Free League Announces Twilight: 2000 4th Edition

3catcircus · May 16, 2020

Fenris-77 said:
See, my faith in Free League is vindicated. I can go back to just being excited about dying of dysentery.

Before or after hiding a wristwatch? (Obligatory Pulp Fiction reference)

Fenris-77 · May 16, 2020

3catcircus said:
Before or after hiding a wristwatch? (Obligatory Pulp Fiction reference)

Hello little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was good friend of your Dad's. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully you'll never have to experience this for yourself...

Iain_Coleman · May 17, 2020

I'm very interested in this. I used to play the hell out of Twilight 2000 back in the nineties. Having looked at the old rulebooks recently, to be honest the system was a bit clunky, and I wouldn't want to run it now. I've thought about converting it to the Mongoose Traveller system, but that would be a lot of effort and would have some difficulty getting enough military crunch into the equipment.

So I'll be looking at this kickstarter with great interest. Things I would particularly want to know are:

How detailed is the resource management? Twilight 2000 is the one game where it makes sense to have to count how many bullets you use.

Will there be a lifepath chargen system? This was my main motivation for thinking about converting the setting to Traveller.

Will there be proper support for non-US PCs? Earlier editions weren't great at this, failing to account for the differences between different countries' military training and structures.

Related: are any of the military advisors involved in this edition from non-US military backgrounds?

3catcircus · May 17, 2020

Iain_Coleman said:
I'm very interested in this. I used to play the hell out of Twilight 2000 back in the nineties. Having looked at the old rulebooks recently, to be honest the system was a bit clunky, and I wouldn't want to run it now. I've thought about converting it to the Mongoose Traveller system, but that would be a lot of effort and would have some difficulty getting enough military crunch into the equipment.

So I'll be looking at this kickstarter with great interest. Things I would particularly want to know are:

How detailed is the resource management? Twilight 2000 is the one game where it makes sense to have to count how many bullets you use.

Will there be a lifepath chargen system? This was my main motivation for thinking about converting the setting to Traveller.

Will there be proper support for non-US PCs? Earlier editions weren't great at this, failing to account for the differences between different countries' military training and structures.

Related: are any of the military advisors involved in this edition from non-US military backgrounds?

You know, the out of print TW:2013 might satisfy you in the interim. Lifepath system, resource management, check.

For info on non-US, check out Paul Mulcahy's site.

I don't know if it still exists or if you'd have to use the wayback machine, but Mitch Berg had a website expanding a bunch of the careers for v2/v2.2

Iain_Coleman · May 17, 2020

3catcircus said:
You know, the out of print TW:2013 might satisfy you in the interim. Lifepath system, resource management, check.

For info on non-US, check out Paul Mulcahy's site.

I don't know if it still exists or if you'd have to use the wayback machine, but Mitch Berg had a website expanding a bunch of the careers for v2/v2.2

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Greysword · May 17, 2020

This sounds fun, but I'm concerned it may not be anything like the original. That game was so real!

The rules made combat so detailed and specific, we used Jane's as a sourcebook, and it played out in parallel to the real world. In fact, it wasn't far future (like Traveller or Star Frontiers), nor was it and alternate past (like D&D). Instead, Twilight 2000 was the immediate future. Like, tomorrow this could be our reality, Future!

That's why the game was so striking, I think. I'm not sure the Millennials and Gen Z can truly grasp the real life fear and global unease that underwrote the game. Unless they set this version in the near future, as well, where diplomacy with China breaks down over the South China Sea, leading to a war with the US and Austrailia (dragging the rest of Asia and Europe in with us). There is enough going on in the real world to make a WWIII scenario plausible, and piggybacking off the fear of the Covid-19 would help people feel it.

In an attempt to show you just how real the game was, I have a short story : ). There are two times in my life where I stopped in my tracks and realized I was living in the Twilight 2000 game.

The first, I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, CA, as a sailor in the Navy, supporting the LCACs (landing hovercraft). Wearing camouflage green, my buddy and I were walking to the chow hall and a Marine Corps LAV drove by us and popped over an arching bridge, disappearing on the other side. I paused, looked at my uniform, and realized I matched a character in our TW2K game almost ten years earlier. The chills....

The second time was early morning in Afghanistan. As a Navy Reservist, I was deployed to Kandahar Airfield. My friends and I were walking along the airfield fence early one morning after a night shift. A Huey was lifting off, beating the air into submission with a loud thump as it lifted off the ground and gained airspeed. Once again, I looked down and saw my clothing was a desert color of the same camo pattern I had at Pendleton, but this time I was carrying an M16. I stopped and took in the moment, remembering our game and realized I was once again living it!

This was the magic of Twilight 2000; a futuristic role-playing game with simulationist rules, that could turn from fantasy to reality at any moment.

I'm curious to see if this game can replicate the magic.

- Chris

3catcircus · May 17, 2020

Greysword said:
This sounds fun, but I'm concerned it may not be anything like the original. That game was so real!

The rules made combat so detailed and specific, we used Jane's as a sourcebook, and it played out in parallel to the real world. In fact, it wasn't far future (like Traveller or Star Frontiers), nor was it and alternate past (like D&D). Instead, Twilight 2000 was the immediate future. Like, tomorrow this could be our reality, Future!

That's why the game was so striking, I think. I'm not sure the Millennials and Gen Z can truly grasp the real life fear and global unease that underwrote the game. Unless they set this version in the near future, as well, where diplomacy with China breaks down over the South China Sea, leading to a war with the US and Austrailia (dragging the rest of Asia and Europe in with us). There is enough going on in the real world to make a WWIII scenario plausible, and piggybacking off the fear of the Covid-19 would help people feel it.

In an attempt to show you just how real the game was, I have a short story : ). There are two times in my life where I stopped in my tracks and realized I was living in the Twilight 2000 game.

The first, I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, CA, as a sailor in the Navy, supporting the LCACs (landing hovercraft). Wearing camouflage green, my buddy and I were walking to the chow hall and a Marine Corps LAV drove by us and popped over an arching bridge, disappearing on the other side. I paused, looked at my uniform, and realized I matched a character in our TW2K game almost ten years earlier. The chills....

The second time was early morning in Afghanistan. As a Navy Reservist, I was deployed to Kandahar Airfield. My friends and I were walking along the airfield fence early one morning after a night shift. A Huey was lifting off, beating the air into submission with a loud thump as it lifted off the ground and gained airspeed. Once again, I looked down and saw my clothing was a desert color of the same camo pattern I had at Pendleton, but this time I was carrying an M16. I stopped and took in the moment, remembering our game and realized I was once again living it!

This was the magic of Twilight 2000; a futuristic role-playing game with simulationist rules, that could turn from fantasy to reality at any moment.

I'm curious to see if this game can replicate the magic.

- Chris

This. Doing [stuff I can't talk about] with [people I can't name] in places [that I can neither confirm nor deny I was at] and realizing that TW:2K was closer to reality than I could have ever have expected.

Before that, however, I'd say earlier generations were far more rational and did a far better job of shielding us from reality when we were kids. The cold war potentially turning hot didn't happen several times between the end of WW2 and the fall of the wall because individuals on all sides took a deep breath and applied common sense when facing situations that initially presented themselves as real that turned out to be drills or non military in nature. Able Archer 83 was in hind sight probably the closest we ever came to nuclear war, and as a teenager, we didn't even know it at the time.

Actually, Able Archer 83 would be a perfect lead in to a TW:2K campaign...

Guest 6801328 · May 18, 2020

Serious gamers learn Swedish and move there.

Guest 6801328 · May 18, 2020

imagineGod said:
Hence, Monday's announcement by Riot Minds of the Trudvang RPG Kickstarter using D&D 5th Edition on May 23 was super exciting.

I wasn't aware of this until now, but just backed the Trudvang Kickstarter. I've always been drawn to Trudvang...the setting and the artwork....but skimmed the rules and it didn't appeal to me. (Not that I LOVE 5e, but I know what I'm getting into.) Psyched to be able to play in this setting.