Sunday, October 28, 2018

Crossranting: The Vistula, but with a Floating Tank (Twilight: 2000: Later Days)

But think with a tank parked on a barge at the bow...
We're a tiger out for a swim. Four mortars down in the belly of the barge, 3 MG positions on each side with a RPG in case of heavy trouble, and the T-72 weighing down the front end. The OT-64 parked toy-like beside it. On the tug we've got another 2 heavy machineguns and 2 mediums on the deck. Finally, the AT-4 anti-tank missile launcher on the roof of the bridge.  - Captain Katriona Paterson

Every now and again you stumble across something unexpectedly interesting on the web while looking for something else entirely and recently for me this was the output of Chris Csakany on his Twilight 2000: Later Days defunct blog (July 2011- March 2013).

Although I'd previously mapped out the first stretch of the Vistula from the module on a previous blog and summarised some of the encounter types, it's been difficult to find any other reasonable material for inspiration to create more generic riverine encounter tables with.

That is until now. 

There's a stretch of 8 game posts from #038 to #45 (Nov 2011 to March 2012) written by Chris (with help from his group of players) that covers the whole trip detailed in the Pirates of the Vistula module:

Addit: there are several additional posts beginning with "New Orders" covering the second trip the lower Vistula beyond Warsaw to Torun, setting up the rail journey to the port of Bremerhaven detailed in Going Home

It's written in character and flows quite well, but there's enough material to both develop an understanding of the play of the campaign they ran (they mounted a T-72 battle tank on the bow of the tug to somewhat hilarious and certainly deadly effect) but also for me to get some more generic ideas from for my riverine encounter ideas.

I'll mine it for some more ideas over the next few weeks, but looking over the original module there's a lot of encounters and hazards that could be readily adapted for a more "generic" riverine adventure and I like the way the tables are set out in "stretches" and divided into "river" vs "Shore". I might even be able to mock up a random generator table or two...

The rest of the posts are quite interesting as well, covering the 5th Division remnant group as they work their way from the default start at Kalisz through to the T2k v1 American mainland adventures. The group even use the suggested strategy to flee immediately due south as an escape route that I mention in my T2k Campaign Start option post... 



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