{"id":1123,"date":"2025-01-29T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T08:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=1123"},"modified":"2025-09-11T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:09:20","slug":"ccc2025-29-vaclav-prochazka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/?p=1123","title":{"rendered":"V\u00e1clav Proch\u00e1zka"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Game:<\/strong> Twilight: 2000<\/em> (second edition, v2.2 – GDW, 1993)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Experience:<\/strong> The second edition of Twilight: 2000<\/em> came out in 1990, when the so-called end of history had rendered the first edition’s game history obsolete. It featured an updated timeline to which, admittedly, I paid very little attention. More of my focus was on the more playable game engine, which eliminated a lot of the headaches high-school-age-me had with the original game. I snapped up the yellow boxed set as soon as it released, flailed ineffectually with it through high school and my early college years, and shelved it when it became clear that I wasn’t going to find anyone interested in playing. Along the way, GDW released v2.2, which I didn’t actually use until I was in my late thirties and involved in a few play-by-post games. But we did have some pretty fantastic PbPs…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Corporal V\u00e1clav Proch\u00e1zka, Everyone’s Favorite Defect(or)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

V\u00e1clav grew up on in southern Czechoslovakia near the Austrian border, in as much of a backwater as was possible in the early 1980s. Like most able-bodied men his age, he served a few years as a military conscript. Unlike most conscripts, though, his aptitude tests and border German were good enough to earn him a spot among the “special purpose troops” of the elite 22nd Airborne Brigade. This was supposed to be an honor, but V\u00e1clav had no particular affinity for military life, and even less for the arrogant Soviet “advisors” who periodically showed up to dispense Red Army training and Communist propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e1clav did his minimum time, mustered out, returned home, and promptly began using his newly-acquired skills for something much more lucrative than farming: running contraband across the neutral Austrian border. The fall of Communism and the Czechoslovakian Velvet Divorce only offered him more business opportunities in newly-unified Germany. He avoided entanglement with the major criminal syndicates that emerged in the wake of the turmoil. In doing so, he also avoided prison during the new government’s anti-corruption sweeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the New Warsaw Pact went to war in 1996, V\u00e1clav was 33 – not too old to be conscripted a second time. This time, though, he was in a position to act on the boiling contempt he felt for the Communist government and all things that served it. Still fit enough to return to airborne duty, he calmly waited for his first raiding mission, then surrendered to the first German troops he encountered, announcing his desire to defect. Once German military intelligence realized he didn’t actually have that much useful information to share, they warehoused him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e1clav was still in a German military prison – well-treated, but definitely a prisoner – when the nukes started flying. By the spring of 1998, the western armies were growing desperate for replacement troops. When a recruiting sergeant came around looking for defectors willing to sign on in exchange for marginally better living conditions and the hope of dying outside a cell, he didn’t have to ask V\u00e1clav twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Traits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Attributes and Skills<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strength 7<\/em><\/strong>
Autogun 1
Grenade Launcher 0
Mechanic 1
Small Arms (Pistol) 5
Small Arms (Rifle) 6
Thrown Weapon 1
Unarmed Martial Arts 6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constitution 6<\/em><\/strong>
Horsemanship 1
Parachute 2
Swimming 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agility 7<\/em><\/strong>
Ground Vehicle (Motorcycle) 1
Ground Vehicle (Tracked) 1
Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 3
Intrusion 2
Stealth 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education 2<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charisma 3<\/em><\/strong>
Instruction 1
Language (Czech) 10
Language (English) 2
Language (German) 4
Leadership 1
Persuasion 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intelligence 9<\/em><\/strong>
Farming 5
Observation 1
Survival 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Age<\/strong> 37
Initiative<\/strong> 4
Rads<\/strong> 22
Hit Capacity: <\/strong>head 12, torso 39, limbs 26
Weight: <\/strong>80 kg
Load:<\/strong> 39 kg
Throw Range: <\/strong>28 m
Unarmed Combat Damage:<\/strong> 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Equipment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

German flecktarn <\/em>camouflage fatigues
Kevlar helmet
Kevlar vest
combat web gear
rucksack
shelter half
sleeping bag
flashlight
personal medical kit
gas mask
lockpick tools
3 days MREs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AK-74 assault rifle w\/ 6 full magazines
vz.61 machine pistol w\/ 6 full magazines and shoulder holster
bayonet
6 fragmentation grenades
2 smoke grenades<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.45mm ammo, 180 loose rounds + full case of 840 rounds
.32 ACP ammo, partial case of 1880 rounds
spare German flecktarn <\/em>camouflage fatigues
spare Czech camouflage fatigues
chemical defense suit
15 days MREs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$1,000 in portable wealth (gold, silver, etc.)
$6,052 of personal equipment allocation to contribute to team procurement efforts<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contacts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 criminal, Czechoslovakian
1 criminal, foreign
1 intelligence, Czechoslovakian
1 intelligence, foreign
1 farming specialist, Czechoslovakian
2 military, Czechoslovakian<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Notes and Afterthoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, random character creation certainly provided an interesting set of attributes that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e1clav is a much less optimized iteration of a character I once ran in a play-by-post campaign, crossed with one of Raellus’ long-running PCs in another PbP. With Education 2 and Charisma 3, a lot of life path options were closed to him, so I saw him as a poorly-socialized, barely-literate guy using his native talent to carve out his best possible life without regard for little things like other people’s laws. Despite his high Intelligence, he didn’t succeed in a single promotion check until after he defected, and in-story, that’s also on the Charisma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(With that Farming 5, he’s probably trying to find a chemist business partner and some opium poppy seeds.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e1clav’s life path phases were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 (1980-1984) – Farmer (swapping the point of Computer for a point of Horsemanship, because let’s be honest – no one in Cold War Czechoslovakia was using computers on a farm) (secondary activity endurance training, +1 CON)
2 (1984-1988) – Special Forces, Enlisted (secondary activity strength training, +1 STR)
3 (1988-1992) – Criminal (secondary activity “target shooting,” +1 Small Arms [Pistol])
4 (1992-1996) – Criminal (secondary activity “camping,” +1 Survival)
5 (1996-2000) – War Term – Special Forces, Enlisted (aging -1 Agility)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Game: Twilight: 2000 (second edition, v2.2 – GDW, 1993) My Experience: The second edition of Twilight: 2000 came out in 1990, when the so-called end of history had rendered the first edition’s game history obsolete. It featured an updated timeline to which, admittedly, I paid very little attention. More of my focus was on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[116,12,13],"class_list":["post-1123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters","tag-ccc2025","tag-t2k","tag-t2k-2e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libellus.de-fenestra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}