4th ed T2K

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

And let's not forget that the US government decides to invade Sweden for "reasons".
Invading a neutral country that was known to be pro-NATO seems a bit "warmongering"...quite a bit, really...

Yeah, I haven’t read the Alpha T2K stuff, but I have seen quotes and numerous summaries of the timeline. I, during college, wrote two term papers on the importance to the Northern Flank during the Cold War. While there were contingency plans to invade Sweden during the Second World War (usually as a counter to possible German occupation), there were no reasons at all to invade Sweden during the Cold War. It makes no sense politically or militarily. It would be exceedingly foolish to mount a war of aggression against a friendly neutral. I knew Sweden would be a gaming location, but I didn’t realize how shoehorned in it would be.

Also how on earth does post 1991 Soviet Union fight all of NATO, including France, plus the ex-Warsaw Pact nations while holding down the restive non-Russian Soviet Republics? The entire TL seems to be one big Mexican invasion.

I’m so glad I dropped out of the Kickstarter. I certainly don’t need yet another rule set for Twilight and all I would have been interested in would be a decent backstory. That appears to be a no show so it’s still V1 for me.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

Yeah, I haven’t read the Alpha T2K stuff, but I have seen quotes and numerous summaries of the timeline. I, during college, wrote two term papers on the importance to the Northern Flank during the Cold War. While there were contingency plans to invade Sweden during the Second World War (usually as a counter to possible German occupation), there were no reasons at all to invade Sweden during the Cold War. It makes no sense politically or militarily. It would be exceedingly foolish to mount a war of aggression against a friendly neutral. I knew Sweden would be a gaming location, but I didn’t realize how shoehorned in it would be.

Also how on earth does post 1991 Soviet Union fight all of NATO, including France, plus the ex-Warsaw Pact nations while holding down the restive non-Russian Soviet Republics? The entire TL seems to be one big Mexican invasion.

I’m so glad I dropped out of the Kickstarter. I certainly don’t need yet another rule set for Twilight and all I would have been interested in would be a decent backstory. That appears to be a no show so it’s still V1 for me.

You haven't even got to the Soviet "Sealion" invasion of the United Kingdom yet and that's after the Soviet northern fleet somehow charms it's way through the Baltic without being bottled up or torn to pieces

The game world setting pretty much reads like a high schooler's attempt at alternate history with the writer not actually having any understanding of military operations, logistics or politics let alone how those three aspects were dealt with during the Cold War.

[mpipes]

Amen to that Stainless.

[Legbreaker]

The original draft had Pres West as an OBVIOUS Trump stand in with ALL the "orange man bad" tropes, real, imagined or falsified.
This is where the claims of it being heavily political came from. If you look, you can still see a lot of that in the alpha, although we did get them to walk it back quite a lot!

...and then they replaced that brain fart with "Operation Sealionski"....

[Raellus]

I find it interesting that folks are upset about the fictional POTUS of v4. I've seen him described as a warmonger here, several times, by a few different posters. I read the v4 World At War too and didn't really get that impression of him, but maybe I'm not sensitive to that kind of thing.

Even if that's a fair characterization of how he was written, is it really outside the realm of possibilities that a US president could be bellicose in temperament and policy?

Could one not argue that past US presidents have been guilty of "warmongering"? How about Polk? (Mexican-American War) McKinley? (Spanish-American War) LBJ? (Vietnam-American War- which started during the Ike admin, and escalated during JFK, but LBJ really poured on the gas) George W. Bush? (Iraqi Freedom)

All of the above wars were either started, provoked, or escalated by US presidents (and these don't count any of the minor Cold War brushfire proxy wars in which the US was indirectly involved). None of them were fought to defend the US from a real existential threat. I think it's fair to level accusations of warmongering in these instances. (Lest I be accused of being politically motivated with this list, I am not- it's pretty non-partisan: two were started by Democrats, two by Republicans)

Heck, only one world leader in the entirety of human history has authorized combat use of nuclear weapons in anger, and that was a US president (Truman, another Democrat).

My point is, US presidents have, at times, been the aggressors when it comes to waging war. So v4's fictional POTUS isn't some sort of implausible/unrealistic outlier, by any means.

More importantly, how many players really care about the role of a fictional POTUS in a WWIII RPG?

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