Good Vibrations~!

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

I've been getting that a lot

As soon as I heard about T2k I jumped on it. I like history, especially military history, and the game was just too good to pass up.

I guess it allows me to play in the (alternate) history I enjoy so much.

But I gotta give respect to everyone who played it when it first came out, the world situation considered. I guess I'll be missing that piece of the game.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by M-Type

I've been getting that a lot

As soon as I heard about T2k I jumped on it. I like history, especially military history, and the game was just too good to pass up.

I guess it allows me to play in the (alternate) history I enjoy so much.

But I gotta give respect to everyone who played it when it first came out, the world situation considered. I guess I'll be missing that piece of the game.

I remember when my Brother-in-law who was a huge computer wargamer (seriously, the guy would spend a day, then a night, then the following day designing stuff in Wargame Construction Set from SSI, then invite me over to play his Cosmic Balance scenarios he'd written on his Atari 800XL) bought the 1e boxed set to build a "Door" or do Play-by-posts for his BBS he ran in like '87 or so (this was all prior to Gorbachev, Perestroika, etc.; not even the most optimistic folks dared whisper that in a mere 25 months the USSR would be out of business as a world power), and as we looked through the contents of the boxed set, he said to me, somberly "You know...this is how it could all really go down."

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Hell, I knew guys who were in the military in 1990 who were certain the USSR was going to use build-up in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War as causus belli and jump off due to the US attacking an ostensible ally...go fig!

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

I remember when my Brother-in-law who was a huge computer wargamer (seriously, the guy would spend a day, then a night, then the following day designing stuff in Wargame Construction Set from SSI, then invite me over to play his Cosmic Balance scenarios he'd written on his Atari 800XL) bought the 1e boxed set to build a "Door" or do Play-by-posts for his BBS he ran in like '87 or so (this was all prior to Gorbachev, Perestroika, etc.; not even the most optimistic folks dared whisper that in a mere 25 months the USSR would be out of business as a world power), and as we looked through the contents of the boxed set, he said to me, somberly "You know...this is how it could all really go down."

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Hell, I knew guys who were in the military in 1990 who were certain the USSR was going to use build-up in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War as causus belli and jump off due to the US attacking an ostensible ally...go fig!

Don't forget the worry as the Wall came down that it could trigger WW3 - the British Army at least went onto alert.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Heh. Pull out a copy of Cyberpunk 2020 and proceed to giggle at the projections therein.

(I think William Gibson once said something about the great failure of the cyberpunk movement was in imagining a future where the United States was gone and the Soviet Union was still there.)

- C.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Heh. Pull out a copy of Cyberpunk 2020 and proceed to giggle at the projections therein.

Or the first couple of editions of Shadowrun! Wow, did they have things a bit screwed up on the computers/matrix front! 2050 and there's no search engines! WTF???

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I know what you mean about ShadowRun but at least they did get something right with their treatment of mobile/cell phones - even if it was a happy coincidence.
I believe it was also William Gibson who when commenting on his own novels said that his greatest failure was to underestimate the impact of mobile phones. Sometimes when you see the future, you just don't see the little things that are in fact the 'big' things!

[Legbreaker]

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

I hear ya. My dad and I get Popular Science, and I love to read their articles where they look back at their own articles from the 40s-50s to see how close they got to certain modern devices.

Some things are eerily accurate, while others are quite laughable.

[Panther Al]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

Totally agree - I think no one saw the change the mobile phone was going to make, especially as computers kept getting smaller and smaller and turning into smartphones.

I think if some one looks back to the 95-15 era, they will probably come to the conclusion that it was the humble camera cell phone that was the biggest, most influential invention of the period.

[CarolG]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

I become amuse at a lot of the anachronisms in old S.F. One of my current favorites is in Startide Rising by Brin where information is faxed to another part of the ship as the fastest method of transmission.
As a player, I at times have had to stop and think about what technology would have been available to us.

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

I know what you mean about ShadowRun but at least they did get something right with their treatment of mobile/cell phones - even if it was a happy coincidence.

I played a 2nd Edition ShadowRun campaign a couple of years ago where the GM refused to allow mobile phones to have cameras built into them because they weren't on the equipment list like that! All of the players pulled out their own real camera phones and sat there looking at her like she was an idiot. GM's sometimes make terrible decisions.....

Originally Posted by Graebarde

40something? YOU are a pup too. I've been doing T2K since 87, and was 40 then!!! LOL
My grandson that is 18 has played T2K.. you should have seen my daughters face the day she walked in and he was READING the BYB asking me questions, he was nine then. Her comment, "OH GOD!! NOT another one." BTW she met her husband at a FTF gaming session at my house LOL. Three Generations of Twilight.

I have two sons aged 5 and 3 and my subtle indoctrination of them to play RPGs has already started, much to my wife's annoyance!