What "IS" TWILIGHT: 2000

[Border Reiver]

You wish.

This whole thread has gone totally political and should be carried on in the proper place.

There are plenty of global warfare scenarios to choose from and more than enough nukes to go round without bringing realworld personalities and situations into the game.

 

[Valarian]

Anyone read Simon Pearson's Total War 2006? It's a fictional extrapolation based on the Middle East Meltdown war scenario. Not global - but good for a regional conflict scenario.

 

[Border Reiver]

I think I might have. Is that the one where the "aggressor" is "The New Saladin?"

 

[Jamus]

This whole thread has gone totally political and should be carried on in the proper place.

There are plenty of global warfare scenarios to choose from and more than enough nukes to go round without bringing realworld personalities and situations into the game.

How does a person discuss possible ww3 scenario in the near future without acknowledgeing political realities?

 

[signless]

When T2K hit the market, our entire gaming group was jazzed. We were hardcore CT players who kludged together ANY gaming system/scenario into a workable part of our collective universe.
T2K set the scene for the grandest of our enterprises. We linked T2K, T:2300, CT, MT and TNE together into one continuous timeline.
Characters were able to trace their Solomani ancestry back to the Twilight War on Terra...and got to PLAY their ancestors, as well.
Yeah, we had to do some fudging with stuff, but it all made sense. The eurocentric climb back to civilization, counterbalanced by a new Asian hegemony, which led to the nationalist colonization of space. The Kafer War solidified and united a world government, and gave the Solomani the militarized culture needed to conquer the Vilani.
We still play T2K today...and we've been having a great time with the Twilight: Nightmares stuff.

 

[jcrocker]

Originally posted by signless:
The Kafer War solidified and united a world government, and gave the Solomani the militarized culture needed to conquer the Vilani.

Did the Kafer worlds end up as glass-paved parking lots?

 

[Jamus]

Kafers for CT now.

do it because I said so.

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Border Reiver:
You wish.

This whole thread has gone totally political and should be carried on in the proper place.

There are plenty of global warfare scenarios to choose from and more than enough nukes to go round without bringing realworld personalities and situations into the game.

You have a political mind Border, you seem to care mostly about the leading up to portion of World War III and apportioning blame for it. A World War III scenario is really very simple, it boils down to this:
One side thinks it has all the cards and thinks the other side will be reasonable and back down, but it doesn't.

For example: North Korea develops nuclear weapons and the United States doesn't stop them from doing that, so as not to upset its European allies, China and Russia. North Korea then invades the South, defeats its army, and captures 30,000 American POWs and it thinks the game is over and thinks it has one, because it "knows" that the US knows it has Nuclear Weapons and that its occupation of South Korea is a fact on the ground and has now annexed those territories under a Unified Peoples Republic of Korea. The only problem is that the United States still considers South Korea to be occupied territory and not part of a unified Korean penninsula, it was caught with its pants down, but it has other forces it can sill use to retake South Korea just like it did during the First Korean War under McArthur. The US figures it can discharge its obligation to its South Korean Allie by invading and pushing the North Korean Forces back across the 49th Parallel into what it considers North Korea proper, it looks at North Korea's nuclear forces and finds that it has only a few bombs, and it assumes that North Korea will be deterred by the US's thousands of ICBMs and will therefore not use its nukes on US forces.

The only problem is the leader of North Korea is crazy and does use nuclear weapons on the invading US forces, and while this is happening, China takes this opportunity to invade Taiwan thinking the 2nd Korean War will remain non-nuclear. The US retaliates against North Korea killing millions of Koreans, and then it sees the China attack on Taiwan as part of the same plan and so it nukes China's forces as well. China launches some ICBMs at the United States and then the US launches many more at China. World War III.

 

[ChalkLine]

Twilight 2000 is one of my all time favourite games. As noted, it has it's faults, and I in fact port it to an entirely different system.

My update has three flashpoints already mentioned here;
- Korea/Taiwan
- Balkans
- Middle East
Because of the turn down in Russian military power, we've adopted a China/Russia coalition vs USA/NATO.
Russia has only 2/5 of the US's population (never knew that, did ya?) so it actually doesn't have the manpower needed to be a serious threat. Asiatic troops serve in Poland in our setting.

We set the war in 2010, allowing the maintenance of that future feel. Poland was neutral, but came out on the side of Russia when German and US troops began operating over their border.

I am lucky in that one of my net-players is an actual Polish mechanised infantryman, and he was able to explode many of the commonly held western myths about Poland and Russia for me. This has allowed a radical undemonising of OPFOR troops and a more human element in the game.

As an aside, an interesting thing (to me) is that many of the net-players seem to be Scandinavian. If you're interested in setting a game in Scandinavia, you'd get a ton of help.

 

[Laryssa]

A US-German Alliance is improbable as is a Polish Russian one. A more likely alignment is a US-Polish Alignment vs a German-Russian one. I don't think Poland would want Vladimir Putin or his successor as their new "Czar".

I don't think the US would support Germany invading Poland, especially since Germany did not support the US in the Iraq War and actively campaigned against it. Feelings are sill likely to be raw in 2010, and I don't think the US considers Germany to be a good ally anymore, it is certainly not going to support an act of agression on Germany's part.

How exactly would you get Russia into the War? The most obvious way would be for Russia to invade one of the former Soviet Repubics, such as Latvia or the Ukraine, this would have to occur as a backdrop to the Second Korean War before it went nuclear and became World War III.

Now how to get Poland on Russia's side?

If Russia invades Latvia, Poland is going to feel threatened by Russian Troops. Poland was once part of Russia you know, an unwilling part. If Poland sides with Russia and thinks Putin is a great leader and their leader too, then what your describing is a very Unpolish Poland. I do not recognize this country at all, and my wife is Polish, if it can undergo such a radical reversal in politics in a mere 4 years. That's right, 2010 is only 4 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if Vladimir Putin is still running things, or is pulling strings from behind the curtain as his appointed protege appears to run things to stay within the Russian Constitution.

My scenario doesn't include the participation of Russia and it doesn't have a European front, a more accurate name for the conflict would be the Pacific War. Europe probably stays out of it, the action occurs over the Pacific between the United States and China. There are not alot of European troops in Asia right now, not in Japan, not in Korea. So basically it is only half of World War III. Missiles fly and misslions get killed, but Europe only gets secondary effects from all this. That's a pretty strange Situation for Europe to be in, I'll admit, but Europe has been trending isolationist as of late, the number of entanglements that would drag them into a world wide conflict are getting fewer and fewer. I think once missile start flying and cities begin to be destroyed, I think Putin will lose his appitite for reconquering the old USSR territory very quick. I don't think the conventional part of the Second Korean War would last long enough for putin to hatch his plans, and remember each side gets involved thinking the other would back down rather than use nuclear weapons, once it becomes clear that this is wrong, I don't think Russia would want to test America's resolve at this Juncture.

I think a more likely situation is Russia just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the USA and China to destroy each other without taking sides in this conflict. The European Union would find a way to remain neutral as well. There may be a local Arab/Israeli conflict, but if Israel goes nuclear, I don't think Europe would want to risk any of that by siding with their Arab friends. Europe would stay neutral.

 

[kafka47]

A US-German Alliance is improbable as is a Polish Russian one. A more likely alignment is a US-Polish Alignment vs a German-Russian one. I don't think Poland would want Vladimir Putin or his successor as their new "Czar".

One forgets their history. Poland may not want a new Tsar but they would want to retain their independence against Germany. If a revisionist German government with the backing of other parties of the Far Right came to power and began to hammer the Poles for concessions, they would try to play the Russia card.

Whilst, the Russian leadership eyes Poland, it fundamentally does not understand the role of Central Europe save as way of getting into West European markets. Now, if that was threatened, say, by a EU that does not want to let Russians join the club and continues to marginalize the Eastern cousins. Then a geopolitical axis could form that would again cause these nations to look Eastward. However, the likelyhood of that is small given the EU's dependence on Russian raw materials and semi-finished goods.

 

[Laryssa]

In four years?

Poland wants to maintain its independence against Both Russia and Germany, it does not want to choose who should occupy it. Right now Russia is the more dangerous of the two. Germany has a democratically elected government and a strong segment of the population is pacifist to the point of unrealism; Russia by contrast is run by a dictator named Vladimir Putin, he has hemmed in the free press and nationalized all of Russia's oil fields and energy market, opposing candidates can't gain access to the media which the Russian government controls. Effectively Putin has converted the once emergent Russian Republic into a dictatorship. If Poland falls under the influence of Russia, it also falls under the influence of Russia's dictator. We're talking four years here, in all likelihood Vladimir Putin is still likely to be running Russia in one form or another as dictators have a way of sticking around much longer than elected officials do.

I think Putin would likely wait out the results of the Pacific War First, and see how damaged the United States turns out to be, if sufficiently damaged, he is likely to entertain his designs on the rest of Europe if he feels the United States is sufficiently out of the picture, then it will be just Europe against Russia!

World War III would likely come in two parts:

Act I is the Pacific War, after which the United States is likely recovering from a nuclear war and can't be bothered to exercise foriegn policy, the the stage opens on Act II.

Act II is sometime after the Pacific War where the major players of this World are Russia and the EU. The European Union is alone, there is no United States to help them out. Although China had fewer nuclear weapons than the US did, it had enough and the US missile defenses weren't enough to stop all the Chinese missiles that were launched. The destruction of several major US cities was enough to create chaos throughout the republic, an Emergency government was established in the Wars immediate aftermath, when the emergency was over, a new government was elected that was isolationist, the American troops that were left in Europe were pulled out, and Putin patiently waited for all the troops to get out, and then the stage was set for his plan to "renew Russia's greatness". It is Europe Vs Russia in this second act, the Russian Troops start crossing the border into Europe while at the same time, Putins agents are spreading pacifist propaganda throughout Europe to delay and render ineffective Europe's reaction to this, and as disunited as Europe is, it quickly becomes every nation for itself. A band of nations led by Great Britian then get together to mount a defence against Russia's aggression.

That's how I think it will play out.

 

[Laryssa]

Also with things going to hell in Korea, the US is unlikely to entertian the sudden expansionist yearnings of an unreliable fair-weather ally like Germany when it already has its plate full with Asia. I don't see how making Germany larger at the expense of Poland should suddenly become a priority for the American Government or its people.

 

[Border Reiver]

Everyone here seems to have a geopolitical outlook that is rooted in the Eighties. Germany (and Germans) have less wish to expand into Poland or other states than the USA has over Mexico & Canada. Why invade a neighbour when you can economically dominate him? There is no need for lebensraum, Germans can move and live freely anywhere within the EU (as can Poles).

To state that there are not a lot of European troops in Asia is hogwash. Deployments can and have been made to Asia. At this moment there are over nine European countries with forces in Afghanistan. France and Britain have a significant interest in the region.

You state that Poland was once part of Russia, I'll counter and state that Ukraine was once part of Poland. All it would take is one election and some greed to convince Poland to invade to secure the gas pipeline. Modern Poles are quite laid back about Russia. But they do care about their economy.

 

[mike wightman]

[moderator]This topic is now about two posts from being moved to the pulpit...[/moderator]

 

[Border Reiver]

Sorry

 

[ChalkLine]

Regardless of how the Twilight War starts, T2K has the capacity for a great roleplaying experience.
The setting has natural pathos, you are survivors in a dying world. Some of the best situations we have encountered has been engaging in careful dialogues with ostensibly hostile Russian troops, with not a shot fired. Trading supplies and exchanging cautionary information. Then they'd drift off towards Russia and we'd head towards Germany, trying to make ground before the Nuclear Autumn turned to winter and the whole world seemed to freeze solid.

Players are so immobile - it takes weeks for a still to brew enough moonshine to move a truck for four hours - that the PCs are forced to interact with their environment and the NPCs, it takes a big load off the GM who can develop plots rather than keep up a running travelogue (and who else has spent a night creating a planet and had the players jump outsystem without doing much more than filling up there?).

PCs make a real difference to the campaign, they may come back across a town they visited a month earlier and their efforts have meant the difference between survival and wholesale death. Similiarly, a failure may mean a deserted hamlet pocked with bullet holes or strewn with unburied disease victims.

The enormous wealth of info available on the net, not the least being the infinitely detailed Polish Online Map , makes the campaign much more alive and is laden with adventure and plot possibilities.

If you're interested, there are many fine PbEMs and forum PbP games running, all with a different emphasis from gunplay to disaster relief. It's a good way of exploring the setting if you're still not quite sure about it.

(Whew! What a spiel!)

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
[moderator]This topic is now about two posts from being moved to the pulpit...[/moderator]

Why not have a Twilight 2000 forum in the Political Pulpit? The political nature of this setting makes it very hard to talk about here without beating around the bush. It is kind of unfair that you can discuss all sorts of aspects of the OTU, since the politics of that is entirely fictional, but Twilight 2000 has real nations with real politics in its history. I think we should have a forum in the Political Pulpet where we can discuss all aspects of Twilight 2000, political, game whatever all in one place, and let make this clear Twilight 2000 is not the real world, although its background is made to resemble the real world.

I'll start a threat in the Pulpet that continues where this one left off.