What is availble in t2k

[Brother in Arms]

This is a question for everyone about what you allow in your 2tk games

I guess alot of it is technology, like cell phones internet ect. How much of the items we have today do you allow in your games and why

Brother in Arms

[Mohoender]

Personnal computer: If you have one some of us might not even know what it looked like except by looking through wiki: amiga, apple II, commodore 64 or first IBM. Bulky, heavy and two main problems: finding power and floppy disks.

Labtop: not really around

Cell Phone: some bulky stuff (close to 2 pounds/1kg) but basically you receive a strange "ffffrrr" whereever you are.

Personnal radio: yes and you might still have some people broadcasting around

GPS: gone

TV: About gone and if available, snowy. Might still exist, however, in countries such as Switzerland or may be Belgium.

About it.

[Legbreaker]

I agree with Mo's rough assessment in all but the phones - the hand units might exist but without a telecommunications network, they're useless even as paperweights. Might be able to hit your dinner of the head and kill it with one though...

[atiff]

Personnal computer: If you have one some of us might not even know what it looked like except by looking through wiki: amiga, apple II, commodore 64 or first IBM. Bulky, heavy and two main problems: finding power and floppy disks.

Disagree a little here. 486 computers came out around 1990, and at that time, every year was bringing another big jump forward in speed, RAM, etc. My first full-time job in 1996 I was using a Pentium with Windows 95 and did some Visual Basic / Access database programming as part of my job. This after doing Computer Science first year university in 1991 and using dBase - the tech leap between the two was large, to say the least.

Laptops - I would agree, bigger, heavier, but still around. Desktops far more common; every 2nd university student had one in the mid-90's. Of course, whether or not they are working is an entirely different matter.

[Bullet Magnet]

My baseline year is 1997 as far as what tech might be available, since that is when the nuke strikes occurred (in the 1st edition timeline at least). I'm not hard and fast about it however, since the T2K timeline is different from our own.
In T2K, the continued existence of the "Big Bad Soviet Empire" could have resulted in less cutbacks in military spending, so some items not available until a few years later may have been around by then.
Since it's been quite a while since I've even had the opportunity to run a T2K game, I haven't really needed to think much about this.
As far as most electronics, I'd have to agree with another post here, that what exists isn't so important as how much of it still works.

[Webstral]

The presumption on the part of the GDW is that the hearts of the world's computers have been fried by EMP--so much so that "The Free City of Krakow" is based on the idea that the players have plans for a chip substitute to sell. The subject of EMP has been covered pretty extensively on this board in the past.

We should bear in mind that mid-2000 is less than three years since the surgical strategic exchange. How much labor is going to be available to do anything with technology is open to debate.

[Mohoender]

I agree with Mo's rough assessment in all but the phones - the hand units might exist but without a telecommunications network, they're useless even as paperweights. Might be able to hit your dinner of the head and kill it with one though...

I ddn't say anything else. I still have my motorola from 1995 in a trunk somewhere. Still a very good self-defense weapon. However, it doesn't quite stand the olympic throwing phone game.

[Mohoender]

Disagree a little here. 486 computers came out around 1990, and at that time, every year was bringing another big jump forward in speed, RAM, etc. My first full-time job in 1996 I was using a Pentium with Windows 95 and did some Visual Basic / Access database programming as part of my job. This after doing Computer Science first year university in 1991 and using dBase - the tech leap between the two was large, to say the least.

Laptops - I would agree, bigger, heavier, but still around. Desktops far more common; every 2nd university student had one in the mid-90's. Of course, whether or not they are working is an entirely different matter.

You are right. 1994, I was playing colonization all day long while doing my military service at the "meteo nationale" (national weather cast agency). But I had to clean the computer of everything else to run it.

Then, I still have two disks with a note stating "sensitive and confidential" somewhere. No kidding, what can be sensitive and confidential about weather casts

[Legbreaker]

Those old bricks could be very effective "throwing rocks" given the wrist strap most seemed to come with at the time. Nothing like a little more leverage on a throw!

...had to clean the computer of everything else to run it.

Including the software it was supposed to be running

[kato13]

Disagree a little here. 486 computers came out around 1990, and at that time, every year was bringing another big jump forward in speed, RAM, etc. My first full-time job in 1996 I was using a Pentium with Windows 95 and did some Visual Basic / Access database programming as part of my job. This after doing Computer Science first year university in 1991 and using dBase - the tech leap between the two was large, to say the least.

Laptops - I would agree, bigger, heavier, but still around. Desktops far more common; every 2nd university student had one in the mid-90's. Of course, whether or not they are working is an entirely different matter.

Fully agree. I think the last time I looked at the data there were 600 Million desktops in use in 1997 and something like 80 million Laptops. Even with a 1/10 of 1 percent survival number that IMO invalidates the game assumption that computers would be almost non existent. I knew personally of 3000 which would have survived EMP in two different secure locations.

According to Dark Conspiracy (From the same game house and designers as T2k) here is what they expected of "state of the art" computers manufactured in 2013 (written in 1991). They seemed to have had no concept of Moore's Law when they wrote T2k nor DC.

[atiff]

Fully agree. I think the last time I looked at the data there were 600 Million desktops in use in 1997 and something like 80 million Laptops. Even with a 1/10 of 1 percent survival number that IMO invalidates the game assumption that computers would be almost non existent. I knew personally of 3000 which would have survived EMP in two different secure locations.

Agree. But to rebutt myself a bit, I also agree with Webstral on some points. EMP hit in 1997, which would knock out a lot. Then you've got wear and tear after that - dodgy mains power supplies, failing hard drives (I think they used to last what, 2 years), and no updates to Windows 95 By 2000, I am happy to go with GDW's assumption that computers are essentially gone*, at least in Poland if not so much elsewhere.

(*If I have to run with 'EMP worked out worse than it would IRL', I'm OK with that - after all, we also get by with the whole 'everything can run on alcohol' premise.)

[Mohoender]

Including the software it was supposed to be running

Of course.

[Mohoender]

Fully agree. I think the last time I looked at the data there were 600 Million desktops in use in 1997 and something like 80 million Laptops. Even with a 1/10 of 1 percent survival number that IMO invalidates the game assumption that computers would be almost non existent. I knew personally of 3000 which would have survived EMP in two different secure locations.

I agree especially since many would have been shot down when the nukes were dropped. However, more would have been lost during the following panics and broken during riots and pillages. Rioters tend to take the TV and send the computers out the window (especially at the time). Still, you have no power to run them, and many more would have simple being left there, slowly getting out of order from simple neglect. They don't tend to survive very well rain falling through the holes in the roofs, chickens dropping eggs on top of them, dogs trying to find what they are all about and cats playing with the keyboard (that last one is a real life story as my sister had a cat which took out the keys of her labtop one by one. Then, it took out, the components behind the keys. I loved that cat)

Still, I agree and had a few computers around in my own campaigns. People with a plan had kept some of them (wether or not their plans were smart or healthy was not the issue).

[kato13]

. People with a plan had kept some of them (wether or not their plans were smart or healthy was not the issue).

The second most common way outsiders come to our site is by searching for the term "Making a Faraday Cage" (The first is post apoc pictures). This shows that people are thinking about shielding equipment right now, Imagine what people would be doing to protect their equipment when nukes had been flying in Europe and China for months.

[Mohoender]

Good point! I forgot about the good old paranoya that makes people protect their valuable holdings and blow the all thing up.