v4 Rules & Mechanics Discussion

[Adm.Lee]

https://twilight2000solo.blogspot.co...-part-iii.html

This guy has been running a solo game, and has his blog set up to show all of the die rolls with modifiers, so I think that's been a good look under the hood as the motor's running.

He started with v2.2 rules, then shifted to v4 as the alpha appeared.

[Lurken]

Yea, Drost is a real champ for showing how the mechanics work in v.FL. He did though modify a lot to make it closer to V2, like how encounters and gear get generated.

[Gunner]

Although I most definitely am in the negative camp, I DO WANT to hear from someones that have tried it out. Having someone that has actually tried some play time to chime in would be helpful. We all know that play testers are here on the Forum, so PLEASE SHARE.

So, I'm not a playtester, nor do I have any affiliation with FL (I work for the US Government full time as an "International Trade Specialist" (really, that's my title), so any side gigs with companies in other countries would be a BIG no-no

I've also had my complaints with FL's house rules, which I have expressed publicly. Reading their response, it is clear to me, at least, that they read my complaint and drafted a reasonable, thoughtful response. Admittedly, their response was, we're not going to change anything because of your criticism... In the end, they are the ones who put up the dollars / Swedish Kroner to buy the IP from Marc...

All of that said, I have generated close to 20 characters, using both Alpha systems (mostly Archtypes to save time, but I generated a few characters with the Alpha lifepath rules - I haven't had the free time to generate ANY characters with the Beta rules yet). I was pleasantly surprised with how the characters have turned out.

I have also solo'd four days (16 'shifts') of gameplay using the Alpha rules, with just a few 'house' rules, and have also been pleasantly surprised with how things have turned out so far. Unfortunately, I am a homeowner in the suburbs, so with warmer weather, more of my time will be occupied / wasted doing yardwork/housekeeping to keep the city off my back, so I'm not sure how much "free" time i will be able to devote to T2K in the short term...

[Olefin]

Although I most definitely am in the negative camp, I DO WANT to hear from someones that have tried it out. Having someone that has actually tried some play time to chime in would be helpful. We all know that play testers are here on the Forum, so PLEASE SHARE.

I have heard that more than a few of said play testers are not happy with the overall experience and due to NDA concerns are not chiming in. Fair enough. But there should be at least a few that can provide commentary perhaps in a more constructive manner going through some of the nuts and bolts of the mechanics. I've made my opinions clear on them, BUT perhaps someone that has been involved in actual playtime has a different take. If the NDA is a problem, then contact FL and ask them if it is ok and even offer to run anything you post by them first.

Have heard from play testers on my facebook group and no it isnt pretty.

[unipus]

I've been running a campaign for five players since a few weeks after the alpha rules came out. We've had to miss a few weeks, but we've done... 8 or 9 sessions so far

I'm happy to get into any particular aspect, but here's my general takeaways. We run this online, using Foundry (I also had to build a lot of this Foundry system myself, since it didn't exist, so I became very familiar with the alpha rules in doing that. An official Foundry system is also in the works).



THINGS I LIKE:

- character generation is relatively quick, but the lifepath system still offers some good opportunities to flesh out backstory on the fly. You can go in with very little idea of what sort of character you want to make and just by listening to the dice you can end up with a pretty convincing virtual person.

- the systems are by and large consistent and elegant. Once you get over the initial speedbump of the skill grading system and how the dice math works and all that, and learn how one or two of the travel activities work, you can pretty easily apply it to everything without slowing the game down. Furthermore, everything degrades gracefully using these concepts. Meaning, if there's some specific rule in the book, and you forget what it is, you're still likely to get a pretty decent result just from using the basic mechanics.

- combat feels "right." I'm not an infantry veteran, but I have a fair amount of training and experience in such matters, as well as general tactical know-how and a decent amount of hands-on experience with much of the equipment in the game. In this game, suppression works, flanking works, the difference between night and day feels good, and there aren't a lot of mall ninjas making one-shot kills all of the time. There are a plenty of meaningful tactical decisions to be made, and by and large it feels pretty complete. It is true that most characters (potentially even NPCs) can take several rounds before going down, in a way that's not necessarily "realistic" (easy to argue about around and around) -- but this has been true of past editions too. It is a game, after all, and it's optimized around ease of use more than table after table of results. It is nonetheless a pretty dangerous, potentially deadly system. A series of bad rolls can easily kill any character in the game at any time, as I have seen several times now. This has the desired effect. Any encounter can turn deadly very quickly. Weapons like .50 cals and 14.5mm are positively SCARY, let alone tank guns and autocannons!

- the game is not exceedingly concerned with gear. The level of detail given for differentiating one rifle from another, for instance, is just about right. The streamlined encumbrance system works well enough and is effective at getting to the point. The meaningful distinction between what you have in your combat load, ready to access, and what is stashed away in your backpack, works well enough.

- there are interesting and meaningful decisions to be made in and out of combat when it comes to pushing rolls, getting help from other group members, etc.

- the character-specific moral codes, big dreams, and buddy system work pretty well at driving narrative and/or creating conflict. They definitely work at encouraging players who may not be the best at roleplay with some easy hooks that are right there to play with.

- the rules as a whole are well-organized and indexed, the book is well laid out, and the design and art are both very good. The character sheets are clean and clear (although, again, we're not actually using these).

- the new solo section is great (although I think mistitled/misplaced). It's full of generators and tools that are extremely useful in any sort of game, not just solo play. Great tools for GMs to have that I have previously relied on other sources for. Since the beta, I can mostly just use what's in the book.

- the new homebase section is... a good start or basis for exploration. I think there's enough here to inspire some cool ideas and get you going, and even provide enough adventure hooks for a few sessions, but it still needs a bit of work or expanding. Whether that will happen officially in this release, no idea.



THINGS I DON'T LIKE SO MUCH:
- I still really, really think the game needed a few more skills. There are a lot of careers in the lifepath system that just don't have much going for them. Around 16 skills, instead of 12, would be sufficient to add the depth that I think is missing to many of the careers and some further character differentiation. As it is, there's a bit more skill overlap than I would like. Specialties are a nice touch, but they don't solve the problem.

- MGs aren't really as potent as they ought to be, and still feel like they're missing something to make them truly effective versus other guns.

- there are a bunch of edge-case rules for a lot of heavy weapons of different types. We haven't run into many of them, so they're a bit harder for me to keep track of it. I'm sure if you were using them more often they'd fall into memory pretty quick.

- combat can still be pretty slow. We run three hour sessions, and if there's going to be more than a very small combat encounter, I can count on it taking an hour or two of the time available. I still think this is faster than many games including older versions of T2K, but as I've gotten older it's just not what I'm primarily looking for in an RPG... I have tabletop wargames for that. But, it does get faster pretty quick with experience. The first fight took a looong time as I had to explain to everyone and we all had to learn on the fly. The second one was twice as fast. Some of this is software-related but some of it is not.

- the encounters included in the book are I guess about as complete as in most games, but I just don't love them for the most part. The playing-card system is not terribly fast in practice. Very often the encounters do not apply to whatever setting the characters are moving through, which is the game's way of saying "no encounter this shift."

- the cross-country travel rules don't feel quite right to me. Or rather, the speed of movement is too high, especially with vehicles. Even more specifically, the game permits you to move cross-country at a very high rate without putting yourself in extreme risk when it comes to encounters (you'll just face MORE encounters potentially, which isn't really the same thing). I don't think other versions have really accounted for this, either (it's frankly always been a problem that if your group wants to "get out of Poland and head west!" that you can do it potentially VERY quickly), but it's something that bothers me personally. The game uses 10km hexes for movement and I think if 5km hexes were used instead many of these problems (and others) would be resolved, but, so it goes.

- some of the vehicle stats are a little wonky, especially where cargo space and so on are concerned. Vehicles as a whole are a little more abstracted. I could maybe go for a bit more detail here, and the damage tables could use some work specifically. The game does list different rounds for, for instance, AP vs HEAT for vehicle guns, but it doesn't have any system whatsoever for penetration over range with AP rounds, or composite armors, etc so the distinction is kind of meaningless. I hope a supplement will address this, but again it doesn't really concern me much -- this is a roleplaying game and not a tank simulator. Tanks are basically a dragon that you can drive around, with just as much potential for unbalancing the situation in every direction.

- there's not a whole lot of info provided on what it's like to just exist in Poland. It's a few pages that just barely touches on history, geography, politics, and current situation. However, this is still more than can be said for at least 1st edition (and IIRC v2 as well).

- the included battle maps are unfortunately not really sufficient. There just aren't enough of them, and most of them are on much too small of a scale for anything but isolated urban encounters. I've used a few of them but mostly have had to make my own for situations at more reasonable engagement ranges. I am still hoping that they will provide a "mapmaker's toolkit" with all of the art assets available.

- the "scenario sites" are a good idea, but the ones included are all on the range from "a little goofy" to "utterly bonkers." I guess this makes sense as they are supposed to stand out immediately to the players and draw them in, and this is a world with extreme mental trauma after all... but... they're mostly just not my cup of tea.



STUFF THAT HAS DEFINITELY BEEN IMPROVED WITH THE BETA:

- travel activities. These have all been cleaned up and are much more consistent now. Some of the results have been changed to provide more reasonable values (ie, hunting). You're still not going to find a GDW level of detail for brewing up ethanol fuel or dealing with disease or a few other things. Those rules all exist, but they're simplified by comparison. Personally, I have zero issue with this; my table's interest is in keeping a story moving with plausible, ballpark results rather than spending 10x as much time making sure my burn rates are correct. Of course it wouldn't be hard to simply use 1st or 2nd edition values here for most stuff like this if you prefer.

- combat, in general. A number of oddities have been cleaned up and rules have been tweaked. Notably, ammo dice is an area that got some work that has implications throughout the combat system. Several suggestions that I personally made and have been using as house rules have been more or less officially adopted, which is nice.

- the background. I'm not going to say much about this because holy hell do I have zero interest in igniting that dumpster fire of a conversation again. But the revised background information is inarguably improved from the alpha edition and more than sufficient to get a good game going. As it is, I used a heavily modified version of the alpha version to kick off our campaign, and a lot of v1 details to fill in missing gaps as far as troop dispositions and so forth, and now find that the official current version has ended up in the ballpark to what I came up with anyway!

- the organization and layout of the rulebook has only gotten better. Still a few issues here and there but I am confident most of those will be resolved before it goes to print.



Probably plenty more I'm forgetting but this has definitely gotten long enough. Overall analysis: it's a bit lighter than previous editions, for sure. To me, that is not at all a negative. I don't really have the time or patience anymore for clunky, inelegant games. I'd say this version is without a doubt a more playable game than previous ones, emphasis more on game than on reference book.

[3catcircus]

Wow, go silent for a few days and I come back to fireworks...

I think everyone has a valid opinion regarding V4. The way forward, however, should be to determine for yourself if V4 is what you want to invest in and play. If not, just move on. Getting angry about it is you punishing yourself for someone else's mistake...

I've seen the alpha and have seen Year Zero. For me, they don't provide verisimilitude for a Twilight:2000 world. The idea of labeling die rolls with letters instead of just using the standard "dx" convention seems to add one more thing to the rules to have to remember for no good reason (Is "A" a d6 or a d4). The backstory is ridiculous.

But I'm not going to waste breath complaining about it. I'm spending my time with my preferred mechanics (T:2013) and backstory (v2.2 with modifications). I'm picking the rules I want and not worrying about trying to get some company who doesn't care about the pedigree of the title to produce something more palatable.

We can't bottle the same lightning. The real question is how long does FL hold the license If someone feels like its a personal insult that FL's direction for V4 is different than you were led to believe, vote with your wallet. It'll have a limited production, the licence can revert, and the rights can be licensed to produce a V5...

For those who like V4, they'll have it. It's a different game with different objectives. For those who want a different vision, that time will come. Meanwhile, there are a huge number of people who are generous with their time and creativity that still produce more things for the older versions of the game. Between the multiple versions that already exist, there are mechanics and timelines to choose from. I'm looking at future versions the same way.

[Black Vulmea]

Rename this thread "Opinions about FL's upcoming edition" and start another for "v4 Rules & Mechanics (new)". Setting appears to be the hottest topic, another thread for that one may be needed.

So far, this forum has been more civil than some others I've been on, and I'd like to keep it that way. It's been said that some of us need to blow off steam about the new setting, and this can be a place for it. Let's not blast someone unsuspecting with that steam.

There will be new players coming to the game from FL's new game, and I'd rather we didn't run them off with stereotypical gatekeeping. Confining the negativity to one clearly-marked place (where forum rules still apply) might limit that kind of damage. We've been welcoming to new players all along, let's please keep it that way.

I'll second this - this 'rules & mechanics discussion' is 90% noise, 10% signal, and while I understand the underlying frustration, could we have one vFL thread without the carping I hoped it would die down a bit by now so the few of us who'd like to kick the tires could do so without a constant chorus of, 'That car's a rip off! What a piece of junk!'

[Tegyrius]

From what I'm seeing discussed here and elsewhere, the new edition's complexity seems to be on par with that of the Savage Worlds engine. Can anyone with experience with both systems comment on their relative properties and merits I know Wayne of Wayne's Books fame recently converted his well-documented campaign from v2.2 to SW.

- C.

[3catcircus]

From what I'm seeing discussed here and elsewhere, the new edition's complexity seems to be on par with that of the Savage Worlds engine. Can anyone with experience with both systems comment on their relative properties and merits I know Wayne of Wayne's Books fame recently converted his well-documented campaign from v2.2 to SW.

- C.

While not directly familiar with Savage Worlds, it is considered in the rules-light end of the spectrum.

Here's a link to info on the rules: https://www.uptofourplayers.com/wp-c...ur-Players.pdf

[Black Vulmea]

It's a small thing, perhaps, but vFL should be freer with languages, particularly for starting characters. That's one area v1 did more to my liking.

As referee, I'd simply allow a character to take a reasonable selection of languages based on nationality and background - that includes Americans, who are more polyglot than many around the world may realize.

[unipus]

There's really no coverage of languages in the v4 rules at all, other than the Linguist specialty, which at one-per-language lets you attempt to pass as a native speaker.

For the default settings/campaigns I'd say ditching most language skills mechanics entirely works fine. Characters in my campaign are a mix of nationalities and backgrounds. But all of them have been surviving in Poland anywhere between their entire lives and 1-2 years. That's enough time that you'd have picked up a conversational level in the language. So the characters can all communicate with each other fine, and they can generally communicate with anyone they meet fine. It's only if they want to pass as someone else or communicate a very complex matter that it's an issue. Doesn't really need a rule; it needs good RP.

End up suddenly in a totally different place Well, now maybe we don't have quite enough mechanical fidelity to handle this. However, language mechanics in games have always been essentially tedious and un-fun. If it's not contributing to a good story that you can't communicate with anyone, and it can't be solved, then what are you even doing

[3catcircus]

There's really no coverage of languages in the v4 rules at all, other than the Linguist specialty, which at one-per-language lets you attempt to pass as a native speaker.

For the default settings/campaigns I'd say ditching most language skills mechanics entirely works fine. Characters in my campaign are a mix of nationalities and backgrounds. But all of them have been surviving in Poland anywhere between their entire lives and 1-2 years. That's enough time that you'd have picked up a conversational level in the language. So the characters can all communicate with each other fine, and they can generally communicate with anyone they meet fine. It's only if they want to pass as someone else or communicate a very complex matter that it's an issue. Doesn't really need a rule; it needs good RP.

End up suddenly in a totally different place Well, now maybe we don't have quite enough mechanical fidelity to handle this. However, language mechanics in games have always been essentially tedious and un-fun. If it's not contributing to a good story that you can't communicate with anyone, and it can't be solved, then what are you even doing

I'll just say this. I've been traveling to Japan for years. I've picked up a half dozen phrases (ordering food and beer, buying train tickets, etc.). The rest of it I'm lost. Spain I picked up a lot more of it more quickly because I had taken the language in school, but even then nowhere near proficient enough. Unless there is a roleplaying reason to pick up the language, I wouldn't have any hard and fast rules on what is or isn't "enough" immersion to be fluent.

[Raellus]

It seems like a major oversight to omit language "skill" in a game where your PC is likely to start off as a stranger in a strange land. I wonder what the designers were thinking. A Linguist ability or skill could be a cool mechanics idea, if designed well. Some people really do have an ear for languages, and can pick them up more quickly than others. But that also seems a bit narrow conceptually. There are plenty of people who pick up a new language less out of innate ability or affinity for languages, but more out of pure necessity. Immersion has long been considered the best teacher of new languages.

People can start to pick up a new language simply through of sustained exposure (by the same token, one can lose a non-native language when one is removed from an environment where it is frequently spoken). I used a house rule in the T2k games I GM'ed that all characters started with at least 1 "free" skill point in the primary language spoken in the country in which they started the game (usually this was Poland, so all characters started with at least 1 SP in Polish; Polish PCs got on SP in Russian, given the large presence of Soviet military personnel in-country).

If I ever GM again, I think I'll change the house-rule for 1 SP in the language of the host country per year (or close enough) spent in-country. So, if an American soldier spent 3 years in Poland prior to the start of the campaign, they'd get 3 SP in Polish; instead, if they spent a year in Norway, a year in Germany, and a year in Poland, they'd receive 1 SP in each of those three languages).

-

[CDAT]

It seems like a major oversight to omit language "skill" in a game where your PC is likely to start off as a stranger in a strange land. I wonder what the designers were thinking. A Linguist ability or skill could be a cool mechanics idea, if designed well. Some people really do have an ear for languages, and can pick them up more quickly than others. But that also seems a bit narrow conceptually. There are plenty of people who pick up a new language less out of innate ability or affinity for languages, but more out of pure necessity. Immersion has long been considered the best teacher of new languages.

People can start to pick up a new language simply through of sustained exposure (by the same token, one can lose a non-native language when one is removed from an environment where it is frequently spoken). I used a house rule in the T2k games I GM'ed that all characters started with at least 1 "free" skill point in the primary language spoken in the country in which they started the game (usually this was Poland, so all characters started with at least 1 SP in Polish; Polish PCs got on SP in Russian, given the large presence of Soviet military personnel in-country).

If I ever GM again, I think I'll change the house-rule for 1 SP in the language of the host country per year (or close enough) spent in-country. So, if an American soldier spent 3 years in Poland prior to the start of the campaign, they'd get 3 SP in Polish; instead, if they spent a year in Norway, a year in Germany, and a year in Poland, they'd receive 1 SP in each of those three languages).

-

There are also some of us who do not have an ear for languages. Over a seven year span I was deployed over five of them to Iraq, most of the time working closely with the locals. At the end of that how much of the local language could I speak One word, now I am probably an outlier but my first deployment of just over two years we only had one guy who did not speak it before we got there (one was born in Iran and left with the fall) who could speak half a dozen words and he was trying to learn it. I also suspect that you would be a bit more motivated in a TW2000 situation than what we were in, however some are very hard to learn with out a teacher.

[unipus]

Probably if you were stranded in a foreign land and everything was collapsing around you, you would be both more immersed and also far more motivated to learn.

Also, Polish and Russian are not easy languages, but they're not Arabic.

Anyway, for me it still just comes back to this: are rules for language fun or interesting To me, they can be -- but they're usually just a drag. What would be more fun and useful, I think, than a bunch of rules on language would be a section of a GM's guide all about interesting situations or reasons why you might bring language aspects into your game.