>Good luck, you're on your own now...
Can /k/ name an alternate reality setting that is as brutal, realistic and fricking badass as Twilight 2000?
>Cold War gone hot circa late 90's
>tactical nukes everywhere
>conventional war between NATO and USSR
>cavalry squadrons are scouting using actual horses
>tanks refueled by divisions manufacturing methanol
marauder factions from deserters spring up
>mix between modern mechanized warfare and ancient army foraging tactics
>RIP US Army 5th (mech) Infantry Division
>OBJECTIVE: S U R V I V E
Larping as Red Dawn is always sweet, but larping as infantryman of a surviving infantry platoon from 5th ID stranded in Poland surrounded by Polish and Russian Tank Armies is cooler.
From the newest fan made continuation:
I don’t like the new edition, but I’m a grog, I prefer autism for the sake of autism
>grim dark artwork depicting the US Army as a broken shell of its former self, effectively ceasing to exist as a functional institution
>it's just average Russian soldiers on a normal day in Ukraine
>$1.50 has been added to your Ukrainian aid contract profile, thank you for your service!
He's absolutely not wrong though. If you'll excuse the pun, the Russian military presently exists in the twilight zone between a technologically advanced and organised military and a rabble sending T55s that they can only half maintain into battle as ersatz artillery. The fact that Russian governance took 30 years to achieve a level of regression that writers thought would require a strategic nuclear exchange might say something about Russian governance or might say something about the fragility of advancement.
>The fact that Russian governance took 30 years to achieve a level of regression that writers thought would require a strategic nuclear exchange might say something about Russian governance or might say something about the fragility of advancement.
kinda think it says something about the endurance of advancement. 30 years is a long time, and Russia has been a total kleptocracy over an utterly nihilistic shit serf population for a long time. That things have held on as long as they have in the face of total decay is itself an interesting data point, granted a lot of that has come from essentially or directly leeching off the advanced world. In a total global nuclear spread there wouldn't be as much advanced world left.
I just send the AFU money directly
The Finnish translation of T2K is a bit different - the Soviet Union collapses when it does IRL but the war starts with Russia anyway. Plus there are authentic Finnish weapons added to the equipment list.
What the frick that’s gigabased. I never knew that
Is the tabletop scene hood in Finland? I know the poles like warmaster and the French have their own versions of epic and warmaster but that’s where my knowledge ends
The TT scene is fugen massive here, I just started neglecting my TT hobby pretty bad after becoming hasgunz. Plus nobody wants to play my autistic tactical shootan scenarios in GURPS
>Plus nobody wants to play my autistic tactical shootan scenarios in GURPS
I know that feel.
From one autist grog to another, i know that feel. Thanks for telling me more about another corner of the world 🙂 here’s my own tidbit - Australians fricking love Horus Heresy, and even made a version of NetEpicArmageddon set in the Horus Heresy.
I wonder what contributes to a game's popularity in a given country? The Germans love Battletech and Shadowrun to the point of having their own splats. I have a copy of 1e MWRPG in Finnish as well, used to be you could find a copy in every public library (even though it's nigh unplayable, it contains the translations for many central BT concepts)
>cut off g11 entry
anon you shameless tease
You know, maybe we could do some kind of /k/ discord gaming?
We seem to have so many of us here looking for games.
I'm already running a game for ppl in the US/OZ/UK all at once. It takes some schedule juggling and probably only works because one guy has insomnia.
Can... can I join?
Sorry, chief, it's a small curated group. (and it's 5e anyway)
Both 1st and 2nd editions of TW2k were translated into Finnish. There were original couple source books and a campaign book for 1st edition from Finnish publisher. 1st edition, published in 1988, had communism.
Speaking of that Finnish adventure and communism. Player characters are assumed to burgers trying to get home that have managed hitch a ride across Baltic from Poland to Copenhagen, where they might find a ship to get across Atlantic, from a Finnish trader running a salvaged Helsinki-class missile boat. Players naturally will get stranded in ruins of Helsinki. First major NPC they will run is a gun nut that has turned a reasonably intact commie block in suburbs of Vantaa into fortress with nice garden. If players are westerners, he is friendly. If there is too many defectors commie countries in the party, him being friendly is merely a ruse and he intends to turn commies and those who tolerate commies to live into slaves as forced labor might cure communism...
I actually have this despite only having the 2e corebook. Isn't this the one with a statted-out Gypsy gang?
If I remember reading them at a friend's house correctly, that timeline is the one from the 2nd edition? They had this meticulous breakdown of where and how things all went wrong, starting with the Soviet hardliners' coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin: KGB Strike Force Alpha doesn't refuse the assault and massacres everyone in the Duma. Their scenario of gradual escalation into full-blown WWIII seemed creepily plausible to me as a teenager.
First edition just had a few paragraphs of handwaving:
> 1980s: Soviets finally manage to access the limitless mineral wealth of Siberia and patch all the holes in their budget.
> 1990s: International relations deteriorate. Petroleum refineries get tacnuked tit-for-tat; no AvGas = no air support. WWIII ensues, deal with it.
TT is massive in Finland? I don't know why this discovery makes me so happy, but it does. Cheers, Anon.
And if you're looking for autistic tactical combat scenarios, I'd have to recommend Millenium's End for the hardcore simulationist, lol.
The Finnish 2nd edition probably differs by virtue of having been published after the 1993 constitutional crisis while the original was published before it. The latter contains no mention of it, while the former nearly has a blow-by-blow entry on it
I can't stop thinking about that: instead of just doing a literal translation and calling it a day, somebody put in the extra effort to update the details of the alternate history to make it that much more convincing. Warms my heart.
The history from 1997 on also offers additional detail on the events taking place in Finland, because the editors thought it might be of interest to the domestic audience
Damn, that's cool. If I ever see a pdf on 1dPrepHole or something I'll have to run that part through Google translate to satisfy my curiosity.
The Finnish Edition 2.2 also states that the T-90 is like an old tramp trying to conceal her age with excess makeup, lol. Vindicated 30 years later. Shows how little we also knew, however, since the Warrior gets a stabilizer and night-fighting equipment in all eds 2.2.
Have you ever made a post that was not projection or just copy-pasting what's directed at you?
I'll admit I laughed, but the RuAF isn't quite at the stages of "Spring offensive delayed because military cantonments face starvation if the ground isn't dry before planting the year's crops" or "towing ethanol stills because fossil fuel supplies have all but vanished".
Well, they're not there YET at least.
Great cover art. Reminds me of this post-apocalyptic young adult series from sometime before the 90s where a young man is trying to make his way in Nazi or Commie occupied America. MC was a young partisan and gets stuck in an internment camp. Very Red Dawn-esque. Anyone know the name?
Backdoor bawdz 9
You're thinking of 7
The Deathlands books? I didn't read those but I remember the covers a little. I think they look more like the Casca series covers but the premise is wholly different than what you said.
Not deathlands but thanks for turning me on to these. Look cool.
The TRIO series? Wasn't it based on a CYA book?
White Fox Chronicles?
Man, that's some nostalgia, read that in elementary school.
YES. These were the books. I have been trying to figure this out for more than a decade. Thanks anon
It was sick when they captured those laser guns. Written by the guy who wrote Hatchet. He wrote a lot of based YA books.
No idea, but you might enjoy the Freeway Warrior adventure book game series by Joe Dever. They're free in pdf format online, he specified that he wanted his books to be available online in his will.
https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books
Aw, I didn't know he'd passed.
But the books had been made available online since around 2000, almost a decade and a half before he passed
He'd been sick for a while, he had multiple surgeries for cancer.
He also had a real passion for gaming of all kinds and was keen to bring people into the hobby. He was a real G.
>as the society collapsed around them, Fox Mulder had to make due with whatever and whoever was available to combat the extraterrestial threat
>Can /k/ name an alternate reality setting that is as brutal, realistic and fricking badass as Twilight 2000?
No, but also that's the weakness of it. /k/ has fallen into and out of love with Twilight a half a dozen times that I've personally seen, and every time it follows the same cycle. The point where anyone tries to play it and realises that having a realistic TT RPG requires hours long turns for even small unit actions and using any abbreviated rules defeats the point of it is the point where they fall out of love.
The newest 4th edition tries to remedy all of those issues to make it slightly less autistic while still trying to keep the realism where it can.
Any PDFs for 4e? I'm interested to see what their solution looks like.
/tg/ has regular shares. If you're not an ESL or shill you should be able to figure it out.
>No, I won't provide them, go and search for yourself.
>If you don't want to do that then you're obviously ESL.
Yeah ok, I guess we won't continue a the conversation then.
>anon obviously has difficulty with the task of going on /tg/ and searching for something, potentially with an archive
And that's why he was talking like that, moron. He wasn't insulting you. He was testing you.
NTA, but he’s not saying that to be a dick, directly linking to the archives puts them at risk of being taken down by bots. If you just go to /tg/ and look around the catalog a bit you should be able to find it.
Yeah, there's good reason share threads use their convoluted system of obfuscating links. It's dumb but it works on robots and redditors too lazy to read the document, and that's enough.
That's also how a lot of censorship works. Forcing people to have to download VPNs to torrent movies will reduce the number of individuals torrenting by 80%. The remaining group is significantly harder to fool and tends to have strange insider language.
(The solution is obviously for someone to do a computer port, but who has time for that?)
Honestly playing "Dying of Dysentery in a irradiated Polish ditch: The RPG" is not even close to the headache of trying to play Phoenix Command.
I would dispute that Phoenix Command is even a game.
4th edition is much more autistic than normie stuff like DnD, but still playable especially when using the official VTT version for tracking inventory and other shit. Managed to run an introductory campaign before the vatniks went apeshit and everyone kinda lost the taste for the game seeing as the same rusBlack folk share a border with us and most of us were involved with national defense in one way or another.
good video that details the backstory and gives a general impression on what Twilight 2000's world is all about
does it have 1dPrepHole article?
>1dPrepHole
hate to be the bearer of bad news, mate...
What?
The site’s been gone for a while now like it usually does every year or so, but it’s taking longer than usual to come back. It’s been archived and everything but that’s naturally a bit of a pain in the arse compared to using the actual site.
Is 1dPrepHole finally kil?
I'm not much of a tabletop guy, but I play the shit of a T2K vidya, sounds like it would be great for a STALKER-like.
>Good luck, you're on your own now...
>Because our Polish friends brought enough vodka for the whole HQ
>The Lodz connection
>realistic
In the late 90s Russia and the USSR were a mess and no match for the West. All the nukes in the world couldn't prevent another Desert Storm.
Post more art, please, I'm trying to cook up a larp
frick twilight 2000. wheres the book with the guy in the nuke bunker holding a baby in one arm a while shooting an mp5 at some giant shrimp guy?
Is this by the guy who did the resonance cascade timeline video? That was kino.
Ah, no, that was someone else. This is the style some people have used for some of the TNO timelines though.
This seems like a dumb setup, though. I guess you have to do all you can to avoid the most realistic/least 'fun' outcome (cold war goes hot, immediately/near-immediately escalates to a strategic exchange) but "oh man we better not use our strategic warheads" as they lob hundreds of tactical ones.
>Yugos and Romanians get accepted into NATO to fight the WP
Cool
>Italy declares war on NATO
Huh? Why?
Are there any good WW3 books that take place during the 50s-60s? Most of them like RSR take place in the mid to late 80s but the earlier time period would offer an interesting setting where WP and NATO at least have some technological parity.
On The Beach?
Interesting premise but what I'm looking for is more like RSR or team yankee, but in the 60s
Or anything that gets you into the action.
Would there really be any 'action' in a potential WW3 scenario in the 50s-60s? Feel like the action would be 'launch bombers, launch missiles, die'.
I mean, both team yankee and RSR had nice in-the-shit chapters where you see a ground-level POV.
Hell, team yanke is just that. The novel red army is too but on the Russian side.
I'm just looking for something set a bit earlier
You can't just post that and not give a source, so out with it
Its the Comic "Bunker 6A" from Heavy Metal Magazine
>KILL homosexualS
haha
Is it really realistic that after a strategic nuclear exchange between NATO and the USSR that the survivors would give a shit about fighting any war?
>realistic
>tactical nukes everywhere
Why is every cold war gone hot scenario set in the late 80s. Probably the least likely years in which the Soviets would invade and also the decade where NATOs advantage became obvious. Are there Russian scenarios where the us attacks in 1972?
The most interesting equipment on all sides + the impending destruction of the USSR's economy makes for a good alt history turning point
My best guess is that under the Carter and Brezhnev administrations of the late 1970s there was a bit of a thaw in the Cold War - SALT and all that. 1980-88 brings the heyday of Reagan and Thatcher, so an ICBM change is back on the menu.
I read a lot of my Dad's old science fiction paperbacks as a kid, and virtually all the stuff from the 1950s-60s seems to assume a nuclear exchange as a given. During the 1970s there's an exploration of different dystopian scenarios like overpopulation (the movie Onions Green, for example), the energy crisis, etc.
Sure enough, the 1980s bring nukes back into play -- there's a throwaway line in Neuromancer about radioactive debris on the outskirts of Bonn. Come to think of it, I don't remember any sci-fi from the 1980s predicting the end of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR while also leaving the U.S. and NATO intact. Maybe it seemed too far-fetched at the time (like ubiquitous cell phones with high-speed internet connections?)
> ICBM change
** ICBM exchange
>ONIONS GREEN IS PEOPLE!
First of all, some stuff was set in the '80s because that was the *near future*, close enough to be realistic, far away enough that sci-fi-like weapons and scenarios were at least marginally plausible.
Second, there was a sea change in attitudes in the '80s that went hand-in-hand with a slew of new conventional capabilities. So, instead of the whole "nukes fall, everybody dies" attitude of the Malaise Era, there was more of a Gung Ho attitude of fighting back against communism with "regular" weapons. This was the era in which most boys grew up playing with Star Wars and GI Joe toys, with all of their associated guns and vehicles. This was the era of Red Dawn instead of Failsafe. It really did permeate throughout the culture. I can't even really imagine what it was like for kids growing up in the madness of the '60s and '70s; I'm glad I was too young to remember any of that stuff.
At the same time, we had all kinds of cool new real-life gear. The beautiful teen-series fighters, now with missiles and radars that actually worked most of the time! A totally new kind of tank with top-secret armor. A mean-looking attack helicopter loaded with over a dozen high-tech (laser-guided!) missiles. Nuclear-powered carriers out the wazoo. There wasn't much new to speak of in small arms, but BDUs and M-16s were a cool aesthetic.
It all blended together into a world that's hard to describe other than, "It was the '80s, man."
>tfw tried playing the computer game but it's just buggy as shit and got all the cool RP features removed
it hurts
This thread makes me want to find a surplus woodland BDU with the 5th ID insignia sown onto it to go larp in the woods with.
Played the hell out of this years ago. A group of players finally managed to get back via Austria, Italy and France after having some crazy times in Poland.