gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Ka-boom)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2006-01-16 07:13 pm
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"You're on your own. Good luck."

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.

[identity profile] cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com 2006-01-17 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
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!"

[identity profile] gridlore.livejournal.com 2006-01-17 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com 2006-01-17 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
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.)

[identity profile] pauldrye.livejournal.com 2006-01-17 06:21 am (UTC)(link)
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.