold a ceasefire in the middle of the Cold War going hot, with their best chance in years to do anything meaningful. If there wasn't the space to be specific enough, and in my opinion if you're going to write about something that needs specifics you should probably make sure there's specifics involved, then why print it at all?