Mongoose and T2K

[ottarrus]

So with the announcement that Mongoose has acquired the rights to the GDW catalogue, or most of it anyway, I'm wondering about the future of one of my favorite games, Twilight 2000.
Does Mongoose plan to renew Free League's license or do you plan on publishing your own version?
The T2K game has a special place in the heart of old Cold Warriors like myself inasmuch as it details 'The War We Didn't Fight'. But if you were a youngster during that era, the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction was something you lived with. If you were in anybody's military in that era, the game has a poignancy that is hard to describe.

 

[Condottiere]

Red Storm Rising was one of the most impactful novels that I had read, and yet, feels rather Tolkienesque in hindsight.

I recall coming across some Twilight hardware books, and the equipment descriptions looked interesting, but for the past two years, I have been wondering at some assumptions I have had about the Cold War.

Ever since I studied the Winter War, I came to the conclusion that the Russians need three years before they learn tactical lessons, and adjust their doctrine(s), and going by current events, need lend/lease in any long term conflict, since their industrial base is subject to malpractice.

 

[ottarrus]

Red Storm Rising was one of the most impactful novels that I had read, and yet, feels rather Tolkienesque in hindsight.

I recall coming across some Twilight hardware books, and the equipment descriptions looked interesting, but for the past two years, I have been wondering at some assumptions I have had about the Cold War.

Ever since I studied the Winter War, I came to the conclusion that the Russians need three years before they learn tactical lessons, and adjust their doctrine(s), and going by current events, need lend/lease in any long term conflict, since their industrial base is subject to malpractice.

Red Storm does indeed have a certain 'hero of destiny' aspect to it, I agree. But if you read the history of Operation Magic /Ultra and the Battle of Midway, you'll see a whole bunch of similarities in the intelligence battle between the characters Toland and and Lowe and the real life Ofc of Special Communications officers Rochfort and Latham.
I think a better book to illustrate WWIII is Team Yankee by Coyle. It takes the strategic suppositions of UK Brig. Hackett and applies the situation to a mixed tank and infantry company [back then, when a tank and an infantry company traded a platoon for a mission, the to companies were referred to a 'company team' or just 'team']. The unit in question is a tank heavy team seconded to a line infantry battalion [that is, two platoons of tanks (total 8 tanks) and one mech infantry platoon with two TOW launchers (total 7 M113 APC incl. the TOW launcher variant]. The chair polishing diplo wonks screw the pooch and the world descends to war, a war that's experienced from the viewpoint of the Team and it's CO. And yes, that's my 'tanker bias' shining through quite brightly, thank you

 

[MongooseMatt]

I have been wondering at some assumptions I have had about the Cold War.

If you are unfamiliar with the likes of Animarchy, History of Everything and LazerPig on YouTube, give them a whirl. They may give a certain perspective on recent events...

 

[MongooseMatt]

Does Mongoose plan to renew Free League's license or do you plan on publishing your own version?

At this time, we expect to be able to do so.

 

[ottarrus]

If you are unfamiliar with the likes of Animarchy, History of Everything and LazerPig on YouTube, give them a whirl. They may give a certain perspective on recent events...

Oh, among historians there is a real sense of 'Oh, I've read about THIS crap', believe me.
The problem with being a historian is that we all sound like lunatics until we're proven right. We stop 'howling in the wilderness' just in time for people to tell us, 'Why didn't you SAY something?'
Absolutely not kidding when I tell you this:
At the turn of the Millennium, we were all sitting around talking about 'The Future [tm]'. From what I've read, the same thing happened in 1900 so I suppose that's natural. All my friends were yammering about one of two things, a] the internet revolution would change everything and b] the world was gonna end in 2012 [yes, I have a couple of lunatic friends...]. I said that by 2025 the US and probably NATO would be at war with the PRC.
Well, that went over like a lead balloon. Since the fall of the Soviet Union most of these guys believed that 'peace had broken out' and it was time to cut the DoD budget, bring the troops home from Europe, etc. etc. etc.
Then 9/11 happened. So these same guys hassled me about how I missed the Arab extremists [which, in fairness, I did] and then went on to accuse me of not knowing what I was talking about. I replied 'Give it a few years. When the old Maoists die off, you'll see a new aggressive leadership.'
I just got an email from one of those guys the other day. Seems his grandson's first West Pac in the Navy is gonna be in the South China Sea between the PRC, Taiwan and the Philippines. He's worried about this [I would be too]. And now all the sudden, I'm a 'genius'.
It's nonsense, of course. Everybody has their interests and the things they pay attention to. My thing is keeping up with the military and geopolitics. Everything I've seen is absolutely open source, I don't know anybody in the intel business. I've read some novels, done some historical reading and can look at a map. That's it. And on New Year's Day 2K, the only two dogs left on the block were us and China.

 

[ottarrus]

At this time, we expect to be able to do so.

May I offer a suggestion regarding T2K? Feel free to use it or not.
I would strongly suggest that you avoid using the 2d6 system for T2K. The reason is that there you're gonna have to parse the differences between Soviet, NATO, and Unaligned equipment to a fare-thee-well. If you try and pass off an AKM and an M-16A2 as just 'Assault Rifles' and insert the Traveller stat block, you're gonna get some blowback from the veteran fanbase. An Abrams is not a T72 is not a Leopard is not a Chieftain and I don't think that 2d6 is a flexible enough mechanic system to sort it all out.
I have more arguments [in the debate sense, not the 'being difficult' sense] in that vein and if you want to hear them, I'll share them. And, of course, Mongoose is gonna do what is good for Mongoose to do. I understand and accept that.
And hey, at least it's not 'd20 World War Three'

 

[MongooseMatt]

When the old Maoists die off, you'll see a new aggressive leadership.'

You keeping an eye on the demographic crunch in China?

 

[MongooseMatt]

If you try and pass off an AKM and an M-16A2 as just 'Assault Rifles' and insert the Traveller stat block, you're gonna get some blowback from the veteran fanbase. An Abrams is not a T72 is not a Leopard is not a Chieftain and I don't think that 2d6 is a flexible enough mechanic system to sort it all out.

Something to consider, but you also have to figure that we need to attract a new audience too, and we would likely make things more about the story. And they may not be Gun Bunnies. Would not worry so much about vehicles, all sorts of things we could do there to separate them.

 

[ottarrus]

You keeping an eye on the demographic crunch in China?

Not only the demographics, but their economy as well.
Their Silk Road Initiative is being checked by the US and EU, with both earning a lot of goodwill in Africa currently. OK, 'a lot' might be overstating it, but 'a lot more than we used to have' is pretty reasonable. Their dependence on coal is starting to bite them in the ass inasmuch as the US has greatly curtailed sales and the Russians are about as efficient as Russian industry is.
And even with the Great Firewall of Chinese internet access, people in China are getting ruffled about the recent military upgrades when their standards of living are dropping. And that's not getting into all the ethnic unrest.
The Party is worried about a lack of faith in the Revolution and this leads us to Vlad Ulyanov's famed quote, 'What this country needs is a short victorious war!' China has three directions that could go... India, Taiwan or the Philippines. India has nukes specifically aimed at China and might trigger a British response and Taiwan and the Phils would trigger a US /SEATO response. Dangerous times, but remember that the Mandarin ideogram for 'danger' is only a brushstroke from the ideogram for 'opportunity'.

 

[Condottiere]

If you are unfamiliar with the likes of Animarchy, History of Everything and LazerPig on YouTube, give them a whirl. They may give a certain perspective on recent events...

To be honest, after having a go at some translated Chinese literature, with the exception of Art of War, I became fairly dismissive of Chinese history.

That took a turn when I realized just how reckless the current, lifetime, administration had planned to be, and then it was a question at what point they had decided it was best to invade Taiwan.

Spoiler, the moment may have passed, just like Twenty Fourteen was actually the optimum time to roll tanks into Kyiv.

I never saw Russian history as being relevant or interesting, until two and a half years ago, when I thought that Putin was just playing brinkmanship, though from past behaviour, I also knew that if he did intend to go through with it, it would be just after the Olympics.

So, yeah, the above and other channels have given me a rather thorough grounding on Russian military history.

From the political socio economic perspective, it would appear that the war was inevitable, and when you think back on Russian expansionism from the Romanovs onwards, I guess it's true.

 

[ottarrus]

@MongooseMatt Something else I want to say about T2K just to get it off my chest... though I do think it's salient comment.
You make an excellent point about wanting new gamers. I've made that point myself in this forum and others and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

But T2K is not a game that glosses over the ugly stuff. It's gritty and doesn't even blink at portraying the very worst consequences of warfare on a global scale. Starvation, radiation, chemical/biological attack victims, slavery, cannibalism, it's all grist for the mill.

So please have whoever is the lead writer do their homework. Three novels, Red Storm Rising, Team Yankee, and Red Army are absolutely necessary reading. Another novel that I have not read but comes highly recommended is Chieftains [UK tank unit in War Three] There are a slew of movies, of course, but the three that I would recommend are The Day After, Threads, and Testament. I would also recommend that the author you designate look at the Twilight 2013 rulebook for what I mean about 'gritty'.

The problem with post-apocalypse games is how they always seem to devolve into an extended firefight over a unopened case of dog food. What I mean is that as a referee it's difficult to keep the PCs from becoming the very marauders they say they're fighting. We've all been trained by almost 50 years of gaming in the DnD trope of 'fight big fight, get big rewards'. And in War Three there simply aren't any big rewards. So the players start doing patrols for the explicit purpose of killing and looting anyone who could conceivably be construed as a 'bad guy'. You have to give the players something to fight for as well as an enemy to fight against.

 

[ottarrus]

To be honest, after having a go at some translated Chinese literature, with the exception of Art of War, I became fairly dismissive of Chinese history.

That took a turn when I realized just how reckless the current, lifetime, administration had planned to be, and then it was a question at what point they had decided it was best to invade Taiwan.

Spoiler, the moment may have passed, just like Twenty Fourteen was actually the optimum time to roll tanks into Kyiv.

I never saw Russian history as being relevant or interesting, until two and a half years ago, when I thought that Putin was just playing brinkmanship, though from past behaviour, I also knew that if he did intend to go through with it, it would be just after the Olympics.

So, yeah, the above and other channels have given me a rather thorough grounding on Russian military history.

From the political socio economic perspective, it would appear that the war was inevitable, and when you think back on Russian expansionism from the Romanovs onwards, I guess it's true.

It should never be forgotten that Putin came up as a KGP apparatchik. For all of his Mother Russia grandstanding, he's every single bit the imperialist that Vlad Lenin or Ivan Romanov was. He not only wants Russia to be feared again, he wants to get personally very wealthy while doing it. And the only way he's gonna be able to do that is by conquest. He's got a 'soft conquest' in Belarus. Lukaschenko doesn't fart without permission from the Kremlin. And I think you're right that he may very well have blown his chance at taking the Ukraine by force.
But I feel the need to point out that the Ukraine War has some eerie similarities to the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to something bigger.

 

[Condottiere]

Putin is supposedly the most wealthy man on the planet, just by his personal fortune, distributed amongst a network agents, whether accountants, oligarchs, or whatever.

But I think money is irrelevant to him, since he can dip into the Russian resources at any time, and the inner circle launders any large purchases he wants to make.

There are two aspects in his situation, he can't get off the tiger, because the tiger will eat him, and he wants to secure his historical legacy, the reunification of the Russian Empire.

Spanish Civil War might be post Putin, or you have another march on Moscow.

If this was Mainland China, it would be highly likely that the provinces would split from each other, and you have another warlord era, where the question would be if any attempts to reunify would be successful.

With Russia, the closest playbook has to be their civil war, where one or more outside powers is going to sponsor an ideologue, versus regional strongmen.

 

[ottarrus]

As the wise man once said:
'When you got the tiger by its tail, you better have plan on dealing with its teeth...'

And we should not forget the 'RedFellas', the Bratva Russian mob in all this. It used to be that you couldn't be a mail carrier and be a member of the mob. The rule was 'haven no connection with the government'. Nowadays it's thought that even the FSB [Russian 'Federal' intelligence] are half in the Bratva's pocket.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on who swallowed who.

Considering how Putin dealt with the oligarchs, and his suspicions, outside of the siloviki security services, he's not fond of power bases he can't control, directly or by proxy.

 

[MongooseMatt]

The Day After, Threads, and Testament.

Oh, we are very familiar with Threads on this office

 

[ottarrus]

Oh, we are very familiar with Threads on this office

I would think so... I was pretty gobsmacked when I saw it the first time. 'The Day After' with gloves off. The scene with the baby sticks with me to this day.
'Testament' is an interesting movie, btw. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. Very few people have. It's a 1983 American PBS film about a suburban family dealing with the end of the world with very very little information. It's softer than 'Threads' but still very tragic.

 

[-Daniel-]

Another novel that I have not read but comes highly recommended is Chieftains [UK tank unit in War Three]

Seeing the three books you suggested, may I encourage you to get and read Chieftains. I suspect you will enjoy it as well. I know I did.

 

[ottarrus]

Already cited in the comments, @-Daniel- .
I just haven't had time to find it. My favorite military book-seller passed away a couple years ago and I haven't found a good substitute yet.
While I like getting gaming books in tablet form, for some strange reason I really, REALLY prefer reading fiction in book form. I also have a Hell of a time studying a text in electronic form. Something about how my brain processes the information presented.