Madonna Mystery

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations, the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examined the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. It also presented two location destinations for the Player Characters, urban centres intended for urban-centred campaigns. One of these was taken from the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, being the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

The Black Madonna updates and expands the scenario and setting supplement of the same name, The Black Madonna, published for use with the first edition of Twilight 2000. Like the original scenario, it is the second expansion to its version of Twilight 2000, following on from Urban Operations. This is despite its setting and the location of the scenario actually being placed geographically between the opening scenes of the roleplaying game, ‘OPERATION Reset’ and for the Poland setting, the ultimate destination of the city of Kraków in southern Poland. For the first edition of Twilight 2000, this did not make a great deal of sense since the Player Characters were likely travelling through the region of southwest Poland before they got to Kraków. In the updated version of The Black Madonna, it makes more sense, primarily because the Player Characters will be travelling through various urban environments and there are rules in Urban Operations that the Game Master will likely want to make use of. Further, the Player Characters, having made it to Kraków, might find themselves retracing their steps back through the region, whether looking for the Black Madonna or on some other assignment given by a contact in the city. One thing to bear in mind with The Black Madonna is that it is designed specifically for use with the Polish setting of Twilight 2000 rather than the Swedish setting that the current edition also includes. There are very good reasons for this, nearly all of them Catholic. There are additions in The Black Madonna that can be used in Sweden, but they are not the focus of the expansion.

As with Urban Operations before it, The Black Madonna is a boxed set. It contains a seventy-two-page book with new rules and campaign material, an eight-page handout booklet used for the core scenario in The Black Madonna, a travel map, sixteen new encounter cards, six new battle maps, and three battle maps for close quarters combat. The maps are divided between those for the core scenario in the boxed set and general battle maps. The former includes a travel map for the specific region where the scenario takes place and specific battle maps for locations within the scenario—internal and external. The latter are for the detailed scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign as expanded encounters, including a former Soviet nuclear bunker, a dam, a Silesian farm, and a gold mine. The handout is the diary which will kick off the scenario proper and the encounter cards are used to determine random events.

‘The Black Madonna’ book begins with an explanation of what it is. Which really do two things that make up a third. One is to present a guide to Silesia in southwest Poland in the months after the Twilight War and the second is to give a plot around the location of a lost icon revered by Polish Catholics. This is ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, the Black Madonna of the title and at the start of the scenario, it is thought lost, if not destroyed. Together, they provide the means for the Game Master to create a scenario in which her Player Characters hunt for the icon. This is not the only content in the ‘The Black Madonna’. It also includes new rules and gear. The new rules are for advanced minefields, covering their size, density, condition, and type, as well as descriptions of the types of mines used by both NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. There is something not a little distasteful about their inclusion, adding one more element of misery left over from the war that can affect civilians, but Twilight 2000 is a military roleplaying game and their inclusion is appropriate. The rules cover underground combat with the chance of ricochets and explosions in the mines and tunnels that appear in the scenarios in The Black Madonna, intended to be used in conjunction with the urban combat rules in the Urban Operations supplement, and there is also a list of specifically Polish materiel with which to arm Polish Player Characters and NPCs.

The Black Madonna provides an overview of the region and descriptions of the state of the numerous towns to be found in Silesia. These are marked on a very clear map along with the zones of control and influence for various factions. They include independent factions such as the Margravate of Silesia, a stable feudal state which rejects the overtures from both the KGB and DIA, backed up by the Śląskie Siły Obronne Sso, or Silesian Defense Force; the rickety 20th Guards Tank Division clinging on to Soviet doctrine as unit morale collapses; Soviet Special Signals Detachment 1109, a Spetsnaz unit operating under the command of the GRU with no love of the Americans or the KGB and the ruthlessness to get any task done; and Marczak’s Legion, the former Czech 8th Border Guard Brigade, now a DIA-funded anti-Soviet guerrilla force—supposedly. All of these factions are nicely detailed, with most being location-based whilst the Spetsnaz unit is a tool for the Game Master to drive the plot along.

‘The Black Madonna’ is the plot set-up or scenario in The Black Madonna. It begins with the discovery of a diary on the body of a dead US soldier, along with a gold chalice, pointing to something odd that he and his colleagues found in some tunnels. Research—at least into the chalice—will highlight its religious significance and the possibility that other religious items linked to it somehow survived the nuclear destruction of Częstochowa and the Jasna Góra monastery museum. This includes the icon known as ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, solemnly crowned Queen of Poland in the name of Pope Clement XL in 1717 and a symbol of Polish Catholicism and nationalism. Whomever managed to find it would have major influence over the future Polish government if they can hold on to it and so if they find out about it, factions throughout the region are going to be hunting for it. Some may even employ the Player Characters to find it for them, depending upon their allegiances. Others will hunt down the Player Characters to get hold of it. The Game Master can also use errant radio traffic and rumours also to push the Player Characters to investigate if they are not readily taking up the bait. Ultimately, the Player Characters will get to the location of ‘Our Lady of Częstochowa’, which is described in some detail. In between, the Game Master has a lot of work ahead of her, reacting to what the players and their characters want to do. Of course, this is how Twilight 2000 is intended to be run, a military sandcrawl of travel, exploration of the new environment, and survival. Advice is given on this in the ‘Referee’s Manual’ for the roleplaying game, but The Black Madonna gives tools and advice of its own, including what might happen after the Player Characters have got hold of the Icon and Silesian encounters and rumours pertinent to the region.

One issue perhaps is where The Black Madonna is supposed to be a horror scenario. The Player Characters are meant to be frightened in their exploration of the location where the Black Madonna has been kept hidden. The advice to that end is very light and the switch to a different genre may be at odds with the tone of campaign that the Game Master is running.

Physically, The Black Madonna is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.

Much like Urban Operations before it, The Black Madonna is a toolkit rather than a traditional scenario. Where Urban Operations is a toolkit to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, The Black Madonna is a toolkit to get the Player Characters through a region of Poland, interact with its factions, and discover a secret that will affect the future of the country and the Catholic Church. That it is applicable only to the Poland setting for Twilight 2000 limits the usefulness of The Black Madonna, but this is still a solid update of a classic scenario for Twilight 2000 that provides everything that the Game Master needs to make the Player Characters’ flight across Poland from ‘OPERATION Reset’ memorable.

Street Stories

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations is the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examining the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. Lastly, Urban Operations presents two ready to play urban centres that can form the basis of urban-centred campaigns and potential destinations for the Player Characters. As with the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, one of these is the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

Urban Operations comes as a boxed set that contains a ninety-six page book, sixteen Encounter Cards, fourteen modular battle maps—ten for urban environments and four for close quarters combat, four scenario site battle maps with two being for close combat quarters, fifty-four battle map tokens, and two double-sided maps. One of the double-sided maps is a city travel map for example city of Kraków in Poland and the example town of Karlsborg in Sweden, whilst the other is a battle map for Wawel castle in Kraków and a battle map for Karlsborg Fortress in Karlsborg. Everything is done in full colour and most of the maps are marked in hexes, whilst the close quarters combat maps are marked sectors. In turn they depict a large housing complex, a church, a nuclear power plant, a bunker, an industrial site, a housing estate, a hospital, a park, even a housing complex where a passenger airliner has crashed, and more. These are ready to be used in the game, the Game Master needing only to add the details of what might be found at each location. The maps also work well with those found in the box for the core rules.

The ‘Urban Operations’ book opens with a discussion of what the Player Characters might find in a town or city. What it emphasises, of course, is the differences between the now of after the war and what it was like before. So, law and order varying from town to city—even devolving on anarchy, but now always at the point of a gun; bartering has replaced currency, whilst in organised towns and cities, citizens sometimes have ration cards and may have to give up their labour in return for this, sometimes willingly, sometimes not; transportation options are extremely limited; politics continues, but is more individualistic, often feudal in nature, the consensus of party politics having been destroyed in the war; and the infrastructure has been broken, so no power, no running water, and so on. Lastly, the survivors are traumatised, damaged by the loss of friends and family and the society that they once knew. Some cities remain uninhabited, too damaged by the weapons of mass destruction deployed in the war. This presents a good overview and introduction to the situations that might be found in the major settlements in post-war Europe, suggesting a variety of different circumstances that the Game Master can use to make places different in her campaign.

New archetypes in Urban Operations include the Cop and the Criminal. Both are roles that can be created using the rules in Twilight 2000, but the archetypes enable the Game Master to create an NPC or the player a character quickly and easily without going through the full character creation process. The other new rules cover fog of war, city movement such as hugging walls, spotting shooters, breaching buildings and blocked hexes, and close quarters combat. These build on the wargaming aspect of Twilight 2000 and play out as a hex (or sector) and counter game. The rules are nicely supported by a decent set of examples. Similarly, the rules for city travel, which is harder than rural travel, are supported by decent examples. As well as the sixteen new encounters, Urban Operations adds Areas of Controls to indicate if a city hex is under the control of a specific faction, primarily replacing the military or marauder encounters with the local faction, whilst the actual encounters burning buildings, robberies, finding a spy dying in an ally, encountering the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ gang of street kids, a pop-up market, and more. Other encounter tables cover situations when the Player Characters are stationary, radio chatter, and rumours. Four factions are described, three of which can be used in Sweden and three of which can be used in Poland. Each is given a plot and some notes, as well as a detailed description that includes goals and forces under its control. The Free Polish 6th Brigade is the one that can only be used in Poland, specifically tied in with the city of Kraków (though it could be used as a template for other local military forces in Poland), whilst the Life Regiment Hussars is the Swedish faction tied to the town of Karlsborg. The two factions that can used in both countries are the World Health Organisation and the Vorovskoy Mir, or ‘thieves’ world’. These two are also given two interesting NPCs as well.

The four factions are each tied into one or more of the plots described in the book. These are intended to provide a storyline that the Game Master can tie factions and encounters together rather than serve as a full adventure. To help this, each has a countdown of events and notes as to what factions and what sites—or rather maps—might be involved. The plots include a search by a group of fanatics for the lost and holy Spear of Longinus and the race to stop a new plague spreading in the face of desperate and brutal measures being used by the World Health Organisation (its staff in the post-apocalypse have mercenaries). Some are specifically tied to the locations described in the book’s appendices, such as getting involved in a mayoral election in Kraków or stopping a KGB power play in Karlsborg. The biggest plot is ‘OPERATION Reset’, which suggests that there were other aims than just military ones in this operation, which was to obtain secret Soviet technology. Only part of the whole plot is explained and available to play through here—the next part will play out in the supplement, Hostile Waters. Thus, ‘OPERATION Reset’ provides the beginning of an overarching espionage campaign that will carry over into several modules for Twilight 2000 and involve the CIA, DIA, KGB, and GRU at each other’s throats and the Player Characters caught in the middle.

The four scenario sites consist of a housing block where two gangs vie for access to the local resources and turf with the Vorovskoy Mir in between; a church whose flock looks to its faith for answers, but wonders if God failed to protect from the war or used it to punish them, whilst not every member of the clergy is honest; a nuclear power plant that is still operational, but are threatened by marauders and the staff believe it has a traitor amongst its midst; and a bunker, no longer a place of war or survival, but turned into a nightclub that offers many locals a few hours escape drinking and dancing, whilst behind the scenes is the target for a turf war. All four come with an explanation of the situation, rumours to fling about, a countdown of events, a description of the various locations within the site, and full descriptions of the major NPCs involved. Like the plots, these are not full ready-to-play scenarios, but rather storylines that can play out as the Player Characters get involved in them. They are all very nicely detailed, they all have their own scenario maps, and they can all be used in either setting for Twilight 2000—Poland or Sweden, Kraków or Karlsborg. Then again, like much of Urban Operations, they can be used in the city or town of the Game Master’s choice.

The last section in Urban Operations consists of a pair of appendices. These in turn, detail Kraków in Poland and Karlsborg in Sweden, after the events of the Twilight War. The descriptions begin with what the Player Characters might see on arrival before going on to give the history of the population centre, its current status, a handful of rumours, descriptions of its neighbourhoods, and its major NPCs. Kraków describes itself as the only ‘free city’ in Poland, a democracy on the verge of a new election in the face of an extremist political faction, a centre of commerce sat on the Vistula River which manufactures ammunition and various devices to trade for food whilst the Vorovskoy Mir smuggles in everything else, and the holder of one ace—a working Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter, though fuel supplies are limited. At the heart of Karlsborg is the Karlsborg Fortress, back in control of Swedish forces and possibly the seat of the Swedish king, the town under the protection of a military which has very limited means to extend that protection, especially as more and more refugees arrive, and marauders control much of the surrounding area. Of the two, the description of the situation in Kraków is richer and deeper than that of Karlsborg, though this is understandable given that the authors had a previous work, The Free City of Krakow for the first edition of Twilight 2000, to draw from.

Physically, Urban Operations is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.

As much as Urban Operations provides further rules to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, what it really is, is a toolkit for the Game Master to run a series of plots in a variety of different locations in her own campaign, ideally in Kraków or Karlsborg. Each of the plots has its own scenario location and together they can easily be inserted into an ongoing campaign in whatever town or city the Game Master is using, or they can be run in one settlement after another as the Player Characters travel from one town or city or another. Either way, they offer several months’ worth of play as the Player Characters travel, get involved, survive, and build or move on. Lastly, Urban Operations does include the start of ‘OPERATION Reset’, a plot that will run through the next series of releases for Twilight 2000, so that there is an ongoing connection from one to the next. Overall, Urban Operations is an excellent expansion for Twilight 2000, providing the hooks and means to pull the Player Characters into the world around them, interact with the survivors, explore the consequences of a nuclear conflict, and hopefully make the world a better place.

The Fourth War

They said the Cold War would end when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It didn’t. The Warsaw Pact might have been dissolved and Germany united, but The Gang of Eight restored Communism in Russia. Not only that, but it revived the Soviet economy and retrained the Red Army. We didn’t find out how good it was until 1996 when the USSR decided to reoccupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Then Poland a year later to prevent it becoming a Western ally. Within months, even after a sustained bombing campaign, U.S. and NATO forces are fighting a Soviet invasion on the ground all across Europe, from Sweden in the north to Romania in the south, and when the Red Army is forced to retreat, the head of the Soviet Union authorises the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. It shatters NATO forces and escalates into a devastating exchange of nuclear missiles that destroy military, industrial, and civilian sites on all sides. Communication networks and transportation routes break down, the food supply chain collapses, and first famine, then disease, hits Europe and elsewhere. By the end of 1999, billions are dead. Even as federal authority crumbles in the USA, NATO launches one last desperate attempt to capture Warsaw and Stockholm, the capitals of Poland and Sweden. Operation Reset is stopped by unexpectedly determined Soviet defence and the last offensive of the war is done. What survivors there are, are told, “Good luck. You’re on your own now.”

This is the situation at the beginning of Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was. It is the classic situation that dates all the way back to the first edition of Twilight 2000, published by Game Designer’s Workshop in 1984. Where the original, written at the height of the Cold War, was set in a much-feared future, the new fourth edition, published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, takes place in an alternate past that hinges on the success of the coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 by the Gang of Eight that saw the restoration of Communism. The result is same. A mixture of U.S. and Allied forces, the last remnants of US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, struggling to survive in a Europe that has been shattered by war and poisoned by weapons of mass destruction, at the mercy of marauders and petty warlords, the potential hope of survivors who want protection, and in search of a home. That may well be the true home of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, the USA, as it has been in the previous editions of Twilight 2000. However, Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was also offers another starting option and another option for long term play. Traditionally, the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division has always been the city of Kalisz in central Poland, but Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was offers the alternative starting point of Sweden, near the central city of Örebro with US 2nd Marine Division. The situation is not much changed otherwise, for whilst the terrain and the people are different, the invaders are not. In both case, they maintain a strong military presence, though not a co-ordinated one. The broken infrastructure and communication links have prevented that.

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was is more expansive in other ways. It is upfront about what the Player Characters are expected to do. One option is find a way home, but others include surviving, helping others in need, gathering information, finding a safe haven, staking a claim, and even helping to reset the world. With the last three, the roleplaying game gives objectives which will be later supported by the community building rules, these being a common feature to many roleplaying games from Free League Publishing. In many of these objectives, there is a moral imperative, one of making the world a better place despite the damage done to it. How they do it is up to the Player Characters, who can of course, be soldiers as the default set-up, but Twilight 2000 also suggests campaign frameworks involving civilians, members of law enforcement, and even prisoners! These are not explored in any detail, but they are intriguing possibilities. They are, though, presented as options in terms of characters that the players can roleplay.

Like the First Edition, Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was comes as a boxed set. This contains a one-hundred-and-fifty-two page ‘Player’s Manual’, a one-hundred-and-twelve page ‘Referee’s Manual’, a large 864 × 558 mm double-sided full-colour map which depicts central and northern Poland on one side and central and southern Sweden on the other, a set of fifteen dice, eight double-sided battle maps, two double-sided scenario-specific maps, one-hundred-and-eight cardboard counters depicting various figures and vehicles, sixteen dice, ten Initiative cards, fifty-two Encounter cards, five character sheets, and two player handouts. The fifteen dice consist of two sets of Base Dice—six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-sided dice marked with crosshair symbols for successes and explosion symbols for failure and damage, six six-sided Ammo Dice used to roll for ammunition use and possible damage to a firearm, and a six-sided Hit location die. The two double-sided scenario-specific maps are larger than the eight double-sided battle maps which are designed to be modular and used with the Encounter cards and the counters. The maps depict a variety of urban and rural terrain. The player handouts are briefings for Operation Reset and the default start of play, giving intelligence data on the NATO and Soviet military deployment at the start of the offensive, one for Poland and one for Sweden. The whole set has a sturdy handsomeness to it and a solid physical presence.

A Player Character in Twilight 2000 is defined by his Nationality, Branch of Service, and Military Rank (as much as it holds sway in the post-war collapse). He has four attributes—Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Empathy—each represented by a letter, with ‘A’ representing the most capable, ‘C’ average, and ‘D’ weak. Each letter also corresponds to a die type. Thus, A to a twelve-sided die, B to a ten-sided die, C to an eight-sided die, and D to a six-sided die. There are also twelve core skills, three per attribute, and these are also by a letter and a die type, from ‘A’ and a twelve-sided die for Elite to ‘D’ and a six-sided die for Novice, with ‘C’ and an eight-sided die for Experienced. A rating of ‘F’ does not have an associated die type and it represents being untrained in a skill. Skills can also have specialities. In addition, a Player Character has a rating for his ‘Coolness Under Fire’, again rated from ‘A’ to ‘D’, as is the Player Characters’ Unit Morale. Whilst ‘Coolness Under Fire’ is important for a Player Character to not panic when the bullets start flying, in the long term it can have detrimental effects upon him, for every time it goes up, there is a chance that the Player Character’s Empathy goes down and thus his ability to interact with others as he becomes hardened to the loss of human life. Which is good balancing factor in play, as the Player Characters try to survive and still keep their humanity.

Beyond the stats, a Player Character will have a Moral Code, such as ‘You have a moral obligation to help those worse off than you.’, which can grant bonuses to skills if the Player Characters acts in accordance with it or cause Stress if acted against; a Big Dream that will give extra Experience Points if the Player Builds towards it; and a Buddy, who will also give a Player Character a bonus to a skill if coming to his aid and Stress if he is injured or killed. Every Player Character has some base equipment and access to starting group equipment, and potentially, a vehicle shared by the group, which could be an ordinary car, a jeep, or even a main battle tank! Important amongst this gear is ammunition, which can be used as a currency as well as in weapons. Lastly, every Player Character begins play with one or more points of permanent Radiation damage.

In terms of character creation, Twilight 2000 offers two options. One is to select and modify an Archetype, of which there are nine. These are the Civilian, the Grunt, the Gunner, the Kid, the Mechanic, the Medic, the Officer, the Operator, and the Spook. Of these, the Operator is the Special Forces operative. The other option is to follow a Lifepath. Beginning with the character’s childhood, the player takes him through a series of terms, rolling to see if he gains specialities, is promoted, how many years he ages, and whether or not war breaks out during the process or at the end. When this occurs, he receives some military training and experience. Civilian characters will have a wider range of skills, whilst soldiers will have better military skills and are more likely to have been promoted. In terms of background, Twilight 2000 supports Americans, Swedes, Poles, and Soviets, whilst there are tables for various careers, including law enforcement and criminal, education, blue collar and white-collar occupations, as well as the one for a military career and lastly, the ‘At War’ career, which covers both conscripts for Player Characters from nationalities involved in the war and civilians if not.

Nationality: Quinn McConnell
Branch of Service: Infantry
Military Rank: Private
Age: 24
Childhood: Streetkid
Career: Burglar, Prisoner, Conscript
Moral Code: Freedom is everything. No one tells you what to do. Ever.
Big Dream: Find a place to settle down with your friends, and defend it with our life

Coolness Under Fire: C
Hit Capacity: 5
Stress Capacity: 6
Radiation: 2

ATTRIBUTES/SKILLS
Strength: B [Close Combat B (Brawler)]
Agility: B [Ranged Combat D, Mobility D (Mountaineer)]
Intelligence: A [Recon B (Infiltrator), Survival D (Scrounger), Tech D (Electrician, Locksmith)]
Empathy: B

Gear
Assault rifle (1 reload), flak jacket and helmet, knife, personal medkit, basic tools, vehicle tools, backpack

Mechanically, Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was uses the same variant of the Year Zero Engine that has since been seen in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls one Base Die the Attribute and one Base Die for the Skill. Rolls of six or more count as a Success. Rolls of ten or more grant two Successes, which can grant extra benefits. In general, unless rolls are opposed, only one success is required to succeed at an action. Modifiers, whether from equipment, a skill-related speciality, or the situation will increase, or sometimes in the case of the latter, decrease the size of the die rolled. If the roll is failed and no successes are rolled or the player needs more successes, he can push the roll. This enables him to reroll any dice that do not already show Successes or Explosions, but whilst this means that he might roll Successes to succeed or succeed better, it is not without its dangers. Every result of an Explosion inflicts damage on the Player Character, either physical and deducted from the Player Character’s Hit Capacity if rolled with Strength or Agility, or mental and deducted from the Player Character’s Stress Capacity if rolled with Intelligence or Empathy. Actually, rolling is thus potentially dangerous to the Player Character and the rules advise that the players should not roll too often as a consequence.

Combat uses these basic rules and expands greatly upon them as you would expect for a military-based roleplaying game with an emphasis on combat. Combat in Twilight 2000 is fought on the roleplaying game’s hex maps using its counters. Initiative is handled by drawing cards from a deck of ten cards, numbered one to ten and then counting up. It is possible to swap initiative cards if a Player Character needs to go first. When a Player Character acts, he can conduct one fast and one slow action, or two fast actions. A slow action might be to break free of a grapple, fire a gun, or exit a vehicle, whilst a fast action could be to seek cover, run, aim, or reload. Combat covers a multitude of situations and rules—cover and line of sight, ambushes, overwatch and suppressive fire, close and ranged combat, explosives—both landmines and IEDs, heavy weapons, and more. Notably, when an attack with a firearm is made, a player does not just roll the Base Dice for his character’s Attribute and Skill. He can also roll Ammo Dice, the more shots fired, the more Ammo Dice rolled. These also have Success icons on them, marked by bullet symbols rather than Target symbols, as well as Explosion symbols. Successes on Ammo Dice can be used to increase the damage done beyond the base damage inflicted by the weapon or to inflict a second hit on the same or a second target. An attack roll can fail and the attack miss, but Successes on the Ammo Dice will still have the effect of suppressing the target. When an attack roll is pushed, the Ammo Dice are also rolled and enough Explosion symbols means that the weapon is jammed and possibly damaged. Successes on Ammo Dice also determine how much ammunition is used in an attack and a player is expected to track the amount of ammunition used.

The other die rolled with an attack is the Hit Location die. This determines where damage is inflicted, which is important because bodily locations can be protected by both armour and cover. Armour can stop small amounts of damage and it can suffer damage itself (and be repaired), but damage can be deadly. Suffer total damage equal to Hit Capacity and a Player Character is incapacitated, but suffer damage equal to or greater than a weapon’s ‘Crit Threshold’—for example, the Crit Threshold for a Beretta M9 is two and three for the M16A2—and a critical injury is suffered. Critical injuries are determined by location and can be lethal, requiring a player to make Death Saves for his character until someone can render medical help. In addition, there is a chance of infection… Few of the critical injuries are permanent, but they all take time to heal and they do require medical attention. Having access to a doctor or medic is a necessity in Twilight 2000. It also possible to be incapacitated via mental stress.

The devastated world of Twilight 2000 has its own additional dangers—the residue from chemical warfare and of course, the lingering effects of radiation. Each time a Player Character encounters a radiation hotspot, there is a chance he gains a point of Radiation, which can become permanent, and also suffer from radiation sickness. If he does, there is the possibility that unless treated, as with other diseases like dysentery or cholera, that the Player Character will die.

The scale of combat in Twilight 2000 is at the skirmish level and that also applies to vehicle combat. For the most part, due to the lack of fuel, parts, and ammunition, a group of Player Characters will only be operating a vehicle or two, so vehicle combat will typically consist of one-on-one vehicle engagements or small and fire and anti-armour weapons deployed against vehicles of various types. The rules for vehicle combat in Twilight 2000 are quite straightforward and the aim in general is not necessarily to destroy opposing vehicles as much as render them inoperable so that they are no longer a danger. A good quarter of the ‘Player’s Manual’ is dedicated to the arms, armour, and equipment that the Player Characters might find and deploy as they make their way across Poland or Sweden. Although there are some weapons and equipment deployed by other NATO forces described, the descriptions are mostly that of jury-rigged and civilian weapons, as well as American, Soviet, Polish, and Swedish gear reflecting the change in location offered by Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

One feature of roleplaying games from Free League Publishing is that they include rules for establishing, developing, and protecting a community, and Twilight 2000 is no exception. More so given that doing so is written into what the Player Characters are expected to do in the game. A base of operations provides the Player Characters somewhere to rest without the need to make Survival rolls to make camp, and not only they can make use of existing facilities, but also add to them. These can be as basic as cultivating cropland or building a cow pen, but then facilities like these are going to be a necessity. In comparison to other roleplaying games from Free League Publishing, such as where they originated in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the community rules are not as detailed or as expansive, but in providing facilities for the Player Characters to build and protect, they can serve as the basis for storytelling and events. Further, a base-focused campaign means that the area around it becomes the space in which stories and events can be told and developed. The rules for travel also cover foraging and scrounging as well as difficulty of travel in the post-apocalyptic world of Twilight 2000.

Where the ‘Player’s Manual’ presents the rules for Twilight 2000, the ‘Referee’s Manual’ presents the setting. This includes how the world slides into the war and the state of both Poland and Sweden as the primary starting points. There is some background on other countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the USA, but only in the broadest of details. There is good advice for the Game Master on starting a campaign from the collapse of Operation Reset and beyond, really developing a campaign driven by what the players and their characters want to do, whether that is to try and find a way home back to the USA or establish a base and even a future where they are. To back this up, the Referee is a given details of the remaining factions, forces, and their goals in both countries, as well as fifty-two encounters to add to her campaign. Each of the latter can be drawn from the ‘Encounter Deck’, which can be anything from encountering a band of refugees, a village ready to barter, or a marauder roadblock to a simply the weather getting better, finding an ambushed Soviet vehicle, or a burnt-out bus, ready to be scavenged, but home to a poisonous viper! They are all easily adjusted so that they can be used again. Four specific scenario sites are described in some detail, including a prison, a town that has fallen under the ‘protection’ of American forces, a military academy turned into a fortress by the surviving cadets, and a burnt-out town whose inhabitants are only beginning to come to terms with what happened. All are nicely detailed and include rumours and hooks that ideally should get the Player Characters to want to stick around and investigate a little further. Lastly, the ‘Referee’s Manual’ includes solo rules, conversion notes from previous editions of Twilight 2000, and most interestingly, designer’s notes. This explains how and why the new edition came about and some of the design changes made.

Physically, Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was is very well produced. Both books are well written and the illustrations really do capture the look and feel of the desolate and damaged world broken by mankind’s worst fears. The production values of the maps, cards, and counters are also very good.

The Twilight 2000 of 1984 was the military roleplaying game of its day and Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was is the military roleplaying game of the early twenty-first century. As much as this new edition is a fantastic update of the original, retaining all of its scope, it better emphasises its potential as it makes explicit that it is as much a military survival game as it is one of rebuilding and resetting the world. Whilst the setting is bleak and the rules often brutal, this gives Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was a sense of hope that makes it worthwhile taking a look at beyond simple nostalgia.

Solitaire: Death in Berlin

Between 1961 and 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by more than ideology. It was divided by the Berlin Wall, built in August, 1961 by the Deutsche Demoktratische Republik to stem the flow of citizens from the East to the West. It focused the world’s attention upon the divide between East and West Germany, between the capitalism of the West and the Communism of the East, embodied by the permanent border constructed of brick, explosive mines, sentry posts, machine guns, and so on. The ‘Grey City’ had been divided between the four Allied powers since the end of World War 2, but the Berlin Wall extended the Iron Curtain between East and West through the city rather than just around it. Both sides—the Soviet and the Allies—operated networks of spies and conducted operations in each other’s territories in an effort to discover what the other knew and what secrets they held, and in return, attempted to prevent secrets and other assets from falling into the enemy’s hands. This secret conflict between the NATO Allies and the Soviet Union and its proxies in the Warsaw Pact had been ongoing since before World War 2 and it would inspire films and fiction, such as that of Len Deighton and John le Carré, throughout the Cold War—and since. It would also inspire roleplaying games such as Top Secret, Spione, and Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War. One of the aspects of espionage and the Cold War is the loneliness and that is ripe for exploration in solo roleplaying such as Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG and Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989.

Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989 is a solo roleplaying and journalling game published by Critical Kit Ltd., best known for its solo journalling game, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG and its scenarios for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, such as A Yuletide Snowball Massacre: A Ridiculously Festive Battle Royale for 5E and The City of a Hundred Ships. In Death in Berlin, the player will be telling the story of a spy in service to one of the agencies from either the Western Bloc or the Eastern Bloc. Thus, he can be a member of the Central Intelligence Agency or MI6 as much as he could be a member of the Komitet gosudarstvennoï bezopasnosti or the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. His role is counter-espionage, uncovering conspiracies and operations conducted by the other side.

Death in Berlin is really divided in two parts. The first part is a source book which describes the setting for the game, Berlin and the Cold War. The latter begins with George Orwell’s first use of the term and runs through the history in brisk fashion, and is accompanied by a guide to Berlin across all four sectors. There are maps too, showing the various checkpoints through the wall—there were far more than just Checkpoint Charlie—and the city’s various districts. There are cultural elements covered too, such as the Trabant and the symbolic figures known as the Ampelmännnchen on the pedestrian crossing lights. There is discussion as well of the various agencies, equipment that the player and his opponents might wield in the field, and the language of spycraft. The discussion of the espionage world is shorter than the coverage of the city though. The author states that this material is not designed as a sourcebook for the period and even suggests further reading for the benefit of the reader. However, this potentially still leaves a younger player with more work to do to familiarise himself with the period.

In terms of game play, Death in Berlin requires a full set of polyhedral dice and an ordinary deck of playing cards, of which, only cards valued from seven to Ace are used. An Agent is simply defined. He has two stats, Rank and Heat. Rank represents his progress through the agency and starts at one, raises by one for each conspiracy he foils (that involves a Queen, King, or Ace card), up to a maximum of five. Heat is a measure of how many risks the Agent has taken and how much of a liability he is becoming. It ranges in value from zero to six. It rises by one each time the player identifies what connects two members of a conspiracy. Should it rise to six, the Agent’s cover is blown and the game ends. An Agent also has a Motivation, such as Ideology or Ambition.

Death in Berlin uses a set of tables to help set up and run the game. One provides a narrative arc for what is effectively a season, such as the ‘Monitor’ Mode of Operation, ‘An Artist’ as the Target, and ‘Space’ as the Goal. Further tables can provide a yes or no answer to a question—qualified, if necessary, a suspect or two, names for NPCs of various nationalities, as well as places, weather, items, and possible codenames. Some of these will be useful at the start, some of them in play. Either way, the player is free to roll or pick from them as is his wont. The structure of play is formed by a pyramid of the playing cards, representing the whole of the conspiracy with each card representing a Suspect, four wide at the bottom, then three wide, two wide, and lastly the single card at the top. At least one seven is placed on the lowest level and cards are drawn and placed in the pyramid, ensuring that each card’s value is equal to or greater by a few points than its neighbouring cards. Initially, this is only horizontally in the lowest row, but switches to vertical for the upper levels. This creates a pyramid of ascending values. The top, most valuable card will be the big target or Suspect. The suit for each card, Spade for the military, police, and intelligence, Clubs for politicians and civil service, Diamonds for business and finance, and Hearts for the arts and vice, determines the area in which field, a Suspect works or is employed, whilst the value of the card is his rank. A random roll determines if he works for the West or the East.

Each individual card and thus Suspect is a target for surveillance upon the part of the player. The surveillance is rolled against the value of the card. If the player fails, he is spotted and gains a point of Heat. For each Rank at Rank Two and above, a player has a Silver Bullet—narratively, a disguise, a weapon, a sidekick, and so on—that sets the roll to ten plus the player’s Rank or enables him to succeed, but also increase his Heat. Heat can be lowered, but it has its own consequences.

If he succeeds, the player draws a new card and consults the Narrative Prompt table. This card determines the basics of the connection between this Suspect and another, adjacent one in the scenario. Each successful roll, each drawing of a new card, and consultation of the Narrative Prompt table is what pushes the story of the player’s investigation forward. For example, “The suspect likes gambling. And this often gets them in trouble. Someone is acting around them. Who is it? What is their relationship?” and “The target meets with one of the known suspects in the conspiracy. This takes place in a cinema in (West sector). You manage to get close enough and hear a sentence. What is it?” It is in this space, using the prompts, that the player is writing his journal and telling the story of his investigation.

Physically, Death in Berlin is simply and cleanly presented. The illustrations evoke the stark world of Berlin in the sixties and seventies, giving a feel for the city. The maps are decent too.

Play through of Death in Berlin, from the beginning investigation of the conspiracy through to the unmasking of the mastermind at its heart will take an hour or more, being dependent on the depth and detail that the player wants to work into the story. It has a slightly grubby feel, but how grubby is again dependent on the player and the style of espionage he wants to write about. The default is definitely le Carré rather than Fleming and there is nothing to stop a player from pushing into the territory of Mick Herron—at least in tone rather than period. Similarly, how much a player will get out of Death in Berlin in writing a journal is dependent upon his knowledge and appreciation of both the genre and the period when it is set.

Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989 is a very serviceable journalling game, one whose enjoyment and creativity very much depends upon the knowledge and interest of the player.

Miskatonic Monday #302: The Russians Are Coming!!

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: The Russians Are Coming!!

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Keith Craig

Setting: Alaska, 1961

Product: One-shot Scenario
What You Get: Thirteen page, 1.94 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The metal from another world...

Plot Hook: Could aberrant radar signals be a prelude to Soviet invasion?

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, two handouts, three NPCs, and two monsters.

Production Values: Plain

Pros

# More weird alien invasion than Mythos investigation

# Creepy transformations
# Environment reasonably detailed

# Could be a Delta Green investigation?

# Russophobia

# Tomophobia

# Neophobia

Cons

# Wonky Investigator backgrounds

# No maps (the Air Force would provide maps)

# Needs a good edit

# Solutions and consequences underdeveloped

# No Sanity rewards

Conclusion

# Alien invasion scenario rather than Mythos scenario

# Underdeveloped in terms of how the Investigators deal with the threat and what happens next

1984: Twilight: 2000

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

“Good luck. You’re on your own, now” It is perhaps one of the most famous opening lines of any scenario or campaign for any roleplaying game. It is an opening line—and its consequences—that all players of the roleplaying game have been faced with and have explored. It gave ultimate control to the players in deciding what their characters did next and where they went. Five years ago, the Cold War went hot. First in China, between the People’s Republic of China and the invading forces of the USSR, and later the Warsaw Pact. Continuing calls for support from Moscow a year later led to increasing dissatisfaction in East Germany and then an invasion by West Germany and an anti-Soviet coup in East Germany. West German forces were joined by U.S. forces and conflict quickly spread along the line of the Iron Curtain as NATO held off attacks by the Russians in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic. The war quickly spread as old rivalries ignited into armed conflict. First between Turkey and Greece, the latter with Italian support, then India and Pakistan, the latter being invaded. As NATO drove into Poland as far as Warsaw, the first nuclear weapons were used by the Soviets. In limited fashion at first with tactical nuclear weapons, on the Western Front, but on a huge scale on the Eastern Front, shattering Chinese forces and its industrial base. That was three years ago. In the west, the nuclear exchanges escalated, but did not yet tip over into full scale launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The destruction of industrial facilities and extensive disruption of trade was followed by famine and pandemic, and in the USA, a wave of refugees crossing the Rio Grande border. Unable to deal with the crisis, the now military-led government in Washington responded with arms and incensed, Mexico sent its army across the border to protect its citizens. By the end of the year, Mexico would occupy much of the U.S. southwest. Breakdowns in government and disputed elections in the USA ran right to the top, resulting in two governments, one civilian, one military. That was a year ago. The war in Europe bogged down into one of raids and attrition. A month ago, NATO forces in southern Poland launched a new offensive. It was met with unexpectedly fierce resistance by Warsaw Pact forces. Today, the last units from that offensive were destroyed or overrun. It is Tuesday, July 18th, 2000. The Third World War is over. Now you have to survive its consequences.

This is the set-up for Twilight: 2000, the military survival, post-apocalyptic roleplaying game published by Game Designers’ Workshop in 1984. The Player Characters are soldiers of the former United States 5th Infantry Division (Mechanised), left to fend for themselves and survive in southern Poland in an environment rife with danger—radiation, enemy forces, rival allied forces, bandits and marauders, limited supplies, desperate civilians—and limited intelligence. Of any roleplaying game released by a major publisher, it is arguably the most controversial. Most obviously due to its subject matter of nuclear war, and surviving that nuclear war and what it leaves behind, but also its militarism, its survivalism, and its Americanism. It would also win a major award, the H.G. Wells Award for ‘Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984’, in 1985, prove to be highly popular, be subject to over forty scenarios and supplements, a board game, a computer game, and three further editions, not always of the best quality or playability. This included the Twilight: 2000 2nd Edition Version 2.2 from Game Designers’ Workshop and the Twilight: 2013 Core Rules from 93 Games Studio. More recently, Free League Publishing would release its own version using the Year Zero Engine with Twilight: 2000 4th Edition. There is a lot to unpack and explore in Twilight: 2000—and not just in the game itself. However, that is the starting point.

The original Twilight: 2000 is a boxed set. Under its green ‘Contents of this Box’ sheet it contains a twenty-four-page Play Manual, a thirty-two-page Referee’s Manual, Players’ Charts, ten-page Referee’s Charts, twelve-page Equipment List, Price List, eight-page Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz, Adventure Handout: Escape from Kalisz, Intelligence Briefing, A5-size Campaign Map depicting southern Poland, and three Record Sheets. The latter consists of the Character Generation Worksheet, Character Sheet, and Vehicle Record Sheet. There are also dice—four six-sided and one ten-sided—and an errata sheet. The latter is never a good sign… The Play Manual introduces the setting of Twilight: 2000 and details character creation, time and travel, upkeep, and the first part of combat. The Referee’s Manual examines skills and attributes, contains the second part of combat, looks at encounters, provides additional rules for radiation, disease, trade and commerce, repairs, electricity, and swimming, a chronological background, and a broad description of Poland. The latter is actually a breakdown of the military forces present in the remnants of the country rather than a description of it, and the advice for the Referee—just three quarters of a page long—suggests preparing a combat and a vehicle trek as training missions before play starts and identifies the need for the players and their characters to have a long term aim, but really only discusses one. Which is, of course, going home. The Players’ Charts lists the personal weapons for each nationality—including the West German Bundeswehr being armed with the Heckler & Koch G11 ‘submachine gun’, skill lists, languages, service branches and specialities, and languages by nationality. The Referee’s Charts contains tables for movement, terrain, encounters, vehicle damage locations, combat with a plethora of weapons, language lists, diseases to be found in encampments and settlements, armour values for cover, equipment availability, NPC motivation, radiation illness, and encounter stats. The Equipment List gives the ammunition type, weight, magazine size, and price of every weapon in the setting from the longbow through to the 120 mm mortar. It does similar things for all of the equipment and all of the vehicles that the Player Characters might also encounter too. It is an extensive list and most items are given at least a basic description. Vehicles are given a more detailed description, though no more than a paragraph, whilst weirdly, the Heckler & Koch G11 is given three whole paragraphs of its own.

The starting adventure in Twilight: 2000, Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz describes the region fifty or so kilometres east of the city, the various Soviet forces present and their disposition. For the most part it details what units are where and the relationships between the Soviet forces and the civilians and where they are present, the civilians and marauders. There are some rumours and radio transmissions too, and some suggestions as to what the Player Characters might do as part of their efforts to escape the region, which primarily consist of ways to disrupt any attempts by the Soviet forces to follow them. The Adventure Handout: Escape from Kalisz provides a description for the players and their characters of the last month leading up to the radio transmission that leaves them on their own. The Intelligence Briefing is for the highest-ranking Player Character and gives an intelligence estimate of the forces still active in the region. Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz is not a fully-fledged scenario in the sense that it has a plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Instead, it is a set-up that the Referee will need to develop during play, likely with the need to create some ready-to-encounter NPCs and enemy forces beforehand to make it easier to run all dependent upon what the players have decided what they want their characters to do. There are not really any hooks or adventure ideas in the traditional sense, and honestly, it feels more like a wargaming sandbox reduced to a personal scale which the Referee will need to develop a lot of further detail. Even then, beyond the limits of Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz, like the Adventure Handout: Escape from Kalisz ends with, the Referee is on his own. (However, there is an official campaign, beginning with The Black Madonna, and continuing east with The Free City of Krakow, before turning north with Pirates of the Vistula, The Ruins of Warsaw, and lastly running west with Going Home.)

A Player Character in Twilight: 2000 has six attributes—Fitness, Agility, Constitution, Stature, Intelligence, and Education. These range in value between one and twenty. An Education of nine or more indicates that the Player Character has graduated from high school, thirteen for a college, fifteen for a master’s degree, and eighteen or more for a PhD. Derived factors include Strength, Hit Capacity, weight, Load, and throw range. The Military Base Experience represents a Player Character’s basic military experience and will be lower for a Player Character with higher attributes, but higher for a Player Character with lower attributes as a balancing factor. From it is determined the number of dice rolled to find out how many months the Player Character has spent in combat. If this is higher than sixty, then the Player Character is a veteran, including of previous wars. Coolness Under Fire measures the Player Character’s reaction to stress and gun fire and is derived from the number of months spent in combat. Lower is better than higher. The Military Base Experience also determines how many Rads the Player Character has suffered. Rank is based on Education and Intelligence, plus a random roll, as are possible second languages.

Twilight: 2000 allows for a wide variety of nationalities in terms of Player Character backgrounds, including those from the Soviet Bloc. The Service Branch and Specialities cover support services, infantry, engineer, medical, artillery, armour, and aviation, as well as special forces, rangers, and intelligence. Most have a straight roll requirement which must be equalled or bettered, but without any modifiers. The various specialities provide bonuses to certain skills or simply make one or two cheaper to buy. Every Player Character has some basic skills, but receives skill points to assign based on his Military Base Experience and Education, and then some Background skill points. Some skills are restricted to either being Military, Education, or Background skills, but all are purchased at a cost of one point per percentage point, and then two points per percentage points over fifty. Every Player Character gets his nationality’s basic equipment and then is free to buy any further equipment with the money earned based on his time in service. Vehicles are rolled for rather than purchased. Choice of equipment is limited depending on whether it is rare in the East or the West. However, this can lead to the Player Characters accruing a lot of equipment—and that much vaunted Heckler & Koch G11 is only $400!

Kevin Mongeau
Age: 27 Nationality: American
Service: US Army Branch: Engineer
Rank: Captain
Fitness 13 Agility 10 Constitution 18
Stature 17 Intelligence 13 Education 14
Strength: 15
Hit Capacity
Head: 18 Chest: 50 Abdomen: 35 Left Arm: 35 Right Arm: 35 Left Leg: 35 Right Leg: 35
Load: 50 Throw Range: 30
Military Base Experience: 5 Time in Combat: 24 Months
Coolness Under Fire: 5
Rads: 14
Skills
Body Combat 50, Chemistry 50, Civil Engineer 65, Combat Engineering 75, Combat Rifleman 50, Computer 50, Electronics 50, Farming 50, Foraging 50, Instruction 50, Mechanic 50, Melee Combat 20, Metallurgy 50, Motorcycle 50, Nuclear Warhead 20, Pistol 20, Scrounging 50, Swim 20, Thrown Weapon 20, Tracked Vehicle Driver 50, Wheeled Vehicle Driver 40
Base Hit Numbers
Combat Rifleman 30/15/10, Pistol 12/6/2
Body Combat Damage: 8
Equipment
M16 Assault Rifle, 9mm pistol

The character creation process is not particularly difficult, although it does involve a fair degree of arithmetic and it is far from quick. The Character Generation Worksheet is there to make it easier. The main issue is perhaps learning all of the three letter acronyms that the roleplaying game’s skills are reduced to.

Mechanically, Twilight: 2000 is a percentile system.* Attributes are multiplied by five when they need to be rolled against and tasks are either easy, average, or difficult. An easy task doubles the value, average keeps it the same, and difficult halves it. Combat uses the same core mechanic and plays out over six five-second rounds per combat turn. A Player Character can typically conduct one action per round, some of which can be combined with a move action. However, some of these have to be Hesitation actions when the Player Characters can do nothing. The number is dependent on the Player Character’s Coolness Under Fire. The lower the Coolness Under Fire, the fewer the number of Hesitation actions a Player Character is forced to do. Certain actions, such as repetitive ones and drivers under direction can avoid Hesitation actions under certain circumstances. Initiative order is determined by skill, higher skills being better. Combat is treated comprehensively, including rate of fire, aimed shots—all shots are assumed to be quick, but a round spent aiming doubles the base hit chance, firing from and at vehicles, and so on. The rules also cover indirect fire and antitank missiles. Damage can be slight, serious, or critical. Damage that does less than the Capacity in a location is counted as slight damage, serious if it exceeds it, and critical if it is twice the Capacity. Critical hits to the head are fatal.

* Which begs the question, why was only one ten-sided die included in the box?

The Play Manual also covers time, and more importantly, upkeep. This includes food requirements, foraging and fishing, hunting, fuel, and vehicle maintenance. All of this is important because the Player Characters no longer have access to regular supplies as they would normally. So, fuel includes consumption of different types and changing from one fuel type to another, also distilling alcohol, which typically takes three days to complete. Vehicle maintenance is also important; they are likely to break down especially since the road networks have been severely damaged and soldiers no longer have access to vehicle bays for checks and preventative maintenance. In many ways, Twilight: 2000 is a roleplaying game of technical survival, and as important as combat is in the play of the game because it is a military roleplaying game, so Player Characters who have technical, mechanical, and similar skills are as important as those who are crack shots.

The Referee’s Manual expands upon the use of skills, notably allowing for Outstanding Success and Catastrophic Failure. An Outstanding Success is equal to ten percent of the skill or attribute roll, whereas a roll of ninety or more, followed by a second failure, is counted as a Catastrophic Failure. What these are in game terms is left up to the Referee to decide. There are also some suggested skill rolls. As well as expanding on skill use, the Referee’s Manual expands on combat. It adds rules for explosions and explosives, chemical agents, mines, and vehicles. Vehicle combat is the most complex aspect of the roleplaying game, especially when it comes to component damage after a shot has penetrated a vehicle. The nature of Twilight: 2000 means that vehicle combat is a possibility, since the remnants of both sides are capable of fielding a mixture of light and heavy armour, and both the Player Characters and NPCs are likely to have access to anti-armour weapons. Encounters covers random encounters, settlements, and NPCs, though in the case of the latter, the drawing two cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards to determine their motivations. For example, clubs indicates violence, diamonds wealth, hearts fellowship, and spades power. The face cards indicate particularly strong motivations and drives, such as ‘Heart Queen’ for love or ‘Club Jack’ for murderer. It is a very broad treatment, but works well enough should the Referee need an NPC quickly. The additional rules cover the extra dangers of the post-apocalyptic setting of Twilight: 2000, including radiation and disease, in particular a lot of diseases that are rare in highly advanced societies, such dysentery and typhoid fever. None of this is particularly pleasant as you would expect. The Referee’s Manual is rounded out with some notes on trade and commerce and on repairs, something that the Player Characters will need to do for reasons already explained, and the timeline and overview of Poland in the year 2000.

Physically, Twilight: 2000 is decently presented. There is some good writing in places. For example, character creation in the Play Manual is supported with some colour fiction that serve as the source for the examples of the process. Both the Play Manual and the Referee’s Manual are illustrated with a range of scenes and characters done in greyscale. When the artwork is not depicting an over-the-top combat scene, it is actually decent, depicting the difficulty of life and survival in this dangerous new world with some delicacy and also diversity. However, the rules would have certainly benefited from some more fully worked out examples of play and combat, especially vehicle combat.

Of course, as contemporary a roleplaying game as Twilight: 2000 was in 1984, even though it was set sixteen years into the future, events outpaced it. By 1986, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto leader in the Soviet Union, and his adoption of greater transparency and openness, relations had begun to thaw between the USA and the USSR. Within five years of the publication of Twilight: 2000, the Berlin Wall had collapsed, the Warsaw Pact had begun to break up, and by 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had disintegrated and was no more. Game Designers’ Workshop would update Twilight: 2000 with a second edition first published in 1990 and then again in a new version in 1993, to take account of the rapidly changing geo-political situation. The belated version published by 93 Games Studio the history even further forward, Twilight: 2013 being set in 2013 within its even then, very short future history, deviating from 2007. The fourth edition, published by Free League Publishing as Twilight: 2000 – Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, returned the setting closer to its roots in the original version by Game Designers’ Workshop and made it an alternate timeline, which fortunately, we have lived past.

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Twilight: 2000 was reviewed not once, but twice in Space Gamer Number 74 (May/June 1985) in ‘During the Holocaust: Twilight: 2000’. First by Rick Swan, who lamented the lack of crossover between wargamers and roleplayers before saying, “Twilight: 2000 may change all that. Let’s say this up front: Twilight: 2000 is the most successful bridge between conventional wargames and roleplaying published to date. If it doesn’t bring the two camps closer together, it probably can’t be done.” However, he was critical of the Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz, complaining that, “Unfortunately, Twilight: 2000 continues in the grand tradition of basic sets by including a substandard introductory adventure as part of the package. “Escape From Kalisz” is so sketchy (not a single NPC is described and the situation is directionless) that you may as well write your own. Let’s hope that GDW doesn’t waste any time in publishing some adventures worthy of the system.” Yet beyond this criticism, he said, “I’ve yet to come across a more engaging premise for a roleplaying campaign. And a war-based game that still retains such a strong sense of humanity is an accomplishment by any standards.” and his conclusion was more positive. “Whether or not Twilight: 2000 becomes a standard remains to be seen, but it certainly fills a niche and does so successfully. I hope it finds an audience with roleplayers and wargamers alike. As a design, it’s nothing spectacular, but as a concept, it’s an innovation. Bring on the adventures!”

Greg Porter offered a rebuttal in ‘Another View’. He praised the character creation system, the relatively realistic equipment list, and the simplicity of the core system. However, he criticised the use of acronyms for the skills and the need for errata in a new game, and called the combat system abysmal. He finished with, “All told, Twilight: 2000 is a tragic waste of 18 bucks. The nice concept and character generation system are completely overrun by innumerable flaws and hopeless violations of the laws of physics. If you insist on buying this game, read a friend’s copy first. I wish I had.”

Chris Felton reviewed Twilight: 2000 in ‘Notices’ in Imagine No. 27 (June 1985). He highlighted the difficulty of refereeing a game of Twilight: 2000 with, “This game system has its downfall built into its basic premise. A group of soldiers behind enemy lines in a disintegrating society is far more difficult to referee than any other game because of the fast-moving nature of the group. Radom is a big crater: will they go north to Bialobrzegi or south to Szydlowiec? Will they attack the supply dump or not? And so on. The players have endless choices in each evening’s play and the referee must be ready to cope with any decision they make. This is against the current trend in rpgs, especially in the States where parties tend to be steered for the referee’s own ease.” Although Felton had other criticisms, such as the acronyms, he said, “Overall, this is a good game, well worth clubbing together for if you belong to a group of experienced players who like free-running games and whose referee can run a scenario from minimal notes. If your referee has no experience of ‘winging it’ and needs all the details worked out in advance, this is not the game for you.”

Marcus L. Rowland reviewed Twilight: 2000 in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 68 (August 1985) in what perhaps is one of the most notorious and controversial reviews to appear in gaming magazines, let alone the pages of White Dwarf. He was highly critical, commenting that, “While the system is playable, the moral stance and attitudes it exemplifies are fairly loathsome. The rules favour the style of behaviour found in ‘fun’ war films…” and that, “The setting, two years after the last nuclear weapon was used, has evidently been designed to avoid showing the worst effects of the bomb; the random encounters don’t include civilians suffering from third degree radiation burns, blind children, and the hideously dead and dying victims of blast and heat. Starvation and plague are occasionally mentioned, with the implication that characters can always use their weapons to get food and medicines.” He finished by saying, “The suggested theme (which beautifully explains the attitude of this game) is to ‘return home’ to America: Europe evidently isn’t worth say anything about the possibility of rebuilding settlements, negotiating local peace treaties, or doing anything else to start civilisation working again. The box blurb says ‘They were sent to save Europe. . . Now they’re fighting to save themselves’, and it’s evident that this game has been written by and for Americans, with little or no understanding of European attitudes or desires.” and then awarding the roleplaying game a score of five out of ten.

Twilight: 2000 was placed at number thirty-five of ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ which appeared in Arcane #14 (December 1996). Editor Paul Pettengale said, “Pretty much all the previous ‘post-apocalyptic’ RPGs had been fairly fantastical, and had been set some time after the apocalypse. Twilight: 2000 is realistic and set in the middle of the breakdown of European society. Involving, but not exactly cheerful.”

One interesting remark by Allen Varney in ‘Roleplaying Reviews’ in Dragon Issue #175 (December 1991) would lead to a debate about the morality of Twilight: 2000. In his review of Dark Conspiracy, Game Designers’ Workshop’s near-future horror role-playing game, he wrote, “…[G]ood PCs fighting evil monsters is at least an improvement over the moral vacuum of the TWILIGHT: 2000 game…” This led to an early Internet debate the same year involving Varney and others, including an unnamed former GDW employee, about the morality or lack of to be found in Twilight: 2000, and by extension other games. The heated debate would result in ‘DO THE RIGHT THING: A Commentary’, which appeared in INTER*ACTION: The Journal of Role-Playing and Storytelling Systems Issue 1 (October, 1994) and is available to read here.

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Let us be fair about Twilight: 2000. It is very much a product of its time. It was released in 1984 at the height of the Cold War. The leader of the free world, President Ronald Reagan, faced off against a Soviet Union headed by Konstantin Chernenko, the last of the Communist old guard who still esteemed Stalin. The film Red Dawn depicted a Soviet invasion of the United States, which would be satirised by Greg Costikyan two years after the publication of Twilight: 2000 when relations between the USA and USSR had radically changed with The Price of Freedom from West End Games. Films such as The Day After in the USA and Threads in the United Kingdom, showed the public the horrors of nuclear war. As the bulwark against the forces of Communism, the American armed forces were held in high esteem, and of course, Communism itself was seen as a great evil, almost Satanic, anti-Christian, and definitely, anti-American. Thus, whatever the situation, even in a post-apocalypse as that set up—if not necessarily depicted—in Twilight: 2000, soldiers are seen as heroes. There can be no doubt that, along with its extensive list of guns, that the militarism and Americanism in the roleplaying game appealed to a certain audience, hence its popularity.

However, outside of the USA, as evidenced by Marcus L. Rowlands’ review in White Dwarf Issue 68, Twilight: 2000 found lesser favour. Again, because it was a product of its time and because of the Cold War. The United Kingdom might not have been on the doorstep of the Eastern Bloc, but it was closer and any conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would take place only a few hundred miles away on the other side of the English Channel. There was a vocal anti-nuclear weapon, ‘ban the bomb’ movement in both the United Kingdom and in Europe, the Greenham Common RAF airbase being the site of an extremely long campaign of civil disobedience, including the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, protesting against the stationing of U.S. cruise missiles on the base. There was also a political divide to the anti-nuclear war movement too, as well as an anti-Americanism, which grew out of the feeling that whilst the U.S.A. would be protecting the United Kingdom and Europe against Russian invasion, it was not going to feel the consequences at home of such a war as the United Kingdom and Europe would suffer. Of course, were the Cold War to have gone hot and nuclear missiles been launched by both sides, everyone would have suffered.

As to the Americanism of Twilight: 2000, that is undeniable, since it is about American soldiers surviving on a wild frontier, a frontier to which they have themselves contributed to its wildness, wanting to get home to America. Indeed, the thrust of the first six releases for the roleplaying game, would be all about getting out of the hell of Europe and getting home. However, this is a roleplaying game written by American designers who had various degrees of military experience, and published by an American company, for an American audience, and the fact that anyone outside of the USA could buy Twilight: 2000 was extra income for the publisher. There were supplements set outside of the American experience for Twilight: 2000, such as Survivors’ Guide to the United Kingdom, but these were exceptions, not the rule.

Although not as immoral as perhaps the earlier military roleplaying game, Merc, published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1981, Twilight: 2000 is not in itself a moral game. In play, it may become a moral game, but the focus in the roleplaying game as written is on survival, combat, and escaping. That is what the Beginning Adventure: Escape from Kalisz is about, getting away from the chaos of a battle lost the day before, but then? It is not on the environment and the other survivors, who are relegated to aids and obstacles, nor is it on rebuilding and protecting what remains—at least until the Player Characters can get home to the shattered United States. Even then the rules do not support this concept of recovery or rebuilding, NPCs are not quite faceless, but they are very broadly drawn—quite literally from a deck of ordinary playing cards—and hardly at all in the starting scenario in the Twilight: 2000 boxed set. Further, there is no guide to creating civilian NPCs, no discussion of the civil or social aspects of Poland that have survived, and no advice on bringing them into play. That said, the artwork does in places depict the innocents of the conflict, the civilians and the children, acknowledging their presence and suffering that the roleplaying game’s text does not.

It is interesting to note that at the height of the Cold War, the roleplaying hobby produced two of the greatest roleplaying games about the fears of the consequences of a world on the brink of Nuclear War. One, Twilight: 2000, dealt with the immediacy of such a conflict and externalised it in a very strait-laced military treatment. The other is Paranoia, which like the previously mentioned The Price of Freedom, is designed by Greg Costikyan (along with Dan Gelber, Eric Goldberg, and Allen Varney) and published by West End Games. Where The Price of Freedom satirised the possible invasion of the USA by the USSR, Paranoia satirised and internalised those fears, most obviously that of McCarthyism.

Twilight: 2000 is the apogee of military roleplaying games and antithesis of the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game normally set centuries after anyone responsible for the disaster has died. The latter frees the players and their characters from having to think about the causes and the culprits, and instead focus on the consequences. In Twilight: 2000, the causes and the culprits are present in the setting and the Player Characters are likely to be concerned with them, if not aligned with them, whereas the consequences, beyond the technical, are ignored and the Player Characters are only expected to think about themselves. In a roleplaying game setting in which humanity has suffered so much and which places the Player Characters on the frontline of that suffering, it is a pity that as written, Twilight: 2000 ignores that humanity.