ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

Running Text-Based Twilight 2000 Games.

Many times we've all been stinging for a game but can't organise a tabletop campaign. T2K is by definition more of a campaign game due to its resources management and travel focus so one-off games usually don't do the trick. As such we often think "hey, I'll just run this online on RPOL or something". Lots of people have, and I encourage you to join one, but what makes it difficult to run in a one-off session is also what makes it very hard to play as a play-by-post or play-by-e mail game. This is because the medium is incredibly slow.

I mean *really* slow. It took me five years to run a very detailed game with two to three "Turn Posts" a week to get the players together, do a small investigation, clear a small group of marauders from the environs of a bridge and then deal with a counter attack. So this brings us to our first rule:

Keep It Small

You have to have small, compartmentalised adventures. They have to be easily resolvable because you will have players either go missing for a while or disappearing entirely. A long campaign is simply impossible given the level of detail that T2K involves unless you are going to gloss over much of the richness of the campaign.
So instead of a long adventure you instead have several small adventures that link to each other. The idea here is that if the thing goes on too long some players will simply become too fatigued to deal with it and drop out. This also gives the players a bit of autonomy; they finish up one area and then can choose the next direction from the choices you give them. Always keep in mind what the next scenario will be however, because here is where the next thing comes in:

Foreshadowing

This goes for any game but is vital for text games. "Foreshadowing" is a literary term for where the writer introduces a plot element early so the reader gets used to it and when it finally features in the script it seem natural that it should occur. If your next scenario features marauders then have survivors of one of their attacks be a feature of some of the NPCs. This links the scenarios together in more ways than just exploration. Foreshadowing is great for mysteries, introducing NPCs and laying the groundwork for large events. Due to its plt-setting nature it makes things seem like to campaign is "alive" and doesn't freeze when the players turn their back.

That leads to the next bit:

The Living Campaign

Because text-based games have to be very focused and you have to provide lots of information in an economical form that doesn't make the reader's eyes glaze over, the important work of giving the feeling that the world is alive and doing other things has to dealt with in most posts, it's not something you can forget and just dump on the players later. In a firefight they should hear artillery off in the distance. When travelling they might hear shooting in the hills or see tracers at night. This needs a bit of practice because it can also be distracting and confusing, the player suddenly doesn't know if a mortar duel twenty kilometres away is landing on their convoy or not. Have one of the last surviving helicopters fly across the far north, its rumbling rotors waking them from their sleep. In one game I had a trio of cruise missile flash over the brigade they were in and keep going. They were headed for France but the players never found that out.

Firm Rules.

Finally I'm going to post my two-decade old play-by-post rules here. Each has a little explanation of why the rule was needed that is usually omitted from the rules page when I play.

Jim's Play-By-Post Rules

1) Do Not Meta-Game
"Meta-Gaming" is where a player uses information or knowledge not available to their character.
This is not that much of a problem any more and usually is exhibited by excited and enthusiastic players. As text-based games are slow many players try and be in as much action as possible or access information (such as another player spotting a sniper but being unable to warn his companions) that is not available to them.

2) Do Not Lie to, Cheat or Steal From Other Characters.
The basic social agreement of gaming is that players will work together. The game is dangerous enough for the characters without their colleagues actively trying to get them killed. Also note that while this sort of behaviour might seem like fun role-playing many players approach this as a relaxation from such behaviour. Please be considerate.
This is a new rule because, hey, I'm 56 and what was cool and edgy when I was 20 is tedious and offensive now.

3) Be Aware Your Actions Have Reactions.
You are not an island, mistreating NPCs will eventually get out, you will find it difficult to interact peacefully with the world if you have a reputation for torture or murder. It's a tough world but there are obvious over-reactions that will impact negatively on your reputations, you have been warned.
I'm not a big believer in making examples of players but sometimes you have to show that the PCs are not always the biggest dog in town, and if they have a bad reputation those big powers will seek them out.

4) You may NOT kill or attack with intent to harm another PC without prior GM approval.
The GM reserves the right to make an empathy roll, if you fail this roll you cannot bring yourself to harm the other player, although you're more than welcome to be bitter and nasty! The GM may well re-roll this without your knowledge as time and the campaign goes on, so you may 'be pushed too far' and be told that you are ready for violent confrontation, but PCs aren't permitted to open up on other PCs willy-nilly.
I use the Cyberpunk 2020 rules (without classes) and one of the statistics is "Empathy". This statistic is you interpersonal stat and is quite important in play, and it's also the sort of "shield" the players has against becoming the evil they strive against. While I hate alignments I think we can all agree that evil really does exist in the world and generally the players are opposed to it. I had to boot a guy who just up and shot another PC during an argument over a triviality, and then another guy used the new 'no attack' rule as a way of sheltering his own poor interaction, thus it was modified again. I try and make it clear that while a player knows that a gun can only do so many "hit points damage" the *character* only sees a deadly weapon.

5) Turns: The GM posts Two times a week, Australian Tuesday and Friday
You must have your response in before then or you are NPC'd for that turn. If you miss three turns without telling anyone, your PC is 'walked offstage' and out of the game. If something catastrophic has occurred, your PC is then brought back on when you can play again.
Turn Posts are different to just posting. The Turn Post moves the action along and is exactly the same as ending a round of combat, and is used for just that during combat. This gives players a firm idea of when things have to be achieved by and how long they can discuss things. Also, people were dropping out without warning or not responding and holding up turns for weeks. I picked twice a week because I had those days off more than any other reason. We had a guy who had a house fire, so you could hardly blame him for not posting, but others just vaporised and I needed a system for everyone to know when they'd be cut out. After this I always was given good warning that a player would have to miss turns

6) Players MUST answer other players
You should always answer any speech directed at your character, even if it's to only post something like 'I ignore John.'
If this isn't instituted some players aren't answered and are stuck waiting for a response, missing turns and slowing everything down. Sometimes this turns into the dreaded 'talking to the air' where players address the air rather than be held up.

7) PCs must NOT 'think aloud' about other PCs. Never post 'Fred thinks John is a total jerk, his plan is stupid and will get them all killed.' etc. It's cowardly, the other player gets no right of response, role-play out your differences and resolve them on the board, that's the name of the game.
We had a rash of this; I had to stamp on it because I was getting a lot of off-list complaints. It's a pernicious thing that many players fall into, the other way of doing it is the PC speaks to an NPC while well away from everyone else, but it amounts to the same thing.
- When in combat, post a combat summary after your post.
The summary looks like:
Who you are,
Where you are,
What you're using,
What you're doing.

Such as:
Private John
In the ditch, crouching, by the wrecked BTR.
M16A2, 5 magazines
Covering Private Fred's advance to the gully.

9) A Rules-Speak Paragraph is A Good Idea.
If you post a long and descriptive turn, you may want to follow it by a 'rulespeak paragraph' after your turn - but before your summary - if you're concerned the GM may get it wrong. Don't skimp on your descriptions, they're the meat of the game, but sometimes a quick clarification of the 'round 1: run to barn, round 2: ready bow, round 3: shoot at brown-haired bandit’ makes things amazingly easier for me to GM out and I hate it when I make mistakes about your intentions.
I know it's hard to come up with thrilling narrative every turn, but please try and make longer posts of good descriptions of your actions for a few reasons. Firstly, they get me really enthused to write the story for you. Secondly, they add so much to the game. Thirdly, fifteen separate posts of "yes", "no", and "maybe" tends to "spam-out" people in different time zones, they get up and there's a hundred posts of drivel that they can hardly inject themselves into. It also is amazingly confusing to GM.

10) Trim your posts.
Only have in your post the text that you are responding to or relates to your post, and only respond AFTER the text and not before.

11) Colour Your Speech.
When your PC talks, the text of his comments should be enclosed within inverted commas and the text should be Blue, this is so other players can sort your conversation from your descriptions. However, if a character thinks something they are written the same way but they are in italics; "such as this."

[ChalkLine]

What sort of add-on units we could attach to the the 5th?

This wouldn't contradict canon at all, it would be an interesting addition and give players other choices when starting.

My first thought would be a unit do attach orphan NATO units to. Some sort of umbrella unit.

The next would be somewhere to put ex-Warsaw Pact troops in the same manner. Once again they'd have their own organisational charts. (In 1st Edition the East Germans might have an odd tension on who wants them)
Finally we can make up some purely T2K units that deal with farming, battlefield reclamation and fabrication.

[ChalkLine]

Polish Civil Defence, Air Raid Shelters and Disaster Relief.

The Cold War Polish people lived in a militarised society. They prepared for a conventional war on their territory, and in the T2K world this preparation will bear fruit.

It has to be remembered that in the People's Republic of Poland everyone had a job to do and if war erupted everyone had a job to do in that. Civilian training in disaster relief was on a level unequalled in the West. The civilians had shelters and were expected to use them. In devastated areas civilians were expect to fall back with the troops and not stay in place. Civilians will be active in the defence of their country and NATO is an invader.

Civilians were incorporated into the war effort under the umbrella of the Obrona Cywilna PRL (OP).
The OP was the primary civil defence organisation and a large proportion of the civilian population had a role in it. The OP as a civil defence unit is off limits to hostile forces and it is illegal to utilise their equipment. Civilian infrastructure such as school buses and bus shelters were designed to be quickly converted into ambulances and aid stations. This thinking permeated the Polish government and society. Firemen, police and medical staff all wore military uniforms. In fact nearly everyone in this situation wore uniforms, it would be rare to see civilian clothes after a while. Civilians had access to shelters and these were stocked with food, medicine and NBC equipment. Huge amounts of earthmoving gear was available to them to shift rubble and enter damaged buildings. The OP had comprehensive NBC detection and decontamination equipment that included decontaminating every facet of life right down to livestock.

Now, it's very hard for me to tell as I don't speak Polish but there was another organisation that has the acronym ZOS. They were either part of the OP, ran in parallel to them or were superseded by them. ZOS had fire, medical, sanitary, technical, social and specialist shelter staff all organised along military lines. ZOS seems to have worked alongside the MO (police) in rear area operations and go into action to mitigate the effects of the war on the population. Poland had the experience of the Nazi occupation to draw from and had no illusions as to how bad war could be and prepared accordingly.

Air Raid Shelters were short term shelters. They were located in a huge amount of places such as railway stations, hospitals, industrial plants and government buildings. These things were not small. They usually had double thick steel doors, a decontamination room, a generator/air filtration/water systems complex, medical centre, storage area for uniforms, helmets, medical equipment, tools, food, and other stores, a series of actual shelter areas, a commander's room and an array of escape tunnels. Most were buried well below ground with a concrete shield overhead and would have survived anything but a direct hit from a heavy bomb. In the twilight 2000 world these will form the nucleus of survivor enclaves. During the real world many of these shelters existed in structure only but during the drumbeat to war it is unlikely that Poland would have neglected these structures.

Note that Nowa Huta near Kraków had over 250 of these structures.

OP Guardsman

[ChalkLine]

Some very good bunker diagrams

[ChalkLine]

On my quest to make the perfect Twilight 2000 Sheridan I think I've finally found it.

Believe it or not but way back in 1967 there was already concerns that the M81 (as it was then) Gun/Launcher may not be a good idea. As such Rock Island Arsenal did a crash program of four other weapon systems to fit in the M551 turret should the M81 develop problems.

Of the four only two were recommended mainly due to space problems, although it was mentioned that if serious redesign work was done all four would fit in the turret. The two weapon systems were:

- M32 76mm Cannon, the same as was on the M41 Walker Bulldog
- XM180 105mm Gun/Howitzer from the XM104 super mobile lightweight howitzer (which really should have gone into service)

Of the two the XM180 was the preferred weapon system as it coupled low pressure and trunnion loading with high damage output and ammunition that was still largely in service.
This weapon fired much faster than the existing M81 because it didn't need a compressed air purge to blow out the bore so the combustible cartridge cases wouldn't ignite prematurely. It's likely that by the time of the Twilight War an A1 version of the gun/howitzer would have been developed with a bore evacuator for even faster firing. Notably the XM108 could fire any 105mm howitzer ammunition in US stocks and new racks for the vehicle gave a stowage of 50 Rounds. (I note the UK ammo has a squash head round)

If the M551A1 is the M81-armed standard version with vision upgrades and a minor modernisation package that would make the M32 76mm the M551A2A1 and the XM108 105mm the M551A3A1

Here's an image of the gun way back in 1967

[ChalkLine]

The Polish PT-91 Twardy MBT really should exist in the game, it's awesome.
Although prior to the dissolution there was a strong drive to keep military equipment the same across the board, invariably Russian equipment, it's obvious in hindsight this was impossible to maintain. I guess to ease the problems that might arise from this situation there'd be lots of cross-training with Russian kit so when they resupplied other national armies with gear in case of loss of industrial capacity due to strikes or being overrun there were fewer problems.
Of special interest is the PT-91EU which was an Urban Warfare variant. Although in real life this vehicle turns up way later in 2011 the exigencies of war would see it being developed far earlier. Due to its high survivability it's likely more of these would survive than the other variants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT-91_Twardy

[ChalkLine]

ZSU-23-4M2 "Afghan" version.

What, it gets worse?!

The deadly "Zoo" or "Shilka" evolved over its ongoing lifetime and the ZSU-23-4 in the books is not necessarily the ones your PCs will meet on the battlefield.

During the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989 the Soviets developed the M2 kit for their Shilkas. This was the following and converted the weapon from the anti-air role to the ground support role:

- Removed the Gun Dish J Band anti-air radar
- Installed enlarged ammunition bays doubling ammunition capacity from 2,000 to 4,000 rounds.
- Installed the TPNZ-49 tank night scope.
- Installed the PSNR-5 man-portable ground surveillance radar.
- Ammunition was a mixed belt of BZT API and OBZT HE-T ammunition to destroy by blast and penetration.


Now, it's important to note that these modification kits exist in the Twilight 2000 era. It just a job of dropping the beast back to a workshop and having them fitted. It's likely this will happen wholesale when the air threat diminishes.

However, what you can use against Afghan rebels and what you can use against NATO regulars are not the same thing. NATO troops can reach out and kill things at night time and the Shilka can only accurately hit targets at around 1,500m in the ground support role. It's going to need some sort of mix of Applique armour, ERA and bar armour.

I can't tell if the Shilkas in the book had the old, unmodified engine that was slow in the book and all the upgrades the vehicles had by the Twilight 2000 era M3 vehicle.