"You're on your own. Good luck."

[gridlore]

A new version of Twilight 2000 is to be released next year!

Twilight: 2013. Looks promising.

For those not familiar with the game, the title of the post is the final message from the commander of the US 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized) on 1 July 2000, as a Soviet force that somehow managed to find enough fuel to run all its tanks shattered the last functioning NATO force in central Poland. This was three years after a limited strategic exchange had knocked most governments out of commission.

T:2K was a great setting, and a unique game in that there was a clear goal for the players who were running the rag-tag survivors of the NATO forces after the final attack: Get home! Much of the early part of the campaign involved escaping the Soviets, getting to Krakow, and from there to the Baltic coast. along the way there were various adventures to be had, from fighting river pirates on the Vistula to finding the Black Madonna. Players could join in the tearing down of civilization or aid in building it back up.

In one campaign, I played a Corps of Engineers officer from the Louisiana National Guard. My character ended up staying behind to help rebuild Bremenhaven. It was interesting for me, since it was one of those RPG moments where what I wanted conflicted with what the character would do.

Comments

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

Coolness... my last character was a Welsh Royal Marine Commando in the dessert around what used to be the gulf

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

Yum. I hear those post-apocalyptic Kuwaiti chocolate eclairs are especially good.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

And it looks like it won't be d20, too! Unlike, sadly, 2300...

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Assuming we ever see the long-touted next version of 2300 anyway.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Reading between the lines of their page (incidentally, isn't it the worst-designed page ever?), it looks like it's going to be another "in the immediate aftermath game. Which is fine, but as a matter of personal taste doesn't do very much for me.

When I saw your post, I'd hoped that they'd still use the old timeline, with WWIII in 1999. That would put the new game 14 years after the destruction of everything, which would mean it was post-apocalyptic without being entirely about the consequences of the war.

Has anyone ever done a "realistic post-apocalyptic" game? It'd be a pretty good concept.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Are you counting the one in the back of the Space Gamer years ago, which was a series of 1d6 rolls for each stage where you died on a 1-5? (I think there was a final step where you died on a 1-6).
The 'ad' at the bottom said, "Coming soon: Rat and Roach War!"

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

That was reprinted in the collected Murphy's Rules. Greg Costikyan got sick of being asked to do a PA game, and wrote that piece to show what he thought of the whole genre.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Right, that's where I saw it.

(Oh, and I got a giggle from your comment about the Soviet armor divisions, which the CIA told us could cross Germany in one afternoon on a single tank of fairy dust.)

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have to be a post-nuclear apocalypse in the Mutually Assured Destruction mode. There are on-coming ones which look likelier, not least a limited exchange in South Asia which "merely" collapses the world economy. Or a bio-war.

[todkaninchen.livejournal.com]

The Morrow Project?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Not what I'd call realistic; with its time-travelling (or merely pyschic) industrial magnate, safe cold sleep, and mutants.

Aftermath (FGU, 1981) probably comes closest to what I'd call realistic, even if it was wedded to the "you survived a nuclear war" trope.

[todkaninchen.livejournal.com]

Well... For a while... a little while a long time ago...

...I was playing a post apocolypse game using TimeLords (BTRC) character creation, Phoenix Command (LEG) combat system, with the Twilight 2000 background*.

It kind of came apart after a while because we were perpetually stuck in character creation mode.

For those who don't know, being on the recieving end of an ambush played in Phoenix Command is very quick and usually lethal against experienced NPC's...

* - This combination is not recommended for people who form attachments to their characters, who do not know what the difference between "cover" and "concealment", those who insist on firing battle rifles on full auto, and anyone else besides masochistic CPA's with obsessive compulsive disorder.