Quote from: jhkim on September 02, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Of these, the only one I've played is Twilight: 2000. It is pretty good, but in my experience, it came down to mostly wargaming. It was hard to get into the role-playing elements in a military command structure.

And I'm not really understanding how that hardship exists at all, because my experiences with the game have been totally different. It's part and parcel of the T2K game that the military command structure has pretty much completely broken down. Most PCs aren't really even beholden to it anymore, especially if they aren't from local units of the initial assumed setting.

I've run a lot of both 1E and 4E, and I've never run into anyone who had that issue. I've always seen more of an attitude that since they were abandoned by their government in this godforsaken hellhole that they would do whatever it took to get home, and that included utterly disregarding any remaining command structure other than that established in their own group, by their own group, and to hell with anything that got in their way.

And with 4E, most of my fellow gamers were pretty much wanting to play something else because Russian troops invading Ukraine was starting up right at the time I pitched the game. One guy said he felt like it might be a little "too real" right then. I'll have to pitch it again soon since everyone's become less on edge over that stuff now.

Back in the 80's we would play Top Secret and many of the missions involved commando raids on installations.  The basic rules don't have much in the way of weaponry, but there were expansions where many of the contemporary arms were statted out.

Later on Top Secret was revamped to Top Secret/SI, which brought the system more in line with the Star Frontiers mechanics.  A definite upgrade.

Quote from: TheShadow on September 02, 2023, 08:25:56 PM
Have you played any of them?

I played a lot of Behind Enemy Lines. It was great fun. Pretty lethal, though. We usually took the approach that each player ran multiple characters. (Often a fire team, but it depended on the number of players and the adventure. There were times a single player ran an entire squad.) I have the boxed set, the British commandos supplement, and the Guns of Navarone adventure.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 18, 2023, 03:04:57 PM

Quote from: jhkim on September 02, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Of these, the only one I've played is Twilight: 2000. It is pretty good, but in my experience, it came down to mostly wargaming. It was hard to get into the role-playing elements in a military command structure.

And I'm not really understanding how that hardship exists at all, because my experiences with the game have been totally different. It's part and parcel of the T2K game that the military command structure has pretty much completely broken down. Most PCs aren't really even beholden to it anymore, especially if they aren't from local units of the initial assumed setting.

I've run a lot of both 1E and 4E, and I've never run into anyone who had that issue. I've always seen more of an attitude that since they were abandoned by their government in this godforsaken hellhole that they would do whatever it took to get home, and that included utterly disregarding any remaining command structure other than that established in their own group, by their own group, and to hell with anything that got in their way.

And with 4E, most of my fellow gamers were pretty much wanting to play something else because Russian troops invading Ukraine was starting up right at the time I pitched the game. One guy said he felt like it might be a little "too real" right then. I'll have to pitch it again soon since everyone's become less on edge over that stuff now.

I'm mostly a fan of Twilight:2013 because of the system, followed by the 2.2 version. 1e was a little too bare bones for me but it's timeline felt the best. 4e, while it looks like it has great production values, seems like it doesn't get the military realism quite right and I'm also not a fan of the system.

3e's combat system *feels* realistic without getting into Phoenix Command levels of looking through tables.

Regardless of system, I've only ever used rank and chain of command as plot devices. ORBATs have been helpful to explain how disparate troops can make sense in a party, but you don't need to get to "your PC was with 1-77 Armor, so there is no way he has an M16A2. Those were only issued to 3-77 and 5-77 Armor because 8ID was equipped with them a month before the war but 4ID wasn't scheduled to get them for another 6 months."