Venting (and a book list)

I need to write, but I don't know that I want to or what to write about - too many thoughts and ideas buzzing around in my head.  Not nearly enough of them game-related.

Frankly, the news keeps me anxious and depressed, but my typical response (retail therapy, my daughter calls it) brings guilt as I think I should be spending on more useful things.

Like ammunition.

Or food, booze, medical supplies, and books.

Just not RPG-specific books (despite there being many awesome kickstarters out there, right now).

RPG-adjacent books, though, I might can justify. 

But what to buy?

The Hesperian Health Guides are a solid start - not that I don't trust where the American health systems are headed, but I don't trust where systems as a whole are headed.  For me, at least, the popular Foxfire series of books are not the answer, as the varied contents of each book are too much a chore for me to read through. 

Dave Canterbury's Bushcraft books are neat and useful and well-illustrated, but I already own them.

From experience, the books from Paladin Press are always ... interesting.  I remember ogling the titles in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine when I was a kid.

Then again, whatever Field Manuals and Training Manuals I don't own from a few terms spent in the military might be a useful pick-up.  Often dry reading, though.

All in all, I am trying to get past a writing block, and this post hopefully does it.  

Thanks for reading.

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Since you read through all that, here is my Joesky tax.  A d30 table of books for a kinda-modern game, be it The Morrow Project, Twilight 2000, Aftermath, The Walking Dead, maybe Car Wars, or something else along those lines.  The books are heavily US-centric, though, so there is that.

These books might be found in an old ammo can sealed in individual gallon ziploc bags; a footlocker under old uniforms and other military memorabilia; a bookshelf; the door, central console, or glove box of an abandoned vehicle; someone's backpack; or all of them together in PDF format on a thumb drive or external hard drive.  

Regardless, none of these are useful unless the reader can actually read English.  Each book may provide a skill bonus of some sort - I won't be suggesting any particular ones.  

1. FM 7-8 Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad - 100-mile-an-hour tape reinforces the spine, and a bookmark made of several pieces of 5-50 paracord attached to a grenade pin show this to be well-used book.  The name LT Smith is written in black sharpie, above several coffee rings that stain the cover.
2. FM 21-150 Combatives - hand-to-hand combat, the US Army way!  Remember, folks, the person that wins a melee is the first person to have a friend show up with a gun!
3. FM 21-76 Survival - a thick catch-all manual for pilots and others that may spend a long time far from friendly lines.  This copy shows wear and tear, and uses a variety of pine needles and leaves as bookmarks.
4. Where There is No Doctor - this book might be in any number of languages, but the illustrations ensure at least a small bonus; in fact, it might actually be any of the Hesperian Health Guides, depending on GM whim. 
5. Boy Scout Manual (1982 edition) - this dog-eared book has the name BEN JAMMIN stenciled on the inside cover.   The year of printing dictates the skills covered in the book.
6. The Human Powered Home - several illustrated suggestions for enhancing your homelife without electricity.  Bicycles and treadles feature in many of the ideas.
7. Ragnar's Ten Best Traps - more than ten, actually, for fish, fowl, game animals, and people.
8. Bushcraft 101 - if you are lucky, you might instead find the Bushcraft Boxed Set, likely without the box, instead.
9. The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs - a useful book for those forced into the outdoors, rather than having grown up in them.
10. Pocket Naturalist Guides - One (or more) pocket-sized illustrated foldables covering a range of information, from foraging to knot-tying to the birds of Northeast America, so they may not always prove useful. 
11. Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine: The Definitive Home Reference Guide to 550 Key Herbs with all their Uses as Remedies for Common Ailments by Andrew Chevallier  - this thick book is full of pictures and tips
12. FM 23-10 Sniper Training - it's not just how to shoot at a distance, but also infiltration and exfiltration and camouflage.
13. Storey's Basic Country Skills - from the label on the side and library card on the back cover, it is apparent this tome is well overdue from the North Shelby Library, located in Birmingham, Alabama.
14. The Anarchist's Cookbook - the first edition is from 1971 and is full of information that most folks probably should not really need to know.  Fun conspiracy - the explosives formulas in it are deliberately wrong and designed to blow up the would-be anarchist!  I lack the background (and desire) to test this conspiracy. 
15. The Joy of Home Distilling - a useful picture-filled guide to distilling spirits, either for drinking or fuel.
16. English-to-LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE-to-English Phrasebook - Polish is the linked example, but depending on the game's setting, most anything is possible.
17. AAA Road Atlas - while small roads and even road names may change, the major roads don't, and regardless of the age of the AAA road atlas, it can get you where you want to be, as long as you don't need to be there.
18. Foldable state maps - these may lack the grid squares of military maps, making calling for fire (and ordering pizza from drivers with a GPS) difficult, but these laminated maps make navigation all the easier.
19. FM 4-25.11 First Aid - despite the bloodstains, slight water damage, and tears, this book is complete and hella useful to those trying to save a life.
20. Propaganda by Edward Bernays - this thin paperback is notable for its marginalia relating to specific historical figures making use of different aspects of the book.  Studying this might enhance one's persuasion skills.
21. Carpentry for Dummies - this well-worn book always produces a bit of sawdust when shaken, and its spine is broken from being pressed flat numerous times.  Illustrated and presumes access to tools that might not be available.
22. The Art of War by Sun Tzu - just a translation of the basic book; The Art of War with Commentaries by Sun Tzu - this English translation also includes commentaries from the ages, making it a more interesting read than the basic translation.  Folded pages from a legal pad stuffed in throughout the book add the last owner's insights to the commentaries.   
23. TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions - this yellowing copy is older than you are and may have been used in Viet Nam.   
24. Mask of Command and Face of Battle by John Keegan - this pair of books addresses both sides of battle, and would-be combat leaders can benefit from reading them.  Weapons change, but the people fighting don't.
25. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - a textbook on Stoicism.  Studying and adopting this mindset may reduce stress and make it easier to survive torture or other stamina-checking extremes.  This particular copy is a well-read paperback with "key" lines underlined.
26. Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons by Marc MacYoung - reading this and putting it into practice makes life just a bit more survivable in urban environments.
27. FM 5-31 Boobytraps - when you need to protect somewhere or something, but lack the personnel for complete coverage.
28. The Trapper's Bible: Traps, Snares, and Pathguards - a useful mix of traps for game, fur, and people.  For protection only, naturally.
29. Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning - without food, people die.  This book shows a variety of ways to preserve food for the winter months.  It smells faintly of salt.
30. Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants:Eastern and Central North America, first edition - there are more recent editions of this book, and many more Field Guides, but this is one of few that might be useful in a game.

There are a wealth of other books and topics that can fit, but I think most of these would be easily gameable, especially in rulesets with skill systems.  

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Note that owning/researching some of these titles might put you on a list - but I am right there with you.  Also, I presume most established militaries have their own versions of the FMs listed, so replace as needed.  

If you're into particular timelines for your games, some of the items linked above may not have been printed yet, while others may just be more recent editions.  Either way, check edition and print date if you are into that level of authenticity.  

Speaking of food for thought, I found this foraging website aimed at those foraging in the UK.  Kinda neat.

2022 Character Creation Challenge - Day 3

For Christmas, I got to open and more thoroughly play with the new Twilight 2000 box set from Fria Ligan.  I backed the kickstarter, so have had the pdfs for a few months, but now with books in hand, I feel I can properly roll up a PC.

In all honesty, this challenge may see a few T2K PCs rolled up.  How much individual PCs will be modeled on people I served with over my twelve years is as yet undetermined. 

T2K does provide some fast PCs, archetypes in the rulebook, but it also includes a life path method, and it's the life path method I'll be using here.  21 easy steps to a new PC trapped in Poland.

Darren McMichaels, American, 33 years old, First Lieutenant 

STRENGTH B - D10

Heavy Weapons D - D6

Close Combat

Stamina D - D6

AGILITY B - D10

Driving D - D6

Mobility

Ranged Combat B - D10

INTELLIGENCE B - D10

Recon C - D8

Survival 

Tech 

EMPATHY A - D12

Command D - D6

Persuasion C - D8

Medical Aid

Specialties: Rifleman, Launcher Crew, Linguist, Tactician, Improvised Munitions

Hit Capacity - 5

Stress Capacity - 6

Coolness Under Fire - B

Moral Code - my job is to take care of my soldiers

Big Dream - get soldiers and self back to the states

Small Dream - get a rifle

Buddy - SFC 'Tuff nuts' - the mechanic

How You Met - 

Appearance - tattoos from enlisted days, partial sleeves and chest

Starting Rads - 5

Starting gear - .45 pistol, 4 reloads, night vision goggles, flak jacket, knife, personal medkit

1LT McMichaels enlisted after high school, partially for adventure, mostly to spite his parents.  After two terms, McMichaels mustered out and used the GI Bill for college and ROTC.  Commissioned a 2LT, McMichaels found himself a platoon leader in a mechanized infantry company, and had been promoted to Company XO by the time war broke out.  As XO, 1LT McMichaels was in charge of maintenance, and was at a maintenance point, negotiating/supervising repairs of two of the company's Bradley's when the fateful call came over the radio.  The thirty or so people at the point split into small groups, and headed west-ish.  For all that McMichaels knows, the two deadlined Bradley's are still parked under the trees, waiting for repairs that are unlikely to come.  He'll gladly trade the grid coordinates for support getting his 'command' of five Americans, a German, and a Pole back to something resembling safety.

All told, there is a good amount of page-flipping, chart-checking, and dice-rolling to get one PC, so we'll see if future PCs aren't just archetypes with a bit of fiction attached.  I do like the idea of a Moral Code, a Big Dream, and (my self-decided) Small Dream for the PCs, and can see those making their way into my eventual frankengame.

Twilight 2000

Despite the image, I'm not talking about the GDW ruleset.  I backed the kickstarter from Fria Ligan (creator of Tales from the Loop and Mutant: Year Zero, among other games), because as a child, I couldn't afford the game.  Still, it fascinated me, as did all things military at that point in my life - I'm fairly certain I did a book report on Team Yankee while in middle school (the comic book miniseries is a solid retelling, if you can find all six issues).  For awhile, I got my fix from the video game version of T2K, but that only worked for so long.

So when the chance to own T2K coincided with my having funds, I jumped on it.

I received the Alpha pdf before Christmas.  After skim-reading it, I set it aside for other things. This weekend, the Beta pdfs arrived, so I've been reading through them in my spare time, and it comes across as somehow more grim than before.

Which is fitting, as the game itself is set in a WWIII that never was.  Still, some of the packaged scenarios in the referee's book quickly begin morally grey, and then wallow in it.  Particularly the adventure set around a former military academy run and protected by students-turned-child-soldiers.

Soviet spies posing as Americans (or Americans serving as Soviet spies) is a recurring theme in the game which resonates with me, because last year I learned that one of my fellow platoon leaders from long ago was convicted of being a Soviet spy. 

There are rules for creating your own homebase, which reminds me a bit of the Fallout video games, as the PCs scrounge for parts, alongside scrounging up food, clean water, miscellaneous other supplies, and ammo.  Ammo is always in demand, because despite T2K being more of an RPG about tired soldiers trying to get back to the states (itself in a bit of a post-apocalyptic mess, just without zombies), combat is a very real possibility, and combat with modern-ish fireamrs relies on having enough ammo.

Because for many people in-game, the war is still going on, at least to a degree.  Local militias, Russian troops, and marauders from both sides will gladly engage any Allied (mostly American) troops they encounter, if only to kill/enslave them and take their stuff.

Grim or not, T2K is a role-playing game, which means PCs of some sort are needed. Players take on the roles of survivors of the disaster in Kalisz and WWIII in general.  The rules provide two options for creating PCs: archetypes and lifepaths.  The former are pregenerated PCs and the latter the means for creating your own PCs from scratch.  Both options require PCs to have a specified moral code, big dream, and a buddy (chosen from among the other PCs).  These three traits ideally help drive the role-playing side of the game. 

The truth is that I have no idea who among the gamers I know might be interested in playing T2K. I know I can draft my eldest to play through the combat-related rules, but for actually playing through several sessions, I haven't a clue.

Even if I never get to play it properly, I can still mine it for my fiction writing, which tends towards the post-apocalyptic.

If nothing else, the box set will look cool upon my shelf.

Art from one of the rulebooks; presumably by Niklas Brandt, Gustaf Ekelund, or Jarek Kubicki