Do you dream in black & white or color? When you think about a roleplaying games (RPG) is it in color? For me the answer “depends.”
You cannot have a RPG without some sort of equipment guide, and Twilight: 2000 4th edition (T2K4e) is no exception. Baltic Boats: A Supplemental Vehicle Guide for TWILIGHT: 2000’s Hostile Waters Module by Alf Bergesen published through the Free League Workshop in 2024. As the ad copy states, “US and Soviet watercraft included within can be encountered anywhere that either military operated during WWIII.” This 21-page digital booklet is sold through DriveThruRPG for $4 (USD).
As the ad copy for Baltic Boats relates, this sourcebook includes:
- 18 new, fully-statted watercraft from the USA, USSR, Poland, NATO, Sweden, and Finland.
- Supplemental Travel and Combat rules for Hovercraft.
- 8 fully-statted hovercraft (a first for Fourth Edition TWILIGHT: 2000!).
Baltic Boats can be a useful adventure supplement if your T2K4e RPG campaign takes place around the Baltic Sea. With some work many of the craft provided can be used beyond that region too.
Sometimes it is black & white
As I read Baltic Boats something about the book bothered me. After some consideration, I realized the Soviet equipment names and color pictures throw me off. Growing up in the 1980’s and 1990’s most military equipment pictures published, especially when depicting Soviet equipment, were black & white drawings or photographs. Further, the project names for many Soviet ships and craft were simply unknown in the West. In their place NATO established an elaborate naming system. As I joined the U.S. Navy in the late 1980’s I, like the rest of my fellow sailors, referred to Soviet weapon systems and platforms by that NATO reporting name. The real Soviet project numbers would not enter the western public sphere until several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While the above books were the publicly available, what was provided to the military was actually not much different. (Please forgive the wrong ships shown below; my copy is buried in a box at the bottom of a stack I don’t want to move at the moment.)
When color images of Soviet equipment were provided to the public they often were not photographs. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1980’s had an excellent group of artists that made unclassified graphics of Soviet equipment in lieu of declassified photos or images.
During the 1980s, the Soviets continued testing various wing-in-ground effect vehicles for use in coastal defense and amphibious operations. The ORLAN-Class, seen here, takes advantage of the increased aerodynamic lift that occurs when a wing operates near the surface. This greatly increases the craft’s ability to carry heavy loads over long distances, especially over water, making it well-suited for amphibious warfare. (DIA Historical Art Collection via fas.org)
I admit it is a silly that color photos throw off my immersion into the setting of T2K4e. I am equally sure that many contemporary T2K4e players that didn’t come of age in the last years of the Cold War like me have no issue here. Nor, unfortunately, do those players understand that the world once was—quite literally—black & white.
Feature image courtesy soviethammer.bologspot.com
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Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 
Thanks for the review. I understand your discomfort with my use of the Soviet Project names instead of the NATO reporting names. I went back and forth with myself when making that decision. Ultimately, I decided to use the former because that’s what Free League did in the official ‘Hostile Waters’ sourcebook. I too prefer the old NATO reporting names because that’s what was used in all of the gear books I collected as a kid during the 1980s. Since I billed my project as a sort of corollary to ‘Hostile Waters’, I chose consistency over my own preferences. But yeah, I felt/feel a bit weird about it myself.
Thanks for dropping by! Guess the old Cold Warrior in me came out.
Nice read.
I have all the editions of Guide to the Soviet Navy, and pretty much every Jane’s Fighting Ships dating back to 1946 (I actually freelance for them as a photographer – and probably of more interest to you – an analyst and data provider on the current Russian navy).
It’s always great going back through the old books, and the B&W images – often grabbed by western ships or maritime patrol aircraft – give that mystification an even greater feel.
The ships back then were awesome visually, though one could argue they may not have been as good as they looked.
I’ve investigated just how they were crewed, and the skills the sailors had – and much like today, as has been proven in the Black Sea – the standard levels were not good at all.
Love all your articles.
Cheers
Tony
The recent pictures/video of Russian ships arriving Havana show that, for as new as they try to look on the outside, the inside is not so much the same.
Very true 🙂
I only realised after that my last comment I wasn’t logged in.
The Havana cruise also highlights how out of touch the press can be sometimes. The visit has been told as a kind of “don’t mess around in Ukraine NATO/USA” story with no references to the visits in the last decade or so with practically the same ships. Chiker is a “frequent” visitor, always being the rescue tug. There’s always a sub around too.
I’m surprised there isn’t a Vishnya about somewhere.
Forgot to say, you may find this blog of mine from 2016 interesting.
Cheers
Would’ve helped if I’d sent the link 🙂