4th ed T2K

[Raellus]

There are a lot of open-minded folks here and elsewhere that are looking forward to giving v4 a chance.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of close-minded people who are OK with prejudging others' work and slagging it sight unseen (or based on a few art samples).

The majority, I believe, fall somewhere in the middle- excited about a new version of T2K but nervous that it will disappoint.

I am cautiously optimistic but as a devotee to T2K since age 12, I have my reservations (especially since I don't like the v2.2 timeline which v4 seems to be leaning towards).

In any case, let's try to get this thread back on track- constructive discussion rather than sarcasm and name calling ("woketard", really). I'd really rather not have to lock this thread or request the admin to ban users. Thanks.

[puška]

More than debate using political buzzwords about the intent of art or writing my concern from FL (other than having a system that feeds the setting and vice versa), is their flirtation with the recent trend to have a low-prep or non-prep game session.

Maybe we're just old grumps who enjoy research, but having a gm and/or players prepare for a game they wish to be meaningful (if no other meaning than the often used excuse of "fun"), isn't a lot to ask. I really hope FL doesn't step towards this for their new edition.

That which we obtain too easily and all that...

~*~

P.S. a 1e aside here: c'mon, Raellus"Tim Bradstreet's art generic

[Hybris]

Howdy long time no read.

Like so many other swedes i have been following the Free League since their beginning and this game is gonna do great on Kickstarter, mainly because all of their games does. And it appears many other swedish rpg games are doing as well Will it be a good gaming system. I dint think so. Its a bit disturbing that despite i have almost all FL rpgs i haven't played anything with the Zero engine open license system because it looks ...bad. friends that have used the system says its a good system for beginners but for oldies like me who has played with Gurps for 30 years it doesn't cut it. i think it would be a fabulous system for a board game or similar but not for a rpg. But the books ,art and everything related are good. It was a long time since i bought their products just to support them . what you see in the pictures is what you gonna get. And maybe,just maybe they can found moore "younger" rpg gamers to experienced a ravaged poland and the war that didn't happen.

[Raellus]

Simple DOES NOT Equal Bad

More than debate using political buzzwords about the intent of art or writing my concern from FL (other than having a system that feeds the setting and vice versa), is their flirtation with the recent trend to have a low-prep or non-prep game session.

Maybe we're just old grumps who enjoy research, but having a gm and/or players prepare for a game they wish to be meaningful (if no other meaning than the often used excuse of "fun"), isn't a lot to ask. I really hope FL doesn't step towards this for their new edition.

That which we obtain too easily and all that...

~*~

P.S. a 1e aside here: c'mon, Raellus-Tim Bradstreet's art generic

I understand the concern regarding the potential lack of crunch, but I really don't think a system can remove research or prep from a GM's tool-bag. I see no reason why a GM can't make the setting or encounters as complex as they like, or include house-rules to up the crunch factor. In fact, I think it's easier for a GM to add complexity to an existing system than it is to simplify a complex one.

To run my T2K campaigns, I taught myself Polish history and geography. I don't see how Free League's system can stop GM's from doing that sort of thing.

Keep in mind that people from Gen X and later have grown up with a lot of other gaming options. Too much crunchiness can make learning/using a system a chore. Why bother learning how to read multiple cross-referenced tables and roll six kinds of die for every interaction when you can just turn on your XBox and it does it all for you It's a generalization, I know, and there are plenty of youngins out there who aren't afraid of tables and dice, but I'm confident the majority aren't looking for too much of that in gaming nowadays. Tabletop game developers have to consider this as they develop new products. I think going the simple-to-complex route is a better idea than complex-to-simple.

Regarding art, I didn't mean "generic" in style- Bradstreet's art is iconic in its own way. I just meant that 90% of all interior art from v1 & 2 could be from just about any RL conflict from 1945-1991. The only reason we consider it more T2K that Free League's samples is that we've been associating the two for 30 years! The covers, on the other hand, some of them are beautiful (Pirates of the Vistula is my favorite).

[puška]

To run my T2K campaigns, I taught myself Polish history and geography. I don't see how Free League's system can stop GM's from doing that sort of thing.

No one and nothing can reasonably prevent a GM or player from research.

My point was that numerous games in recent years actively discourage it. You taught yourself because the game encouraged"if not required"you to do so. Saying that kids today have so much more offered them so its a chore to do something for themselves is a disservice to the hobby, to education, and ultimately, to those people who look to be spoon-fed rather than to learn something for themselves.

Simple does not equal bad, but neither does asking for a little investment.

[Raellus]

Investment Pays Off

My point was that numerous games in recent years actively discourage it. You taught yourself because the game encouraged-if not required-you to do so. Saying that kids today have so much more offered them so its a chore to do something for themselves is a disservice to the hobby, to education, and ultimately, to those people who look to be spoon-fed rather than to learn something for themselves.

Simple does not equal bad, but neither does asking for a little investment.

I guess I haven't seen a game that's actively discouraged research and preparation. I admit that my experience is limited, though. My only practical experience with tabletop RPG's is T2K v1 & 2.2, Conan, and most iterations of D&D. The only one that fits that description from that list was D&D 4e. Of those listed- and to your point- that one was my least favorite of the bunch, by far.

I'm a high school history teacher. Education is my calling. I've been working with 13-17 year-olds for the past 20 years, so I have a pretty good read on the generations coming up. I'm just saying that it's pretty much a fool's errand to try and force someone to research and prepare. If a game requires too much of that sort of thing, it's probably not going to do well these days. I do believe that you can and should encourage it, though. That's my job.

Technically, I didn't need to do extra research to run Pirates of the Vistula. I could have run it straight from the module. But I'm curious, and I quickly learned that there were lots of cool places and encounters just waiting for someone who cared to dive in a little deeper to discover. I hope my players would agree but I think it was really worth it.

In that regard, the internet has been a huge boon to gaming. It would have been a lot harder to have learned so much about Poland pre-WWW.

So I don't disagree with your point about research and prep being a good thing in gaming, but I think trying to shoehorn players and GM's into that style of play is a death sentence for anything aspiring to something greater than niche-gaming.

[puška]

I guess I haven't seen a game that's actively discouraged research and preparation.
...
I'm a high school history teacher. Education is my calling.
...
I hope my players would agree but I think it was really worth it.
...
In that regard, the internet has been a huge boon to gaming. It would have been a lot harder to have learned so much about Poland pre-WWW.

Games that self-advertise as ready to play in a handful of minutes or literally "Can be played with no GM prep" are what I consider such. especially if you compare them with early rpg jewels like LBB Traveller or 1st-2nd ed CoC. The husband likes to tell folks with 90% sincerity and 10% sarcasm that being introduced to CoC at age 12 led to his going to university in his 30s and a PhD less than a decade later. Overshadowed by the fact the guy who introduced him to it had six PhDs and cites rpgs as what started him on his research path.

I've taught AP English and History for high school; husband used to teach at a snooty almost-Ivy university. We're both in a similar boat as you for education as a calling. We've both used rpgs and rpg-metaphors in the classroom. Like our players (and your comment), we'd like to think things like that can make the difference between just learning something to answer a test question and creating curiosity. The husband wrote on on his ?syllabuses/syllabi under "requirements for class" as being an active curiosity.

Which is what I wish"and my original point was"that when rpgs present themselves as being low-prep, the vast majority of evidence I've encountered is the equivalent to "mindless entertainment" movie compared to a prepped and invested game that may not be a Kubrick production, but is certainly more than an explosion laden SFX feature. Nothing worse in and of itself with mindless entertainment, but no entertainment has to be mindless, just as learning history doesn't have to be a monotonous chore of names and dates.

So I don't disagree with your point about research and prep being a good thing in gaming, but I think trying to shoehorn players and GM's into that style of play is a death sentence for anything aspiring to something greater than niche-gaming.

Doesn't have to be shoehorning. Just a game that encourages a bit of planning and checking of this and that that can lead to curiosity being piqued and everyone involved having a richer experience and maybe... just maybe, want to learn something above and beyond themselves.

And, not that I think you have, but I often say this in online forums since we aren't talking over coffee I'm debating the idea, not you personally... If I didn't think your points had validity, I'd ignore you.

[Southernap]

Timelines and supplements/modules

Okay, I got to ask about the timelines.

I only had owned V2.0 and its timeline seemed reasonable to me as a kid of the 80s. That is wall falls, communism is on the wan through out Europe, Germany is reunited. PRC and Soviets go to war. Poland and the Russians restart the Warsaw Pact. Germany accidentally invades Poland due to a helicopter crew misunderstanding where they were during an exchange of gunfire by border guards of Germany and Poland. The Pact goes west to teach the Germans a lesson based on a bad radio call. The Germans plead for help and NATO crumbles as the US/UK/CDN forces go east to help defend Germany, nukes fly and at least in the box set of 2.0 that I had, the only thing about how your players were in Germany was a one blurb on the summer offensive in the year 2000 at the bottom of a page right after the chapter on how to referee, basically this page was how to create a campaign. It wasn't even near the "World of 2000AD" chapter and a major fault in my mind in how V2.0 was setup. This blurb was that German 3rd Army with US 11th Corps and specifically 5th ID Mechanized ran across the last big bits of the Soviet armies in Europe. Now the Germans are in full retreat. The players are on their own if they want to play in Poland. It was maybe half a page of additional background about why the players should be for the European Campaign.

I have gotten V1.0 rules and V2.2 rules in PDF via DTRPG and love the fuller "Escape from Kalisz" module and background in V1.0 of the rules. I read the timeline there and there are major differences between V1 and V2. With of course talk about how East and West Germany conducted operations against the Soviet forces in Germany and then conduct a coup. The details here make better sense as to why NATO crumbles. As well as the interesting details as to how the PACT crumbles under politics. All of this filled in details that didn't jive for me with some of the V1 supplements that made references to the Germans going east, more details of how the combat in Poland went specific to help setup the Poland campaign trilogy of books.

Okay so reading V2.2 it seems that the major difference there is that the Coup against Gorbachev by the hardliners is successful and we see the return of the Warsaw PACT. Yet most of the folks that I am reading at a facebook page and here seem to have a bad taste for this background. What is the reason for that

I also have T2013 rule books in my DTRPG collection. I have tried multiple times to read thru that time line and I just either can't stop laughing or going "it doesn't work like that" sort of comments. I had bought it based on the fact that it was there and it seemed when I bought it almost a decade ago, that this was probably going to be the rules going forward.

So all that said, if they are rebooting the timeline, background; which they have to and make this new edition jive with what modules in V1 and V2 have been released. Would it go all the way back to the "Red Dawn" style divide Germany sort of bit Or would it work better like this mockumentary from ZDF. Where due to the East German government wanting to go hard line they don't have the wall collapse. Hardliners take over the Soviet Union just after Gorby visits East Germany for the anniversary of the GDR's founding. Just before Hasslehoff is up on the Wall singing for it to come down and it being pulled down. War breaks out because of mistakes by Bush foreign policy team and the Soviets leadership. Where it ends with full on SIOP on everyone. Basically Berlin crisis 1989.

Either the Red Dawn or the Berlin Crisis 1989 background seems to make the most sense to me as being playable timelines and not fully scuttling the background in what is mostly been published before for GDW modules. Which in turn ought to allow for the game to run well until the first series of errata get published and they start to see whether its worthwhile to pump out their own modules going forward.

2nd thought about this planned 4th Gen of T2K, the Merc 2k supplement. My friends and I played the heck out of this rule book and using V2.0 rules for most. We used the same characters we had for the core game but dropping the rads and having them all get out of active duty forming a private military corps that did operations around the world either "A-Team" sort of adventures or full on using the gazetteer and special ops book to have stuff like what was talked about the old Soldier of Fortune magazines we could find at used books stores near us for cheap.

I wonder how easy it will be to blend Merc 2k with this new planned rule set, since I could see that being a viable alternative time to come out so if folks don't want to do post-apoc. They could do a Great Depression/Great Recession style background with the same sort of characters and being guards to some archeology team in war torn ME and keeping the terrorists off them. Trying to pull off some hostage rescue of vacationers in some south seas island chain that pirates seized their cruise liner. If not something else from the news in the last decade.

Lastly, I cant remember where I read it if it wasn't in the designer notes of V2.0 Twilight 2000 or in the designer notes of 2300AD. That the folks at GDW gamed out WW3 thru to the 2300 time line. Said they used their own in house game rules, which I wonder if they used their own Third World War series of board games to play out the conflict. I wonder if the new folks would do something similar to game out the land conflict from when the war starts to when we end up on our own to help establish the background.

[Legbreaker]

I'm currently talking with a rep from Fria Ligan re the setting and how my work will integrate with what they're already done. It's still fairly early, but it's looking like the setting for 1st, 2nd and 4th will be basically compatible, especially outside the heavily detailed areas of Europe.
Now I don't know what they've kept the same and what they've changed as yet, but it appears they're sticking relatively closely to the 2.2 version where the Soviet coup succeeded.

Rule set is radically different of course, but that doesn't mean scenarios, background info, history and so forth won't be able to used with earlier rules, or even something totally different such as GURPS, Phoenix Command, D20 Modern, etc. I would think this would include Merc.

[Legbreaker]

This should answer a lot of your questions re 2300 http://stalexone.tripod.com/gg2/resources.htm

[Southernap]

This should answer a lot of your questions re 2300 http://stalexone.tripod.com/gg2/resources.htm

Sweet. Thanks for that nice bit of history.

[mcchordsage]

I'm curious! I hope the rules have sufficient depth and options for me to find engaging, while not really being very confident they well.

Still, keeping the 2000 time frame makes me interested. I discarded the base v1 and v2.2 timelines for my own anyway, so if I have to again no big deal.

Art's alright! The three guys walking in the rain's probably my favorite of the bunch. To copy some internet comedians, I saw the m/45 and I clapped.

As much as I dislike the low-prep/no-prep mindset, or the games it creates, older systems certainly don't encourage it. Laziness transcends rule sets. I've had plenty of bad GMs for GURPS, D&D (all editions), T2K, CoC, Star Trek, and Warhammer 40k who either didn't do their homework or did it in a way that contravened player ability to plan. When it works, it works great. When it doesn't, it isn't fun.

[langdolin]

My word.

I have played all three versions of this game and I have enjoyed them all. We have had to make and use house rules for all three. No big deal. I am excited and hopeful. I plan on supporting this edition as I did the third and the second and the first. Probably wont have a play group, but will buy into the Kickstarter.
So. Bring it already.
If you guys need play testers. Drop me line.

[Tegyrius]

I wish Scott Glancy was still posting here, because I think he's the only active industry professional registered on the board and I'd dearly love to see his analysis of this. Alas, it looks like he hasn't visited us for five years.

I own several Free League products, though life events over the past couple of years have left me without a local gaming group with which to test-drive them. Having read Coriolis, Tales From the Loop, Symbaroum, Forbidden Lands, and Alien, I am fairly confident that whatever we get will have first-rate production values. The writing in those products is generally solid, though there are some idiosyncrasies that I suspect result from ESL authors or editors. I will also note that their tagline for 4th Edition hints at their expertise in alternate-history settings. Tales From the Loop's tagline is "Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was," while for 4th Edition, they've chosen "Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was." I do not believe that was accidental, nor that it was lazy writing.

Having not actually played with any of those systems enough to find the edges of coherence, I can't provide detailed analysis as to their suitability for T2k. Generally speaking, though, I will note that with the exception of the Old School Renaissance movement, I am seeing current game design trends going for a lot more fast play over rigorous simulations. I don't think this is a reaction to the stereotype of younger gamers having short attention spans or expecting to be spoon-fed material (and seriously, guys, why not just complain about Millennials killing station wagons and fax machines while you're at it). Rather, I believe it's an acknowledgement that the core market for tabletop RPGs is middle-aged adults whose work and family responsibilities don't leave them the time for rigorous prep, whose gaming time is rare and precious, and who want the mechanics to not bog down the progression of the story when they do get to play. So while I am skeptical about whether Free League's house system will have the right tone for Twilight: 2000, I embrace the intent and will give them the benefit of the doubt.

As far as the complaints about representation that I saw upthread - if you have to complain about representation, I'm not sure anything you read on a gaming forum will change your mind. But people who are not middle-aged white dudes will be more likely to get into the hobby, and to stay in the hobby, and to keep supporting the hobby with their money if they see characters in the art, writing, and story options who are like themselves. In a hobby that was always a tiny niche, and which (apart from D&D5) is facing ever-increasing challenges from other entertainment media, we need all the new blood we can get. If you don't want women gamers, gamers of color, LGBTQIA+ gamers, or other gamers who aren't exactly like you at your table, I pity you, because I've been playing with those folks since Vampire: The Masquerade 1e in the early '90s, and most of the best roleplayers at my tables and LARPs have not been middle-aged white dudes. So if Free League wants to insert representation into 4th Edition, I will quite happily stand there and hand them the representation insertion tool of their choice while giggling at your whines of outrage.

- C.

[Targan]

Due to the system they're using, I have zero interest in the new edition for me personally. But I won't be trash-talking it on social media. I'm sure some groups will enjoy the new edition, and I hope it's a rip-roaring success.