Who is your favourite player character?

[ChalkLine]

Everyone has a few PCs that seem to have been inspired. Who are you favourite player characters you've made for Twilight 2000?

[Raellus]

I'm pretty sure that I know yours, Chalk!

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'm pretty sure that I know yours, Chalk!

(Actually I just use the same one over and over. I'm thinking my next one will be a civilian.)

[Dackattack]

Had a polish character that was like 17 and hadn't finished highschool but he was a wizard mechanic. Crack shot with an RPG

Sent from my Z839 using Tapatalk

[ChalkLine]

As a topic tangent I think when I sit down to do my T2k update I'm going to make it very unlikely that a player character gets any rank. My reasoning behind this is that most game players don't know what it is that NCOs and officers actually do and couldn't portray it in a game - so they're probably better of being low rankers.
Just a thought

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

As a topic tangent I think when I sit down to do my T2k update I'm going to make it very unlikely that a player character gets any rank. My reasoning behind this is that most game players don't know what it is that NCOs and officers actually do and couldn't portray it in a game - so they're probably better of being low rankers.
Just a thought

I agree, so much so that I'd be inclined to do exactly the same thing if I run another campaign.
Decades ago, when I was running some Merc:2000 games, I would have a senior NCO in charge of the group. The NCO was run by me so it was just another NPC but it meant I could gently direct the group (none of the players except me had even been in anything like the Scouts or Cadets let alone any sort of military service).

For T2k I'd probably let some players have some rank but it would be basically, "filling dead men's shoes". There aren't any fully qualified personnel available for promotion due to manpower losses in the war, so the the "least unqualified" gets the promotion. That way it's not so bad that the newly promoted NCO doesn't know as much as they should and you can work it in as part of their backstory.

[ChalkLine]

Some of you guys may remember my 'Schlactebrucke' PbEM.

We had one lieutenant, one platoon sergeant, two corporals and fifteen privates. It worked really well and it let people without a military background or military knowledge deal with the arcane art of being a soldier let alone a tactics or strategy specialist.

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

I agree, so much so that I'd be inclined to do exactly the same thing if I run another campaign.
Decades ago, when I was running some Merc:2000 games, I would have a senior NCO in charge of the group. The NCO was run by me so it was just another NPC but it meant I could gently direct the group (none of the players except me had even been in anything like the Scouts or Cadets let alone any sort of military service).

For T2k I'd probably let some players have some rank but it would be basically, "filling dead men's shoes". There aren't any fully qualified personnel available for promotion due to manpower losses in the war, so the the "least unqualified" gets the promotion. That way it's not so bad that the newly promoted NCO doesn't know as much as they should and you can work it in as part of their backstory.

Just out of curiosity what do you do for those who do have military experience?
For example my local group has three former NCO's, two more former senior NCO's, and one former officer. Now I do agree that the rest of the group who have never served do not really have any idea what it is like to have been in the military and most of them will even admit it.

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by CDAT

Just out of curiosity what do you do for those who do have military experience?
For example my local group has three former NCO's, two more former senior NCO's, and one former officer. Now I do agree that the rest of the group who have never served do not really have any idea what it is like to have been in the military and most of them will even admit it.

Well I had some serving and former military men as well and for the purposes of the game, which was to play an ad hoc security unit, they were happy to play enlisted troops but in a more normal game I'd be happy to let them run what ever they wanted.
Even if a person has never served it would probably fine to let a person play whatever rank they like now because there is so much data available on the net but I'd be warning them a lot of reading up was probably necessary

[Adm.Lee]

I almost never played, so I can only offer other people's PCs or my NPCs.

When I ran the game in college and high school, if the group was small, I often stuck an experienced NCO in the group. It would fill out the watch schedule or fill gaps in PC skills, as well as allow me the voice, "Are you SURE you want to do that... sir?" I've no military experience, but I was the wargamer/historian in the group.

- I cannot recall the names, but one was a Polish Marine living in Krakow. He rolled an abysmal AGL score, so I ruled that he'd lost an arm and was now a freelancer in that city.

- Another was a German armored-recon NCO, I quickly gave him the background detail that he had left a wife and daughter in Hamburg. The players quickly coalesced around the goal of getting Heinz back home to them! That was a lesson to me as a young GM about what can happen when the players like an NPC.

- In my very first campaign, my group tended towards the "Kelly's Heroes" school of wacky backstories and the like. We were in high school, it was part of the mood. The standout was Ernie, the Dutch tank LT, who had a rubber duck on his dogtag chain.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by CDAT

Just out of curiosity what do you do for those who do have military experience?
For example my local group has three former NCO's, two more former senior NCO's, and one former officer. Now I do agree that the rest of the group who have never served do not really have any idea what it is like to have been in the military and most of them will even admit it.

At that time, there wasn't anybody in the group with any military experience so the situation never surfaced.
Some time later I was running some Merc:2000 games for a second group who did have some knowledge of the military. Two of them were seriously interested in the armies of WW2 and one of them had been in the Air Training Corps (a department of the Air Force in some Commonwealth nations to introduce high school aged people to a career in the Air Force).

Those guys got more leeway in generating rank but on the flip-side, I expected more from them as well and there were a few times when I basically said, "Well your characters would know from their military experience that blah blah blah..."
However the main benefit to the Referee in running a Merc game was that these PCs would be hired for certain roles and their previous rank was an advantage but didn't mean they would be given a similar rank or role position in the team for that particular mission.
In the few times I ran some T2k games with these guys, they took the tasks pretty seriously and generally went with the group consensus approach unless one of the players had some real time knowledge and then he was usually expected to take charge (this worked fine for the group as I only had three players at the time).

Overall it worked out fine and I've only ever had one problem with someone who knew better about the military. He was basically a selfish prick who was playing the game for himself and wasn't interested in "team play"despite having been in the navy for a decade or so.
Fortunately this was for some introductory D&D games so I didn't have to involve him in any plans I had for a T2k campaign.
Ultimately however, I've never had the situation where I had players in a T2k game that had real world military service. I think I would probably discuss with those players what they wanted their role to be in game and work out ranks in game as part of that discussion and their PCs backstory.

[ChalkLine]

In response to a private conversation I'd like to point out that I'm not patronising anyone, it's just that the military culture is opaque to civilians. I know heaps of soldiers and half of what they say is in another language to me

But it does bring out the fact that the name of the game is military roleplaying and so some sort of happy medium must be met. I think perhaps a better introduction to life in the military in the rules might do that but that might scare off new players.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

In response to a private conversation I'd like to point out that I'm not patronising anyone, it's just that the military culture is opaque to civilians. I know heaps of soldiers and half of what they say is in another language to me

But it does bring out the fact that the name of the game is military roleplaying and so some sort of happy medium must be met. I think perhaps a better introduction to life in the military in the rules might do that but that might scare off new players.

Well as ex-Army Reserve I will say that I did not construe anything you said as patronising. And you're absolutely correct about the typical view various groups have towards a different group. For example, every trade/profession has it's own jargon and I would be just as lost trying to understand a conversation between brain surgeons as I would between plumbers.
Even within the military there are different groups that have their own lingo - I was recently reading a forum posting about the different branches of the USN having different slang terms for various things, so in my view, it's completely acceptable for a civilian to not know what a military person is going on about.

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Well as ex-Army Reserve I will say that I did not construe anything you said as patronising. And you're absolutely correct about the typical view various groups have towards a different group. For example, every trade/profession has it's own jargon and I would be just as lost trying to understand a conversation between brain surgeons as I would between plumbers.
Even within the military there are different groups that have their own lingo - I was recently reading a forum posting about the different branches of the USN having different slang terms for various things, so in my view, it's completely acceptable for a civilian to not know what a military person is going on about.

So true, I spent about half my time in Armor, and finished up as EOD (with a little bouncing around in the middle). I still remember one of the early times I went to the field after leaving tanks. I was assigned to the .50 BMG as I was one of the few who had experience with it. The Engineers dug us fighting positions. There I was manning the MG when one of the guys comes around and asks if I am done with my range card, I asked him what a range card was. Blowing his mind, he wanted to know how I could make sergeant and not know what a range card was. I told him it was not something we used in tanks, when he explained what it was, I then told him that in all the armor units I had been is SOP was that each tank as a preassigned direction to cover, and we were not that worried about shooting the tank next to us with the MG, as we even had a command to do that.

[Olefin]

My first character that I made - a Captain who got his M1A1 Abrams (yes we rolled it) all the way from Kalisz to the Omega convoy - and who in the process ran thru the Madonna, Krakow and Warsaw modules and managed to bust a bunch of 5th Division guys out of various POW camps to where when we were done we crossed the line with almost 200 of them with us in a rag tag group of vehicles. Used that character as well down in Texas (where my GM did a variant of the module to have the US take the refinery back) and then finished with him with Last Submarine trilogy.

One of three of the original characters that survived the whole campaign out of eight that were originally rolled up. Was one hell of a fun time over the course of two years and my love of the game never dimmed even though it was a long time after that before I played again.