A new Twilight:2000... how would you do it?

[3catcircus]

I don't see why a class that "just" defines a skill-set is meaningless. For a military game, I'd expect a bunch of short (prestige) classes listing skills and feats, with a few choices where choices do exist.

I don't see why a class system can't mimic that elegant solution perfectly.

Well, I'll use the following example and you tell me how you'd use classes to approach it.

I enter the army - completing Basic Training and AIT as an 11B (Infantryman).
I go to my unit after school as a PFC - I dunno - say the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized). While assigned to 1ID, I apply for and am accepted into Airborne school and complete it (three weeks of parachute school - 1 week ground, 1 week tower, 1 week jumping from an airplane) - followed by Ranger School, and complete it. Ranger School entails the following: The Benning phase (2 parts - consisting of physical fitness test, combat water survival, night and day marches/land navigation, medical considerations, rifle bayonet, pugil stick, water confidence, demolition, an airborne refresher drop, and finally squad combat patrol operations.) This is then followed by the Mountain Phase (military mountaineering, platoon command and control, cross-country movement, air assaults onto mountains, 8-10 mile marches, etc.) The Florida Phase is the final phase (extended platoon level extended duration patrols in jungle/swamp environments, small boat operations, ship-to-shore operations, etc.)

Now - how would you simulate these things in terms of classes/skills/feats?

1. boot camp and AIT, followed by assignment to an infantry division
2. Airborne school - 3 weeks focusing on nothing but static-line parachuting
3. Ranger school - weeks (months?) of diverse training.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Well the latest instance was a show on the History Channel. They were discussing how in W.W. II it was something like 50K rounds fired per casualty, and by Vietnam it had gotten well over 100K per. If you really care enough I can probably dig up such a figure in one of my Keegan books or an encyclopedia. I know I've read it in various places.

In each of those cases COVER was the telling factor. In Vietnam often the troops were firing blindly into the jungle. That would be considered firing on an invisible target with a 50% miss chance before a to-hit was even rolled.

How about when you are moving through an area where the cover is variable? Let me clarify that. Say I'm at starting point A, no cover, I'm moving to end point D, with some cover. During the whole time there are varying amounts of cover in between at B and C.

If your enemy delays his action until you run out of cover he can interrupt your move to fire on you (provided he has initiative on you) when you are without the benefit of cover. This would be why DFPs (defensive fighting positions) might take no action the first round to gain that "20" on initiative so that they beat pretty much everybody on all the rounds following. Otherwise you are right, they'd have to take a penalty from the cover. A likely tactic for a DFP with two soldiers in it would be for one to fire on the first round while the other "Re-centers" for the Initiative bonus. The second round the soldier who fired on the first round would re-center while the other begins picking off enemies when they move out from cover.

 

[ddougan]

Mitch Berg's Twilight:2000/Merc:2000 Website

Thanks

I agree to the extent that extremely hard tasks were hard for everyone - but I don't necessarily know if a linear DC approach *isn't* being applied. The problem is really with the fact that you have to round down - better to round up when determining x1/2 and x1/4 chances to succeed.

As interesting idea, but I'm not sure this really resolves it to my likeing.

TW2K's task difficult levels are definetly not a linear approach - its a
stepped approach.

For a Formidable (x1/2) task, the steps are 2:1 ratio (asset increase:
chance of success increase), ie

Total Asset Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Chance of Success: 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4

etc

(Note the effect of the "1 is always a success" rule - a character with
a total asset of 0 has the same chance of success as one with a total
asset of 3). If as you suggest, we round up, then we'd get:

Total Asset Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Chance of Success: 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5

This doesn't really do much other than shift the start of the "ladder"
(to keep with the step terminology!). In other words, instead of a
character with asset total 3 losing out over a character with asset
total 2, we have a character with asset total 4 losing out over a
character with asset total 3.

The problem is more apparent in Impossible tasks (x1/4), where the ratio
becomes 4:1.


Using a linear approach (eeek, and I've just realised, I've gone back to
how 2300AD does it!), every increase in asset total gives an increase in
chance of performing the task, regardless of how hard the task is.

So we could say (as an example):


Task Level DC
---------- --
Easy 5
Average 10
Difficult 15
Formidable 20
Impossible 25

(Off Hand, IIRC, 2300AD used Task levels of: 4, 9, 14, 19, 24 - but used
D10 rather than D20. So my perfect TW2K task system would probably opt
for more granularity in the task levels - perhaps increase the number of
task levels to 7, and reduce the increase in DC between task levels)

Any chance of seeing that particular mechanic? How does it differ from the idea of "Quick Kills" in TW2K, Dark Conspiracy and TNE? That is - if your roll succeeds, you can roll a second d20 - if this second roll is less than the damage rating of a weapon (i.e. roll less than a 3 when using an M16A2, which has a DAM rating of 3) and it results in an instant kill. How does it differ from a different (house rule?) method of assigning an Outstanding Success (succeed by more than 10) as a critical hit doing double damage?

Sure - though I'm not sure if you mean the 2300AD damage model, or my house rule on Spycraft, so here's a summary of both

For 2300AD, you start by rolling Hit Location (D10).

Each Hit Location has a Severity Modifier (Head Shot is more likely to
result in a kill than a Lower Leg Shot)

Roll Potential Severity (D10), modified by above Severity Modifier. This
will result in a Potential Kill, Potential Serious Wound, Potential
Light Wound.

Roll Actual Severity (D10). This roll is made against the damage of the
weapon - a weapon doing 0.7 points of damage has a 70% chance of
inflicting the potential severity. If the roll is equal to or under the
damage value, then the potential severity is inflicted. If the roll is
greater than the damage value, then the potential severity is decreased
by 1 (ie Potential Kill becomes Actual Serious, Potential Serious
becomes Actual Light, Potential Light becomes No Effect). Any weapon
doing 1.0 or more damage points automatically inflicts the potential
damage.

As 2300AD a house rule, we deemed that an additional -1 to the Severity
(an increase on the potential seriousness of the wound) would be applied
for every 2.0 points of damage - which meant getting hit by heavy
weapons was a rather nasty experience

There's therefore no need for a quick kill rule in this situation,
because effectively every round that penetrates has the potential to be
a quick kill (ie roll for a potential kill, and roll for actual kill )


For Spycraft, I have Vitality Points on each hit location, and a common
pool of Wounds. Whenever any hit location exceeds its Vitality Points,
additional damage is applied to the Wounds. Critical hits do double
damage, and the Wounds Capacity is double the norm (ie 2 X CON).

Each hit location starts off at the maximum for the character at level 1
(ie CON + either 8, 10 or 12 based on whether or not they have a D8, D10
or D12 hit die).

At each additional level, characters get extra VP per hit location,
based on their hit die:

D8 == 1 hit point per hit location per level
D10 == 1 hit point per hit location per odd level (1,3,5 etc), and 2 per
even level (2,4,6 etc)
D12 == 2 hit point per hit location per level

Head and Heart shots do not require an action die to convert to a
critical hit (in Spycraft, a potential threat is not confirmed by a
second die roll, but by spending an action die).

Vitality Points recovers on a per-hit-location-per-hour basis.

The resulting gameplay experience is very satisfying - characters can
still play the hero, and recover quickly between fights (unless they are
physically wounded), but are now worried about facing a number of guards
- because even high level characters cant afford to take a couple of
hits on the same hit location without becoming wounded (ie no more
"there's 3 guards with weapons - even if they all hit me, and roll
maximum damage, I will still have enough hit points to stay standing").

I based my statement solely on the fact that WOTC d20 is a skill/feat/class/level based system. I just can't see making prestige classes for "Ranger" or "USMC Sniper" or feats like "SERE School graduate" or "Naval Nuclear Reactor Operator" - And, to paraphrase someone on a TW2K message board - "Hearing someone describe their character as a Infantryman 3/Ranger 3 makes me shudder." The d20 mechanic itself (skill ranks + bonus vs. DC) works just fine. It is the underlying class/level/feat system that would, I think, ruin a TW2K remake.

I GC a Shadowforce Archer Spycraft campaign - d20 works well for this because of the campaign setting (psionics, The Fringe, Mystics, etc.) I wonder how realistic it would end up being if I ran a straight campaign, or used The 60's book?

Bottom line for me is - stick with a purely skills based system. You'd have to have military or civilian ranks that do *not* act like levels (how many worthless senior NCOs or managers have you had to deal with in civilian or military life?) to preserve the feel of the game.

I don't see a problem with the level/feat/class/skill approach D20
takes, if its applied correctly. (Have you seen any of the special forces prestiege classes from Blood and Guts by RPGObjects? Damn good...)

If you think about it, weapon specialisation in TW2K v2.2 is pretty much
feats (3 levels of weapon specialisation - reducing the auto-miss roll,
adding to Strength for recoil determination etc). There's no reason this
couldn't be expanded to allow greater degrees of weapon specialisation,
or extended to allow specialisation in other skills. That sounds like
feats and/or class abilities to me

I certainly think the default range of D20 skills needs to be expanded
though to account for the fact TW2K is a skills-driven game system.

Also, if you think about NPC levels - Green, Regular, Veteran etc,
aren't these really Levels? (Green: lvl 1-3, Regular, 4-5, Veteran 6-9,
Crack 10-12, Elite 13-15 as an example).

I actually think "Infantryman 3/ Ranger3" isnt a bad description for a
character in TW2K. How far off is it from "3 terms as Ground Infantry, 3
terms as Ranger"? If you view it as a Traveller career description, then 3 terms of a Range and only being Level 3 is rather poor - so having Ranger 3 with only a single term is like "hey, this guy really had some field time in that term".

I would like to see the Base Attack Bonus drop off a bit in importance
though. Given the number of weapon based skills, plus the limit on Skill
Level vs Class, I think BAB increases could be lowered to highlight the combat skills more. If we describe
BAB advancement as Good, Average and Poor (reflecting DnD Fighter,
Cleric and Wizard rates of advancement), then we might have:

Good: +1 every 2 levels (0, 1, 1, 2 etc) == +10 at Level 20
Average: +2 every 5 levels (0, 1, 1, 1, 2) == +8 at Level 20
Poor: +2 every 7 levels (0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2) == +5 at Level 20

This would mean non-military characters could still have good weapon
skills if thats how they chose to spend their skill points, whilst
military based characters get an inherent class bonus to all forms of
attack - whilst still requiring them to spend skills in whatever form of
weapons they want to use (small arms pistol, rifle, machinegun, grenade
launcher etc) regularly.

So "worthless" military/civilian ranks could easily be modelled by
having the likes of 3 or 5 level classes - which would have Poor BAB
bonus, and class skill lists limited to what you describe as "worthless"
(which may be a good description - I doubt there's much room for MS
Project or Excel goons in the aftermath of a nuclear war )

 

[3catcircus]

Thanks



As interesting idea, but I'm not sure this really resolves it to my likeing.

TW2K's task difficult levels are definetly not a linear approach - its a
stepped approach.

For a Formidable (x1/2) task, the steps are 2:1 ratio (asset increase:
chance of success increase), ie

Total Asset Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Chance of Success: 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4

etc

(Note the effect of the "1 is always a success" rule - a character with
a total asset of 0 has the same chance of success as one with a total
asset of 3). If as you suggest, we round up, then we'd get:

Total Asset Level: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Chance of Success: 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5

This doesn't really do much other than shift the start of the "ladder"
(to keep with the step terminology!). In other words, instead of a
character with asset total 3 losing out over a character with asset
total 2, we have a character with asset total 4 losing out over a
character with asset total 3.

The problem is more apparent in Impossible tasks (x1/4), where the ratio
becomes 4:1.

I see what you mean, and I'd have to do the math and expand it along that series of numbers, but it also kinda looks like in addition to shifting the start of the ladder, that the total number of steps of a given number might possible expand - but I'd have to sit down and expand that 0-9 to something like 0-100 or so.

Using a linear approach (eeek, and I've just realised, I've gone back to
how 2300AD does it!), every increase in asset total gives an increase in
chance of performing the task, regardless of how hard the task is.

So we could say (as an example):


Task Level DC
---------- --
Easy 5
Average 10
Difficult 15
Formidable 20
Impossible 25

(Off Hand, IIRC, 2300AD used Task levels of: 4, 9, 14, 19, 24 - but used
D10 rather than D20. So my perfect TW2K task system would probably opt
for more granularity in the task levels - perhaps increase the number of
task levels to 7, and reduce the increase in DC between task levels)




Sure - though I'm not sure if you mean the 2300AD damage model, or my house rule on Spycraft, so here's a summary of both

For 2300AD, you start by rolling Hit Location (D10).

Each Hit Location has a Severity Modifier (Head Shot is more likely to
result in a kill than a Lower Leg Shot)

Roll Potential Severity (D10), modified by above Severity Modifier. This
will result in a Potential Kill, Potential Serious Wound, Potential
Light Wound.

Roll Actual Severity (D10). This roll is made against the damage of the
weapon - a weapon doing 0.7 points of damage has a 70% chance of
inflicting the potential severity. If the roll is equal to or under the
damage value, then the potential severity is inflicted. If the roll is
greater than the damage value, then the potential severity is decreased
by 1 (ie Potential Kill becomes Actual Serious, Potential Serious
becomes Actual Light, Potential Light becomes No Effect). Any weapon
doing 1.0 or more damage points automatically inflicts the potential
damage.

As 2300AD a house rule, we deemed that an additional -1 to the Severity
(an increase on the potential seriousness of the wound) would be applied
for every 2.0 points of damage - which meant getting hit by heavy
weapons was a rather nasty experience

There's therefore no need for a quick kill rule in this situation,
because effectively every round that penetrates has the potential to be
a quick kill (ie roll for a potential kill, and roll for actual kill )


For Spycraft, I have Vitality Points on each hit location, and a common
pool of Wounds. Whenever any hit location exceeds its Vitality Points,
additional damage is applied to the Wounds. Critical hits do double
damage, and the Wounds Capacity is double the norm (ie 2 X CON).

Each hit location starts off at the maximum for the character at level 1
(ie CON + either 8, 10 or 12 based on whether or not they have a D8, D10
or D12 hit die).

At each additional level, characters get extra VP per hit location,
based on their hit die:

D8 == 1 hit point per hit location per level
D10 == 1 hit point per hit location per odd level (1,3,5 etc), and 2 per
even level (2,4,6 etc)
D12 == 2 hit point per hit location per level

Head and Heart shots do not require an action die to convert to a
critical hit (in Spycraft, a potential threat is not confirmed by a
second die roll, but by spending an action die).

Vitality Points recovers on a per-hit-location-per-hour basis.

The resulting gameplay experience is very satisfying - characters can
still play the hero, and recover quickly between fights (unless they are
physically wounded), but are now worried about facing a number of guards
- because even high level characters cant afford to take a couple of
hits on the same hit location without becoming wounded (ie no more
"there's 3 guards with weapons - even if they all hit me, and roll
maximum damage, I will still have enough hit points to stay standing").

Hmm - I really like that modelling of VP/WP per body location. I also like the 2300AD mechanic, on the face of it - but I don't know how the idea of doing fractional math on the fly would go over with my players - some of them are young enough to not know how to do "old math" and instead think it is ok to "get an answer that makes you feel good about yourself."

I don't see a problem with the level/feat/class/skill approach D20
takes, if its applied correctly. (Have you seen any of the special forces prestiege classes from Blood and Guts by RPGObjects? Damn good...)

If you think about it, weapon specialisation in TW2K v2.2 is pretty much
feats (3 levels of weapon specialisation - reducing the auto-miss roll,
adding to Strength for recoil determination etc). There's no reason this
couldn't be expanded to allow greater degrees of weapon specialisation,
or extended to allow specialisation in other skills. That sounds like
feats and/or class abilities to me

I certainly think the default range of D20 skills needs to be expanded
though to account for the fact TW2K is a skills-driven game system.

Also, if you think about NPC levels - Green, Regular, Veteran etc,
aren't these really Levels? (Green: lvl 1-3, Regular, 4-5, Veteran 6-9,
Crack 10-12, Elite 13-15 as an example).

I actually think "Infantryman 3/ Ranger3" isnt a bad description for a
character in TW2K. How far off is it from "3 terms as Ground Infantry, 3
terms as Ranger"? If you view it as a Traveller career description, then 3 terms of a Range and only being Level 3 is rather poor - so having Ranger 3 with only a single term is like "hey, this guy really had some field time in that term".

I'm starting to agree with this - it may work out after all. The only concern I would have is that given this is a military-intensive game, I would like to see excruciating detail be given to determine whether something should be a feat, a skill-set, or a (prestige) class.

For example - it kinda makes sense to make an 11B Infantryman character class. It even makes sense for an 0300 USMC Rifleman class. But what about an NEC3353 Submarine Reactor Operator in the navy? He is really just an Electronics Technician (ET) with a year of extra schooling (I know - I used to be one...) How would you distinguish him from a Navigation ET? What about the differences between an FC and an FT, or a GMM and a GMG? Now - that 11B Infantryman should probably get a class for passing ranger school of Special Forces school. But he should only get additional skill ranks for passing the Airborne course. But, then how would you reconcile something like that being given only additional skill ranks if something like Master Fitness Trainer sounds like it could warrant a feat (Athletic)?

I just don't know - there is so much detail in terms of MOS's (NEC's in the navy), Additional Skill Identifiers (army), and Secondary Qualification Identifiers (again, army) - what level of granularity do you go to? What about foreign militaries?

I would like to see the Base Attack Bonus drop off a bit in importance
though. Given the number of weapon based skills, plus the limit on Skill
Level vs Class, I think BAB increases could be lowered to highlight the combat skills more. If we describe
BAB advancement as Good, Average and Poor (reflecting DnD Fighter,
Cleric and Wizard rates of advancement), then we might have:

Good: +1 every 2 levels (0, 1, 1, 2 etc) == +10 at Level 20
Average: +2 every 5 levels (0, 1, 1, 1, 2) == +8 at Level 20
Poor: +2 every 7 levels (0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2) == +5 at Level 20

This would mean non-military characters could still have good weapon
skills if thats how they chose to spend their skill points, whilst
military based characters get an inherent class bonus to all forms of
attack - whilst still requiring them to spend skills in whatever form of
weapons they want to use (small arms pistol, rifle, machinegun, grenade
launcher etc) regularly.

So "worthless" military/civilian ranks could easily be modelled by
having the likes of 3 or 5 level classes - which would have Poor BAB
bonus, and class skill lists limited to what you describe as "worthless"
(which may be a good description - I doubt there's much room for MS
Project or Excel goons in the aftermath of a nuclear war )

Well - what I meant by "worthless" was not so much a given skill, so much as describing a personality trait. For example - you could have a guy in the infantry continue to take the same career every term - increasing his level, while spending skill points on "Coffee Cup Holding" and "Pencil Whipping" rather than on warrior skills like patrolling, fieldcraft, marksmanship, etc. In real life - these are the a-hole senior NCOs who gig people on uniform inspections but aren't fit to lead the same soldiers in a battle. That's why I'm reluctant to use a level system where, if you desired, you could spend all your skill points on cross-class skills. If you were to use a level-based system, you'd have to restrict the skills list to disallow cross-class skills unless you were spending your (secondary activities analogue) in skill points in a d20 system.

 

[Goodsport]

Well, they could try to contract them the same way they got Dougherty onboard for T20. That assumes those designers WANT to do a d20 version and they're not busy.

I hope that they're brought on board in some capacity.

They would undoubtedly need to update some of the vehicles and weapons (as some of the more experimental ones they predicted in the mid-90's may not have turned out exactly like they'd envisioned), but assuming they stay with the "what if?" world of a Cold War USSR-China confrontation that eventually becomes a NATO-Warsaw Pact war, I see no reason for them not to use the Version 2.2 timeline written exactly "as is".

As a matter of fact, today's young players may get a kick out of playing a "what if?" scenario of an era they aren't familiar with (damn, I'm old! ), just as many of us have done the same for "what if?" games involving WWII ("What if the Axis had won?") and among others (like "What if the Roman Empire had never fallen?"). Besides, look at the popularity of the Operation Flashpoint series of PC games.


-G

 

[ddougan]

Hmm - I really like that modelling of VP/WP per body location. I also like the 2300AD mechanic, on the face of it - but I don't know how the idea of doing fractional math on the fly would go over with my players - some of them are young enough to not know how to do "old math" and instead think it is ok to "get an answer that makes you feel good about yourself."

The fractional maths was a bit misleading - cos 2300AD weapons started off doing 0.x damage - so it would be easy to simply map this to "x".

So if you wanted to do this for Twilight, I'd take the average damage for the weapon (say 10 for a 3D6 assault rifle), and then use a D20 for the severity.

So:

(1) Roll Hit Location (1D10)
1 = Head (+3 to severity)
2 = Heart/Chest (+2 to severity)
3 = Left Arm (-1 to severity)
4 = Right Arm (-1 to severity)
5 = Chest (+1 to severity)
6 = Abdomen (+1 to severity)
7 = Left Thigh (+0 to severity)
8 = Right Thigh (+0 to severity)
9 = Left Lower Leg (-1 to severity)
10 = Right Lower Leg (-1 to severity)

(2) Determine Potential Severity (1D10 + hit location modifier)
1 = No Effect (scratch wound)
2,3,4,5 = Potential Light
6,7,8 = Potential Serious
9,10 = Potential Kill

Additional modifiers to severity: +1 if Damage > 20; +2 if Damage > 30 etc

(3) Determine Actual Severity (1D20 vs weapon damage)
If D20 roll <= Damage, then inflict potential severity as actual severity
If D20 roll > Damage, then inflict one less level of severity as actual

A 20 is always considered to be > Damage (even if its a big gun doing more than 20 points of Damage)



For D20 mechanics (say Spycraft), you could base this on Saving Throw (a bit like how they did it in Unearthed Arcana).

Roll Hit Location
Roll Potential Severity
Make Saving Throw (DC = 5+ Amount of Damage)

If the Saving Throw fails, then inflict potential severity as actual
If the Saving Throw succeeds, then inflict one less level of severity as actual

This would lead to a Spycraft without VP or Wounds (because your wound level imposes penalities - e.g. serious head = unconscious, serious arm = cant use it, serious leg = cant walk on it).

I'm starting to agree with this - it may work out after all. The only concern I would have is that given this is a military-intensive game, I would like to see excruciating detail be given to determine whether something should be a feat, a skill-set, or a (prestige) class.

I hear you. I don't think D20 is perfect for Twilight (I wouldnt use it in my perfect remake of TW2K) - I just think its completely capable of doing a great job on it (though again, I already dislike the T20 Twilight).

And I agree that careful design needs to be done to correctly model class features, feats and skills.

Some of the things you mentioned could be handled by proficiencies (this is actually one of the few things I disliked about the GDW House System - there wasn't really a good way of defining proficiency aside from skill - so anyone with Medical could do surgery, whereas in teh real world, you'd need to be proficient as a Heart Surgeon, or a Brain Surgeon etc. So in my perfect re-release of TW2K, there'd be skills that say how good you are at something, and additional proficiencies that say what complicated stuff you can do at your skill level (there could even be levels of proficiency - so Basic Brain Surgery (!!!) would be Medical with a -2 modifier, Normal Brain Surgery (!!!) would be Medical, and Advanced Brain Surgery would be Medical with +2 modifier).

I just don't know - there is so much detail in terms of MOS's (NEC's in the navy), Additional Skill Identifiers (army), and Secondary Qualification Identifiers (again, army) - what level of granularity do you go to? What about foreign militaries?

Oh definetly - since I'm foreign to you

And lets not forget, much of Twilight was originally set in Europe, so I'd like to see it keep the flavour of German, French etc military.

 

[Woas]

...what? Twilight: 2000 is an actual game?

I remember playing Twilight:2000 on my 386 DOS Shell 3 game. It was 5 3.5 floppies. The best part was creating characters. Although I never got passed the 4th mission cause I needed a party member who could speak like... Mobadishu or some language that I still doubt the exsistance of. And each time I made a new game, the NPC who only spoke some odd ball language would be different and I could never get it.

Whats the pencil-paper version like?

 

[ddougan]

...what? Twilight: 2000 is an actual game?

I remember playing Twilight:2000 on my 386 DOS Shell 3 game. It was 5 3.5 floppies. The best part was creating characters. Although I never got passed the 4th mission cause I needed a party member who could speak like... Mobadishu or some language that I still doubt the exsistance of. And each time I made a new game, the NPC who only spoke some odd ball language would be different and I could never get it.

Whats the pencil-paper version like?

Its great

There are several versions of the game: 1.0, 2.0, 2.2. These are all out of print, though Far Future Enterprises has reprinted the 1.0 rules, bundling it with some adventures. Its worth picking up for the adventures, but my advice would be to get the 2.2 second hand on ebay or a used-game store.

The version 2.2 rules are extremely well designed and all you need to play is the single core rulebook. This book contains pretty much everything - character generation, Referee rules, NPCs, equipment, vehicles, weapons, world information, encounter charts, combat rules, radiation and disease rules etc.

You probably already know the general idea of the game from the computer version - but its set in a post-nuclear exchange, yet the war still goes on. Divisions no longer have thousand of troops and hundreds of armoured vehicles, but instead perhaps several hundred men and a couple of working tanks. Theres no oil supplies, so units have to ferment alcohol and engines are converted to run on this alternative fuel. Logistics is a real problem. Disease and radiation hot spots are rife.

The game is skill-based (not level and class-based like D20), and heavily military flavoured. The rules are very easy to learn, fairly realistic, and very fast paced.

There are also alternative timeline source books - Merc 2000 and Special Ops, in which the world doesnt go to nuclear exchange, but is instead a boiling pot of low-intensity conflicts, and players can play out mercenarys. This gives you the ability to have a good logistical backing, and you can really play with all the cool weapons to blow things up

There is a D20-based version of Twilight in the works, but personally, I'm not in the least bit excited about it - if you wanted to play that version, you'd have to buy the Twilight D20 rules, plus T20 Traveller rules, and of course your D20 Core rulebook (DnD PHB or D20 Modern or Star Wars - I assume you've got at least one of those already ).

 

[Goodsport]

Its great

There are several versions of the game: 1.0, 2.0, 2.2. These are all out of print, though Far Future Enterprises has reprinted the 1.0 rules, bundling it with some adventures. Its worth picking up for the adventures, but my advice would be to get the 2.2 second hand on ebay or a used-game store.

The version 2.2 rules are extremely well designed and all you need to play is the single core rulebook. This book contains pretty much everything - character generation, Referee rules, NPCs, equipment, vehicles, weapons, world information, encounter charts, combat rules, radiation and disease rules etc.

You probably already know the general idea of the game from the computer version - but its set in a post-nuclear exchange, yet the war still goes on. Divisions no longer have thousand of troops and hundreds of armoured vehicles, but instead perhaps several hundred men and a couple of working tanks. Theres no oil supplies, so units have to ferment alcohol and engines are converted to run on this alternative fuel. Logistics is a real problem. Disease and radiation hot spots are rife.

The game is skill-based (not level and class-based like D20), and heavily military flavoured. The rules are very easy to learn, fairly realistic, and very fast paced.

There are also alternative timeline source books - Merc 2000 and Special Ops, in which the world doesnt go to nuclear exchange, but is instead a boiling pot of low-intensity conflicts, and players can play out mercenarys. This gives you the ability to have a good logistical backing, and you can really play with all the cool weapons to blow things up

Great summation of the game, Ddougan!

And I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one here who prefers v2.2 to any other version of Twilight: 2000.

There is a D20-based version of Twilight in the works, but personally, I'm not in the least bit excited about it - if you wanted to play that version, you'd have to buy the Twilight D20 rules, plus T20 Traveller rules, and of course your D20 Core rulebook (DnD PHB or D20 Modern or Star Wars - I assume you've got at least one of those already ).

I pretty much feel the same way. I'm just not that compelled to buy the new upcoming versions of Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD, particularly after hearing that they may re-do the background stories to both, like having WWIII start at around 2020 with the U.S. fighting China or whoever. Bleh!

I'll stick with v2.2, even though I still use several components from v1.0 (like the maps of Eastern and Central Europe that were included with v1.0 and the module Going Home, respectively, as well as the Intelligence breifing sheet and the initial Escape from Kalisz scenario), as well as the older modules along with the later ones (as the v1.0 stats included in the older modules could be converted easily enough to v2.2).


-G

 

[RPGRealms]

I pretty much feel the same way. I'm just not that compelled to buy the new upcoming versions of Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD, particularly after hearing that they may re-do the background stories to both, like having WWIII start at around 2020 with the U.S. fighting China or whoever. Bleh!

The backgrounds in both remain unchanged. What you are hearing are from folks who *want* us to re-do the backgrounds.