4th ed T2K

[Benjamin]

SNIP


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To me there are ways to try and make a new TL work for Tw2k post 1991. That would be exploiting Yugoslavia. To drag Sweden, like what FL wants to do into the game it isn't that hard and I really think that you can take the 1991 coup and make it work. You can work the "Peace Dividend" in and still make the whole idea of the Twilight war work.

Not that it matters much but take this:

• 1991 - Coup occurs and Gorby is disposed. Hardliners come into play
• 1991 - Even with the hardliners in power the need to feed folks and get the economy that Gorby destroyed back up causes USSR to go internal for a while. PACT collapses and the Eastern Europe tries to come up to speed fast with democracy and capitalism. The cracks start to falter
  
  "Gorbachev didnt wreck the Soviet economy, communism did. Eastern Europe cant reform quickly because their industries are outdated and run down. It would take time and the Hardliners would never allow the West to move in and get economic control.
  
• 1992 - Clinton comes to power. With the collapse of Soviet Union. High off win in Iraq in 1991. Peace Dividend comes into effect in the west. Yet, the needs for the US to be the Hegemonic power starts to play. The US has troops in Somalia, Arabia, Korea, and the American Hemisphere. All while NATO scales back.
  
  "Clinton gets elected in late 1992 but doesnt oecome to power until January 20, 1993. Im not so sure about what NATO does. The Coup brings Hardliners to power...so what are these Hardliners hardline about Most likely economic reform will be reversed and sabres will be rattled concerning the status of Eastern Europe. Some European nations might reduce military spending but in many ways tensions will actually increase, especially as Jugoslavia falls apart. Either way no bailout money will be going into the Soviet Union from the West and the US economy can afford to be a hegemonic power as the USSR withers.
  
• 1992 - Bosina war starts. the USSR pledges military and financial aid to keep the Yugoslavia states together or at least to defend the Slavic peoples.
  
  "This will be another Afghanistan/Vietnam for the USSR at a time when they completely cant afford it. Its actually likely to occur given historical ties and Russian pride, but it wont end well for them even if the West stays completely hands off.
  
• At this point I think have the incident at Pristina Airport occur earlier, this starts to give a cause belli for the war in the west. Have the ChiComs decide that going after the Kamchatka Peninsula and its bases along with the traditional 1969 border crisis creep up again. Introduce an economic collapse of some sort that throws everyone into the doldrums, whether it is the 2008 Great Recession or not. So some see the rising Soviets at this point fat and flush with cash making communism work and capitalists go count trees.
  
  "There is no Great Recession in the works for the early or mid-1990s. The groundwork has already been laid for the economic boom of the 90s while the internet and housing bubbles were each 6-to-10 years away. That cant really be changed by a POD of mid-1991. Added to this the crime wave of the 1980s was abating. Global economic growth might be slower with a belligerent Soviet Union still around but its on its way. The Pacific Rim, where Soviet influence is minor will see its historical boom. Very quickly a stagnant Soviet Union will be left behind, even more than the Russia of our history.
  
• 1994 - The PACT comes back into play after the economy in the east falters. With the New Soviets promising to share their oil wealth.
  
  The economy in Eastern Europe was well past oefalters prior to the 1989 events. The Soviet Union has nothing to offer but oppression and Poland et.al know that. There is no oil windfall for the Soviet Union. Their infrastructure was a mess and without Western assistance and trade deals it gets worse. The Gulf War oil price spike lasted less than a year. After that OPEC moved up production quotas and the Soviet Unions oil industry would never keep up.
  
• 1995 - The PACT goes west after "reports" of NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia when IFOR fails to protect Slavs from genocide.
  
  If the Soviet Union moves into Jugoslavia there is probably no UN/NATO presence beyond Slovenia and maybe Macedonia. The Soviet Union still has a veto on the security council and at this point they would be loath to loose even more regional influence to the West.
  
• 1996 - To assist in securing the Northern Flank with war against NATO. The PACT invades Sweden to either allow for breakout of the Soviet Naval Forces in the Baltics or to attack Norway.
  
  "Sweden does little to secure the Northern Flank. They need control of the Northern half of Norway which might call for crossing Finnish territory but bringing the well armed Swedes into the war makes no sense for either side. Occasional illegal overflights might be a go but nothing too provocative.
  
• At which we take everything else in either V1 or V2 timeline to have occurred at some point after 1996 with the course of the war.
  
  "-This the general problem. The post Coup V2 timeline never made much sense but may have been reasonable given our understanding at the time of its writing. The V4 timeline on the other hand is crap.
  

MORE SNIPE

No offense is intended here; your ideas are far better than what Ive seen with V4.

Ive just gotten tired of the authors of oehistorical RPGs where the background setting makes no sense. Its one thing if your doing a Cold War setting with Vampires, magic or Cthulhu but T2K is oehard alternate history and should be written as such. The V4 timeline is a mishmash of teenage oemoar cool!, political axe grinding and downright ignorance of the Cold War era.

[Benjamin]

I'll upload it to Youtube probably tomorrow; I am playing AD&D right now.

Bill, I watched your Facebook video yesterday but couldn't comment. My IPad has issues with the Facebook video player.

I too like Stlenhag's "Tales From the Loop" setting, but I thought you were a bit too kind when you said it wasn't political. I found the follow up, "Things From the Flood", to have very strong and pervasive political undertones. To me it seemed very anti-capitalism. The entire Flood setting centers around consumerism and the high-tech wonders it spawned falling apart and leaving decay. There are also strong environmental overtones as well. Stlenhag is a wonderful artist be he and his setting are very steeped in euro-left political ideology. This doesn't mean I dislike the setting but I found "Things From the Flood" overly pessimistic and out of touch with the economic realities of the 1990s. Perhaps Sweden, still recovering from its socialist experience of the 1970s and early 80s was doing poorly in the 1990s but the rest of the West were doing quite well in the 1990s.

[It turns out Sweden had its worse economic crisis in over 50s starting in 1990. Banks failed and unemployment skyrocketed due to over lending. This obviously shaped the "Things From the Flood." but historically would not have held true for the US and elsewhere.]

As for the V4 TL I agree it's garbage and I feared this would be the case from early on. That's a major reason why I dropped out of the Kickstarter. Chris Lites has no filter on his strong political biases and the team at Free League were certainly not the ones who would be able or willing to reign him in. Either way it is what it is. Another version of T2K to strongly avoid.

[Olefin]

Good to see that I am not alone in thinking that the background, timeline and war events are garbage. And you are right about the political leanings of those who wrote the game. And you can see that Tomas has already posted on the FL FB page that there are no large scale US forces left in Europe and no "lines" to get back to

In other words this atrocity of a V4 release is 100% NOT TWILIGHT 2000 as we knew it and loved it

And the Free League fan boys, almost none of them actual T2K players, clearly are only looking at this as a game to spend a couple of evenings on and then go to the next game.

And yes I have had the Chris Lites experience - and he is everything that Legbreaker said and worse - and has a very definite political viewpoint

And Tomas told us that the Alpha would be changed form the original drafts we saw about the the total destruction of NATO and the US Armed forces that he said was just a draft, wait for the Alpha - and then out comes the Alpha and if anything its worse - and whats even worse is that comments that Tomas has made make it clear that his own writers arent keeping him in the loop on the Alpha - he just told me that only the 5th was supposed to be destroyed - I pointed out that Secret Handout said eight full Corps were assigned to Reset and the Players Manual clearly said they were all overrun and survivors running for the woods

[mpipes]

And Tomas told us that the Alpha would be changed form the original drafts we saw about the the total destruction of NATO and the US Armed forces that he said was just a draft, wait for the Alpha - and then out comes the Alpha and if anything its worse - and whats even worse is that comments that Tomas has made make it clear that his own writers arent keeping him in the loop on the Alpha - he just told me that only the 5th was supposed to be destroyed - I pointed out that Secret Handout said eight full Corps were assigned to Reset and the Players Manual clearly said they were all overrun and survivors running for the woods

If that is the case, then maybe Tomas will reign the idiots in and get a decent backstory in place. But then those pesky mechanics are a pile of poop also.

Just out of curiosity, what was the goal From what I thought many moons ago, they were intending the game to be mostly compatible with the previous editions....at least enough so that only minor tweaking would be needed. This pile of poop seems to want to kick hard core players - you know the guys that will shell out bucks for MANY follow on products for YEARS - in the crotch.

[Olefin]

If that is the case, then maybe Tomas will reign the idiots in and get a decent backstory in place. But then those pesky mechanics are a pile of poop also.

Just out of curiosity, what was the goal From what I thought many moons ago, they were intending the game to be mostly compatible with the previous editions....at least enough so that only minor tweaking would be needed. This pile of poop seems to want to kick hard core players - you know the guys that will shell out bucks for MANY follow on products for YEARS - in the crotch.

Frankly I dont see them putting out any follow on products except Frank's Madonna - this smacks of one and done - and not being there to support a campaign based game - which explains the total lack of the world at war and the lack of being able to play any character that is with NATO or even the other WP members that are clearly mentioned in the game

And you are right - this went from being a V2.2. update to a total rip it up and start over

Notice that the oil war which was a huge part of V1 and V2.2. is completely lacking here - no targeting at all of petroleum sources and refineries which the original game went out of its way detailing

[Jason Weiser]

Just re-read the entire mess of a background to make sure I got what I said right:

Ok, for starters Iraq and Syria allying to form this 'New United Arab Republic' Have they literally not studied any of the history of those two countries They cordially hate each other. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the Syrians gleefully cut Iraqi access to the main oil pipeline Iraq used to get its oil to the Mediterranean. This cost the Iraqis billions in lost oil revenue. Moreover, the Syrians were a major arms dealer to Iran. There is no way, not with Hafez Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein still in the picture that these two will ever cooperate on anything.

Next, The Sweden timeline seems like a torturous method to a simple goal: Get Sweden into the war. A little history serves well here too Whiskey on the Rocks anyone Considering the Soviets violated Swedish territorial waters and airspace all throughout the Cold War, why couldn't an incident be the catalyst

Finally, the writing on Page 143 is so vague, that even if Tomas is indeed being honest that he is only referring to the 5th Division being destroyed, then he should have made it clearer, this to me is bad writing and poor sentence structure.

Also, the strange occurrences in Sweden with military units and Parliaments disappearing, one has to wonder if this was a bad attempt at cross-marketing with Tales From the Loop

[Southernap]

No offense is intended here; your ideas are far better than what Ive seen with V4.

No offense taken. I was trying to make something work with the "Coup is successful" timeline and bring in some other major events from the 1990s that occurred. The only other way to make the "Coup is successful" work, is have the 1989 Berlin Wall crisis happen where the East Germans or the Russians go all Tienanmen Square on the protesters in Berlin and Gorby goes to "retire" at his dacha and then has a "medical" incident while on retirement.

I only brought up the great recession, idea was that there was a thread for a while in the early to mid 90s in various media from books to games. That assumed the absorption of Eastern Europe into the common markets might have caused the collapse of some economies due to migration of low income workers. That said, we can quibble about details all day long still we both agree that there are some good options from the real history that can provide points of divergence for the counterfactual.

[Legbreaker]

I am of the opinion we should all let FL crash and burn.

A few years from now another company picks up the title and, hopefully, looks at forums such as this, discord, FB, etc and sees where both FL and 93 went wrong and does better.
Really, it's not THAT hard is it Just take the 1st & 2.x timelines and clean them up a little, same thing with the 2.2 ruleset (yes, I know there's a lot who prefer 1st, but...) and boom, you've got a viable 5th ed that a) doesn't piss people off, b) is 100% compatible with the early versions and c) actually ADDS to the host of resources already out there.

[Olefin]

I am of the opinion we should all let FL crash and burn.

A few years from now another company picks up the title and, hopefully, looks at forums such as this, discord, FB, etc and sees where both FL and 93 went wrong and does better.
Really, it's not THAT hard is it Just take the 1st & 2.x timelines and clean them up a little, same thing with the 2.2 ruleset (yes, I know there's a lot who prefer 1st, but...) and boom, you've got a viable 5th ed that a) doesn't piss people off, b) is 100% compatible with the early versions and c) actually ADDS to the host of resources already out there.

And d) lets us build off the work of the past and honor it and go forward with the timeline but with improvements like an actual decent UK Sourcebook

[raketenjagdpanzer]

This is kind of how I felt when 4e D&D came out, insisting that things like Tieflings and Eladrin were "always" in various settings, including Greyhawk, etc.

[Raellus]

Admin Message

Although it's nice to have a place to vent, a lot of the discussion in this thread has been in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of our forum guidelines. Some of it has been downright nasty. I've let this go on for too long.

A little refresher is probably in order.

Keep It Civil

We can all agree to disagree but let's make sure to do so respectfully. No name-calling, sarcasm, or other childishness is appropriate or welcome here. If you are upset with someone and want them to know about it, send them a PM and try to work it out privately. If another member is really getting on your nerves, you can use the forum tools to place that person on your ignore list. We don't tolerate flame wars here.

Please don't attempt to incite internecine forum conflict with deliberately provocative and/or inflammatory posts. In interweb parlance, please don't be a troll.

Keep It Constructive

Folks post a lot of original T2K material here, most of it of the highest quality. Many contributors invite and welcome constructive criticism. If, however, they do not solicit feedback, then it's poor form to pipe in give it anyway. And please, don't post just to tear down the hard work of others. If you really don't like something that someone else has posted, and can't express this respectfully and with the intention of creating a constructive dialogue with the poster, then you should probably just keep it to yourself.

Keep it Apolitical

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So, to sum up, constructive criticism of v4 is appropriate and allowable in this thread. However, name-calling and trashing are NOT.

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[Legbreaker]

Pretty hard to be constructive when the foundation material is just soooo bad and the company responsible has so far shown very little inclination to actually listen to those of us who've already spoken up directly to them.

But, you're right. Insults, etc aren't going to help anyone.

[Raellus]

Pretty hard to be constructive when the foundation material is just soooo bad and the company responsible has so far shown very little inclination to actually listen to those of us who've already spoken up directly to them.

This comment is kind of what I'm talking about. Fair or not, this point has been made, ad nauseum, here and elsewhere. How is repeating it constructive

We've all had time to vent. Enough is enough. Let's try to move on.

But, you're right. Insults, etc aren't going to help anyone.

I'm glad that we agree on that, at least.

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[Legbreaker]

This comment is kind of what I'm talking about. Fair or not, this point has been made, ad nauseum, here and elsewhere. How is repeating it constructive

Hence my earlier comment about just letting FL crash and burn.

[Raellus]

Hence my earlier comment about just letting FL crash and burn.

Again, what's the point (of this comment) You said it once before. That's enough. Ad nauseum.

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