Forum

Until Fria Ligans creates a dedicated feedback thread post your thoughts on the Alpha Rules here.

Quick thoughts before I head out to buy enough ink to print everything out.

How long do we have to check and potentially playtest the Alpha Rules and get feedback in?

02 Encounter Pack Of Wolves seems odd. Given the number of wolves pre WW3 coupled with everyone having guns and a freezing winter and I suspect wolf numbers would be low. A pack of starving feral dogs would make better sense as both farm dogs and pets that were abandoned will join up to survive (a problem in the real world at times).

Reading the background in 07 World At War it all seems a bit weak. For example how did the Soviet Union become powerful enough to pull off invading the Baltics, Sweden, the UK and fighting in Central Europe? Is the idea that the USSR had the military that the Pentagon claimed it had in budget requests to Congress rather than what it had in reality?

For all the folks borne after the 1990s this probably doesn't matter, but it looks like 1st / 2nd Edition again just updated for the Gulf War, Yeltsin and Clinton.

Apart from the above I will wait until I have a chance to read through the rules before posting anything further.

Moderator Action: Changed the title so it includes that this the alpha tag within brackets, just for clarity.

One thought escaped the first post - where is and what happened to the third superpower China in all of the backstory?

I'd love to post directly to the Dropbox files ... but SEVEN steps for authentication, with pictures which aren't always of identical featured dice?

Ridiculous.

Anyway. The obvious on the 'Secret' Coversheet for the Poland briefing ...

Cover Sheet
'Exercise the necessaary ..." = necessary
"to prevent unautorized ..." = unauthorized
"... disclousure ..." = disclosure
"... alocked ..." = a locked
" ... Department of Defence ..." = Defense
"... apermanent ..." = a permanent

Interior Pages
1) If this is meant to mimic a typed sheet, then none of the Xth or Xst or Xnd or Xrd notations should be as superscript ... they should be 1st-2nd-3rd-Xth

2) Personal opinion. The chances of any surviving Soviet (or NATO for that matter!) nuclear weapons, even tactical nukes, is likely to be so close to zero as to not be measurable. Even if they (and Chemical/Bio Weapons) remain in existence, the chance of any significant number of delivery systems are also so close to zero as to not be measurable. In any case, if the Soviets have surviving nukes or chemical weapons it is at least as likely that NATO (US/UK/French) will as well ... in the unrealism stakes, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. IMNSHO.

Phil McGregor
========
Author: Space Opera (FGU); Rigger Black Book #1 (FASA); Orbis Mundi 2, The Marketplace, Ithura & Porthaven, Fantasy Europe (PGD); Road to Armageddon & Supplements, Displaced, Audace ad Gloriam, Farm, Forge & Steam (PGD).

Hello! First time poster, here because I backed the new edition of T2K on Kickstarter and have spend the past few hours going over the books. Figured this would be as good a place to drop my ~opinions~ as any!

Now, first and foremost: I've never played any edition of T2K, though I've certainly wanted to. I learned about the series a few years back when I was in undergrad, and as someone interested in military-themed RPGs, Cold War military history, and post-apoc settings like those in the Fallout and the Metro series of games, T2K was right up my alley. Unfortunately, my friends were never quite as interested as I was, and so I never managed to get a game going (No matter how much printer paper I wasted at the university library printing the books out). But, with the new edition, I'm very interested and excited in finally getting a chance to play, and to draw my friends into the setting as well.

So, what do I think of the book so far?

For the most part, I like it! The art especially is a big draw, painting desolate landscapes and desperate people that really help set the mood of the game. The mechanics (Always one of the most important parts of any RPG) also seem straightforward enough, though obviously I won't be able to judge them as clearly until I actually get some sessions in.

Now, general thoughts and feelings as I plough through character creation:

-Feels weird that the Gunner is more likely to be higher ranking than the Grunt. Also there doesn’t seem to be much reason to take Grunt over Gunner? Might help if Grunts got bonus skills or extra equipment to help better fit as all-rounders as opposed to the more specialized Gunner. This could really go for most of the other archetypes as well—as currently written a lot of them are somewhat same-y, and could use help with differentiating each one from each other.
-Also strange that there doesn't seem to be any option to be a regular Sergeant—only way to be one is to be a Medic or Special Operator.
-"Key" Attribute might not be the best word? When I was skimming through initially, I read "Key attribute" as "this is an important attribute to have for your class," rather than something mechanically important. Realized my error after going back into Archetype character creation, but still, there might be a better way to phrase it.
-Likewise, "Recommended" options make it seem like I can take any skill or specialty at all, rather than needing GM approval for non-recommended options.
-Might be interesting to have Coolness Under Fire have a chance to go down, especially given there's only four ranks (And Operator can already start at the second-to-best one)
-The T-80 with its turbine engine should have similar fuel consumption to the Abrams, but a benefit for being a Turbine (with its stratespherically high fuel consumption) should be that it doesn't need any conversion for alcohol fuel—it'll run on anything that burns
-Fixing up a vehicle (especially a diesel) to run on alcohol fuel should imo take a lot more time and potentially reduce the reliability of the vehicle, to make running on real fuel more appealing.
-There should be a vehicle/weapon upgrade section in general. It's the apocalypse, and the game should facilitate and encourage jury-rigging and customization—particularly as it can help differentiate military and non-standard gear.
-"Water" has no listing under Food and Drink.
-Body Armor has no section for descriptions, only the illustration and table. Also, there's no options for leg or arm armor.
-Can start with "Flak Jacket and Helmet," but it doesn't specify whether it's a steel or kevlar helmet (also the kevlar helmet should offer more protection, steel pots are only really good against shrapnel)
-Should specify what kinds of hand-grenade a PC can start with. Frag? AT? WP? Can they pick and choose?
-Grenades should have reliability, prove me wrong
-There’s no range listed for R-311 Soviet military radios. There’s also no entries for vehicle-based radios, which will obviously have a much longer range.

That’s just what struck me as I was trying to make a character and skimming elsewhere through the book. I’m sure once I try building a character through the Lifepath system, I’ll have even more.

Now, one thing that really does rub me the wrong way is "Operation Reset,” and this is for several reasons. First, for as much as it’s built up throughout both the Player’s Manuel and the Referee’s guide, there’s simply not enough substance to justify that buildup. And “We’ll have more information in the next module, we swear!” is an extremely lame excuse, especially when learning more about the operation’s true goals is explicitly provided as a potential player motivation. It’s hanging the GM out to dry, and effectively forcing them to buy that module if the players show any inclination to check out the carrot that the book’s fluff dangles tantalizingly close to them.

It also feels... I dunno, not really fitting for the setting? Now granted, I've never managed to play in or run a game of T2K (Though I'm certainly hoping to do so with this edition), but when I went through the old books the emphasis always felt like surviving in the world as it is now, with pre-war governments, organizations, and military formations slowly breaking apart as equipment rusted away and communications became more and more difficult—with the destruction of the 5th Mech at Kalisz serving as the last, final gasp of those who believed the war could actually be "won.” But what little is said of Reset in the Ref’s book builds the operation’s true objective as some kind of war-winning, civilization-restoring object that feels both unbelievable and somewhat hokey.
If it were up to me, I'd remove a lot of the references to the Operation in the two books, and leave any suggestion that the Operation Reset had a deeper, secondary goal as a strict rumor, something that can be built up in a future module or by an enterprising GM, but not something the GM is bound to account for early in the game.

I’d also change the name, since “Reset” doesn’t really feel like a suitable name for a last-ditch invasion of Eastern Europe.

I dunno, what do you folks think?

edit: I should really go to bed, it's 2AM here, but one last point:

If anything, I'm not sure the new game is really apocalyptic enough. For instance, this is how the original introduction of v1 reads:

The year is 2000 AD. For five years the armies of the world have fought back and forth across an increasingly devastated planet. Chemical weapons, biological agents, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, every horror from a technological cornucopia of destruction was used. And in the wake of war came famine and plague, until well over half of the planet’s population had been carried away.

But the war goes on.

Most civilian governments have collapsed under the burden of massive casualties and a total breakdown of the communication and transportation systems. Only the military has survived as a cohesive force. For many soldiers, particularly those out-side their own national borders, surrounded by a foreign and increasingly hostile population; the army has become their country.

But even the pressures of unit loyalty and wartime discipline have not been sufficient to prevent the gradual disintegration of the armed forces. The countryside is infested with bands of murderous marauders, made up largely of deserters, preying on soldier and civilian with equal ferocity.

In the spring of the year 2000, the German 3rd Army launched its final offensive against Poland. It was postponed due to late rains—the soldiers were delayed in getting their fields planted. The objective was to clear the Baltic coast of Polish and Soviet forces and thus gain control of the plentiful Baltic fishing and the Vistula River barge traffic.

When the offensive finally got under way it was spearhead-ed by the U.S. Eleventh Corps, because the U.S. troops were less tied to their garrison areas than were the Germans. The initial drives were successful, with two U.S. divisions breaking loose and conducting deep penetration raids into the enemy rear area. While the 8th Division (Mechanized) headed for the port of Kaliliningrad
and a link-up with the Free Latvian Army, the 5th Division (Mechanized) headed southeast toward Lodz. Then, everything started to come apart.

The last battle-worthy remnants of the Polish army counterattacked, and battered themselves to pieces against the NATO troops. When the dust had settled, though, the last heavy equipment of Eleventh Corps was burning junk. The remnants of four Soviet armies went on the offensive against the base camp areas of 3rd German Army, and German troops began drifting west to bolster the defenses of their homes. Finally, two additional Soviet armies, the 4th Guards Tank and 22nd Cavalry, rolled across the Polish frontier from Byelorussia and hit the U.S. 5th Division. With a combined strength of 21,000 men and almost a hundred modern tanks, the two Soviet armies plowed 5th Division under near the Polish city of Kalisz, 200 kilometers southwest of the ruins of Warsaw. As division headquarters was being overrun, the CO’s last radio message was, “You’re on your own. Good luck.”

Bolded a very important section, because what this introduction accomplishes is that it illustrates very clearly just how much society and the war itself has degraded over a few short years. This grand, sweeping offensive was engineered to gain access to food resources and barge traffic, and was delayed because the soldiers were needed to help with harvests (The clear implication being there aren't enough able-bodied people left to do so otherwise). And while the implication of all these things happening still exists in the new edition, the text doesn't really bring attention to it to the same degree (And bizarrely also shortens the timeline from a five-year war to a three-year war). And it's really unfortunate, because I think this is all a big part of what makes the setting so impactful and compelling.

A couple of points regarding the Travel Map of Sweden.
- The road between Göteborg and Trollhättan (E45) is on the wrong side of the river, it should be on the east.
- I also think Trollhättan should be in hex L47 and Vänersborg in L45.

I started a thread to cover responses and feedback about the game's handling of the UK: viewtopic.php?f=127&t=7052

I like that Attribute Scores and Skill Levels are rated by die type. However, I feel that it would be quicker and clearer to just refer to the die type instead of having to 'translate' from a letter to a die.

- Moved myself over to the new thread -

Thanks

I started a separate thread for specific feedback on the worldbuilding.

Might get messy if we try to discuss everything in the same thread.

I like that Attribute Scores and Skill Levels are rated by die type. However, I feel that it would be quicker and clearer to just refer to the die type instead of having to 'translate' from a letter to a die.

Completely agree.. I thought exactly the same thing.
Just refer to it as d8 or 8.