4e What happened to the rest of the world?

[Ursus Maior]

Again, a few sentences here and there in the old core books were certainly not enough to actually run the game in any other part of the world, so how much does it matter As a GM you were still pretty much (wait for it) on your own. Unless you waited patiently for modules and got lucky and you had been hoping to run a game in Iran or Appalachia or on a submarine or something.

Put this in the context of pretty much any other game and it starts to seem like a pretty silly demand.


But yeah it's pretty clear that FL has a plan, but they also have a lot of pots on the stove and not enough bandwidth to get it done in a very expedient manner.

THIS. We're customers of a niche product at the very beginning of the product line. We all. I hope, knew that from the beginning. And the fan base wasn't exactly hard to please so far. So why throw us something quickly cobbled together. It wouldn't be worth anybody's time or money.

[Olefin]

From a company's point of view, putting out a small document that just gives facts and dates is probably the worst decision one could make. There is literally zero chance that anyone would like the content 100 % and recommend it. It's just fluff with no stats and game stuff and it is something no referee will use as is. The timeline given was already met with so much vitriol, it just shows this would be a colossal waste of time and money for FL.

Plus, most groups will use Poland and Sweden as their setting. Other countries in far off places hardly influence what happens there. And for Europe you get the basic facts: WW3, nukes, Soviets fighting NATO and former WP countries. Stalemate. Operation Reset. NATO fails liberating Eastern Europe. Post-collapse. Go!

Look at it this way: If you'd picked up the game in '84, what did you get

1995: China fights USSR. The USSR gets supported by WP states, because everyone's a good commie.
1996: West Germany starts WW3 while annexing East Germany while the NVA just watches. WP declares war on Germany, except for Romania, who find an ally in Yugoslavia. NATO comes to Germany's rescue, since NATO is now in business of wars of aggression; except France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece, because people speaking non-Germanic languages are apparently the only ones with a clear head.
1997: Greek and Turkey finally go to war. Italy violates Austrian neutrality, because backstabbing lunatics is now everyone's game. Meanwhile, Germany actually wins against the USSR, so they Commies go nuclear. Everyone joins into that game.
1998: France and Belgium start shooting refugees. Since everybody has been at it for 2 1/2 years already, divisions are now down to 50 %. Apparently, Germany could levy new combat effective divisions still by 1945, after 5 years of war, but by 2000 suddenly they forgot that every male above the age of 18 has had either training as a soldier or in civil defense, police, firefighting or healthcare. Italy is really successful as is Greece. The US break de facto apart over a refugee crisis. Mexico invades the US. Yugoslavia invades Hungary, despite Italy having occupied Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, while Greece annexed Macedonia. Unclear what's left of Yugoslavia by that point except Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegowina.
1999: The US break apart even further. Europe stabilizes, because everyone's dead.
2000: Thinking that stability is bullshit, NATO wants to go for another round, fails miserably over getting its hands on a "turn back time" MacGuffin and now is worse off than ever before.

Meanwhile, I'm adopting stuff from 1E and 2E for my campaign, but boy am I glad FL isn't putting out anything like these 6 pages from 1984.

You actually get a lot more than that - which is what Chico is showing with his day to day breakdown that he is posting. It gives you exactly what is needed to know what is going on elsewhere enough that a GM could have taken that information and played the game elsewhere with at least some confidence that he or she was following canon. And they have quite a while to come up with a basic timeline - and two major reference works that detailed out the whole world in the V1 and V2.2 sourcebooks as well as things like the RDF, Howling Wilderness, East Africa and the Korean book that they could have used to come up with how the events in Europe affect the world.

So you dont have to start from scratch - you can go thru and easily do a nice concise timeline that shows what is going on elsewhere. Plus that is called knowing your base and your target market

Those timelines and details mattered a lot to the core T2K market - thus you make a point of it to get that right in your release. As for them being a small company - so what They were offered and turned down multiple offers by people to assist them in the launch - heck coming up with a plausible timeline is part of what both Raellus and I had to do with our stuff - and Frank is working with them and could have easily assisted them.

And the timeline they did come up with for events in Europe really needed help - if you have issues with V1 at the least they didnt send over 500,000 reinforcements and then suddenly forget they sent them over like FL did in their timeline.

So again - basically if you only want to play a limited campaign in Central Poland and Sweden then who cares about timelines. But if your players are like "this is getting boring what about the rest of the world" then you are going to have a major issue with basically the rest of the world barely being mentioned.

[unipus]

Moving on... maybe you have your answer here Raellus

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60257080

[Ursus Maior]

@Olefin
You're confusing the boxed core sets with the full canon of 10 years or so of publications for 1E, including a golden era house magazine. What Chico posts is not what's in the core set. I went through those six pages today for my post.

[Raellus]

Keep it On Topic, Keep it Constructive

Ok fellas, let's get this thread back on topic. There's no point in whinging about Free League did or didn't do regarding a global timeline. Heffe's OP was an entreaty that we, the community, create something in the absence of an official product release, not an invitation to complain that there hasn't been one yet.

I'll start.

Moving on... maybe you have your answer here Raellus

The more I think about it, the more I believe that 4e should feature a Soviet-PRC alliance- at least, that is, for the first couple of years of the war. I'm a big-time fan of the v1 timeline, but it always struck me as improbable that the Soviets could fight a multi-front war against the bulk of NATO and the PRC and do as well as they did. With the combined military power of NATO and the PLA, the correlation of forces is just too stacked against the Warsaw Pact. Add in the tech gap (NATO's tech superiority), and the situation almost beggars belief.

That's one area that I think the 4e timeline could actually improve on the v1 timeline.

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[Tegyrius]

Timeline development should always take into account the desired end state - in other words, what do you want the game world to be like at the "today" of the game, the time in which campaigns are occurring It seems that FL has chosen to have a world that is slightly less devastated than in previous editions. Witness the presence of a working A-10 in one of the boxed set's random encounters, and the implication that this is an uncommon but not exceptional occurrence.

- C.

[Spartan-117]

Timeline development should always take into account the desired end state - in other words, what do you want the game world to be like at the "today" of the game, the time in which campaigns are occurring It seems that FL has chosen to have a world that is slightly less devastated than in previous editions. Witness the presence of a working A-10 in one of the boxed set's random encounters, and the implication that this is an uncommon but not exceptional occurrence.

- C.

This is one of FL's more 'unusual' choices IMHO. A-10's fly, but personal and group equipment is dramatically scaled back from previous editions. 1/6 of all PCs start with 1 spare magazine only.

In 1st edition, "Each character begins the game with a set of fatigues, combat webbing, a rucksack, and a personal weapon."

Even if a 1st edition PC ended up with 1 month of Time in Combat (not sure this is mathematically possible) and are also enlisted, they would a 500 equipment allowance and could purchase 5x 280-round cases of 5.45mm/5.56mm ammo at a cost of 100 each, representing almost 47 full magazines of ammo.

Personally, I'd like to see more balance in this area for 4e games. 2013 handles this well with group equipment rolls for a wide range of useful options (animals, food, fuel, support weapons, vehicles) plus individual selections equal to weight allowance to preserve player agency and support PC concepts.

That's the gold standard in my opinion. 4e tries hard with the 'group gear' concept, but gimps the PC equipment so much that character concepts suffer unnecessarily and group gear gets allocated to things many PCs should probably start with.

[Raellus]

I prefer the more spartan starting gear allowance of 4e. IMHO, v1-2.2 were too generous with kit. It never really made sense to me that a soldier cut off behind enemy lines after a failed offensive (involving traveling quite a ways from the start line to arrive at Kalisz) would start play with 47 full mags (or most everything else starting allowances could buy). Granted, I haven't actually played 4e yet, so maybe it's not that fun to start off with so little, but it seems a lot more realistic to me.

Since this thread is about world-building, if we continue this discussion re starting gear, let's move it over to Mechanics & Rules:

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=6517&page=3

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[Heffe]

Heads up that I'm slowly but surely building a timeline spreadsheet for what's contained in the ref manual. I figure that will be a better starting point for understanding the canon timeline's impact on individual nations. I'm up to '97 so far - I'm hoping to have it complete enough to be able to share sometime in the next two weeks or so.

[Olefin]

@Olefin
You're confusing the boxed core sets with the full canon of 10 years or so of publications for 1E, including a golden era house magazine. What Chico posts is not what's in the core set. I went through those six pages today for my post.

I am also talking about the very extensive world building that is in the V2.2 sourcebook - there is enough detail there to be able to play anywhere in the world - ie gives good basic info and better yet the information on the British and French militaries lets you create characters in other countries that based their militaries on those countries - for instance Uganda or Tanzania or Djibouti as I did when I did the East Africa Sourcebook

[pmulcahy11b]

I agree with your post generally, but I think that the Sovs would invade Iran to use as a gateway to Iraq and its oils, then that they would attempt to invade (or more, roll over in their thoughts) Kuwait Saudi Arabia, the and the UAE and Gulf States. Meanwhile, Iran does have decent reserves of oil and gas (IRL, sanctions are preventing most of that oil and gas from getting out into the world), and it could serve as a base for their operations in the Gulf.

So they thought. Sounds simple, right (After all, we're the Soviet Union, and we have troops and equipment up the wazoo!) The Iranians were not simply going to roll over, and it took a lot more effort to pin down Iran. They are still suffering both small and large partisan attacks from Iranian freedom fighters and Iranian Army members gone native. And in pinning down the Iranians as best they could, Iran turned out to be more of a meat grinder than they expected.

In my T2KU, the Gulf War happened. And ever since then, the US and several of the Coalition countries maintained a decent troop presence in Kuwait, Saudi, the UAE, and the Gulf States. And while the coalition has their own problems with insurgents, they were able to being enough troops and equipment to bear to stop the Sovs cold just north of Basra. That effort cost the Sovs and the Coalition a lot of vehicles; the armor battle north of of Kuwait was larger than the Gulf War's 73 Easting.

So now, both sides are nursing their wounds after other Sov-Coalition battles, and each has their own problems with insurgents and groups who would qualify as terrorists. They largely use their remaining vehicles for special missions, their aircraft for very special missions, and their fuel. The Coalition is doing decently, but the Sov commander has nightmares every time he closes his eyes. And both sides are stuck in the Middle East; both sides know it will be a long time before they go home, and there is precious little communications to the US, Europe, or the Soviet Union.

I also have a blurb in the B-52 section of US Bombers that B-52s were known in the Middle East for their 24-hour nonstop bombing of Baghdad, levelling the city. Might have to remove that, though.

[pmulcahy11b]

Make V1/2.2 section

Many of the latest posts are for V1.2.2, including mine, and this is a 4E folder. Could a moderator pull out the V1/2.2 posts and put them in their own directory, perhaps. :batting my eyes:

[Ursus Maior]

The more I think about it, the more I believe that 4e should feature a Soviet-PRC alliance- at least, that is, for the first couple of years of the war. I'm a big-time fan of the v1 timeline, but it always struck me as improbable that the Soviets could fight a multi-front war against the bulk of NATO and the PRC and do as well as they did.

I second that and have had thoughts in a similar direction. This is something that's even scary probable today (as of news today). By the 1990s, Western industries want to expand into China. It's a win-win for everybody and China absolutely needs the tech transfer and the commerce. But what, if they have better alliance with the USSR than historically with Russia, since the USSR is no paralyzed, but an actual actor on the world stage

Tech transfer from the USSR and some from the West combined with the raw production power of China could not only end in the PRC become a powerhouse, but also deliver the USSR the masses of equipment it would need for the Twilight War. It could answer the question "how" in another way, too: If China starts grabbing land in the Pacific - not speaking about an invasion of Taiwan or South Korea, just fortifying islands in the South China Sea, like today - that'll alert US and UK and distract them somewhat from Europe.

[Heffe]

I agree that the PRC joining with the USSR would certainly explain a lot of the wonkier bits in the 4E canon. Regarding South Asia, I do wonder about India and Pakistan, but I imagine both nations would have blown themselves to bits.

One area Im really struggling with in the Refs manual, at least in the timeline, is Yugoslavia. Theres no mention of Yugoslavia or the nations that followed its collapse.

What do you all think, would Yugoslavia still have collapsed in FLs timeline

[Ursus Maior]

One area Im really struggling with in the Refs manual, at least in the timeline, is Yugoslavia. Theres no mention of Yugoslavia or the nations that followed its collapse.

What do you all think, would Yugoslavia still have collapsed in FLs timeline

Yes and I absolutely see this as one of Europe's flashpoints in 1997.

The fragmentation of Yugoslavia started around Tito's death in 1980, but was not just related to his death, though he was a unifying force for the country. Since the 1970, economic growth throughout the country came paced very differently. Something similar can be said for the idea of a unified state, which changed a lot with the new constitution of 1974. The constitution ended in Kosovo becoming an autonomous province within Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia arguing for greater autonomy and Serbia taking the most unitarist stance. To make matters worse, Yugoslavia by the late 1980s was economically failing. So much, that the Reagan administration feared Yugoslavia might enter the Soviet bloc to save its economy. Austerity was the word of the day and that didn't sit well with the richer states of the country.

De facto, Yugoslavia was a confederation after 1974 and then the economical factor hit full force. Croatia and Slovenia were the most developed and industrialized federal states within in the union. In 1987, public opinions in Slovenia saw better economic opportunities for the state outside a Yugoslav union than within. At that time, communism lay on its worldwide ideological deathbed and when the USSR was visibly breaking apart - being the world leader in communist matters - the idea of that being a goal to aim for in Yugoslavia, was just evaporating. As the USSR was softening up on power and started talking to Yugoslavia again, the West stopped pouring so much money into Yugoslavia, but the USSR couldn't compensate. So matters grew worse fiscally and that added to Slovenia and Croatia wanting out of the republic. It didn't help that Serbians began driving an evermore rhetorically nationalist course and Milosevic became president of Yugoslavia after going on record with the sentence, "[a]t home and abroad, Serbia's enemies are massing against us. We say to them 'We are not afraid. We will not flinch from battle'" in November 1988.

In January 1990 the communist party more or less imploded and multi-party elections were held the same year. The Slovenes held an independence referendum the same year and Croatia followed on 2 May 1991. On 25 June 1991 Slovenia declared independence and Croatia followed the same day. Slovenia made it out within ten days, but Croatia was more complicated, because there were larger parts of the country where Serbians lived, who in turn declared splitting off from Croatia in December.

So, even before the August Coup changes history of 4E, Yugoslavia is de facto broken up, having lost Slovenia completely and seeing fighting during the Croatian War of Independence.

What happens after late 1991 in 4E Yugoslavia is open for speculation, of course, but I don't see the USSR acting very differently for at least two years than Russia did. It seems, they wouldn't have been powerful enough to intervene in any large way. With communism hopping of the deathbed in 1994, after the death of Gennady Yanayev and Vladimir Kryuchkov taking over, the USSR might intervene more actively. Honestly, I don't see them automatically becoming allies of Serbian led Yugoslavia, because, while the Russian-Serbian bonds werre historically strong, Serbian nationalism wouldn't necessary play well with the USSR: Serbians emphasized their Orthodox Church a lot again and that's not in the interest of the USSR. But should Milosevic approach the USSR and propose a deal like "we downplay nationalistic and religious tones for weapons and peace troops", I could see the USSR meddle with that.

Of course, the West by then was active in the Balkans as well. IFOR wasn't a thing until 1995, but by 1994 this looked like it might happen. The USSR might want to join in on stabilization, albeit with its own agenda. Similar to the 1999 incident at Pristina airport, there might something like that in the winter of 1996/1997 at Mostar airport. With the Soviets already actively fighting in the Baltics, they might try to grab Mostar airport. Who knows, maybe the Italian, Franco-German and Spanish forces behave a lot like the US and British did at Pristina, but maybe they also buckle and let Moscow have that airport for Soviet troops to pour in. It might throw oil into the fire for what happens later that year and convince President West that the US need to be swift, decisive and hard in their response to the USSR invading Poland and other former Warsaw Pact countries.