ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

This is probably irrelevant to most people, but a 44 gallon drum (UK)/55 gallon drum (US) holds 200 litres which roughly equals 200 kilograms of potatoes.

I'm a bit torn on the humble spud. They are extremely energy dense food and don't really deserve to be termed "wild food".
(An empty 44 weighs 20kg)

[ChalkLine]

Ahh, I should have added this:
Paul lists this:

Drum, 200-liter: Normal steel or aluminum drum, though plastic is becoming available. Weight: 10kg; Price: $30 (V/V)

I would add:
Rotary Oil Drum Pump: Pump for dispensing fluids from large drums. Weight: 2.0kg; Price $50 (V/V)

[ChalkLine]

Iso-Butanol, the fuel that acts like T2K "alcohol"

Iso-Butanol is a biofuel under study that is derived from agricultural waste. It has a whopping 98% efficiency of that of gasoline and it doesn't even use the high-sugar feedstock like sweet sorghum or beets that modern bio-fuels use. It needs a fermentation-distillation system that uses some odd microbes, the infamous E-Coli stomach bug is one, and it needs some finicky kit to make. It's still in the experimental phase (this is actually great news for the world, it doesn't even use the edible parts of the food).

Now, a few of us have never been comfortable with ethanol-methanol fuels for the simple reason is they don't work the way they do in the books. Ethanol has a very high burning temperature and needs to be mixed with other fuels to lower it. Methanol has, to use the Australian idiom, bugger-all energy. Neither fuel has nearly enough energy to run a vehicle or frankly you'd see everyone cooking fuel now.

So, for those OCD people such as myself you can consider that the iso-butanol revolution came early. As the war ground on the fuel crunch hit and one side or the other introduced the fuel and the other side quickly caught on and did likewise. Specialty brewing/distilling kits were issued to the troops and these are the "stills" we see in the game.

If you don't like having that sort of high-efficiency fuel around simply rule that the kits the troops make and the microbe stock they have access to is less efficient.

[ChalkLine]

A possible menace for the T2K battlefield.
Now illegal since 1995, blinding lasers were developed but not fielded by all the powers.
If you're feeling brutal here's some ways they work that are more involved than you might think.
There is no protection against blinding lasers that still allows you to see.

[ChalkLine]

Horses (yet again)

Many months ago a poster here brought up the brilliant point that there wouldn't be all that many horses in Poland and probably not enough for cavalry units. I did some "research" since then and found that Poland actually had several state horse studs and Polish race horses were an important vector of western funds. In The Second World War these studs were moved east and then south for safety to save them from the Germans. They did actually fall into their hands but it seems obvious to me that this would probably happen again. The obvious upshot of this is that horse units are raised in the east and sent west using Russian and Polish breed-stock. This saves them from the worst of the chemical warfare. Similarly cavalry units in NATO are raised from French and Spanish stocks (if you ignore the stupid French stab-in-the-back theory) and are moved east and this is where the horse studs are.

Now, this all might seem useless trivia but it does give us some useful information. Cavalry units after the general collapse might even furtively trade across enemy lines for instance. Also horse stocks are rife for raid-and-capture and a scenario of troops raiding across the Oder to grab mounts if your supply line to your mount resupply collapses.

As we've discussed earlier horses actually do not run on grass. If you want grass-fed horses you need something on the order of seven remounts per trooper as horses are rested. Cavalry work is hard going for horses and historically in pre-modern armies fodder took up the bulk of logistical space as horses need high energy feed. There's also the annoying thing that horses won't graze in strange territory after dark even if fodder is their supplement. This gives you in idea of why horses with their higher land speed don't cover as much ground as infantry; horses move more quickly but for a shorter time. Also if you're running a cavalry game then unlike in the infantry game clean water becomes an issue. Horses drink about 30 litres to 50 litres a day, we can say 30 litres if resting and 50 litres if working. This water has to be clean. So a careful scouting route has to be made and water sources reconnoitred.

Although we tend to think of cavalry as just a few guys on horseback and maybe a packhorse or two, in an actual unit this will be different. The best example of this is going to be European cavalry units serving in the Second World War. For scenario and campaign ideas here's a Lone Sentry article on soviet cavalry from the early 1940s.

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/cavalry/

[ChalkLine]

Group Morale

Panic in Twilight 2000 2.2 relates to wounds and incoming fire and this is an example of personal morale.

Group morale is the behaviour of groups to events and situations. Player characters are not effected by group morale in standard games but non player characters do not have this luxury.

Normally, a unit's morale is based heavily on its leadership. Well indoctrinated, well-rested and well-fed troops with good leaders are capable of surprising accomplishments. Unsure, tired and starving troops with poor leadership regularly break at first contact. They will flee if possible or surrender if it is not. Often they will not even fight at all. In their desire for self preservation they might discard their weapons and anything else that hinders their ability to run at top speed. Leadership also incorporates many other aspects of group character and leadership figures often help shape unit behaviour in many situations, but that's getting a bit complex for this post.

It would be onerous to have to roll for every individual NPC constantly during a fight. Instead GMs should think on the following aspects before the encounter to come up with a sort of unit character to understand how they will react during combat.

- Leadership (if any)
Troops under an effective leader have the morale rating their leader has and this is why leaders are primary targets. Leadership usually but not always is equivalent to rank, however actual leadership roles have been found in very low ranking members of units. This aspect is brittle, troops that have a significant difference in NPC quality such as Novice troops under a Veteran leader often break when they become aware the leader is out of action.
- Training.
The four NPC levels depict training and the acclimatisation of the individual to combat and campaigning. Very experienced troops might be reduced to Novice morale if they are ill, disillusioned or fearful. Training has a strong influence on reaction (see below)
- Condition.
Hunger, thirst, fatigue and similar conditions sap the individual of their will to fight. Sieges frequently are resolved when troops simply lose the will to continue fighting due to privation.
- Indoctrination.
The level of commitment to fighting comes from how the soldier sees the situation and the information they are given about the fighting. Many things influence this and these include exposure to formal and informal indoctrination such as political training or propaganda or rumours and biases. Fraternisation strongly effects the will to fight and soldiers who have had friendly relationships with the enemy frequently refuse to fight at all.
- Circumstances
A catch-all category that influences the group and individual. For instance troops that have traded with the enemy might assume they will be given good treatment if they surrender. Troops who have been engaged in atrocities might assume that surrender will mean abuse followed by execution (although even at the last moment troops often choose surrender knowing this will happen to put off death for a short time). If a strong position is to the rear troops might wish to fall back towards it or if reinforcements are nearby troops might fight on knowing help is at hand.

All these modify the following hard fact:

The vast majority of troops do not attack at 10% casualties, retreat at 25% casualties and flee at 50% casualties.

Humans are not D&D orcs and only very rarely fight to the death (this is really a player character thing). These events are so rare they are nearly always noted in the history accounts. When morale fails there are three major human reactions that follow in decreasing order: Flight, Freeze and Fight. These reactions become Retreat, Surrender or Last Stand. Highly trained individuals have this retrained to Fight and Retreat through various means. Anyway, this is very rarely group behaviour. Note that most military operations deliberately give equal size units escape avenues as last stands can cause significant friendly casualties out of proportion to their operational gains.

Morale Failure Reactions:
As there's little if any evidence for group minds morale tends to fail in a smaller section of the unit and rapidly spread. Isolated individuals under pressure, flanks struck from the side, lower quality troops witnessing a leader's fall or capture often break first and then other members of the unit become aware of it and lose morale as well. While some leaders or sub leaders can salvage the situation and rally the troops on the spot what usually happens is some sort of reduction in fighting capability is managed. This can happen over and over during combat. One flank can start to fall back which requires rallying and shoring up while another sector comes under pressure. Troops can press forward and then stall or fall back. This sort of behaviour brings realism to T2K fights that are often lacking.

Player Leaders.
Using all this lets the players take the roles of battlefield leaders in unit actions. GMs should consider the nature of the led troops, the behaviour of the player leader and situation. Some troops might respond well to a brutal player leader while others might not. All these factors should give dice modifiers to the Leadership skill roll. All-or-nothing rolls should be avoided (as in all things) and excellent rolls should give excellent results and only-just-failures should not mean the troops run for the hills. Careful managing of the Condition, Indoctrination and Circumstance aspects relating to the troops can give bonuses while neglecting them can give adverse results. Note that heavily indoctrinated troops might misbehave when not under a leader's immediate control.

[ChalkLine]

Does anyone use dirt bikes in the game
I'm a motorbike rider myself and I have to say I'd rather not be riding a dirt-squirt around World War Three Poland. Not only are they pretty noisy but they have fairly limited carrying capacity. They don't even have the illusory armour of a humvee in which you can at least crouch down in the back and hope they don't see you. It also takes all your hands and feet to control the thing. Yes, I've seen people shooting things off bikes but let's be honest, you can't do it in life and death fighting. When people use them to kill people in cities the pillion passenger does the shooting.
The only use I can find for them would be for getting around inside the canton with and you can use a pushbike for that. If you scout with it you'd better make damn well sure you didn't miss an enemy on your next bound.

[ChalkLine]

I put a few thoughts down about something, added a bit and then bit more and I sort of got a bit carried away. 3,000 words later . . .

Here's a combined Soviet-Polish unit to chase the characters around. Not actually bad people, however they want that intel document you have and they're determined to get it.

[ChalkLine]

Leaving France in NATO

If you do away with the kinda dumb France stab-in-the-back-legend you can have the falling out between France and Germany anyway. In this scenario French troops have trouble with German forces and displaced persons as they start to carve out cantons (just like everyone else, it's just seen in a different context). Perhaps rumours are starting that the supply lines coming out of France and Spain also have stuff going back and the Germans feel they're being strip-mined of assets.

If you do have this you can move the non-German, non-British and non-US troops (the only NATO troops in T2K really) up to the gap in the line towards the southern German-Polish border. Sooner or later these troops are going to want to go home for stabilisation work and you can either leave them in place for some good multinational NATO colour or have their cantons deserted as they pull out and make for their respective territories.

This opens up some more backstory. Instead of the French Perfidy you can have NATO thrust right back across the French border in some places at some times and thus whole swathes of German territory have WarPact troops still in place, living off the land and looking for a way out now that their strategic reason for being is gone. Soviet plans might involve linking up with these isolated units and if you're doing Going Home these units might present a problem for the fairly quiet section of getting across Germany.

This also gives you a far greater political angle. When the collapse starts national character is going to figure heavily when it comes to unit cooperation. Does a French unit really want to go to aid of a German unit when another French unit is in danger Most of the time they will but this strain will steadily mount and the players might have to navigate a national political minefield of competing requirements. Also they can play each off each other, like if they're pulling out and some unit demands all their equipment but a nearby unit is prepared to be far more equitable if they pass through their territory instead (and do that little job for them the PCs don't know about yet).

[ChalkLine]

Russian Shotguns

(This kinda doesn't fit for Poland games but I add it if your PCs ever get into ex-USSR territories)

While we generally tend to assume that every soviet citizen had a Kalash in the cupboard that really only applies to the post-soviet breakdown period. Of course soviet citizens had to undergo mandatory conscription so the idea that these trained individuals should have easy access to rifles was something the soviet authorities weren't keen to allow. Thus Russia had strict rules on rifle ownership, however shotgun ownership was common for hunting and as such were often used in places were rifles would be used in the west. This meant Russian shotguns usually had rifle sights and also rifled slug and heavy dart ammunition were not uncommon.

These slugs, darts and sabot rounds were varied and grew over time. Russia also adopted the plastic shotgun cartridge early and constantly refined them. Here's some of the basic slugs:
Brenneke Slug: Actually a German design, this was quite common in the 1960s to the 1980s. As an enormous amount of these were in circulation it's likely some would still exist.
Polev Slug: Designed in the 1980s, this is a complex plastic shell slug purely for big game. There are several variations but these were not in use in the Twilight Era apart from the first. The actual slug looks like a honking great pistol bullet and has the same damage potential as a big game rifle.
Mayer "Turbinka" ("turbine") Slug: Another from the 1960s, this slug is similar in some ways to the US Foster Slug in having a forward weight bias for stability. Notably a turbinka can be home-made if the sophisticated moulds are available however careful mixing of the slug material is important for bore life and accuracy.
"Udar" ("strike") Sabot Round: A sub-calibre round with serious armour penetrative ability and range. Originally a specialist round for government use it soon became a sought-after black market item for hunting and no doubt for settling the odd personal grievance.

Now, when it comes to Russian shotguns the name "TOZ", "Tulsky Oruzheiny Zavod" or the Tula Arms Plant is as easily recognised to a Russian as Winchester or Remington is to an American, it is a TOZ shotgun that will be on the wall or behind the door. TOZ made a plethora of civilian weapons and I won't list them all but I will note the most widespread shotguns.

TOZ-34 is an under-and-over double barrelled shotgun, 3.00kg
TOZ-66 is a side-by-side double barrelled shotgun, 3.00kg
TOZ-87 is a semiautomatic, 4 or 7 shot shotgun, 3.20kg

[EDIT]: Note that there are lots of Russian hunting rifles and in some very curious calibres, I'm just posting these as they are so common. Please don't think rifles were totally banned, it was just harder to get a licence for them.)

[ChalkLine]

(Summary: arctic troops should eat double)

Another nuclear winter is rolling in on my players and soon the winter whites will be part of the dress code. As it's going to be a long hard winter with even more famine and nutrition deficiency illnesses I thought I might make a few notes here about climate and food.

Firstly, modern westerners have different bodies to twilight soldiers. Since the 1970s our body fat content has doubled due to our modern food types. This layer of energy-rich insulating fat will be much missed by the troops who have been primarily eating potatoes and dog meat for over a year. They are lean and stringy rather than buff. You can see the average perfectly fit, healthy and enduring soldiers today that would be categorised as "moon faced" in former wars.

Twilight 2000 has us surviving on terms of kilograms, an annoying metric but useful for kit purposes. The net says one MRE is 1250 calories, well below the daily requirement for soldiers in tropical environments (3300 calories). Notably this number is for 1947 and is more presentative of twilight 2000 conditions. This is considered bare survival level and just above a starvation diet. Realistically twilight 2000 troops should binge occasionally and build up a body reserve, especially before it gets cold.

So, winter rolls in for Poland and the normal temperatures vary where you are. but -5oc is the common bottom temperature. However we've thrown nukes about with MAD (pun) abandon so we could probably expect temperatures to hit -15oc regularly. Note that this is a best case Nuclear Autumn. I can see really horrid blizzards rolling in off the Russian Massif going well below that. Don't forget wind chill lowers the temperature from -5oc to -30oc and even just slowly moving in a vehicle adds the minimum amount.

So what will the troops be eating

The gold standard for arctic weather food intake is 4400 calories per day. We could argue that as a game mechanism that we could use double standard twilight 2000 rations of 2500 calories per day but I think this is being fairly lenient. 3750 calories, or triple standard rations, is actually more likely for troops who expect to be outside and active. Twilight 2000 life is hard, grinding work with little sleep and constant stress.

[ChalkLine]

So, your party of military hillbillies straggle into a Polish village short on fuel and food.
However, when they get there they find the locals aren't willing to trade. Their spokesman demands the group instead redeem the hundreds of Military Payment Certificates (MPCs) they'd been saddled with during a period of former occupation, reducing them to a poverty level even lower than elsewhere.
Of course the group can't pay and the sullen villagers send a runner to report the group to a local OTK outpost while being nice to their faces.

(In Vietnam the locals would regularly get saddled with MPCs, a form of military scrip designed to keep high value US dollars out of the Vietnamese economy and ruining it. These would regularly be changed over on secret "C Days" to a new type, ruining the local people who didn't understand and were kept in the dark on how the currency worked. After a few times of this they tended to join the Viet Cong and attacks on bases after C Days were frequent.)

[ChalkLine]

The Polish Government in Exile

When NATO goes over the border in the Twilight War they can't just rampage around in Poland without good reason, those things just aren't done (legally). So, they have to be invited in, and to do this they need a power that asks them to and this will be a hastily created "Government in Exile" (GiE) which of course will be instantly branded a "Puppet State" by the Polish People's Republic (PPR).

To be honest, political scientists get very cautious naming these entities because there's a whole lot of moral bias going on, the best description I've seen for them is a "Nominally Sovereign State". These can be as free willed as The Free French Government in The Second World War to something as blatantly controlled as one of the many Imperial Japanese puppet states*.
Usually these powers are complex and change stature frequently, at first supportive and then suddenly becoming obstructive. Like any political entity it may only partially be concerned with military rationales as they have to consistently tread a fine line between excusing their allies and appearing to be a puppet of their military guarantors.

However, in role playing terms it's first and foremost important to say that the PPR are going to hate these people with an incandescent fury. Not only are they to them national traitors but in communist terms they are also class traitors. They are everything a communist Pole is going to loathe, and seeing them fight alongside those who nuked, gassed and plagued as well as bombed their own country makes them implacable enemies (their own allies doing the same might be treated with a bit more lenience, what the average Polish survivor thinks will vary widely).
So, when the US 5th Infantry Division (Mechanised) goes under the first thing that is going to happen is a lot of unpleasantly harsh questions are going to be asked of the POWs about the 1st Polish Free Legion and where they are, what their strengths are and what their support is. Also are going to be some uncomfortable questions about who in the civilian population supported them. These questions aren't going to be asked by the Polish People's Army but rather by the less restrained political authorities.

It will be priority one for Polish PPA troops to engage, destroy and then capture any 1st Legionnaires. Note this will probably clash with Soviet war aims which will be to encircle and destroy NATO main force units. PPA troops will be extensively indoctrinated before engaging rebels to whatever levels are locally possible. If possible political troops will be integrated with PPA units to enforce discipline and deter desertion. A classic problem for political operations such as these is troops allowing rebels to escape because they can sympathise with them even if they don't agree with them.
Historically soviet forces avoid these operations but if they see the need to join in they will use the usual soviet method of ensuring success: overwhelming force. Unlike local troops soviet troops will see no problems with encircling and annihilating rebel units as a method of enforcing political orthodoxy (believe it or not but NATO will generally act in a similar way on their side of the border). World War Three is an ideological war fought for ideological aims and this means ugly ideological operations.

So, where does this place player characters First off, Polish and Soviet players are at an even more increased risk than normal. Deserters who go over to the other side are always treated badly, and switching sides in an overtly political war even more so. Communists officials have historically treated traitors harshly and while Stalinism is over forty years dead at this time the very fact there's a war on means that all sides will be run by hardliners.

Secondly, there will have been vestiges of the GiE here and there right across Poland. These people will most have left with retreating troops but a portion of those that remained will have survived. They may be operating as Stay Behind Troops or Partisans. Note; don't expect normal military aims from a partisan group or any other paramilitary group. Quite often their operations have more to do with group dynamics than any coherent military aim. Of course many partisan groups are brave and dedicated people.

GiE officials may want to try and create enclaves in the desolate Polish rear areas. These cantons will draw military activity like honey draws flies. The players may well understand that eventually someone will inform Lublin for whatever reason and then the hammer will fall, Lublin is likely to tolerate the Black Baron far more than a GiE hamlet.

GiE offcials and infrastructure can be a help to the players. If they've had a series of awful rolls, bad outcomes or simply rotten choices then blundering onto a hidden GiE base can be a godsend. These are good plot devices because they can't keep the players too long or they'll draw attention, especially if the players have the usual gaggle of clapped out vehicles along. A GiE base can be rife with intrigue, betrayal and other drama the players can blunder into. Factional struggles, petty personal squabbles that blow up into existential threats and other threats abound. These are even more likely than the usual tiny village problems because of the massive overreaction that Lublin has for these groups so they have to maintain the utmost secrecy. Lublin is, of course, well aware that they are out there and has dedicated specialist TKO units that exist solely to root them out and destroy them.

Some missions that these groups give in exchange for their help can be at odds to the strictly military or survival orientated tasks the players are used to. Tax gathering (everyone loves the tax man! Not.), persuading villages to switch sides, drawing off inquisitive government forces, hearts-and-minds ops and some of the weirder Vietnam-era operations are all possible. The players might be happy to get on the road again.

Finally, traces of this organisation should be rife, even if they are grimly negative. Bodies strung up from lamp poles with placards on them remind the average Pole of who is really in charge, and usually it is Lublin. Some average Poles may be on the road because they made a bad choice out of two bad options in some situation where both sides demanded loyalty. Informers realise that both sides are willing to give precious food or security for information and that there are denunciation networks available to them.



(*I try not to use recent examples for obvious reasons)

[ChalkLine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polish_cheeses

'nuff said

[ChalkLine]

I haven't really gone into it but is the 5th Infantry Division's doomed ride even possible logistically

The supply lines don't seem to make sense and they sort of would require rail transport to shift the tanks and other heavy equipment. I don't even think the trucks could actually be moved on the alcohol possible to the unit.
Has anyone ever had a look into this

If it does require a higher level of logistical support it means the collapse the players see is happening really fast as everything just falls to pieces. This kinda follows the historical maxim of "everything varies with time and place" meaning the 5th Infantry division collapses logistically at the worst time when the Soviet units are looming over it.

Another thing that's always made me wonder is "where is the massive supply lines of the Soviet 4th Guards Tank Army" I know a few logistical units are mentioned but they are nowhere near enough for a unit that's just powered across Poland. They also should be following rail lines now I think on it.