4e What happened to the rest of the world?

[Olefin]

So far the new edition publisher has shown a distinct lack of caring about the rest of the world - they basically even ignored places that obviously should have been detailed like the Czech Republic and Denmark and Norway - its like the war has been confined to just a few countries. And while communication breakdown would eventually keep GI's from all sides knowing what is going on the USN is still working and still viable - meaning that mail and newspapers and things like that would be coming over ever so often.

Thus the events in the rest of the world would be known to those in Europe - especially given the huge shipment of US draftees that occurred - they would have brought news of what was happening at home for sure.

Its a monstrous hole that really needs to be filled and could be easily with a relatively small official supplement. Keep in mind how few pages the original edition Sourcebooks devoted to the events happening elsewhere - yet those few pages built up a picture of what was happening elsewhere that you could build on. The later releases added more but at least you had some idea of what was going on in China, Korea, the US, Mexico, etc.

And the official status of "fan canon" has been debated a lot and I brought that up with Marc - but the only new release since 1997 he ever recognized as canon was mine - and I told him that frankly he was making a mistake there - that what Tegyrius and Raellus did was every bit as good as anything GDW ever did and deserved to be recognized as official canon once and for all.

Free League's current fan canon approach leaves you with no baseline to build on - thus you can easily get ten different "official" versions of what is going on outside of Poland and Sweden. Yes that leaves you free to choose your world - but it also makes it hard to write as well - i.e. what version of Great Britain will you choose if there is no official FL release. The fan canon stuff is great but they have no basis in "reality" because they have not been declared canon - and that opens the door to chaos and a lot of work by GM's that shouldnt have to be done if they want to use the 4th edition timeline and setting outside of a limited area in Europe.

And there is a market for material on the rest of the world - Raellus and I proved that with East Africa and Korea.

[unipus]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Free League's current fan canon approach leaves you with no baseline to build on - thus you can easily get ten different "official" versions of what is going on outside of Poland and Sweden. Yes that leaves you free to choose your world - but it also makes it hard to write as well - i.e. what version of Great Britain will you choose if there is no official FL release. The fan canon stuff is great but they have no basis in "reality" because they have not been declared canon - and that opens the door to chaos and a lot of work by GM's that shouldnt have to be done if they want to use the 4th edition timeline and setting outside of a limited area in Europe.

As someone who just wrote an entire book about Poland (because there was insufficient official material IMO to run a game set in Poland, the game's default actual setting)... is this really anything new? Doesn't every GM end up having to make calls like this to make the game work for them anyway? It's not like you really need canon beyond what happens are your table, and I can't think of a single game I've ever just blanket accepted the setting of without making a few significant changes to suit my own interpretation.

Basically you've got to draw the line somewhere, but even then I doubt you'll find any two people who agree on exactly where that line should be drawn.

[mpipes]

For now, after looking at what has become available on Drive Thru RPG, there really is no direction from FL. I am afraid that FL is only interested in Sweden and Poland and the rest of the world is pretty much whatever others choose to make it.

Unless FL steps up to the plate with some overall guidance on the other war fronts, I am afraid the product line it is going to turn into a chaotic mishmash.

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by mpipes

For now, after looking at what has become available on Drive Thru RPG, there really is no direction from FL. I am afraid that FL is only interested in Sweden and Poland and the rest of the world is pretty much whatever others choose to make it.

Unless FL steps up to the plate with some overall guidance on the other war fronts, I am afraid the product line it is going to turn into a chaotic mishmash.

you are 100 percent correct in your analysis - and it doesnt have to be that way - like I said they need to step up to the plate and put out, at most, a dozen page supplement that would give just enough details on the rest of the world to be able to fill that hole - at the very least the situation in the rest of Europe - i.e. you cant have WWIII in Europe and give basically no details on France, Italy, the Balkans - heck even the V1 Sourcebook at least gave you something about them that was enough that you could have done something with it

and Unipus - you are right about what happens at the table - if the group is content with just Sweden or Poland then you will be fine - the problem will be if they want to really start exploring or say something like "is Poland all there is?" and you have nothing to go on.

Worst case you could always use the old sourcebooks and what was recently put out and just try to run them with 4e rules if people want to go beyond Poland or Sweden - but some of the changes in the timeline already make a lot of the old material moot

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by Olefin

you are 100 percent correct in your analysis - and it doesnt have to be that way - like I said they need to step up to the plate and put out, at most, a dozen page supplement that would give just enough details on the rest of the world to be able to fill that hole - at the very least the situation in the rest of Europe - i.e. you cant have WWIII in Europe and give basically no details on France, Italy, the Balkans - heck even the V1 Sourcebook at least gave you something about them that was enough that you could have done something with it

From a company's point of view, putting out a small document that just gives facts and dates is probably the worst decision one could make. There is literally zero chance that anyone would like the content 100 % and recommend it. It's just fluff with no stats and game stuff and it is something no referee will use as is. The timeline given was already met with so much vitriol, it just shows this would be a colossal waste of time and money for FL.

Plus, most groups will use Poland and Sweden as their setting. Other countries in far off places hardly influence what happens there. And for Europe you get the basic facts: WW3, nukes, Soviets fighting NATO and former WP countries. Stalemate. Operation Reset. NATO fails liberating Eastern Europe. Post-collapse. Go!

Look at it this way: If you'd picked up the game in '84, what did you get?

1995: China fights USSR. The USSR gets supported by WP states, because everyone's a good commie.
1996: West Germany starts WW3 while annexing East Germany while the NVA just watches. WP declares war on Germany, except for Romania, who find an ally in Yugoslavia. NATO comes to Germany's rescue, since NATO is now in business of wars of aggression; except France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece, because people speaking non-Germanic languages are apparently the only ones with a clear head.
1997: Greek and Turkey finally go to war. Italy violates Austrian neutrality, because backstabbing lunatics is now everyone's game. Meanwhile, Germany actually wins against the USSR, so they Commies go nuclear. Everyone joins into that game.
1998: France and Belgium start shooting refugees. Since everybody has been at it for 2 1/2 years already, divisions are now down to 50 %. Apparently, Germany could levy new combat effective divisions still by 1945, after 5 years of war, but by 2000 suddenly they forgot that every male above the age of 18 has had either training as a soldier or in civil defense, police, firefighting or healthcare. Italy is really successful as is Greece. The US break de facto apart over a refugee crisis. Mexico invades the US. Yugoslavia invades Hungary, despite Italy having occupied Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, while Greece annexed Macedonia. Unclear what's left of Yugoslavia by that point except Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegowina.
1999: The US break apart even further. Europe stabilizes, because everyone's dead.
2000: Thinking that stability is bullshit, NATO wants to go for another round, fails miserably over getting its hands on a "turn back time" MacGuffin and now is worse off than ever before.

Meanwhile, I'm adopting stuff from 1E and 2E for my campaign, but boy am I glad FL isn't putting out anything like these 6 pages from 1984.

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by Ursus Maior

From a company's point of view, putting out a small document that just gives facts and dates is probably the worst decision one could make. There is literally zero chance that anyone would like the content 100 % and recommend it. It's just fluff with no stats and game stuff and it is something no referee will use as is. The timeline given was already met with so much vitriol, it just shows this would be a colossal waste of time and money for FL.

Plus, most groups will use Poland and Sweden as their setting. Other countries in far off places hardly influence what happens there. And for Europe you get the basic facts: WW3, nukes, Soviets fighting NATO and former WP countries. Stalemate. Operation Reset. NATO fails liberating Eastern Europe. Post-collapse. Go!

Look at it this way: If you'd picked up the game in '84, what did you get?

1995: China fights USSR. The USSR gets supported by WP states, because everyone's a good commie.
1996: West Germany starts WW3 while annexing East Germany while the NVA just watches. WP declares war on Germany, except for Romania, who find an ally in Yugoslavia. NATO comes to Germany's rescue, since NATO is now in business of wars of aggression; except France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece, because people speaking non-Germanic languages are apparently the only ones with a clear head.
1997: Greek and Turkey finally go to war. Italy violates Austrian neutrality, because backstabbing lunatics is now everyone's game. Meanwhile, Germany actually wins against the USSR, so they Commies go nuclear. Everyone joins into that game.
1998: France and Belgium start shooting refugees. Since everybody has been at it for 2 1/2 years already, divisions are now down to 50 %. Apparently, Germany could levy new combat effective divisions still by 1945, after 5 years of war, but by 2000 suddenly they forgot that every male above the age of 18 has had either training as a soldier or in civil defense, police, firefighting or healthcare. Italy is really successful as is Greece. The US break de facto apart over a refugee crisis. Mexico invades the US. Yugoslavia invades Hungary, despite Italy having occupied Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, while Greece annexed Macedonia. Unclear what's left of Yugoslavia by that point except Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegowina.
1999: The US break apart even further. Europe stabilizes, because everyone's dead.
2000: Thinking that stability is bullshit, NATO wants to go for another round, fails miserably over getting its hands on a "turn back time" MacGuffin and now is worse off than ever before.

Meanwhile, I'm adopting stuff from 1E and 2E for my campaign, but boy am I glad FL isn't putting out anything like these 6 pages from 1984.

You actually get a lot more than that - which is what Chico is showing with his day to day breakdown that he is posting. It gives you exactly what is needed to know what is going on elsewhere enough that a GM could have taken that information and played the game elsewhere with at least some confidence that he or she was following canon. And they have quite a while to come up with a basic timeline - and two major reference works that detailed out the whole world in the V1 and V2.2 sourcebooks as well as things like the RDF, Howling Wilderness, East Africa and the Korean book that they could have used to come up with how the events in Europe affect the world.

So you dont have to start from scratch - you can go thru and easily do a nice concise timeline that shows what is going on elsewhere. Plus that is called knowing your base and your target market

Those timelines and details mattered a lot to the core T2K market - thus you make a point of it to get that right in your release. As for them being a small company - so what??? They were offered and turned down multiple offers by people to assist them in the launch - heck coming up with a plausible timeline is part of what both Raellus and I had to do with our stuff - and Frank is working with them and could have easily assisted them.

And the timeline they did come up with for events in Europe really needed help - if you have issues with V1 at the least they didnt send over 500,000 reinforcements and then suddenly forget they sent them over like FL did in their timeline.

So again - basically if you only want to play a limited campaign in Central Poland and Sweden then who cares about timelines. But if your players are like "this is getting boring what about the rest of the world" then you are going to have a major issue with basically the rest of the world barely being mentioned.

[unipus]

Moving on... maybe you have your answer here Raellus?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60257080

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by mpipes

Unless FL steps up to the plate with some overall guidance on the other war fronts, I am afraid the product line it is going to turn into a chaotic mishmash.

Don't confuse the product line with the fan-produced offerings. The product line is whatever FL publishes under the terms of its license with FFE, and I guarantee you that they have a multi-year strategy for that. They're just metering the information they share with us on it.

(Whether or not they can follow through on that strategy is another issue entirely. There is no RPG industry... there is only a subsidized hobby.)

- C.

[unipus]

Again, a few sentences here and there in the old core books were certainly not enough to actually run the game in any other part of the world, so how much does it matter? As a GM you were still pretty much (wait for it) on your own. Unless you waited patiently for modules and got lucky and you had been hoping to run a game in Iran or Appalachia or on a submarine or something.

Put this in the context of pretty much any other game and it starts to seem like a pretty silly demand.


But yeah it's pretty clear that FL has a plan, but they also have a lot of pots on the stove and not enough bandwidth to get it done in a very expedient manner.

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by unipus

Again, a few sentences here and there in the old core books were certainly not enough to actually run the game in any other part of the world, so how much does it matter? As a GM you were still pretty much (wait for it) on your own. Unless you waited patiently for modules and got lucky and you had been hoping to run a game in Iran or Appalachia or on a submarine or something.

Put this in the context of pretty much any other game and it starts to seem like a pretty silly demand.


But yeah it's pretty clear that FL has a plan, but they also have a lot of pots on the stove and not enough bandwidth to get it done in a very expedient manner.

THIS. We're customers of a niche product at the very beginning of the product line. We all. I hope, knew that from the beginning. And the fan base wasn't exactly hard to please so far. So why throw us something quickly cobbled together. It wouldn't be worth anybody's time or money.

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by mpipes

I am afraid that FL is only interested in Sweden and Poland and the rest of the world is pretty much whatever others choose to make it.

Unless FL steps up to the plate with some overall guidance on the other war fronts, I am afraid the product line it is going to turn into a chaotic mishmash.

I wouldn't look at it that way. The product is still very new, it has its first expansion box coming out this winter and an adventure probably later this year (Black Madonna). It's just one of many products by FL and certainly niche. They're a small company, developing other stuff needs time. Plus, not a lot people played T2K with a completely vanilla timeline back in the days, weren't they? Mixing timelines and elements is really a great opportunity rather than a drawback for me.