Your Preferred T2K Timeline

[kato13]

If anyone is interested in keeping up with defense issues, this is a really thorough aggregator site for defense news.

http://www.realcleardefense.com/

In general the real clear team strives to show a wide range of opinions for all their websites.

[kcdusk]

V1 of the T2K timeline is the only one i will consider, for a number of reasons.

1. I love the front cover of the box, every time i see it i fall in love with the game.

2. V1 is the timeline i grew up with, for better or worse its the only one i will consider.

3. If i had to look at another time line for a group, i'd go with whatever the current world wide situation was, add 6 months of time (to allow me to make up and project things going from bad to worse), and start from there.

For example, currently i'd say the Ukraine and Russia get into it. IS starts beheading people in public places of capital cities throughout the world (which was there current plan in Australia this week, i believe) , Scotland rebels against the UK, etc ... and drop the players in there.

[Draq]

When I discovered t2k, it was v1. Which is partly why I love it. The only other time line I'd use would be modified v1 or rewind to the late 70's and start ww3 during the cold war.

[Ancestor]

Ancestor again - forgot that I already voted but I'm now running a homebrew: V1 but set in 2030 (Soviet Union is Russia, Belorus, Ukraine; WP is Soviet Union, Hungary, a couple of the stans, plus the PIGS of Europe). War started with Sino-Soviet war over Siberian resources, then spread to Europe.

I just love the doom of V.1. I also run some modified rules (V.1 skill and individual combat, hybrid V.1/V.2 character gen, and then for mass combat I use a Russian game called "Art of Tactic"). My boys grew up on Memoir 44 and D&D V.4 so lots of hexes and miniatures, so it became a good way to introduce T2K to them.

[Ancestor]

[QUOTE=kcdusk;61283]V1 of the T2K timeline is the only one i will consider, for a number of reasons.

1. I love the front cover of the box, every time i see it i fall in love with the game.

Plus THIS! Metcalf South Mall, Clint's South Comics, 1985.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Just bought the v1 core books. Agree it's the best of the timelines.

[Draq]

Ancestor: I'd love to see your hybrid v1/v2 char gen system

[.45cultist]

I've grown to like them all. You can convert Paul's stuff to V1 easy enough.

[Draq]

im still a noob as far as actually playing the game goes. im getting fairly familiar with the setting, but i learn by doing, the same way i did with I.C.E. cyberspace, AD&D v2, original Traveler, and West End Games Star Wars v2. the t2k v1 books do a decent job explaining the mechanics, but there isnt a single play example. all the stats for characters, weapons, equipment, and vehicles make sense, but i need to see them at work.

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by Draq

im still a noob as far as actually playing the game goes. im getting fairly familiar with the setting, but i learn by doing, the same way i did with I.C.E. cyberspace, AD&D v2, original Traveler, and West End Games Star Wars v2. the t2k v1 books do a decent job explaining the mechanics, but there isnt a single play example. all the stats for characters, weapons, equipment, and vehicles make sense, but i need to see them at work.

They did a V1 example in Challenge Magazine, marauders attempt to take a barn with some soldiers in it.

[unkated]

Originally Posted by .45cultist

They did a V1 example in Challenge Magazine, marauders attempt to take a barn with some soldiers in it.

Challenge 31, to be precise.

Uncle Ted

[ChalkLine]

As I've been playing the game off and on since it first came out I'm over the old timelines and prefer to play in a contemporary setting

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

As I've been playing the game off and on since it first came out I'm over the old timelines and prefer to play in a contemporary setting

I get it. I've toyed with updated timelines, to make the setting more familiar, feel more relevant, and to incorporate new weapons and kit, but there are issues with that.

I think newer timelines lend themselves best to those first two considerations (creating a game world that feels more relevant, more familiar and connected to today). I find the opposite to be true for weapons and kit, though. There are two reasons.

First, new weapons and kit kind of betray the T2k ethos of a general breakdown of civilization and technology. PC's with tablets (no internet, but still), e-readers, mp3 players (old tech, today), and photo albums on their phones? One of T2k's appeals for me is getting away from all that stuff, but yeah, that sort of tech doesn't feel T2k to me.

Second, newer weapons and kit tend to make the PCs overpowered. When most PCs are equipped with current gen NVGs, weapon sights, comms, drones, and body armor (or various combinations thereof), they essentially become superheroes, the equivalent of "Masters of the Realm" in D&D (5e). If the OPFOR isn't similarly equipped, it's like Level 15 D&D heroes going up against kobolds, goblins, and the occasional orcs. If you equip the OPFOR like the PCs, with all the latest bells and whistles, then it's not really T2k, is it? It's Modern Warfare, and there are plenty of outlets for that out there now.

It's a Catch-22: Include lots of modern gear, it feels less like T2k. Eliminate all that cool current-gen gear, then there's less of a reason to update the timeline.

I've experienced this a bit already in the T2030 campaign that I run. Some day, I hope to confront my players with OPFOR that are as well equipped as they are but PbP is so slow-paced, IRL, that I'm pessimistic that we'll ever reach that point.

For these reasons, I keep coming back to the alternative, Cold War never ended, v1.0 timeline.

[Legbreaker]

Completely agree.
T2K is really about the aftermath of the war. The survivors only have the scraps left over, all the good stuff has been used up, or is on the verge of failure due to lack of maintenance and spare parts. The only reliable equipment are the simple things with few working parts, little to no electronics and can be repaired with little more than a hammer and anvil.
Anything modern is akin to magic and should be treated as such. Once it's gone, there's no replacing it.

[Raellus]

We don't know what the v4 timeline is going to look like, so it's too early to add it to the poll. I would, however, like to share some thoughts re critiques of the v1 timeline and some critics' assertion that it needs to be replaced by something (quote), more plausible (end quote).

The one argument against the v1 timeline that I keep seeing is that it strains credulity. It goes something like this:

New gamers can't get into v1 because it ignores real world history between its release c. 1984 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991. They are unable to accept the premise that the Cold War never ends because it is too implausible given what we know now.

Fair play. But I don't see how any other timeline that starts WWIII c.1996 eliminates this issue. They too, by their very nature, ignore real world events from 1991 to the commencement of WW3. It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Timelines that include the end of the Warsaw Pact and a hard-line military coup in the Russian Soviet rump-state do the same thing- depart from real-world events. IRL the coup didn't succeed. IRL, it took Russia 30+ years to even come close to regaining its Cold War power (it's still not there yet). So how is that route more realistic than a Cold-War-never-ended scenario?

Successful coup scenarios tend to ignore that a Neo-USSR ruled by a hard-line military government would be an international pariah state on par with the Soviet Union of 1918; that its economy would be even more decrepit than that of the RL Soviet Union of the late 1980s because its European satellites had all left its orbit a couple of years prior to the historical departure point (the coup). With a wrecked economy, how does the junta keep the Soviet military afloat, let alone as powerful as it was prior to 1989? How does the Soviet economy recover enough to support a two-front peer-rival war in under half-a-decade? And how does a Soviet Union without most of its Warsaw Pact allies compete in a conventional military confrontation with China and/or NATO? (especially when some of those former allies were well on their way to becoming NATO members!)

I just don't see the v2 timeline or any others that include a successful coup resulting in a more realistic back-story/setting. If anything, I think it results in a much less realistic and/or believable back-story and setting.

For the v1 alternate history to work, one only has to figure out a way for the Soviet economy to remain afloat from 1989 until 1996. This seems much more doable than figuring out a how a collapsed post-coup Soviet economy somehow miraculously recovers in four or five years, leaving the neo-Soviet Union no worse off than it was prior to the coup (or IRL, after 1991).

I watched a Youtube critique of v1 recently. The Youtuber didn't like that it ignored real world events that occurred between 1984-1991. For him, it was "too unrealistic" and therefore, impossible for anyone younger than 35 to accept. This Youtuber preferred a revised timeline that included the fall of the Iron Curtain, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a coup replacing Yeltsin's government with a hard-line military junta (i.e. something more along the lines of v2). His explanation for the miraculous recovery of the neo-Soviet economy was the discovery of fusion power* in the mid-1980s (kept secret until after the coup, then used as leverage to win back the loyalty of the restive WTO states).

*Something that still hasn't happened, IRL.

A macguffin that erases history from 1991-2000 is presented as more realistic than a Soviet Union that manages not to collapse 1989-1991.



Poppycock, I say. If one is going to adopt a fusion power macguffin in 1991, post-coup, why not just insert it pre-1989? It's totally arbitrary and therefore, no more realistic than v1. Instead of fusion power, how about the discovery and exploitation of massive energy reserves in Soviet territory in the late 1980s? That's not too far off how modern-day Russia rakes in a good chunk of western currency, IRL. With revenues from oil and natural gas, the Soviet economy could stay solvent until the advent of WWIII. With a minor tweak of reality, the v1 timeline works quite well. If it ain't broke...

I realize that this is all academic or, at least, moot, and that GM's can tailor their respective T2kUs however they like. That's the way it should be. But, for officially released starting points, I think the v1 timeline is just as plausible/realistic, if not more so, than v2 or what's been leaked of the v4 timeline. Either way, T2k is built around an alternate history. For me, the simplest route is the best.

That said, the timeline is the foundation of the setting of any iteration of Twilight 2000. A bad timeline will likely hamstring the game. One could argue that Twilight 2013 was doomed by its timeline. I really hope that v4 presents a plausible timeline. Different is fine, but better- or, at least, not worse than v1-2.2- is crucial, IMHO.

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[StainlessSteelCynic]

I could not agree more with you Raellus.

It would be far better and more plausible to have the Soviet Union discover a variety of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) within Soviet territory.
Rare Earth minerals are vital for electronics and are in everything from communications and medical equipment to catalytic converters for pollution reduction.
The modern world could not function without them.

China has traditionally been the world's largest supplier of REEs and dominated the world market through various tactics such as economic bullying.
China makes a staggering amount of foreign currency by being the number one seller of REEs.
If the Soviets discover massive reserves of REEs in their territory, it could be a source of economic tension between the USSR and China. They might even try more overt ways to prevent each other from being the world supplier.
They might even get into military clashes over it.

So, give some remote area of Russia a significant deposit of REEs and they will be rolling in the cash. It might even be a causus belli for war with China.
When the USSR starts to threaten restrictions on the sale of REEs to Western nations, it might even give the West cause for conflict with the Soviet Union.


And I didn't have to make up a whole new timeline with McGuffins to get this to work.

[Raellus]

Great idea, SSC. REEs could keep the Soviet economy afloat from the late 1980s through the mid-'90s, and contribute to the start of the Sino-Soviet War (leading to WWIII).

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[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

So, give some remote area of Russia a significant deposit of REEs and they will be rolling in the cash. It might even be a causus belli for war with China.

That sounds pretty plausible to me. I could be wrong - it's been a long time since I read it - but IIRC Tom Clancy's Bear and Dragon used something along those lines to posit a conflict between what was by then the Russian Federation and China - I think the premise was that the Russians discovered large deposits of gold and oil in Siberia.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

That sounds pretty plausible to me. I could be wrong - it's been a long time since I read it - but IIRC Tom Clancy's Bear and Dragon used something along those lines to posit a conflict between what was by then the Russian Federation and China - I think the premise was that the Russians discovered large deposits of gold and oil in Siberia.

Gold and oil would certainly give them some hard currency via exports and as for the Rare Earths, Russia does actually have deposits but doesn't do much with them at the moment - but that's all set to change.
From what I've read, Russia supplies about 2% of the world supply but according to some reports, has the fifth or fourth largest reserves of the elements.
So yes, definitely plausible without having to completely rewrite the history of the USSR, you'd only have to fudge the timeline for the discovery and exploitation of the resources.

Russia is apparently looking into plans to exploit the REE reserves they have, a plan that will put them at odds with China. The value of those REEs could give Russia a lot of money in the coming decades. Now, from what I understand of the talk I hear in the mining industry and what I've read in the trade papers and news, Russia initially wants to end it's reliance on China for REEs but after that, they want to be a world supplier.
I believe the West will be happy to help (because they too want to end some of their dependency on China).
According to this South China Morning Post article, Russia wants to be a world supplier in ten years (in second place to China apparently)
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/euro...ce-rare-earths

So the REE reserves are there, all we need to do with the T2k world is have the USSR discover & exploit them soon enough to allow them to have a healthy economy into the 1980s-1990s.
No need for complete rewrites of history, no need for McGuffins.

EDIT: To help add some perspective to the importance of REEs to the modern world, this article, while the same as the South China Morning Post article, adds some extra information about the Pentagon funding the establishment of a Rare Earth separation plant in Texas, USA.
https://www.mining-technology.com/ne...e-earths-plan/
And this is the article linked in the article posted in this edit
https://www.mining-technology.com/fe...ynas-contract/

[Fallenkezef]

I clicked homebrew as my group uses the V1 timeline but dated to the 80's.

We've tried a few other timelines. One we played around with was based on the German WW3 alternative history film portrayed as a documentary. I'll link it. It's surprisngly well done actualy and really worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQCM3Hu1YW4

[cpip]

Originally Posted by Fallenkezef

I clicked homebrew as my group uses the V1 timeline but dated to the 80's.

While I was rereading the V1 timeline, it occurred to me that if it was shifted back to the Sino-Soviet Amur conflict in the late '60s, and had that blow up, it might just work for a "Twilight: 1972" sort of period.