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| Image taken from Amazon.com/IP is GDW/FFE |
The mission is simple, find Hughes, who is holed up in a bunker that is half fortress and half pleasure palace for him and a few hundred of his closest friends, which happens to be smack dab in the middle of one of the largest New American cells this side of St. Petersburg, and bring him back to Civgov and Caldwell, alive.
May I just state, that while the idea of this adventure sounds cool? It's guaranteed to be what they call in role playing to be a TPK (Total Party Kill). Not to mention? There is this totally unnecessary side trip and additional dungeon crawl through an abandoned New American facility that has almost zero intelligence value, except to confirm "Nope, Hughes, he isn't here!" The displaced social studies teacher makes a better way to find Hughes and his not-so-merry band of sleazeballs.
Oh, and did I mention the marauder band that is practically an ethnic slur to Native Americans, in the foot hills of Appalachian Virginia? Um yeah...
And did I mention this was all about to happen while the most controversial event in Twilight: 2000 canon, "the Drought" was about to begin and Civgov and Caldwell are pulling up stakes for the Midwest?
In short, nobody thought this through really well at all. But, desperate people do desperate things, even if those desperate things border on military insanity? But no, this adventure needed some better writing overall.
But how does it fare as miniature scenario fodder?
Skirmish Games
For skirmish games, Kidnappped has a few possibilities, even for an adventure as well, badly written as this. Many of the potential encounters make good fodder for man to man games, but some of the really good ideas are these:
- Dealing with the Trolls outside Sandy Hook, one restriction on using firepower is that the locals need the bridge intact.
- Launching a raid on the New American supply depot at Bolivar (this one should be no picnic for the Civgov raiders, as the adventure description makes the place sound like a fortress).
- Clearing the Makado Computer Corporation building from either a New American patrol...or an unaffiliated marauder band.
- Rescuing Roy Masterson from a New American raid on his farm meant to silence him, and recover the papers he has come into possession of.
Larger Games
For larger games, there would not seem to be a whole lot here, but the fact, it..any assault on the Country Home bunker would take a far larger force than the typical band of role playing characters. I personally would think it would take a company sized force or larger to do it right..there's simply too many New Americans there. So, you could say Civgov had an attack of the smarts, and sent a force in to do it right, but that would entail that force fighting it's way all the way through to Country Home in the first place, which I suppose, could make a good campaign...but then again, with the drought on the way, could such a force hold together under the circumstances?
Well, next on the list is Return to Warsaw, which should have some folks wondering if the Baron Czarny really is the Twilight: 2000 answer to Darth Vader?
In the coming days, I also will be reporting on my upcoming trip to Historicon. I am leaving for Fredricksburg this Thursday, and I will check in with Covert Intervention Games and see what they are up to, as well as look about and see what else is going on of interest to anyone with a hankering for wargaming in the world of Twilight: 2000. Look for the paunchy fellow with glasses, brown hair, and eyes wearing a black t-shirt with a Twilight: 2000 1st Edition or module cover on it! That will be me!
Until next time everyone!
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who read this one and went "What?!?" Not the best of writing.
ReplyDeleteId figure it would up to the players to create a force of locals to take on the compound. Or the players be the snatch team while Civgov commits a company.
ReplyDeleteAnd they wrote it without having stats for Hughes?
ReplyDeleteFrankly Kidnapped had multiple issues. One I live in the area that the module is based in - and frankly whoever wrote it has never lived anywhere near here. Second I completely agree with the fact that this is an all out suicide mission for any party that doesn't consist of Chuck Norris, Rambo and the Terminator as well as at least a platoon of Special Forces - and even then I give NA the edge. Third the drought makes absolutely no sense - and when combined with the description in Howling Wildness of its effects its basically a "hey lets kill the US off completely and start playing Aftermath instead" kind of scenario.
ReplyDeleteOh and I forgot the timeline for the module directly causes issues with Allegheny Uprising and the Ozarks. Because if you try to put them all together you find that they cant all exist in the same timeline unless you dont have the drought. Also if Allegheny Uprising has already occurred why dont they send the five Bradley's or at least a couple of them along for the ride to blow the living snot out of NA.
ReplyDeleteAh, you hit on what our party did. We even asked our GM and got the same old answer: "not enough fuel for Bradleys to drive that far". Pffft.
Deleteor maybe you have the GM give you a few bags of nerve gas grenades or something similar so you can gas the whole compound - course that sort of kills Hughes but at least you dont lose half the party like we did
ReplyDeleteThis is one module I actually don't own, as I didn't like it when we played it. So, no idea what the setup really was, but in our game we mad a big fuss and got a lot of the NA force to chase us, and blew a nice long bridge out from under them. Those that survived the fall and subsequent "fish in a barrel" shoot we had couldn't make it back to their base in time for our assault. We lost a couple of guys, and a handful of locals we recruited to help assault. Really messy.
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