In Defense of the Red Army

[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by John Farson

Well, anyone who's been reading my Finnish Sourcebook translation knows that the guys who did the Finnish version solved the issue by putting the POD in late 1993, after the Duma rebellion against Yeltsin (which is when the book was published). After that, things get worse and worse in Russia until the nationalists and militarists seize power in a coup d'etat, resulting in one Vladimir Zhirinovsky becoming president.

While Russia under Zhirinovsky could have threatened the former states of the USSR and even Finland, such as state would have existed during the same period of economic catastrophe that characterized the Yeltsin era. Such as state could instigate a doomed program of conquest, but they'd flounder. Even if the anemic Russian armed forced of the mid-1990s manage to over-run a few former Soviet republics, the international forces arraigned against them would be so great that the desperate Zhirinovsky government would quickly turn to nuclear weapons in an attempt to avoid defeat.

And what would that get us?

A nuclear war? Yep.

An end of modern civilization? Yep.

A post war environment conducive to role playing? MMMMmmaybe? Depends on the size of the nuclear exchange.

But it wouldn't give us Twilight 2000.

When it comes to preserving things about TW2K, the main thing I want to preserve is the character of the war. The Twilight War is a conventional war of attrition where victory seems so tantalizingly close that no one is willing to risk total annihilation by using nuclear weapons. Instead, as desperation rises, we start small, nuclear war becomes the "Death of 1,000 Cuts" rather than the extinction of humanity you'd get from a full commitment of nuclear forces. Zhirinovsky was the kind of guy who would have unrealistic goals far beyond Russia's ability to achieve, and then would petulantly opt to destroy the world rather than fail. I just don't think a Zhirinovsky taking the reigns in 1993 would create a playable rpg universe. I think he'd create a radioactive graveyard.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing