v4 Rules & Mechanics Discussion

[swaghauler]

Yep, the mechanics were a dealbreaker for me from day one.

Are they using the 3 sets of different D6 dice to represent Attributes, Equipment, and Skills like in the Mutant Year Zero game, OR are they using the "growing dice size mechanic" (where a D6 becomes a D8 or a D10) like in Forbidden Lands game

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I guess I'd have to ask WHY there is an "ammo dice" mechanic at all Are we as gamers getting so lazy that we cannot keep track of basic supplies in lieu of a dice mechanic in a game where "resource management" is one of the key features That seems like some lazy game design to me.

In general I have to say "Yes".
It appears that many gamers today do not want to do any book-keeping (or at least, they want it to the bare minimum). Keeping track of consumable supplies like food, water, ammo, fuel, etc. etc. is not something they want to bother with and allegedly, some players have complained that such book-keeping interferes with playing the game!

This came up most recently for me when I was part of Clockwork Publishing's revival of Dark Conspiracy. I provided some optional rules for body armour degradation and was told, in essence, they weren't likely to be needed because players do not want that level of granularity.
Oh the irony...
The fact that a player/GM of that specific game was providing those optional rules was completely lost on them.

That was not the only instance, when it came to the forms used to keep track of ammunition that were provided in 1st & 2nd editions of Dark Conspiracy, we were told that they probably would not be included because the chief designers felt they were not wanted by players. Ammo expenditure should, apparently, be managed by the GM if the GM is concerned about it, (as if the GM doesn't already have enough work to do!)

So "yes" many of todays players are so damned lazy that they expect to do little and still be rewarded for it.

[wolffhound79]

Does anyone else get the feeling this is basically Twilight 2000 LITE. It remind me of a OS D&D board game where you pic the character, add some gear and a vehicle and talk to each other about doing imaginary things until you get killed, horribly disfigured, or just bored of the game and play something else.
It doesnt in my opinion give you a vested interest in playing a long term campaign.

A few of the charts are interesting gives me more ideas for a chart i was working on for scrounging.

Im still trying to figure out the use of artillery in this game mechanics.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Does anyone else get the feeling this is basically Twilight 2000 LITE. It remind me of a OS D&D board game where you pic the character, add some gear and a vehicle and talk to each other about doing imaginary things until you get killed, horribly disfigured, or just bored of the game and play something else.
It doesnt in my opinion give you a vested interest in playing a long term campaign.

Personally, I've found that what you've said applies to every Free League game that I've ever seen.
I've mentioned elsewhere that it appears the people who like the Free League game rules are quite happy with this, they don't seem interested in campaigns at all. They play one Year Zero game until they get bored of it then ship over to another Year Zero game. They get bored with that one then move to the next etc. etc. until they're right back to the first game.

[Rainbow Six]

Does anyone else get the feeling this is basically Twilight 2000 LITE. It remind me of a OS D&D board game where you pic the character, add some gear and a vehicle and talk to each other about doing imaginary things until you get killed, horribly disfigured, or just bored of the game and play something else.

Yep. I think it's becoming pretty evident that we (as in those of us who have been playing T2K for years and appreciate - if not expect - a fair degree of realism) are most definitely not the target market for this game.

[Southernap]

Character Generation issues

Okay, so looking at the alpha rules on character generation. I have some issues and wonder if anyone else noticed them as well.

If we don't use their 9 archetypes to play the game. Then you have to use the life paths. The rules as written doesn't have a character generation worksheet included to walk through this path, unlike what GDW did for us in V1 and V2.

So here is where I have an issue with the life path method.

1. There is only 4 major nationalities to pick from right now. Swedish, US, Soviet, Polish. There is a reference to a local militia; but that means nothing since the game is set in Poland or Sweden. Where are the Germans, the British, Danes, Czechs, Ukrainians, Latvians, etc. Basically, where is the rest of Europe Heck at the most why not include the Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Baltic States at a minimum

2. Everything seems to be a D6 role to start with, based on that A-D attribute skill roll. Why not just say, roll a D6 or D12 to get this score If the little attribute score chart isn't on the Ref's screen. It will be flipping back and forth too much to roll up my character.

3. Why the roll for the childhood on 1D6 well after one has filled out their attributes. That seems particularly silly, since I might have tanked one of my attributes scores that would give a reason for my skills. I am also troubled by the forced taking of skills via dice roll. It works in Traveller rules because you can at least select a broad category to roll in for skills that at least gives you some control. The way FL has written it, you have no control unless the GM allows you to make changes to what skills you want to pick.

4. The entries into the careers. I understand this is alpha and they are fairly generic. Yet, you only get a chance to pick one of 6 skills based on the career choices that I see. In addition it appears they made officer a separate category of career for the military paths. When it should have been pick a military path and if your attributes are B or better all across three of the categories then you can be combat arms and an officer or Special Ops and and Officer. With maybe a pair of 2D6 rolls for skills.
Similarly, their breakdown of the "Intelligence" civilian career field has the career path of "Assassin", which I am sure seems cool; but it also seems very Pulp novelist like. Also, why not have a similar path of "hit man" in the Crime field
The whole thing for the civilian career paths makes no sense.

5. Aging rules seem overly complex. Why not just say that each term is 4 years like before So you go from 18 to 22 to 26 to 30 and so on. By saying roll 1D6 for aging. Then roll again against the number of terms that I have completed to figure out if I have lost some attributes. If you do it this way from the start, then you could be figuring attribute loss on a 24 year old PC. I mean I know I probably was starting to lose something at 24, but I didn't feel it when I compared myself to being at mid 30s or even now in my mid 40s. The chart that was standard in V2 (page 24 of that rule book) made it very simple. They then want you if the war doesn't break out to add three years to your age. Seriously.

• Aging starts at 18
• Then roll a 1D6 to age your character
• Then add three years to that current age if war hasn't broke out
• Then roll 1D6 and if you roll <current number of terms you lose an attribute score by one step
• Then add three to your score.
  ************************************
• So lets play this out. Start at 18. Roll 1D6 and I get a 6.
• Now I am 24 years old. Roll 1D6 and get a 3, so no attribute loss
• Roll 1D8 to see if war breaks out. Recieve a 2. No war. Add three to my current age.
• Second Term starts at 27 (since 24+3 is 27). Roll a 1D6 and I get a 1.
• Now I am 28, roll 1D6 again and get a 1. Now I have to lose an attribute At 26 That makes no sense.

Again this is all being done without a worksheet for character generation like V1 or V2 offered. This should be simplified way down to either 3 year or 4 year terms to make the math simpler. With again the effects of aging starting at either a specific term or a specific age (say like age 34 or term 5)

5. Trying to figure out the hit capacity and stress took me a while. Their example wasn't clear. It appears the rules have you take one of the attribute types die size + another attribute die size. Average them together (say Attribute B and D, which is 10+6=16. Divide by 2 to find the average is 8) then divide that by 2 to get the half of that number (or 2 if I am using the example). Why not make it simple math and say "add attribute scores together and find the quarter of that sum"

6. The unit morale, moral code and dreams and the other fluff listed on pages 16 and 17 of the Alpha players manual means nothing. Where are the contacts that used to exist That gave my GM more meat than how I fell into how I ended up playing with these guys or what my big dream was I mean in one of my games using the old V2.0 rules. We had a player who created a Russian. That joined up with our team while we were in Norway. He wanted to get away from the boomer and the all the other mad Russians, he wanted to get to Montana and marry a fat prairie girl. He happened to have known one of the submarine crew members as a contact from before the war that gave us an in for allow him in, after our GM and this player rolled off some skills with each other. That is the way it should work, besides you should have a little notebook, or at least the GM should, that has the PCs and some of that information so the GM can craft adventures which pull at the motivations of the characters. I can see all manner of things going wrong with this idea of the moral code and unit morale. This isn't DnD where you can have a chaotic evil player near a lawful neutral player and the absolute chaos that comes from them butting heads. This is a game where everyone is together trying to survive and get home or to some form of a home and survive. The boundaries of morals and ethics will be tested by the GM about trying to maintain a shred of civilization and sanity.

Similar the unit morale means what exactly That can't be initiative since that is a 1D10 card draw (wait why card draw, why not a 1D10 roll). It is dependent on the highest command skill. What if no one has a higher command skill than 1 Scrub the skills sets none of them offer a "command" skill to start with unless you create an officer or a civilian manager.



At this point, I am just lost with the character generation and it seems as if the rules are forcing the players to use specific archetypes and to have groups setup specifically with certain mandatory roles filled like some computer games mandated you needed to have a thief, tank, cleric, magic user.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

<snip>

6. The unit morale, moral code and dreams and the other fluff listed on pages 16 and 17 of the Alpha players manual means nothing. Where are the contacts that used to exist That gave my GM more meat than how I fell into how I ended up playing with these guys or what my big dream was

<snip>

Because a number of the games made these days seem to be about "muh feelings". They give players a lot of opportunity to force their own narrative into the story without any regard to the story the GM is trying to tell. They focus a lot on a character's personal feelings but never seem to give any purpose for this, other than to supply unthinking players with some sort of motivation for playing the game - "If I don't have a Role, how do I know how to play my character"

[Legbreaker]

Character generation was tacked on towards the end of the writing. Initially it seemed they expected you'd play a pregen archetype. Really, the "life path" system in the alpha is perhaps 2-3 months old, and I'd be very surprised if it's had much (or any) testing.

Same thing with non-US, Soviet or Swedish nationalities. Original draft background mentioned NATO a grand total of 4 times.... The VAST majority of it read as if it were purely a Soviet vs US war with Sweden in the middle and quickly taking the US side.
The rest of Europe was an afterthought.

[Olefin]

I don't like these mechanics. They're derived from the Year Zero rules that Free League uses as the base for all their games (as far as I am aware). They suit episodic, non-campaign style games and I've seen a particular trend among fans of the Year Zero rules that seems to bear this out.
They will play one Year Zero game until they get bored with it and then they'll start up a new game with a different Year Zero game. When they get bored with that one, they ship over to the next Year Zero game until they complete the circle and come back to the first game.

I don't see any longevity in that approach, it seems to me that they are simply playing the game to kill time rather than to follow the journey of their character.
I'd rather play RIFTS with all the problems of its hashed together AD&D mechanics because at least I can expect the game to last more than a few adventures.

I agree with you both on the mechanics of the game and of much of their fan base - too many said great game five minutes after it came out - which shows that they really arent sold on the campaign and character aspects of the game - which is what is needed for actual long term commitment by both the players and GM's - and which will be needed to sustain the game beyond the initial launch - especially if they are depending on fan content to sustain the game with perhaps one "official" release a year or every other year

The rules and mechanics just dont feel right - much prefer V1 or V2.2 to this - its too derivative of their other releases and not really a Twilight 2000 release as to the mechanics

[Olefin]

Character generation was tacked on towards the end of the writing. Initially it seemed they expected you'd play a pregen archetype. Really, the "life path" system in the alpha is perhaps 2-3 months old, and I'd be very surprised if it's had much (or any) testing.

Same thing with non-US, Soviet or Swedish nationalities. Original draft background mentioned NATO a grand total of 4 times.... The VAST majority of it read as if it were purely a Soviet vs US war with Sweden in the middle and quickly taking the US side.
The rest of Europe was an afterthought.

"There is only 4 major nationalities to pick from right now. Swedish, US, Soviet, Polish. There is a reference to a local militia; but that means nothing since the game is set in Poland or Sweden. Where are the Germans, the British, Danes, Czechs, Ukrainians, Latvians, etc. Basically, where is the rest of Europe Heck at the most why not include the Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Baltic States at a minimum"

You can see that clearly about the rest of Europe as there is not anywhere near the level of information about other countries that was in V1 or V2.2 - even the rank names are missing. And the information about characters from other countries that is in V2.2. is a glaring omission here - hell they could have just lifted that straight from V2.2 without much effort

Its like all the cared about were the Swedes, US, Soviets and Poles. For instance the French fought against the Soviets here in this war as did the Belgians - but there is literally zero information to create French and Belgian characters or about their weapons. And the Dutch are part of the forces that get overrun in Poland as are the Belgians - so there is a very good chance to run into them or generate Belgian and Dutch characters - but no information provided for that.

and there are Germans and Brits also in the forces overrun in Poland - and absolutely zero on how to create German and UK characters - who make up the lions share of the NATO forces that would be fighting against the Soviets

And like I said - that can be done quite easily just by adapting the V2.2. rules - which should be part and parcel of their release and not something that the players and GM's have to jury rig.

[Olefin]

Yep. I think it's becoming pretty evident that we (as in those of us who have been playing T2K for years and appreciate - if not expect - a fair degree of realism) are most definitely not the target market for this game.

That matches up with comments I have seen from Tomas and others - i.e. that this was NOT a release for those of us who have played the game and loved it - this was pretty close to a one shot to add to their list of games - but not something they plan to back as GDW did.

They are depending on fans to write new material for them - and then they basically gave the old fan base the finger with how they wrote the mechanics, character creation, etc.

And how can you have a game that features an invasion of the UK and have almost no information on British characters

This game needs to be aborted right now, scrapped and re-written from the ground up - keep the artwork and lose all the rest

FYI my ideas of fixes -
Scrap the character creation section and lift it right out of V2.2 including the info on other nations militaries.

Scrap the timeline and war background entirely, fire Chris Lites and find someone other than Frank Frey who hates Republicans and the US Army in general for military background (read their FB and you can see what I mean).

Remove all the political crap and making the Republican president look like a war monger who somehow authorizes all kinds of nuke strikes all by himself. Their is no room in the game for politics of one persuasion or another.

Whoever wrote the Secret handout needs to talk to the Player Manual writer and fix it because Tomas himself thought only the 5th was destroyed but the two releases clearly say that all forces assigned to RESET are overrun and destroyed - which means eight Full Corps just in Poland alone.

Add the weapons and vehicles that the UK, Germans, Dutch, Belgians and French would be using.

Add the ability to created UK, German, etc. characters.

Make the war into an actual world war.

Or just do what needs to be done, fire the writers, keep the artwork, scrap the Alpha and try it again

[mpipes]

Same thing with non-US, Soviet or Swedish nationalities. Original draft background mentioned NATO a grand total of 4 times.... The VAST majority of it read as if it were purely a Soviet vs US war with Sweden in the middle and quickly taking the US side.
The rest of Europe was an afterthought.

Yea, its just way too Sweden centric, and its gone from a world war to just a big regional war that only rages in Sweden and Poland and maybe the Czech Republic (at least till the nukes fly). Not believable in the slightest to ANYONE with a modicum of military knowledge.

I think that is what is bothering me the most; the guys that wrote this stuff have no real knowledge of the military outside a documentary or two. If they go back to the drawing board, they need a military consultant of some type knowledgeable of the Cold War and the respective plans of NATO and the Soviets. This just looks like it was written by some college dweeb that found underwater basket weaving challenging and whose source material came out of the Kremlin. It fairly reeks of, not just anti-American bias, but also anti-NATO bias.

[Olefin]

Yea, its just way too Sweden centric, and its gone from a world war to just a big regional war that only rages in Sweden and Poland and maybe the Czech Republic (at least till the nukes fly). Not believable in the slightest to ANYONE with a modicum of military knowledge.

I think that is what is bothering me the most; the guys that wrote this stuff have no real knowledge of the military outside a documentary or two. If they go back to the drawing board, they need a military consultant of some type knowledgeable of the Cold War and the respective plans of NATO and the Soviets. This just looks like it was written by some college dweeb that found underwater basket weaving challenging and whose source material came out of the Kremlin. It fairly reeks of, not just anti-American bias, but also anti-NATO bias.

AMEN

Keep the artwork - ditch the rest

[pansarskott]

To be fair, V1 doesn't have that much info on non-US military. Weapons in use by other countries, and languages spoken. A list of Soviet republics. No non-US ranks at all (which V4 has)


V 1 Play Manual:

Players may choose to be Americans or Europeans, at their option. Since all armies practice considerable local recruiting and have picked up deserters from the other side, a U.S. unit could contain virtually any nationality. However, it is recommended that at least half of the unit be American. Europeans, although they are with the group, are not technically in the U.S. Army; the unit is technically under the command of the highest ranking American, despite the ranks of any European characters.

A person from Europe would call earlier versions very USA-centric. It all depends on the perspective.

[Olefin]

To be fair, V1 doesn't have that much info on non-US military. Weapons in use by other countries, and languages spoken. A list of Soviet republics. No non-US ranks at all (which V4 has)

V 1 Play Manual:

A person from Europe would call earlier versions very USA-centric. It all depends on the perspective.

V1 - NATO sourcebook provides all rank info, weapons, other NATO countries
V2.2. has an entire section in it the details other countries, weapons, ranks, militaries, how to roll up characters etc..