[OT] Twilight 2000

[Dura Ace STI]

My one memory of Twilight 2000 (1st ed) forever will be, pumping 3! Count em! 3 Tow IIs into a BMP and inflicting essentially no damage what so ever. IIRC the vehicle damage rules gave you a % chance to "hit" various systems going from one side of the vehicle to the other. With sufficiently poor dice rolling, we never managed to "hit" anything important and most of the damage simply went in one side and out the other. We were getting so annoyed that the GM let us kill, infantry on the other side of the vehicle.

Yeah. The vehicle combat rules were rough. I skipped over them. If my players rolled a hit the turret usually blew off in awesome Hollywood Style.

I bought the US Army Vehicle Guide [1st ed] when I was in 8th grade for 7.00 [remember when 7.00 was alot?] and it must of been around 1989. It was an awesome book. It was my first RPG thing ever. It got me into RPG's and I met a good friend Damian through them.

We would spend 2 hours building a character and then when the time came. I just had them roll percentile for combat and just let them "do" whatever skills they wanted. It wasn't relalistic but it was fun, and that was the point.

 

[Bagpuss]

Autofire was still pretty much a crapshoot, but it did realistically simulate that those with a higher marksmanship skill would usually be a bit more successful autofiring than those with a lower marksmanship skill.

-G

Wasn't it something like you roll a D20 for every bullet fired and any that come up 1 hit, if you had a decent marksmanship skill it was any that came up 1 or 2.

Realistic for just spraying autofire but not exactly fun rolling 30 D20 to only get a couple of hits.

 

[S'mon]

Wasn't it something like you roll a D20 for every bullet fired and any that come up 1 hit, if you had a decent marksmanship skill it was any that came up 1 or 2.

Realistic for just spraying autofire but not exactly fun rolling 30 D20 to only get a couple of hits.

I don't have T2000 2.2 but I do have Traveller TNE, which uses this system. In contrast to the beautiful 'd6' mechanic, I found the d20/skill system gave terrible results. A PC offloaded an SMG at point blank range (about 2m) at a security guard sitting behind an armoured desk - unfortunately the PC had little of the relevant skill, and fired 30 bullets, all the '1s' were 'leg' hits - ie they hit the desk. After rolling 30 d20s and not hitting _at all_ the player wasn't very happy.

The T2000 'hit on a d6/6' by contrast has always given plausible results. I tweaked it some for my Cyberpunk/AD&D game - 10-round bursts instead of 5-round, slightly changed the recoil stats, etc. The character could opt to attempt a precise shot instead of spraying in the general direction of the target (using the d6 rule), in which case they rolled a normal d20 attack, on a hit from a 10-round burst they rolled a d10 to see how many bullets hit.

But for hosing down a room, nothing beat the d6 rule. For multiple targets, half the d6s automatically missed, and you remove a d6 for every point of recoil over the firer's strength.

 

[Goodsport]

Wasn't it something like you roll a D20 for every bullet fired and any that come up 1 hit, if you had a decent marksmanship skill it was any that came up 1 or 2.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Realistically yes, although technically it could be higher (in some rare cases, I've actually seen it as high as 3 or 4).

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp According to page 203 of Twilight: 2000 Version 2.2: "The number of rounds in a burst is the number listed in the weapon's ROF [Rate of fire] column. Each individual shot fired in a burst is resolved seperately as a marksmanship task at the Impossible difficulty level, regardless of range."

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp According to the Task Difficulty Levels chart on page 134: Easy was x4 Asset (Asset being the addition of the controlling attribute and the skill number, similarly to D&D3e's Skill being the addition of the controlling attribute and the rank number), Average was x2, Difficult was x1, Formidable was x1/2, and Impossible was x1/4. According to the same page, though: "However, a task roll of one always results in success, and a task roll of 20 always results in failure, regardless of skill, asset, or difficulty level."

Realistic for just spraying autofire but not exactly fun rolling 30 D20 to only get a couple of hits.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Is that any different than rolling 30 d6's?


-G

 

[Numion]

I don't have T2000 2.2 but I do have Traveller TNE, which uses this system. In contrast to the beautiful 'd6' mechanic, I found the d20/skill system gave terrible results. A PC offloaded an SMG at point blank range (about 2m) at a security guard sitting behind an armoured desk - unfortunately the PC had little of the relevant skill, and fired 30 bullets, all the '1s' were 'leg' hits - ie they hit the desk. After rolling 30 d20s and not hitting _at all_ the player wasn't very happy.

You didn't use the recoil rules? IIRC, you didn't get to roll for all of the bullets, but like one fourth or something. The rest missed automatically.

 

[Goodsport]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp It should also be noted that the Twilight: 2000 line (all three versions) had some of the best pencil artwork I have ever seen in an RPG, from Steve Venters (who also drew the cover to the First Edition box as well as many of the early modules) to Timothy Bradstreet (who also contributed tons of great black-ink artwork to the 2300AD and Space: 1889 lines) to Grant Goleash (his pencil artwork literally looked like black-and-white photographs).

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp And the choice of pencil artwork (as opposed to the more commonly used black-ink artwork) really established the appropriately-dreary mood of Twilight: 2000 well.


-G

 

[Numion]

My one memory of Twilight 2000 (1st ed) forever will be, pumping 3! Count em! 3 Tow IIs into a BMP and inflicting essentially no damage what so ever.

I envy you for having TOWs. We didn't have any heavy arsenal .. or maybe someone had one LAW. When we saw some T-55 coming we just bolted. Which was about once during the campaign.

 

[coyote6]

I envy you for having TOWs. We didn't have any heavy arsenal ..

IIRC, you could start with quite a bit of gear under the 1e rules. The characters we ran were armed to the teeth, anyways.

Edit: Though not with TOWs. IIRC, they were fantastically expensive. Plenty of LAW rockets & the like. Hmm, the RPG-16 -- either the rockets or the launcher were "Rare" (or something like that) and thus couldn't be purchased by NATO troops during character creation -- but the other (launcher or rockets) could. So the people playing turncoat Soviets loaded up on the rare items, while everybody else bought the other . . . ("Voslev! Get me some more '16 rockets, would ya?")

Dammit, I'm getting all nostalgic! Argh.

 

[Goodsport]

Realistically yes, although technically it could be higher (in some rare cases, I've actually seen it as high as 3 or 4).

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Oops... now that I did the math, it turns out that rolls of 3 were definitely common, and even rolls of 4 weren't unheard of.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Considering that a roll of a 6 on a d6 (as in the Second Edition) on average would happen 1/6 of the time (duh! ), that a roll of a 3 on a d20 (as in Version 2.2) woud generally happen 3/20 (a bit less than 1/6) of the time, and a roll of a 4 would happen 1/5 of the time (a bit more than 1/6) of the time. So it all pretty much evens out, with Version 2.2 giving a slightly better chance for better marksmen to hit in autofire.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Ugh, all this math... must rest my head...


-G

 

[Numion]

Dammit, I'm getting all nostalgic! Argh.

Same here! But it would make sense though that there would be plenty of cheaper anti-tank weapons available. All the kewl stuff was just off-limits (like TOWs, Tanks and such). I just had my trusty Shotgun, MAC-10 and a rifle .. later changed to AK-74, since western bullets started to run out.

I lost my aviator shades though for addressing a rank wrong . . on purpose. Half of the time we were thinking if there really even were any chemical weapons we were supposed to find, or had the command just wanted to get rid of us on a wild goose hunt.

Oh the nostalgia.