The FFW

[tytalan]

War Fleets, ICS Papers, Armies, etc were fun to read (except the TL 12 Army bit ). I don't regret buying them. But they are just loregasms. They don't give me any tools or advice or structures for actual play that I didn't already have. I can run an interstellar war in Traveller just as well now as I could before I bought them.

That’s because it’s not the purpose of FFW to give you tools or advice or structure for running an interstellar war in Traveller. It’s a setting and the fleet and army’s book are resources for running a game in that setting, you complain that they are lore focus but that exactly what a setting is about.

Also what wrong with a TL 12 Army it make sense on so many levels?

 

[tytalan]

You are asserting it is a setting. At no point did anyone from Mongoose suggest such a thing.

I quote from the mongoose FFW page “ Explore the grand campaign setting of The Fifth Frontier War, and witness key events unfold across several new releases in this multi-year story arc.” yes they did say it was a setting repeatedly! Even when they announced it they called it a setting! https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/the-fifth-frontier-war

It has some adventures. But none of them actually rely on anything in the "setting material". Though most of them do say "This will affect how the war goes!" without actually explaining how that's supposed to happen. Again, supposedly Turning Points will do that. I am very curious to see how that is supposed to work, because unless you specifically run it as a campaign of disparate groups doing various things, I don't see how there's any sort of cumulative effect going on. There's still six adventures waiting to be published, but so far, you'd be struggling to get more than two of them into the same group of characters. Aka the typical sort of campaign.

So you think that every adventure in a setting needs to be connected? That doesn’t make sense. Mongoose has literally given us a setting not a campaign. Sorry if it’s not what you wanted but it’s exactly what mongoose said they were going to do. They have given the GMs a new setting to play in

 

[Brian]

To me seems to be taking over the release schedule

 

[Vormaerin]

They are making a lot of books for it. In the past, a big release like this would have been a kickstarter and so it would seem like the schedule was fairly clear. While there was several months in 2024 where everything was 5FW or Invasion, that has not been true for a good while.

What we have a particular freelance author being extremely prolific. It is not reducing the amount of other stuff being produced, though perhaps it is putting art and editing demands that are slowing some projects down a bit. There are 7 other titles not related to the War with release dates, plus the Pioneer Kickstarter and the Singularity Kickstarter. And of the other books being worked on that don't have release dates, 11 of 14 are not 5FW products.

 

[Quint]

I'm still waiting for the payoff of the seed written up in Alien Module 4: Zhodani...

Basically that (pp72-73) the Zhodani discovered a second, larger Erdiap Chensh on Rhylanor during the 4th Frontier War and that political realignment authorized in 1096 authorized military action to take it as soon as the resources were gathered.

Mongoose really has a bad habit of burying the lede sometimes.

D.

 

[Endie]

I'm still waiting for the payoff of the seed written up in Alien Module 4: Zhodani...

Basically that (pp72-73) the Zhodani discovered a second, larger Erdiap Chensh on Rhylanor during the 4th Frontier War and that political realignment authorized in 1096 authorized military action to take it as soon as the resources were gathered.

Mongoose really has a bad habit of burying the lede sometimes.

D.

Burying the lede means saying the important bit further down the page instead of in the title or headline. Do you maybe just mean "discarding earlier statements"?

 

[Sigtrygg]

This is well known. It is also a ridiculous reason for a war. If Mongoose reveal this to be the reason for the FFW I will be very critical.

Other ways to resolve things...

1. Send diplomats to the Imperium with proof of the Empress Wave, take Imperial scientists and nobles to study it first hand. Then request access to Rhylanor to use the Ancient artifact. This would make a pretty good PC scale campaign.

2. Send every Zhodani Ethan Wick and John Hunt, trained to the highest level of psionic and spec ops that would make Jason Borne look like Walter Mitty to gain access to the Ancient artifact and use it. This also is a PC scal thing

3. if you do have to have a war then don't piss about, assemble your fleet and a couple of diversions and then head to Rhylanor in successive jumps, take the world using weapons of mass destruction if necessary then use Ancient artifact. This is boring metagam with lots of after action reports and no input into the outcome.

 

[Quint]

Burying the lede means saying the important bit further down the page instead of in the title or headline. Do you maybe just mean "discarding earlier statements"?

Nope, given the mention in the thread about lack of understanding what the Zhodani goal is (or what the goal/role of the 'campaign/setting' is) I think that this is likely the big reveal at some point - the why of the war.

(And yes, it's a stupid reason for a war - but I could argue that the reasons for most wars starting are stupid, so...)

Plus it then lets the GM decide what to do with the McGuffin. Are the Zhodani able to secure it to save their civilization from 'Yonder Chilling Thought' or do other even more hardline anti-Imperial elements in the Zhodani manage to activate it as a superweapon? Do other elements, in an effort to bring peace, contact Norris through Dilgaadin, explain the situation and that's what spurs Norris into his actions? As a McGuffin it actually somewhat opens up far more ways to involve PC's in way that is meaningful to the outcome than large scale strategic naval battles and planetary invasions do (unless you're playing admirals and generals).

D.

 

[Endie]

Nope, given the mention in the thread about lack of understanding what the Zhodani goal is (or what the goal/role of the 'campaign/setting' is) I think that this is likely the big reveal at some point - the why of the war.

(And yes, it's a stupid reason for a war - but I could argue that the reasons for most wars starting are stupid, so...)

Plus it then lets the GM decide what to do with the McGuffin. Are the Zhodani able to secure it to save their civilization from 'Yonder Chilling Thought' or do other even more hardline anti-Imperial elements in the Zhodani manage to activate it as a superweapon? Do other elements, in an effort to bring peace, contact Norris through Dilgaadin, explain the situation and that's what spurs Norris into his actions? As a McGuffin it actually somewhat opens up far more ways to involve PC's in way that is meaningful to the outcome than large scale strategic naval battles and planetary invasions do (unless you're playing admirals and generals).

D.

OK: that's still not burying the lede (which doesn't mean a big reveal or a plot-twist, either) but sadly I suspect that you may be right. It's lazy and doesn't make sense for the reasons @Sigtrygg laid out. But I fear that you could be right. It would be a let-down.

 

[Stargrove]

I personally do not see how the Zhodani can support building all the ships they send on their "Core Expeditions" AND build a fleet to also support something like the FFW. Just doing one would be a large investment of treasure and resources (material and people).

Another thing is that they (Zhodani) have basically no opposition Spinward or Coreward for empire expansion so it makes no sense for them to want or need to take territory from the Imperium other than the enmity they generally hold for each other.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Zhodani don't fight to take territory from the Imperium. They have fought the wars to curtail Imperial expansion. While they have won the wars of the past they have only slowed down Imperial encroachment into the Marches.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I personally do not see how the Zhodani can support building all the ships they send on their "Core Expeditions" AND build a fleet to also support something like the FFW. Just doing one would be a large investment of treasure and resources (material and people).

Another thing is that they (Zhodani) have basically no opposition Spinward or Coreward for empire expansion so it makes no sense for them to want or need to take territory from the Imperium other than the enmity they generally hold for each other.

I believe the intent of the wars is to give the Imperium a bloody nose and deter what they see as expansionism into Zhodoni areas of control.

 

[Vormaerin]

I personally do not see how the Zhodani can support building all the ships they send on their "Core Expeditions" AND build a fleet to also support something like the FFW. Just doing one would be a large investment of treasure and resources (material and people).

Another thing is that they (Zhodani) have basically no opposition Spinward or Coreward for empire expansion so it makes no sense for them to want or need to take territory from the Imperium other than the enmity they generally hold for each other.

Honestly? I don't see how we could even know what they can or cannot afford. We don't know anything about the economies of these countries or even what "economies" would look like at that TL or in interstellar polities at all. We assume that building a big fleet is some sort of challenging expense, because it has been for terrestrial nations.

But is it actually a big fleet? The military forces available to the Imperium in the Spinward Marches are not particularly significant. They can't even be bothered to have a Sector Admiral. The 5FW book suggests it's overstrength in patrol and lighter elements, but nothing special in the way of main fleet elements. And that's just one sector out of how many in the Imperium?

If the Zhos were planning on a proper military victory, they would plan on crushing the Spinward Fleet, the Deneb Fleet, and the Corridor Fleets piecemeal before they link up.

But the forces the Zhodani commit to this war are stronger than any one of those three Imperial fleets. But not as strong as all of them. And those three fleets are like, at most, one hand of the actual Imperial Fleet. So it doesn't seem obvious that this is a great armada of Consulate straining size.

It could be. The core expeditions could be draining resources so heavily that this invasion force is "The big fist" of the Consulate that is every last thing that they can afford. It could be that it's just enough of a force to be a threat and convince the warmongering factions that the Consulate is serious about expansion, but it's just not actually that and the war is about psychic woo-woo or macguffins rather than any actual military victory.

 

[rinku]

Yeah. Of course there may be other factors that lead to the *timing* of a Frontier War... but the strategic purpose of them was well established a long time ago.

It's probably worth remembering the original lore was written during the real life Cold War... but here there's no mutually assured destruction between the powers, or really much ability to take and hold territory either. So what would be a proxy war like Vietnam can be a direct border clash. I'm guessing that was appealing to the GDW crew.

 

[Vormaerin]

I'm actually going to disagree with that, at least as far as the 5FW is concerned. I don't think it is clear at all that there is any meaningful correlation between GDW's 5FW concept and Mongoose's. The force pools are not the same. The operational parameters do not appear to be the same.

We have no idea what the strategic purpose of this version of the war is, because they have intentionally obscured what the Zhodani actually want.

 

[Condottiere]

Cats they're not allergic to.

 

[JupiterIndustries]

Nevermind all this, when do we get our Rebellion source book?