On 27 January 2018 at 20:23, Ethan McKinney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
Vietnam Above the Treetops

Can't remember much about it, but it's a classic.


LOL!

I should have course guessed there was a whole sub-genre of the Vietnam war like this.

 OK, it's added to my list.  :-)


What I recommend more than anything else ever is War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province by Jeffery Race. Race was the only civilian researcher in Vietnam and he interviewed government and military officials, VC defectors, any many others to cross-check events in building a picture of the ebb and flow of insurgency in Long An. VC makes progress, government devotes more resources, VC pull back under pressure, government withdraws resources to put them in high-threat areas, VC moves back in to fill the vacuum. He also explains the VC shadow or alternative government.

Character studies, background to steal, ideas on how to resolve higher-level efforts by the players, and more. Oh, and you'll come away with a vastly increased understanding of both the Vietnam War and the great difficulty of counterinsurgency warfare in general.



<sighs>  That too. 

Does sound interesting.  Although I really didn't mean to get into this...  

Still, whatever I can read before about the middle of March will be grist to Wolf at the Door with it's TL6 troops and combat.  My players may never know what hit 'em...

Of course, it won't help actually running Traveller combat unless I get to grips with the rules beyond the utter basics.  Like maybe auto fire and recoil...   I know none of that is difficult in itself but keeping it all my head when I use it so little is hard.  I generally know more than my newbie players though, so a chunk is just looking like I know. :-)

tc