The Frozen Watch.

[.45cultist]

One could put them within distance of a regional supply depot with a special access card to draw gear one time or use an old Legacy Cache.

[mikeo80]

In one game I played in, our Recon Team found Prime 2. Getting in was a TRIAL!!! Automated AP defenses. IF you walked straight toward, did not raise weapon, no problem. Something like Delta base in Starnaman scenario.

Then we had to find the power "switch" to turn on the base. We did. Lights came on!!!

We were relaxing, enjoying a meal. And then we were surrounded by armed members of the Base. We did not realize that there was a "dead man" switch that woke up every one if the power was not turned on correctly.

OOOOPPPSSS!!!!!!

Or as one of the team said to the TL. "Boss, we got a problem......"

My $0.02
Mike

[stormlion1]

Now that's one way to set up a new base of operations. Plus I would think they would all be glad to be awake. Considering they all majorly overslept!

[Joseph Benedetto Jr]

I was going to comment on the SPACE GAMER article " Project File: Discovery" but Nuke11 beat me to it. Nicely done!

The reason I created the Frozen Watch teams way back in 1988 was because there was no quick way to get new Morrows into an existing team [replacing dead player characters, as well as introducing new MP player characters to an existing team].

The basic concept of the Frozen Watch teams is that they are minimally armed and equipped, waiting to climb into a dead man's shoes on an existing Morrow team. They normally sleep in a small, sparse, bare-bones bolt hole, which lacks even a periscope package. The idea was that a team in need of replacements could use their AutoNav and look for a map notation of "abandoned ash pit", which was the cover for the hidden replacement teams. In fact, Morrow Industries engineers would actually place a fake ash pit with waste slurry at the site to mark it.

Spotting & entering the FW bolt hole from outside is pretty much identical to that used to locate/recover a cache: a fake benchmark, stainless steel data plate listing the FW team's location, keep digging and wake them up.

Unfortunately somewhere in the editorial process for "PROJECT FILE: DISCOVERY" one crucial line got lost: how the team came to be awoken just at the moment the Badges are upstairs having "a party". The original shelter notes were that "entrance to the cache of MP emergency gear was a stainless steel panel set in the floor underneath the base of the ladder to the roof, built in such a way as to appear to be a metal floor pad. The unmarked card slot would be in the wall behind the ladder so as to be rather inconspicuous."

What is missing from the SG/FG mini-adventure is the line that one of the halfway-bright Badges found the card slot and "tinkered" with it (starting with a screwdriver, and ending with a crowbar). Somewhere along the way the 150-year-old electronics shorted out, and the bolt hole computer started the Emergency Revival Sequence for the team. Hence the reason the team wakes up at just the right moment to (maybe!) save the day.

To be honest, I am rather surprised to find anyone even remembers the original magazine article I wrote way back in the 80s! The FW teams got little other notice save their mention in THE FINAL WATCH. It's pretty cool to see people picking up the idea and working it through.

Thanks!
~Joseph Benedetto Jr.

[cosmicfish]

I had two problems with the Frozen Watch.

First, the lack of MPV's. To me this is just a safety issue - we know that boltholes were rigged to wake everyone if the site was compromised, and any decent engineer would allow for the possibility of an accidental triggering of the team, so there was always a chance that the FW would be awakened with no team to support them, possibly even before the rest of the Project was out! Heck, even if everything went great it might be desired to wake a FW Team as augmentation rather than replacement, so they would need transport anyway.

Given that some vehicle spares needed to be out there anyway, I just included MP "jeeps" with the FW Teams. It guaranteed that they had maps and transport to other Morrow groups and facilities, and also ensured that spares of this cheap and useful vehicle were readily available.

Second, the implied numbers were too high. While the FW is useful to roleplaying, it is by nature inefficient - they would be more efficient grouped into Teams of their own, out there doing their job! As Teams took losses, the MP command structure could see about dissolving decimated Teams and redistributing personnel, or just combining weakened Teams. That is really a large part of what your command structure is intended for!

My assumption therefore was that FW were simply the leftovers of the later stages of selection and training for the Teams. Towards the end, there had to be a date when selection and training started shutting down and the Teams started to finalize. There would be some in this late stage who were (a) injured in training, or who, (b) for reasons of personality and professional efficiency, had to be removed from their Team, or who (c) were unable to "disappear" without compromising the Project. These people were trained and useful, but no longer had a team... so the FW is simply those men and women who were administratively "left over" rather than a deliberate exercise in inefficiency.

For me, this meant assigning them higher up in the command chain, at the level above the group commanders. It also meant fewer total, perhaps 200-300 across the whole Project. For the module that meant I just blanked out the name of the FW facility - the Team knew it was MP, but didn't know what it was as it was above their paygrade.

[cosmicfish]

Another advantage to giving the Frozen Watch vehicles - it lets you start as Frozen Watch! Gives a very similar feel to both the classic D&D game ("You all happen to be in the same tavern, when...") and the old Living Steel game setting (for those familiar with that equally obscure game). A regular team would have trained together for a coherent mission, in a Frozen Watch campaign they are all strangers who wake up together with no specific mission and a minimum of gear...

Okay, I really want to run this game now.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Another advantage to giving the Frozen Watch vehicles - it lets you start as Frozen Watch! Gives a very similar feel to both the classic D&D game ("You all happen to be in the same tavern, when...") and the old Living Steel game setting (for those familiar with that equally obscure game). A regular team would have trained together for a coherent mission, in a Frozen Watch campaign they are all strangers who wake up together with no specific mission and a minimum of gear...

Okay, I really want to run this game now.

I don't want to turn a MP campaign into another game of AD&D murder hobos with MGs and kevlar instead of swords and chainmail.

[cosmicfish]

Looking back at this, the Frozen Watch makes more and more sense to me not as an intentionally-maintained source of team replacements but instead as the places where incompletely-trained and not-yet-assigned-to-a-team Project members could be sheltered. Since the time of the war was not precisely known, Project members who had not yet gotten a team would either have to get to a MP facility or else likely die in the early stages of the war. I'm envisioning pre-war MP training and logistics centers to be spaced around the country, with FW boltholes nearby. When the missiles are launched, everyone not yet frozen heads for the boltholes, ready to be woken up as needed.

The gaming consequence is that you can put almost anyone in a FW bolthole! I've run some great games (in other systems) where the characters are relatively normal people, and it would be an interesting MP game if the characters were frozen just after they started training!

The equipment consequence would be that you could not count on people arriving to the facility with any of their issue equipment, so it would make sense for the FW bolthole to double as a general-purpose supply cache, with a smattering of weapons, ammo, basic packs, etc.