4th ed T2K

[Legbreaker]

Yes, we did move it, just nowhere near far enough, and now the fan bois are praising it for being so "stunning and brave"....

[raketenjagdpanzer]

As promised, today's rant...

https://www.facebook.com/bill.silvey...1730120921959/

[Legbreaker]

And a DAMN FINE rant it is too!
Where can we find the youtube link?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

And a DAMN FINE rant it is too!
Where can we find the youtube link?

I'll upload it to Youtube probably tomorrow; I am playing AD&D right now.

[Legbreaker]

I would say you've got your priorities all backwards, but since it's Advanced D&D and not one of the heretical later pretend versions, you're forgiven.

[Southernap]

Originally Posted by Spartan-117

It's Spartan Time! Two G&Ts in, here comes the wisdom!

The great irony is that all the left believe the right is in an echo chamber and all the right believe the left is in an echo chamber. Because yeah, social media AI feed us the meals we want to eat.

Listen, you guys who were pre-Alpha and are still upset, consider this - You already moved the needle. If this is better than it was before, congrats! That's truly an accomplishment. I mean really, over the Internet, you helped someone else move from an extreme position you absolutely disagreed with to something closer to the middle, that maybe you hate just a touch less? Mark your f-ing calendars; on the Internet, in the echo chambers previously mentioned, that's not something that normally happens.

What do we do when we move the needle but don't get it to where it needs to be? We keep pushing. We enlisted allies (I know, I know.. but yeah, everyone needs allies) and we try to move the needle some more.

Unless you gain some spectacular and applicable insight into how to move the needle by over-analyzing someone else's political leanings, it's probably a better use of everyone's time to gather input and feedback and offer it in as-a-constructive manner as possible.

You've already had some success and this project is still in alpha. Don't fold now, the game is just getting started.

At the same time if the needle was moved, but it was only moved a tenth of an inch. Then did it really matter? If they were unwilling to talk about or even make adjustments to the lore, then what does that say if they start to get rule questions or concerns where things don't work in the rules? You want changes to character creation? Yea we might consider it....okay we did some tweaks and here you go with the rule changes. [Narrator: The changes were minor and not what the play testers found were issues]. I have also seen in other places both in board games and wargame miniatures that play testers have found issues with not only the lore, but the rules. Kvetching, hair pulling, and rending of garments occurred. Only for the designer to offer up insults and ban folks or attempt to ban folks from commenting on how messed up the game is at either the alpha or beta phases.



*******************************************
To me there are ways to try and make a new TL work for Tw2k post 1991. That would be exploiting Yugoslavia. To drag Sweden, like what FL wants to do into the game it isn't that hard and I really think that you can take the 1991 coup and make it work. You can work the "Peace Dividend" in and still make the whole idea of the Twilight war work.

Not that it matters much but take this:

• 1991 - Coup occurs and Gorby is disposed. Hardliners come into play
• 1991 - Even with the hardliners in power the need to feed folks and get the economy that Gorby destroyed back up causes USSR to go internal for a while. PACT collapses and the Eastern Europe tries to come up to speed fast with democracy and capitalism. The cracks start to falter
• 1992 - Clinton comes to power. With the collapse of Soviet Union. High off win in Iraq in 1991. Peace Dividend comes into effect in the west. Yet, the needs for the US to be the Hegemonic power starts to play. The US has troops in Somalia, Arabia, Korea, and the American Hemisphere. All while NATO scales back.
• 1992 - Bosina war starts. the USSR pledges military and financial aid to keep the Yugoslavia states together or at least to defend the Slavic peoples.
• At this point I think have the incident at Pristina Airport occur earlier, this starts to give a cause belli for the war in the west. Have the ChiComs decide that going after the Kamchatka Peninsula and its bases along with the traditional 1969 border crisis creep up again. Introduce an economic collapse of some sort that throws everyone into the doldrums, whether it is the 2008 Great Recession or not. So some see the rising Soviets at this point fat and flush with cash making communism work and capitalists go count trees.
• 1994 - The PACT comes back into play after the economy in the east falters. With the New Soviets promising to share their oil wealth.
• 1995 - The PACT goes west after "reports" of NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia when IFOR fails to protect Slavs from genocide.
• 1996 - To assist in securing the Northern Flank with war against NATO. The PACT invades Sweden to either allow for breakout of the Soviet Naval Forces in the Baltics or to attack Norway.
• At which we take everything else in either V1 or V2 timeline to have occurred at some point after 1996 with the course of the war.

The only other change I would make is maybe have the the RDF books shift and instead deal more with Iraqi in some way, shape, or form. Maybe even have it being that the Soviets invade Iraq to drive into Saudi Arabia oil fields. Since by this revised timeline Iran isn't a reason for the Soviet Invasion and most anyone knows about Iran is current history. While Desert Shield/Storm/Sabre are still fresh in the memories.

The biggest issues I have with the lore as written in the 4th Edition is the logic games to get us from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the invasion of the Baltic states and the use of nuclear weapons because the Soviets invade Poland while the US invades Sweden with a carrier force that doesn't exist in real life until 1998 and couldn't even get into the Baltic with said carriers due to simple physics. I am not even going to try and wrap my head around the mid-east setup, it sounds very much like some bad fever dream of Z grade pulp fiction writer of action adventure novels. There are just too many plot holes in the post 1998 time line that makes sense. There are massive nuclear strikes on the US, but somehow at surviving port facilities a convoy of thousands of ships is assembled and sent to Europe with men. Wait...what? How does that even work? Similarly after the nuclear strikes, there are protests in major cities throughout the US? Wait...what? Did we have the infamous "thanksgiving day" massacre or did it not happen? The plot holes here are so huge that again a Z grade pulp fiction writer would have problems hand waving them away, let alone feel bad for creating them.

The number of plot holes in the new lore is troubling and makes it difficult to fit the older modules into the new game, let alone explain what is or isn't canon. That isn't even going to touch on the fact that they took a MacGuffin in the form of a V1 module about Operation Reset. Moved the whole operation that is the reason for the 5th ID to be destroyed and call that Operation Reset. Which completely invalidates said module as well as prevents you from using said module (and its related Polish modules) for anything since you rip the heart of the module out by eliminating the MacGuffin.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

It was implied at some point a few months back that you are not meant to try and fit modules from earlier editions into Free League's reboot of T2k.
I vaguely recall something to the effect that anything published before Free League's reboot is NOT canon for their version.

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by Southernap

SNIP


*******************************************
To me there are ways to try and make a new TL work for Tw2k post 1991. That would be exploiting Yugoslavia. To drag Sweden, like what FL wants to do into the game it isn't that hard and I really think that you can take the 1991 coup and make it work. You can work the "Peace Dividend" in and still make the whole idea of the Twilight war work.

Not that it matters much but take this:

• 1991 - Coup occurs and Gorby is disposed. Hardliners come into play
• 1991 - Even with the hardliners in power the need to feed folks and get the economy that Gorby destroyed back up causes USSR to go internal for a while. PACT collapses and the Eastern Europe tries to come up to speed fast with democracy and capitalism. The cracks start to falter
  
  —Gorbachev didn’t wreck the Soviet economy, communism did. Eastern Europe can’t reform quickly because their industries are outdated and run down. It would take time and the Hardliners would never allow the West to move in and get economic control.
  
• 1992 - Clinton comes to power. With the collapse of Soviet Union. High off win in Iraq in 1991. Peace Dividend comes into effect in the west. Yet, the needs for the US to be the Hegemonic power starts to play. The US has troops in Somalia, Arabia, Korea, and the American Hemisphere. All while NATO scales back.
  
  —Clinton gets elected in late 1992 but doesn’t “come to power” until January 20, 1993. I’m not so sure about what NATO does. The Coup brings Hardliners to power...so what are these Hardliners hardline about? Most likely economic reform will be reversed and sabres will be rattled concerning the status of Eastern Europe. Some European nations might reduce military spending but in many ways tensions will actually increase, especially as Jugoslavia falls apart. Either way no bailout money will be going into the Soviet Union from the West and the US economy can afford to be a hegemonic power as the USSR withers.
  
• 1992 - Bosina war starts. the USSR pledges military and financial aid to keep the Yugoslavia states together or at least to defend the Slavic peoples.
  
  —This will be another Afghanistan/Vietnam for the USSR at a time when they completely can’t afford it. It’s actually likely to occur given historical ties and Russian pride, but it won’t end well for them even if the West stays completely hands off.
  
• At this point I think have the incident at Pristina Airport occur earlier, this starts to give a cause belli for the war in the west. Have the ChiComs decide that going after the Kamchatka Peninsula and its bases along with the traditional 1969 border crisis creep up again. Introduce an economic collapse of some sort that throws everyone into the doldrums, whether it is the 2008 Great Recession or not. So some see the rising Soviets at this point fat and flush with cash making communism work and capitalists go count trees.
  
  —There is no Great Recession in the works for the early or mid-1990s. The groundwork has already been laid for the economic boom of the 90s while the internet and housing bubbles were each 6-to-10 years away. That can’t really be changed by a POD of mid-1991. Added to this the crime wave of the 1980s was abating. Global economic growth might be slower with a belligerent Soviet Union still around but it’s on its way. The Pacific Rim, where Soviet influence is minor will see its historical boom. Very quickly a stagnant Soviet Union will be left behind, even more than the Russia of our history.
  
• 1994 - The PACT comes back into play after the economy in the east falters. With the New Soviets promising to share their oil wealth.
  
  The economy in Eastern Europe was well past “falters” prior to the 1989 events. The Soviet Union has nothing to offer but oppression and Poland et.al know that. There is no oil windfall for the Soviet Union. Their infrastructure was a mess and without Western assistance and trade deals it gets worse. The Gulf War oil price spike lasted less than a year. After that OPEC moved up production quotas and the Soviet Union’s oil industry would never keep up.
  
• 1995 - The PACT goes west after "reports" of NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia when IFOR fails to protect Slavs from genocide.
  
  If the Soviet Union moves into Jugoslavia there is probably no UN/NATO presence beyond Slovenia and maybe Macedonia. The Soviet Union still has a veto on the security council and at this point they would be loath to loose even more regional influence to the West.
  
• 1996 - To assist in securing the Northern Flank with war against NATO. The PACT invades Sweden to either allow for breakout of the Soviet Naval Forces in the Baltics or to attack Norway.
  
  —Sweden does little to secure the Northern Flank. They need control of the Northern half of Norway which might call for crossing Finnish territory but bringing the well armed Swedes into the war makes no sense for either side. Occasional illegal overflights might be a go but nothing too provocative.
  
• At which we take everything else in either V1 or V2 timeline to have occurred at some point after 1996 with the course of the war.
  
  —-This the general problem. The post Coup V2 timeline never made much sense but may have been reasonable given our understanding at the time of its writing. The V4 timeline on the other hand is crap.
  

MORE SNIPE

No offense is intended here; your ideas are far better than what I’ve seen with V4.

I’ve just gotten tired of the authors of “historical” RPGs where the background setting makes no sense. It’s one thing if your doing a Cold War setting with Vampires, magic or Cthulhu but T2K is “hard alternate history” and should be written as such. The V4 timeline is a mishmash of teenage “moar cool!”, political axe grinding and downright ignorance of the Cold War era.

[Black Vulmea]

Originally Posted by Southernap

To me there are ways to try and make a new TL work for Tw2k post 1991. That would be exploiting Yugoslavia.

Yes! It's not like we don't have precedent for strife in the Balkans precipitating a world war . . .

I admit I was never fond of the geopolitics and timeline in v1, either, to be honest, and house ruled it as an Able Archer scenario that went tragically wrong.

If I ever run v4, I will as well: a Balkans crisis with NATO and PACT intervention, a Pakistan-India-China kerfuffle, and Iraq flexing in the Middle East.

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

I'll upload it to Youtube probably tomorrow; I am playing AD&D right now.

Bill, I watched your Facebook video yesterday but couldn’t comment. My IPad has issues with the Facebook video player.

I too like Stålenhag’s “Tales From the Loop” setting, but I thought you were a bit too kind when you said it wasn’t political. I found the follow up, “Things From the Flood”, to have very strong and pervasive political undertones. To me it seemed very anti-capitalism. The entire Flood setting centers around consumerism and the high-tech wonders it spawned falling apart and leaving decay. There are also strong environmental overtones as well. Stålenhag is a wonderful artist be he and his setting are very steeped in euro-left political ideology. This doesn’t mean I dislike the setting but I found “Things From the Flood” overly pessimistic and out of touch with the economic realities of the 1990s. Perhaps Sweden, still recovering from its socialist experience of the 1970s and early 80s was doing poorly in the 1990s but the rest of the West were doing quite well in the 1990s.

[It turns out Sweden had its worse economic crisis in over 50s starting in 1990. Banks failed and unemployment skyrocketed due to over lending. This obviously shaped the “Things From the Flood.” but historically would not have held true for the US and elsewhere.]

As for the V4 TL I agree it’s garbage and I feared this would be the case from early on. That’s a major reason why I dropped out of the Kickstarter. Chris Lites has no filter on his strong political biases and the team at Free League were certainly not the ones who would be able or willing to reign him in. Either way it is what it is. Another version of T2K to strongly avoid.

[Olefin]

Good to see that I am not alone in thinking that the background, timeline and war events are garbage. And you are right about the political leanings of those who wrote the game. And you can see that Tomas has already posted on the FL FB page that there are no large scale US forces left in Europe and no "lines" to get back to

In other words this atrocity of a V4 release is 100% NOT TWILIGHT 2000 as we knew it and loved it

And the Free League fan boys, almost none of them actual T2K players, clearly are only looking at this as a game to spend a couple of evenings on and then go to the next game.

And yes I have had the Chris Lites experience - and he is everything that Legbreaker said and worse - and has a very definite political viewpoint

And Tomas told us that the Alpha would be changed form the original drafts we saw about the the total destruction of NATO and the US Armed forces that he said was just a draft, wait for the Alpha - and then out comes the Alpha and if anything its worse - and whats even worse is that comments that Tomas has made make it clear that his own writers arent keeping him in the loop on the Alpha - he just told me that only the 5th was supposed to be destroyed - I pointed out that Secret Handout said eight full Corps were assigned to Reset and the Players Manual clearly said they were all overrun and survivors running for the woods

[mpipes]

Originally Posted by Olefin

And Tomas told us that the Alpha would be changed form the original drafts we saw about the the total destruction of NATO and the US Armed forces that he said was just a draft, wait for the Alpha - and then out comes the Alpha and if anything its worse - and whats even worse is that comments that Tomas has made make it clear that his own writers arent keeping him in the loop on the Alpha - he just told me that only the 5th was supposed to be destroyed - I pointed out that Secret Handout said eight full Corps were assigned to Reset and the Players Manual clearly said they were all overrun and survivors running for the woods

If that is the case, then maybe Tomas will reign the idiots in and get a decent backstory in place. But then those pesky mechanics are a pile of poop also.

Just out of curiosity, what was the goal? From what I thought many moons ago, they were intending the game to be mostly compatible with the previous editions....at least enough so that only minor tweaking would be needed. This pile of poop seems to want to kick hard core players - you know the guys that will shell out bucks for MANY follow on products for YEARS - in the crotch.