4th ed T2K

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by unipus

I guess? I mean I found most of the changes in the beta to be improvements, both in rules and especially backstory -- but none of the rules change were earth-shattering, they were evolutionary of what was already there.

But I guess I fundamentally don't understand the question. What would make it feel more or less appropriate to campaign play to you, versus one-shot? I *never* saw anything about it as very one-shot oriented, and I've been running a campaign in it since not too long after the alpha came out. I'd say we've done... 12 to 15 sessions so far?

Some additional materials have come out that better support setting up a campaign. Orders of battle, more material on the factions and some NPCs/mini-adventure sites, a little more nuance to the background, etc. That stuff can certainly all be useful, if you need it. I've retroactively applied most of it to my campaign, but not with any major effect. Most of it is way above the PCs' pay grade.

It's been my experience that FL's various RPGs, to date, mostly lend themselves to one-shots or small adventure path style haves rather than long term campaigns. If 4e is more conducive than they're previous offerings, then I'm more interested...

[unipus]

Well, without knowing what aspect of your experience leads to that observation, I really couldn't tell you. It seems about as suited to a campaign as most RPGs to me. There's no levels, so not a lot of power creep to deal with. Combat can be quite deadly, so PCs can certainly disappear in a flash. Characters can hoard gear and supplies but it's quite easy for that to all disappear as well.

So the main factor is "how long can you keep a captivating story going in this setting" and, well... the setting is Twilight: 2000. So that's on the GM pretty much.


Some of their games (notably ALIENS) are definitely more oriented towards one-shots, as the survival rate is very low by design. I haven't played it but that's a pretty universal comment on it. Others (like Forbidden Lands) are certainly more campaign-friendly.

[Adm.Lee]

[Caveat: I've read the alpha and skimmed the beta and final PDFs]

To me, this edition seems to only support a "one-time" rather than a "one-shot" campaign.

Relative to the Polish start point:
- you start with the 5th MD getting overrun, but it's only a few dozen kilometers back to friendly lines (although the impression is given that the Soviets are still advancing, so the number of km in question might be increasing by an indeterminate amount). Scant detail* is given on where the hostiles and friendlies are, and less on where they are going.
- The random encounter table uses a a deck of cards, with little reusability. ("Eight marauders with an RPG on a sunny day. Ho hum, GM drew the 8 of Spades again")**
- There are no alternate locations for PCs run to, no Free City of Krakow, no Markgraf of Silesia, no guerrilla legions of the Polish Free Congress, no pocket of the US XI Corps. The only direction for the PCs to go is west.

* Relative to the v1/v2 "Death of a Division" and "Escape from Kalisz" set-ups.
** Yes, any good GM can alter these, but a good setup wouldn't make them have to. Using cards could be a good idea, but having exactly 52 choices and no inherent flexibility for location or terrain is not.

I haven't read in detail the Swedish start-point, but it didn't seem any broader to me.

All of this made it seem like this T2k is a "one time" deal. You start HERE, and the Obvious Goal is to go THERE. Full stop, end of story. You've played all of Twilight:2000. Go buy another game, this one is wrung out and done.

[unipus]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

[Caveat: I've read the alpha and skimmed the beta and final PDFs]

To me, this edition seems to only support a "one-time" rather than a "one-shot" campaign.

Relative to the Polish start point:
- you start with the 5th MD getting overrun, but it's only a few dozen kilometers back to friendly lines (although the impression is given that the Soviets are still advancing, so the number of km in question might be increasing by an indeterminate amount). Scant detail* is given on where the hostiles and friendlies are, and less on where they are going.

Same as it ever was? I'll give you that older editions included a little more info on what the various divisions are up to, but it wasn't much.

- The random encounter table uses a a deck of cards, with little reusability. ("Eight marauders with an RPG on a sunny day. Ho hum, GM drew the 8 of Spades again")**

I agree, I don't love this setup. It's straightforward but inflexible. It IS terrain-based, actually, but not in a way that's particularly efficient at the table. I find it more useful for skimming through and stealing elements from occasionally.

However, what they did add at the very end is a Solo section, which I feel is terribly misnamed -- so maybe you skipped it. In there are all kinds of nice easy tools to help GMs drum up encounters and scenarios that are useful for all sorts of games, not just solo ones. I use these things all the time.

- There are no alternate locations for PCs run to, no Free City of Krakow, no Markgraf of Silesia, no guerrilla legions of the Polish Free Congress, no pocket of the US XI Corps. The only direction for the PCs to go is west.

How ever did anyone manage to play 1st edition before years worth of supplemental adventures came out??? /s

The PCs can obviously go anywhere they want. There are NATO troops to the East and North as well as West, if you want to do a rescue mission or something. This is very clearly spelled out in the book, and clearly indicated on a map, don't know what to tell you there.

All of this made it seem like this T2k is a "one time" deal. You start HERE, and the Obvious Goal is to go THERE. Full stop, end of story. You've played all of Twilight:2000. Go buy another game, this one is wrung out and done.

If that's as far as your imagination or interest takes you, then sure. This complaint would apply to every other edition of T2K to pretty much the same degree (not to mention a huge number of other RPGs on the market in every genre). Yet they have all succeeded to some degree or another because they provide a sandbox for you to bring your own ideas to.

And of course, since you clearly have much more experience and knowledge of the OLD T2K setups and encounters and adventure hooks -- well, there's sure nothing to stop you from bring all of that knowledge to the table. That's what I've been doing.

[Raellus]

Free League has released a v4 soundtrack for Kickstarter backers. Check your email!

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[Ursus Maior]

So far, I'm listening to good ambience music that's not to narrowly "modern combat" only. It could also be used for scifi, I guess.

[Ursus Maior]

Since the PRC is a topic in a thread here already, I was thinking, if some of the successes of the USSR could be explained by a sudden weakness of the US armed forces after the so called Third Taiwan Strait Crisis went hot, which in known history it of course has not?

In our version of history, the PRC backed down from possible conflict, when the US sent in two carrier strike groups (CSG 5 and CSG 7 respectively). If the PRC had not backed down from confrontation, but instead begun an invasion of Taiwan, the PLAN (the navy of the PRC) probably would have still lost the fight back in 1996, but might have mauled two USN carrier strike groups.

Further escalation could have come from North Korea acting up. Kim Jong-il succeeded his father in 1994. Historically North Korea then was at its worst, since the dissolution of the USSR robbed North Korea of large funds of Soviet aid. Had the USSR not imploded, e. g. as it avoided in T2K 4th edition, North Korea might have been in much better shape during the mid-1990s, when Kim Jong-il took over. He would still have to prove his value to the USSR and the PRC, of course, likely making him a illing ally in upcoming conflicts.

With border hostilities along the Korean DMZ and 7th Fleet badly mauled, a mid-1990s "Asian Pivot" might have weakened deterrence possible by NATO during peace time or at least prohibited REFORGER-like large scale troop movements in swift time. This might have been enough for the USSR to gain initial ground against NATO frontline forces in late 1997 and early 1998. As per FL's timeline, once the US fully implements its levée en masse and fields dozens of new light infantry brigades: 500,000 draftees easily makes 25 divisions (actually 28.9) modeled after late Cold War mechanized divisions, which had 17,300 personnel. This would leave plenty room for filling up other services.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Ursus Maior

Since the PRC is a topic in a thread here already, I was thinking, if some of the successes of the USSR could be explained by a sudden weakness of the US armed forces after the so called Third Taiwan Strait Crisis went hot, which in known history it of course has not?

I'd forgotten about this. Thanks for bringing it up.

Originally Posted by Ursus Maior

With border hostilities along the Korean DMZ and 7th Fleet badly mauled, a mid-1990s "Asian Pivot" might have weakened deterrence possible by NATO during peace time or at least prohibited REFORGER-like large scale troop movements in swift time. This might have been enough for the USSR to gain initial ground against NATO frontline forces in late 1997 and early 1998. As per FL's timeline, once the US fully implements its levée en masse and fields dozens of new light infantry brigades: 500,000 draftees easily makes 25 divisions (actually 28.9) modeled after late Cold War mechanized divisions, which had 17,300 personnel. This would leave plenty room for filling up other services.

Well put. I'd posited as much re DPRK and PRC aggression helping to explain early Soviet success in the v4 timeline, but in less detail, in post #241 of this thread.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=241

One thing that I really don't get about v4 is how it currently includes no mention of WW3 taking place anywhere else but in NW/Central Europe and the Middle East. FL's Twilight War doesn't seem like much of a world war, as currently written.

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[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'd forgotten about this. Thanks for bringing it up.

[...] I'd posited as much re DPRK and PRC aggression helping to explain early Soviet success in the v4 timeline, but in less detail, in post #241 of this thread.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=241

One thing that I really don't get about v4 is how it currently includes no mention of WW3 taking place anywhere else but in NW/Central Europe and the Middle East. FL's Twilight War doesn't seem like much of a world war, as currently written.

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In consentaneity with all you said, I must confess I had almost forgotten about the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis myself, too. Therefor, I could not see a conflict between the US and the PRC as likely, when you first described its possible effects in the previous post.

To be fair, I still think it's a bit far-fetched and would either need premeditation on behalf of the PRC and possibly the DPRK, which should be explained in any narrative that wants to build a credible background. However, there would be the slight chance that during such a crisis stuff just goes plain wrong and someone trigger-happy overreacts: a faulty sensor indicating missile launch, a pilot going off-course etc. This too would need explanation, of course.

In the end, the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis probably is the only incident in the Pacific theater, with high enough volatility and chronological proximity to become a flashpoint for conflict. In my opinion, a sudden, but short flare-up of hostilities, which gets contained by massive diplomatic endeavors of all parties, including, but not limited to, a US pivot to Asia, would allow the USSR a time-window of 18-24 months between 1995 and 1997, where they could fly under the radar of US intelligence services with a little more than usual.

This would be especially true, if the USSR seems to be occupied more with Chechnya and other conflicts along its periphery than it actually is and the USA plus some of its key allies are overestimating their own capabilities as a consequence of Desert Storm. This would not be a sentiment shared by the armed forces, who might actually warn against it, but probably would not be listened to. In the end, if the political elite grows complacent towards the USSR or turns its attention away (or both), all it needs is an intelligence bungle and a (strategic) surprise attack could be conducted. One only needs to look at 9/11 for that; even in a state of heightened awareness did the Japanese achieve operational surprise at Pearl Harbor.

A possible course of things then could be that China and the USA clash over Taiwan, with some assets on both sides being lost and taken out of action for quite some time. Maybe 2-3 older cruisers and destroyers get sunk, a carrier needs to be repaired and a couple of aircraft get lost. The DPRK then tries to move across the Korean DMZ, but ultimately the Chinese call them back, because that's what the - still dominant - USA demand for not bombing Fujian province and all of North Korea into submission. Still, major damage is done to South Korean units along the primary angle of the North Korean attack and Seoul was shelled badly enough to need billions of USD in repairs. This leads to a 1996 stock market crash, which hurts Western economies more than that of the USSR. It also hamstrings the New Economy and especially Dot-com bubble, taking off some of the edge Western economies historically saw. It further stops the brain-drain the USSR experiences, since Silicon Valley, Wall Street and London are not as lucrative as they historically were. Of course, the brain-drain already fell short of the historical one, since the USSR never imploded.

Consequently, the USSR uses its time well and moves full force into some of the provinces and break-away nations it (nearly) lost between 1989-1991: Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldavia (Moldova) all rejected reforming the USSR in 1991 and achieved independence. In 1997 the empire strikes back and brutally occupies all six nations, annexing them shortly afterwards by means of faked elections.

All former Warsaw Pact nations, cry out for help, Poland most vocally, but the US looks towards Asia, the UK is in a recession, and continental Europe is busy with itself, most notably Germany, where Aufbau Ost - the reconstruction of Eastern Germany - is still consuming time and money. Since the Peace Dividend never came through as much as it did historically and economies perform worse than historically, money is considerably tighter in Europe and America than it was for ourselves. This leaves many Americans and Europeans frustrated, destabilizing democracies and putting politicians under pressure to act "decisively", "strong", "swift" and "for the people". These populist tendencies do not make for good counsel in the upcoming crisis of international security, which the USSR can use for its own plans better than Western democracies.

From there, it pretty much goes south on its own in the second half of 1997. All the USSR and its leaders need is some time and a spoon full of overestimation of Soviet power. An invasion like the Russian of 2014 into Ukraine, but into Poland in 1997 would have good chances to flare up all of Europe and most of the Pacific from Vladivostok to Vietnam: For, if the US is then fully occupied in Europe, as well as containing Soviet forces in the Far East, who guards the Korean DMZ against Kim Jong-il? Who stands against renewed Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait or the Vietnamese border?

There should be enough room for a thousand campaigns across the world in that setting.

[Hybris]

A Russian warship collided with a 145-meter long cargo ship on the Danish side of the Öresund Bridge on Wednesday. The collision was probably caused by fog, according to the Danish Armed Forces' operations center - and the Russian ship is said to have got a hole in the hull.23 Sep. 2020

I would assume that the possibility to enter the Baltic sea would be severely limited during wartime for larger vessels. ships would have been sunk, sea mines deployed, and maybe even defend by land-based or ship-based weapon systems from Sweden and Denmark. The bridges that enable traffic between the danish isles and between Sweden and Denmark would probably not be finished or damaged/destroyed during the wars and makes the baltic sea an even more pond than it currently is.

[unipus]

If it's related to the ongoing CVN discussion, the lore there is that it entered prior to hostilities.

Otherwise, what you said is no doubt true, but most war plans weren't about entering the Baltic -- they were about keeping the Soviets from getting out.