Twilight 2000

[Machinegunkelly]

Hello. I am not going to start this thread with a hardcore rule discussion, but rather a more philosophical mindset.

Why Twilight 2000?

What will it give me that I can´t find in other set of rules?

I have spent lots of time this summer pondering over these two questions, while sitting on my porch watching the rain fall on my ever growing lawn.

The answers that slowly solidified in my brain was interesting. It was the setting of during the apocalypse that spoke to me. The world was going to hell right at the front of our eyes. Also it was the background and contempurary setting that GDW had put so much thought and love into, to make it believable. I also remembered the lack of supplies and the neccesity to adapt to the fact that you had to find everything you needed. Like one of my characters whom started out his campaign as a american sgt equipped with all american stuff. But ended his campaing dying leaning on a barn door equipped with an AKMR and an old .38 revolver.
I also like the high turnover rate of characters making the groups goal constant shifting. To go back to my sgt. In the beginning they where an all american force trying to get home by heading south to find boat transportation back to USA. When we stopped playing there where only one american in the group. But two soviet soldiers, one polish pilot and a norweigian doctor in group. There goal was to secure and rebuild a small polish town. (Whom to my dismay the GM had decided to call Bögenhafen. I still haven´t forgiven him)

When I had reached this point I had to start thinking about the next step. How to take this and turn it from a RPG setting into a tabletop setting, and introducing players into it who had never played Twilight 2000 at all? I am not sure yet and there will be lots and lots of playtesting but I have made some decisions.

1. The player group should be from 4 - 6 players and me as the GM. I will play the bad guys and the rest of the players will take on the role of NATO soldiers. In this case I will start with ´mericans.
2. It will be a campaing game, where each campaing turn involves approximatly three set encounters they will need to play before moving to the next campaign turn. There will be possibilities for the gaming group to choose to play more small encounters that if they succeeds with them will give them extra bonuses (like information about the enemy, extra weapons...) in the set encounters. I am going to explain this even more indepth a little later so just hang in there.
3. To capture the sense of lack of supplies and men I will make them scarse. The player group starts out with a set number of men with different experience. There is also a set number of M16 clips to give the men and every clip that are in a gun at the end of the encounter is considered spent, no matter if it has been fired or not. This will make the cost for putting a soldier on the board at least one clip.
At the end of each campaing phase there will be some reinforcement and supplies sent their way. The early campaing phases there will be many clips but always less than before. In the early phases they will get more men but of lesser experience. Later they will get less men but of higher experience.
4. To make the game easier in the beginning for the gamers I will set it slightly before the famous "You´re on your own" order. That way I can control their weapon choices and introduce new weapons when I feel we are ready for them. I can also control their vehicles this way.


The setting.
The players are controlling a platoon securing an area in Poland. The high command think it is out of the way of the real fighting and therefore it is lowly prioritesed in supplies and reinforcement. The platoon has 24 men combat ready. 4 of them are veterans, 13 of them are experienced and 7 are Rookies. Everyone is equipped with an M-16 and a M9 with unlimited amount of clips. The M9 are only allowed to be used if they run out of ammo of their main weapon during the encounter to stop abuse of my charity.

The first briefing the players get will be.

"A small recon party of Rangers have informed us that a small force of marauder are heading in our direction, These three farms will be hit and needs to be defended. The enemy forces will reach them at the same time so you will have to divide your forces into three groups."

Then I will give them a mission card for each encounter. (With mission card you will have to look up Stargrunt 2 to figure out what I mean). The players will quickly realise that on the mission card there are lots of information missing so I will suggest to them that they could send out a scout force first to try to find out more information. If the scout force are successful I will fill in the approximated number of forces attacking each farm. (When I start discussing rule changes I will tell you more about scouting).

If the players manage to defend all the farms I will grant them a bonus of finding a prisoner in the marauder camp they set free. It is one of the rangers and are of elite experience.

[Conquistador]

Wow, I own a set of the rules and a copy of the computer game.

The former was fun to build characters but the loss rate meant you needed a stack of PCs ready to keep the campaign going.  The latter never ran on any machine I ever had.

I wish you well.  I take the rules books out and think about playing the game but can no longer work up the will to run it.

Gracias,

Glenn

[SBRPearce]

T2K brings back some really old gaming memories! I'd love to find a group interested in something like this, but I guess it's one of those "never meant to be" games (like so many, sadly).

[Machinegunkelly]

@Conquistadore: I think the computergame is available as a "freeware". I have it on my backup harddrive somewhere. After boxing down the computer speed with like 99% it is almost playable.

[Galland]

This is a great idea, really interesting. We have had some great gaming time with Twilight 2000 as well and still have all rules and adventures I belive. One of the few RPG systems that I kept when I had a great clear out some ten years ago. That and Warhammer Fantasy RPG... hehe saw your comment about Bögenhafen ^^
Plenty of models and vehicles should be available for this, and any WWII or modern gaming terrain would be fine.

Keep us informed about what you came up with.

[styx]

Wow, I own a set of the rules and a copy of the computer game.

The former was fun to build characters but the loss rate meant you needed a stack of PCs ready to keep the campaign going.  The latter never ran on any machine I ever had.

I wish you well.  I take the rules books out and think about playing the game but can no longer work up the will to run it.

Gracias,

Glenn

There was a computer game?

[Predatorpt]

There was a computer game?

Yep

http://magisterrex.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/magisterrex-retro-game-of-the-week-twilight-2000-1991/

And you can get it (legally) here:

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/twilight-2000-1am

[Conquistador]

Yep

http://magisterrex.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/magisterrex-retro-game-of-the-week-twilight-2000-1991/

And you can get it (legally) here:

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/twilight-2000-1am

Our household went 100% Mac          a year ago so I have tons of software (Atari ST, IBM clone, Pre-Mac Apple,) I will sadly never, ever use again.   

I have an Atari ST computer, (still my emotional favorite,) too out in the garage but it has a major problem - push a key and two characters (neither one the key you push,) show up on the screen.     Schizoid computers...   



Gracias,

Glenn

[NurgleHH]

Our household went 100% Mac          a year ago so I have tons of software (Atari ST, IBM clone, Pre-Mac Apple,) I will sadly never, ever use again.   

I have an Atari ST computer, (still my emotional favorite,) too out in the garage but it has a major problem - push a key and two characters (neither one the key you push,) show up on the screen.     Schizoid computers...   



Gracias,

Glenn

Glenn, with virtual box you can use it. I'm also 100% mac, but sometimes Virtual Box helps...

[6milPhil]

Twilight 2000 was a brilliant game, and very much of it's time. A little odd to think if your grandchildren ever asked "What did you do in the Cold War?" this might feature in the answer.

Yep

http://magisterrex.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/magisterrex-retro-game-of-the-week-twilight-2000-1991/

And you can get it (legally) here:

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/twilight-2000-1am

Thank you very much. 

[zemjw]

All the Twilight 2000 stuff is available as a bundle deal on RPGNow.

That link is for the 2nd edition, but the 1st edition is also available. The first edition is page scans, but still readable. Not sure about the 2nd edition PDFs...

[redzed]

Had exactly the same idea 6 months ago

Even started a blog (HERE) 

Only one post as we started to actually rpg the game instead.

[NurgleHH]

I own all the rpgnow-stuff. 1st and 2nd-Edition is scanned, but ok. 3rd Edition is very good. I think they published it in full quality.
I wait for my empress-kickstarter to use them for my Twiight 2013-Project. All the Empress-modern-Stuff is good for it.
Have a look here: http://www.empressminiatures.com/

[scrivs]

I dug my old copy of Twilight 2000 from the back of the garage last year. A bit smelly, but good memories of my youth

[therepoman]

I love the bleak and desperate setting of T2000, but the rules suffer from tableitis.