4e What happened to the rest of the world?

[Heffe]

I'm not sure why your comment was addressed to me, but I'll respond anyway.

To send reinforcements from CONUS to Europe, or bring US soldiers back home, one wouldn't necessarily need any military transport ships at all. Civilian merchant ships of all sorts could, in a pinch, be used as troop transports. One would only need enough warships to escort said civie transports to and/or from Europe.

I don't think anyone is claiming that no civilian shipping exists in the 4e T2kU.

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Certainly there would still be a small modicum of civilian shipping happening - just not enough to make a serious dent in the collapse or enough to ferry large numbers of men and equipment. That canon piece about international shipping coming to a standstill, at least in my mind, mainly refers to large bulk container ships and oil tankers. The global shipping industry is going to be locked down by lack of fuel, lack of personnel, lack of repair parts, and fear of being sunk by hostile forces. Smaller outfits probably have the means to move around, though even they would be suffering from lack of adequate access to oil and spare parts, even if they still have the manpower available. That said, some enterprising and risk-taking small merchant captains could probably end up doing quite well for themselves indeed, so long as they stayed below the radar and stayed in friendly waters. That actually sounds like a great start to an adventure.

[Olefin]

I'm not sure why your comment was addressed to me, but I'll respond anyway.

To send reinforcements from CONUS to Europe, or bring US soldiers back home, one wouldn't necessarily need any military transport ships at all. Civilian merchant ships of all sorts could, in a pinch, be used as troop transports. One would only need enough warships to escort said civie transports to and/or from Europe.

I don't think anyone is claiming that no civilian merchant shipping exists in the 4e T2kU. I'm confident that at least a few naval vessels would be available for escort duties, even as last as 2000.

The question is, is the fuel for said ships- civie and naval- available

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I was replying to your comment earlier in reply to my USN posts - sorry I should have just made it a general post

One question about fuel may be more is there fuel in Europe - i.e. its great if you can ship stuff there but you need to get the boats or planes home too or you are not going to be able to keep up any supply effort for long

[Heffe]

I was replying to your comment earlier in reply to my USN posts - sorry I should have just made it a general post

One question about fuel may be more is there fuel in Europe - i.e. its great if you can ship stuff there but you need to get the boats or planes home too or you are not going to be able to keep up any supply effort for long

One of the issues is that the only relevant verbiage here is incredibly vague.

"When the smoke clears, the US has obliterated the Soviet navy [in the Atlantic], but suffered huge losses in the process. President West has lost his capacity to ship more troops and equipment to Europe - as well as the ability to bring the forces already there back home."

Does this mean the US doesn't have enough ships to carry large amounts of troops/equipment That they don't have enough fuel That the men operating the ships have lost contact with command That their morale is so low that they're simply unwilling to risk further trips

It could be any or all of those reasons. Or something else entirely.

[Raellus]

+1

Certainly there would still be a small modicum of civilian shipping happening - just not enough to make a serious dent in the collapse or enough to ferry large numbers of men and equipment. That canon piece about international shipping coming to a standstill, at least in my mind, mainly refers to large bulk container ships and oil tankers. The global shipping industry is going to be locked down by lack of fuel, lack of personnel, lack of repair parts, and fear of being sunk by hostile forces. Smaller outfits probably have the means to move around, though even they would be suffering from lack of adequate access to oil and spare parts, even if they still have the manpower available.

I agree wholeheartedly. ↑THIS↑ is a crucial premise of any T2k timeline. It explains why US military forces around the world are dwindling by 2000, and presents a major challenge to any PCs who must cross an ocean to get home.

That said, some enterprising and risk-taking small merchant captains could probably end up doing quite well for themselves indeed, so long as they stayed below the radar and stayed in friendly waters. That actually sounds like a great start to an adventure.

Indeed.

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[Spartan-117]

Twilight 2000: Free Trader.

I feel like there's another GDW RPG that covers tramp trading also.... just don't die during character generation.

[The Zappster]

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/declassified-document-reveals-merseyside-master-23046423.amp

Not into 4th Ed myself but this seems like a fitting place for this. From the website of my local newspaper.

[Ursus Maior]

Twilight 2000: Free Trader.

I feel like there's another GDW RPG that covers tramp trading also.... just don't die during character generation.

Mayday, Mayday, this tramp trader MS Kalisz... we are under attack... propulsion is gone... the Bofors on the fo'c'sle is gone... Mayday... taking water fast... calling anyone... please help... We're on our own...

[Ewan]

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news...r-23046423.amp

Not into 4th Ed myself but this seems like a fitting place for this. From the website of my local newspaper.

Excellent, thank you

[kcdusk]

I'm quietly impressed by V4. I hope to share my thoughts and first few days gaming soon.

I've done what i normally do. I'm running a solo game, set in wherever the current hotspot is. This latest one is set in present day Ukraine.

I'm running my PC across the border into Ukraine, under a paper thin cover as being a journalist. I've met my first arranged contact on the ground, yada yada, stuff happened, and a few die rolls later I'm on foot heading east.

I've got a Woods encounter then a hills encounter to be played out. My game has been a mixture of two set pieces i thought would be good to play through some initial rules. And random encounters that i've been able to tie into the direction of the game. A bit of a story is developing.

I know one PC isn't going to impact the world in a big way. My hope is to play though some of the different rules, do some reconasonce, call in some off board artillery (or maybe mortar fire), generally be a nuisance, live off the land and make it back out. I'm using actual weather happening at the moment to impact my game world. We'll see how things go.

[Olefin]

Mayday, Mayday, this tramp trader MS Kalisz... we are under attack... propulsion is gone... the Bofors on the fo'c'sle is gone... Mayday... taking water fast... calling anyone... please help... We're on our own...

Now that sounds like the start of a good adventure

[kcdusk]

Current day pontoon bridge built across Pripyat River, tying in to 2TK because its on the Chernobyl site of 1986.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44319/pontoon-bridge-appears-in-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-that-could-give-russia-unique-access-to-ukraine

May or may not mean anything, just felt like the past and present intersecting.

[Ursus Maior]

Worth noting that the pontoon bridge was deployed on the Belarusian side of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, so it's still a bit up the road from the (former) town of Prypyat. It's interesting though that the Russians train river crossings in the Exclusion Zone proper, because they would need to cross it, if they strike from the North towards Kiev.

[unipus]

This is something that actually excites me about the game, and why Ive gone to the effort of splitting the canon timeline apart. The community right now has an opportunity before it to create the Twilight 2000 world that we want, rather than having a generated world thrust upon us. We can make the changes we feel will better fit the narrative.

I think this is also just a natural reaction to the way the hobby has developed. Back in the day, "session zero" wasn't a thing anyone had heard of. These days, everyone putting a game out assumes you're going to houserule and poke at it -- so why not leave it wide open to do so.

Hell, it gave me the opportunity to publish an entire book on a very specific setting. You can definitely argue that stuff should have been in the core book (although it never was, in any edition of the game), but the fact that it wasn't left the door open for me to create an interpretation that made sense to me and was fun at my table... which probably wouldn't be 100% the case had it been in the core book, really! And I'd have a lot less sales.

On the topic of "what's left of the USN" ... well, it's the same thing. If your players want to sail home and you want to say that's going to be the adventure of a lifetime just finding a seaworthy ship and crew brave enough to risk it, then you can do that. If you want to play it that the war in Europe is still sustainable and there's just enough word and supplies coming from back home to make that viable, you can do that too. If you want a game where ships are still out there volleying missiles at each other now and then, you can do that too. You could of course always do all of these things, but now at least you're not contradicting the written word to do so.

[Heffe]

I think this is also just a natural reaction to the way the hobby has developed. Back in the day, "session zero" wasn't a thing anyone had heard of. These days, everyone putting a game out assumes you're going to houserule and poke at it -- so why not leave it wide open to do so.

Hell, it gave me the opportunity to publish an entire book on a very specific setting. You can definitely argue that stuff should have been in the core book (although it never was, in any edition of the game), but the fact that it wasn't left the door open for me to create an interpretation that made sense to me and was fun at my table... which probably wouldn't be 100% the case had it been in the core book, really! And I'd have a lot less sales.

On the topic of "what's left of the USN" ... well, it's the same thing. If your players want to sail home and you want to say that's going to be the adventure of a lifetime just finding a seaworthy ship and crew brave enough to risk it, then you can do that. If you want to play it that the war in Europe is still sustainable and there's just enough word and supplies coming from back home to make that viable, you can do that too. If you want a game where ships are still out there volleying missiles at each other now and then, you can do that too. You could of course always do all of these things, but now at least you're not contradicting the written word to do so.

Of course! I bought your book btw, it's great.

Like I said in the other worldbuilding thread, I get that maybe everyone just wants to do their own thing, and that's all fine. But I do worry that with so many content creators just making products, eventually there's going to be just a ton of discrete modules, none of which work together, and IMO that's going to hurt the game in the long run.

Any Ref that's looking to run more than one module with their group is going to be running the risk of those modules not working together, in which case they'll have to houserule, potentially extensively, in order to make it work for their players. In my mind, it makes more sense to at least try to flesh out the world a little more, at a really high level, just to help center the game around a default timeline. For example, knowing which countries are fighting which, and why, etc. Hell, even knowing which countries are still in existence (Yugoslavia anyone).

As an example, say we have multiple modules be released for the US by various content creators over the next few years. One may have Russia and Mexico/Cuba invading as in the original games. Another may not, or may have some other group invading. Others may have no one invading the US, but perhaps New America has taken a bigger chunk of the country.

Each of those options is fine, and those Refs are free to determine their own games as they see fit. But it might help them if there was something to build off of *as an option*. And if a default timeline helps to ensure that there are multiple modules made inside the same cohesive "world", then all the better.

[kcdusk]

I'm quietly impressed by V4. I hope to share my thoughts and first few days gaming soon.

I've done what i normally do. I'm running a solo game, set in wherever the current hotspot is. This latest one is set in present day Ukraine.

I'm running my PC across the border into Ukraine, under a paper thin cover as being a journalist. I've met my first arranged contact on the ground, yada yada, stuff happened, and a few die rolls later I'm on foot heading east.

I've got a Woods encounter then a hills encounter to be played out. My game has been a mixture of two set pieces i thought would be good to play through some initial rules. And random encounters that i've been able to tie into the direction of the game. A bit of a story is developing.

I know one PC isn't going to impact the world in a big way. My hope is to play though some of the different rules, do some reconasonce, call in some off board artillery (or maybe mortar fire), generally be a nuisance, live off the land and make it back out. I'm using actual weather happening at the moment to impact my game world. We'll see how things go.

My little introductory solo adventure is progressing slowly but well. My PC is making his way across Ukraine towards the Soviet border, and its only over night my story arc has come a bit clearer.

Very sad to read about the Ukraine invasion. I have melancholy feelings about Russian forces taking Chernobyl. But, in my story line my PC is now making his way to Chernobyl. In my story the timeline is 2 weeks behind current day. I like Chernobyl as a location. I'm not sure what "happens" when my PC gets there, but it feels like worlds colliding!