I recently received a reader question regarding the systems I use in Kaserne on the Borderlands for tracking the agricultural and infrastructure projects that the Ponikla PCs are undertaking. I was about to write something, but the topic sounded like something I might have written already. A bit of sniffing around my own internet backtrail led me to a three-year-old post on Kato’s forum. In the interest of having a backup, I’ve replicated the original post here.
Continue reading →Author Archives: Clayton Oliver
Twilight: 2000 4e Conversion: VBL
This image recently appeared in /r/TankPorn and was immediately reposted to /r/Twilight2000 for reasons that should be obvious:
Naturally, someone requested VBL stats. Let’s give it a shot. WordPress compresses the screen shots of my tables; click each one to enlarge it in a new tab.
The MILAN doesn’t appear to be statted in the 4e core rules, despite being listed in the Marder’s stat block, so here’s a quick conversion:
AFAIK, we don’t have official rules for reactive armor, so the IIT’s tandem-charge warhead gets extra armor penetration as a kludge.
The AA-52 is a GPMG whose stats should be equivalent to those published for the FN MAG / M240B / KSP 58B. It was originally chambered in 7.5x54mm, but my cursory research suggests the French military had converted to the NATO standard 7.62x51mm by the time the Twilight War rolled around.
Continue reading →MICE/RC
Agents, how do we get the information we want from the sources who have access to it?
Classic intelligence theory references MICE – Money, Intelligence, Conscience, and Ego. A while ago, I recorded this variant in my Spycraft notes:
Material – we have a tangible thing they want (money, coke, hookers).
Ideology – their beliefs are congruent with ours and they want to help us.
Compromise – we find an existing fear (i.e., a secret whose exposure is feared) and leverage it.
Ego – we reinforce (or challenge) their self-worth.
Revenge – we facilitate their need to get back at someone who wronged them.
Coercion – we create a new fear (make them afraid of us, usually) and leverage it.
Coffee break is over. Back to standing on your head.
Winter break at work has ended, and with it, so too goes the stream of Eagle Leader/Fulcrum Leader productivity.
No one’s been this close before!
I really should have more adult supervision.
(If you don’t get the joke, your education in the classics may be lacking.)
A moment, Comrade Colonel…
I indulged my absurdism yesterday and generated a sheaf of new Zampolit cards for Fulcrum Leader. Get ’em at the usual place.
Not Really an Annual Report III
Three years, and I’m still sort of here.
For various reasons, my personal accounting of years begins in October, not January, but the turning of the calendar seems to be a more commonly-accepted time for annual recaps (and I did actually spin up this thing in January 2023, so it fits in this case).
2023 was a year of heavy posting (due in part to New Toy Syndrome), with 126 entries. I slowed down heavily in 2024, with only 51 posts, and none during football season (while I give no shits about football, my day job means it cuts into my fall gaming time quite heavily). 2025 has been slightly better for content, with 106 posts – though that’s a bit artificially inflated due to my participation in Character Creation Challenge 2025.
Competing demands, low energy levels, and the scheduling complexities of gaming in middle age have kept me from getting in more than a handful of Kaserne on the Borderlands sessions last year. I did start Somewhere West of Light as a side campaign, though I’ve done a lousy job of keeping up with session logs. I also attempted to start a Discord chat-based Shadowrun 3e campaign for my wife and her Tumblr bestie, but that does not seem to have gotten any traction. As a player, my gaming was limited to a handful of D&D 5e sessions with NLP and the one-shots I was able to get at RiverCityCon and CharCon.
As I’ve remarked before, one of the main sources of content here has been a 30-year backlog of various gaming-related things that I’ve posted elsenet or never actually released for public consumption before. With the exception of a handful of pieces that I’m saving for specific times or occurrences, that well is now dry. Going forward, almost everything here will be new content.
I did turn on commenting a few months ago, mainly to enable my players to provide their perspectives on session writeups. If the spam moderation requirements become too onerous, I’ll flip the switch again.
Twilight: 2000 as Television Series
A couple of months ago, a user on the Juhlin Twilight: 2000 forum posted the question of whether T2k would make a good television series. The following is a mirrored post of my thoughts on implementation, lightly edited with afterthoughts.
Continue reading →Defending the Baltic Approaches
I made a couple of false starts at this release, but I’m now in a place where I can comfortably consider it out the door. After a couple of weekends of unhealthy hyperfocus in GIMP, the end product (for now) of my thoughts on Eagle Leader‘s under-served Luftwaffe is available.
AIRBALTAP, my first fan-made expansion, includes:
- 16 West German and Danish pilot cards
- 3 event cards
- 3 squadron asset cards
- stats for the West German Alpha Jet light strike fighter and AS.34 Kormoran anti-shipping missile
- a new campaign, Able Archer Baltic (1983)
The campaign requires the use of the target cards from Expansion 8: JASDF and assumes you have Expansion 1: Luftwaffe and RAF.
It’s currently at a playtest draft version 0.5, which you can download from my main DVG resources page.
RAAF Reinforcements
I had a showerthought and some free time today:
PDFs set up for duplex printing are available at the usual place.
(Background images are Google Earth shots of northern Australia at ~5km viewpoint altitude. I’m a tiny bit pleased that I thought to do that.)