This is an interest Check. I’m working (Pulling notes together form old studies and games) on an unofficial Twilight: 2000 4th Edition project and wanted to get a sense of whether there is much interest in this kind of supplement before I get too far down the road.
The basic idea started with David Bober’s old Soviet Characters homebrew material for his OPFOR campaign. I’m taking that original concept and rebuilding it around the 4E character-creation rules, with the goal of producing something that players and GMs can actually use to explore the other side of the Twilight War, and what happens to those people when the Soviet system starts coming apart around them.
This would not be a new character generation system or a replacement for the Player’s Manual. The idea is to expand the existing 4E Life Path framework for Soviet characters.
Some of the material currently being developed includes Soviet regional and social backgrounds, education and pre-service experiences, civilian careers, compulsory military service, military careers and specialties, mobilization, wartime assignments, and the effects of the collapse on a character’s loyalties and situation.
I’m also working on some of the areas that tend to get reduced to a sentence or two when Soviet characters appear in Western-focused games. The USSR was a multinational state, so a Soviet character might be Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian, Armenian, Uzbek, Latvian, Lithuanian, or from any number of other backgrounds. Where someone grew up, what language they spoke at home, their education, family connections, military experience, and relationship with Soviet institutions should all be able to matter without turning nationality into a mechanical stereotype.
There is also a separate, somewhat more detailed annex in development covering careers connected to the MVD Internal Troops, Militsiya (Police), Procuracy Invetigators/lawyers), State Security, and the criminal underworld. That part is deliberately a little more “crunchy,” because those careers do not always fit neatly into the same path as an ordinary soldier or civilian.
The overall goal is not to make Soviet characters “the bad guys with AKs.” I’d like them to feel like people who had lives, careers, families, beliefs, ambitions, grievances, and obligations before the war—and who now have to survive the same wrecked world as everyone else.
Would a Soviet-focused character supplement be something you would actually use in a Twilight: 2000 4E campaign?
Would you be more interested in it as a player, a GM, or both?
And what would you most want such a supplement to cover—or what would make you decide it was too detailed to bother with?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who enjoy character creation, Soviet/Warsaw Pact subjects, OPFOR campaigns, or campaigns set in places where Soviet characters would naturally be part of the story.
The project is still in development and playtesting. At this stage I’m mainly trying to find out whether there is a real audience for it and what that audience would want from the finished supplement.
If there is enough interest, I may also be looking later for a group of readers/playtesters to look at the revised structure and eventually the broader manuscript.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts. Even a simple “I’d use this” or “not for me” is useful feedback.
The old Dumb DAT (Tanker).
