Getting Started

What’s going on around here!?

Background

After three of years gamemastering a self-created fantasy-ish setting (that is a whole different blog that I will not do…and now we are on three years) sandbox campaign using GURPS 4e by Steve Jackson Games online using Discord and Foundry VTT, I started to ponder running something else. I tried setting up a more linear Second World War commando campaign, but the idea rapidly lost its flavor with me. I tried to run a time travel sci-fi campaign with the setting determined via session zero with the players, but we never gathered enough players and the campaign never gained what my friend Rich calls “escape velocity”, that moment when you know that you could lose players due to real life attrition or whatever but the thing just has a live; a constant level of engagement and investment from the players and gamemaster that keeps it going. In December of 2023 several factors and idea strands came together that led to the subject of this site.

When Free League Publishing announced it had licensed and would release a Fourth Edition of Twilight: 2000, a classic TTRPG originally published by Game Designers Workshop (and currently a licensed property from Far Future Enterprises) , I was dubious. Firstly, I wondered how relevant the setting of a “Cold War gone hot” was in an age after 9/11 and the “forever wars” (that I was a participant in) was. I love a good, fun engaging setting, but I am not one for nostalgia. Secondly, despite current trends in TTRPG design, I was of the opinion that a survival game where the number of bullets, at what caliber, one possesses matters and probably greatly, wouldn’t gel well with Free League’s boardgame/crpg influenced ludographic approach given that they would be using their mutant year zero engine. However, the thought of playing a sandbox in the setting had always intrigued me, and I remembered how rich and developed the original GDW area sourcebooks were.

Regarding relevancy, the beginning of the current unpleasantness between Russia and Ukraine, while it delayed Free League’s release of its game due to vague sensitivity concerns, underscored to me the vitality and relevancy of the setting. And I also applaud Free League’s decision to determine that the setting is an alternate past with its point of departure being the success of the Hardliner’s Coup (1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt, also known as the August Coup) against then Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev.

That was about all I found relevant and valuable from Free League’s edition. The system, as I predicted, was ill-suited to a survival game and actually provided a barrier to getting immersed in a character that wasn’t a trope (i.e. very gamist and having the in-vogue boardgame/crpg toggles and switches for abstraction of play; but creating a distance from the character). However, the designers recognized that scarcity and inventory would still be an issue and had to be dealt with in this setting. So they included that as well, but mysteriously created page after page after page of inventory items keyed to “cargo units” as a of measurement, completely divorced from any real world unit of measurement. An approach well-suited to dealing with cargo on a space freighter but extremely puzzling when dealing with canned food and bullets. A friend likened the choice to “deciding that your book needs to be read by people who speak different languages, so you require them to learn Esperanto.” We won’t discuss the concept of having a cardboard counter wargame (and a bad one, speaking as a wargamer) as the combat system. It was and remains a mishmash.

Even Free League’s setting was bizarre; the decision to have a Swedish theater predominant, not dealing with the ugly ramifications in the Balkans of a Soviet Union surviving and thriving through the 90s, constant use of organizations not present in the year 2000 (but existing in the year 2020). The list goes on. Suffice to say that it was not my cup of tea and made the idea of running a Twilight: 2000 campaign seem almost laughable to me. But those wonderful GDW sourcebooks stayed in my head.

In the Fall of 2023 , a good friend of mine, Gary (Ardwulf of Ardwulf’s Lair), and I were idly chatting about the setting and he made the comment “well, the setting is still really appropriate for a great sandbox campaign, as long as the gamemaster develops a good rich sandbox and filters out the out of date stuff. And if the player characters and world aren’t run like a trope; treating soldiers like classes in a D&D game.” And it hit me; he was right. And I went into brainstorming mode.

Tone, Structure, System and Materials

First I needed to determine what I wanted to do with the setting. I wanted something that would have action, combat and scarcity. I also wanted something that allowed players to make characters that really feel three dimensional. I wanted a tone where war wasn’t a romp to shoot people and take their stuff or a “Inglorious Bastards” set in the year 2000 starring the Soviets as the Germans. My own sensibilities and experiences wouldn’t allow that; I would involuntarily balk at running it. I wanted to players to take on characters that were being changed by the events they found themselves in and engaging with a world that can be filled with ugly, sometimes very ugly, prejudices, actions and practices. War IS hell. A campaign I would run needed some of that.

I began to have the vision of the campaign as a sandbox, yes, but a sandbox that had as its tone a Television series made in the last 10 or 15 years. A drama set in this alternate past. It wouldn’t be “heroic” in tone but gritty. Real people being “heroes” by surviving and even sticking their necks out a little bit. People who were in support roles; called-up reservists. Support troops. Not Elite Troops or Superheroes. And probably, subconsciously, I was foreseeing the representation of the Army and Military that I knew from that era, the late 90s and 2000. Our war was very different than this world’s. But I know (and knew) those soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen as people. I wanted a game that let the player character soldiers be people too. And allowed that in its mechanics as well.

The choice of system was frankly, quite easy. GDWs old game had become antiquated in its processes. It also inherently encourages making a character who’s class is “infantryman” like “paladin” or “cleric.” Not appropriate to what I wanted to do. I chose the Generic Universal Role-Playing System (GURPS) 4th Edition. Being familiar with it I knew that as a toolset its “out of the box” factory settings would give me everything I wanted, in spades, for a modern setting game. Gritty combat. Deadly modern weapons. An expansive skill list to curate. An alternate set of “Chase Rules” that will allow for vehicle and more mobile combats to be fluid and not be “wargames.” Advantages and Disadvantages that would allow for mechanical reinforcement of player character concepts aiding immersion. The simulationist approach of the game would allow for scarcity and resources to be dealt with organically and normally (an M16A2 Rifle weighs 7.5 Pounds not one “cargo unit” , and I can just look weights up for whatever comes up…).

I also knew I would eventually rewrite the setting alternate history (staring off Euro-centric, then broadening things out afterwards), and figure out a way to tie the party together and have a proposed basic direction in the fabric of the campaign’s construction with the player characters that could keep the momentum of what I hope for; a long sprawling campaign that starts at Kalisz, Poland in July 2000 and eventually get the player characters, US Army soldiers, Home.

Final Thoughts for Now

I was spurred to start this blog and site after months of rejecting perfectly good advice that I absolutely should have listened to from many friends I have shared many of these thoughts and materials with. I rejected it because I wanted to spend more time and work on the Campaign itself. However, I began writing session recaps, what I call “Musical Recaps”: session by session “Emergent Scripts” using the conceit that the Cry Havoc TTRPG Campaign is the Cry Havoc Television/Streaming Serial and scored to popular music, with accompanying Spotify playlists. I was writing them up and putting them in the Campaign-Dedicated Discord Server and sharing them on Social Media, but it has become evident that I should just do the damn blog! So here it is. We are on Session 4 and already we have achieved “Escape Velocity.” Wish us luck; there is more to come!