1975: En Garde!

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—

En Garde! is one of the first five roleplaying games to be published and it was the first to be published by Game Designer’s Workshop. It was not the first historical roleplaying game—that likely would have been Boot Hill from TSR, Inc., published like En Garde! in 1975—but subtitled, “Being in the Main a Game of the Life and Times of a Gentleman Adventurer and his Several Companions”, it was definitely the first swashbuckling roleplaying game and the first to emphasis what a Player Character was doing socially and what a Player Character’s social status and standing was. Although it began life as a set of rules for handling duels, the expanded rules provided the scope for roleplaying as gentlemen attended their clubs and caroused and quaffed and gambled, spied pretty ladies and courted them as potential mistresses, joined a regiment and went off on campaign to fight either the Habsburgs, the Spanish, or the Protestants, aiming to win prestige, promotion, and position, all the whilst attempting to maintain sufficient monies to support themselves and their mistresses in the lifestyles they have become accustomed and want to become accustomed to! There is always the danger of death and penury, and insults flung, leading to a duel and its consequences.

Yet, En Garde! has always been overlooked as a roleplaying game and may not even be a roleplaying game in the traditional sense of even the Dungeons & Dragons of 1974. There are good reasons for this. The game play is rarely one of being sat round the table in the traditional sense because a player programs the actions of his character a month in advance. There is none of the immediacy of a traditional roleplaying game, no back and forth between the players and their characters, or indeed between the players, their characters, and the Game Master’s NPCs. Nor is there a real strong sense of place, since the Player Characters move between locations automatically, whether between their club and their barracks, between their mistress’ apartments and the duelling ground, and between Paris and wherever the French army is in campaign. Consequently, En Garde! abstracts France rather giving it any sense of place or geography.

Consequently, the baton of the swashbuckling genre and the period of Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers would be taken up other roleplaying games, most notably Flashing Blades from Fantasy Games Unlimited. Yet En Garde! has had a long life of its own parallel to the roleplaying hobby. This is because its pre-programmed style of play lent itself very easily to what was then Play by Mail, turns and results being sent and received through the mail, and more recently Play by E-Mail. It thus found a home in fanzines devoted to postal games such as Chess and Diplomacy. The current owner of En Garde! began running postal games of En Garde!, and convention games of it, before becoming the publisher.

To be fair, just because the game is played in a procedural fashion, it does not mean that it is truly lacking roleplaying possibilities. En Garde! does have a definitive aim for every Player Characters and that is to acquire better social standing and status—and keep it. That desire to better oneself and maintain it drives a Player Character’s decisions and how he reacts to the outcomes of those decisions and those of the other Player Characters, and it is this space that En Garde! has scope for roleplaying? If a Player Character discovers another man has been courting his mistress, what should he do? If facing certain death on the field of battle, an act of poltroonery might save him, but should the act be exposed, should the Player Character challenge his accusers to a duel and protect his honour or confess and suffer the consequences? As a King’s Musketeer, what insults should he be taunting members of the Cardina’s guard with? Answering them spurs a roleplaying response in character, even if only written down, and in being written, unlike in most roleplaying games, you have a specific chronicle of the actions, reactions, and responses of all of the Player Characters.

A Player Character in En Garde! is simply defined. He has four stats, Strength, Expertise, Constitution, and Endurance. The first three are rolled on three six-sided dice, whilst Endurance is determined by multiplying Strength by Constitution. Strength is a Player Character’s ability to inflict damage, Expertise his skill with a sword, Constitution his health, and Endurance his ability to withstand punishment. His Social Level is determined by rolling on tables for his Birth, Sibling Rank, Father’s Position, and Father’s Title (if Noble). His Military Ability, used when he is on campaign, is rolled a single six-sided die.

Our sample Player Character, Cyrille Mageau, is of a very lowly origins, with barely a Louis d’or to his name. His lack of status means that his prospects are equally as low, but Cyril is ambitious and not without potential. Given his very high Military Ability, his best option is to enlist and prove himself on campaign. If he is successful there, he may improve his fortunes in Paris.

Cyrille Mageau
Social Level: 1
Class: Commoner
Sibling Rank: Bastard
Father’s Position: Peasant
Strength 09 Expertise 13 Constitution 13 Endurance 117
Military Ability: 6
Initial Funds: 9 Allowance: 0 Inheritance: 0

Mechanically, En Garde! does not really offer much in the way that looks like a roleplaying game. It starts by offering the mechanics out of which the rest of the game grew. These are the duelling rules, with participants programming manoeuvres such as Close, Cut, Slash, Lunge, Throw, and more. This is written out in a sequence of letters as a routine, for example, ‘-X-L-X-’ for a Lunge, ‘-CL-K-X-X-X-’ for Kick, ‘-P-(R)-’ for Parry and possible Riposte, and so on, with the ‘X’ standing for Rest or Guard. These sequences are then compared step-by-step and the results determined, with duellist’s Strength, manoeuvre, and weapon type. The latter includes rapier, dagger, foil, sabre, cutlass, and even two-handed sword! A duellist who has a lower Swordsmanship—later called Expertise—will be slower against a duellist who has a higher Swordsmanship, and this is represented by the player having to be put in more ‘X’s. Duels are played out until one participant either surrenders or is killed. Winners will gain Status Points and Social Levels in general, depending upon the Status Points and Social Levels of the participants.

The actual play structure is based on four weeks per month, three months per season, and four seasons per year. A player will program his character’s activities four weeks at a time. These could be to a club with a friend, practice with a weapon, carouse at a bawdyhouse, and court a mistress. A Player Character can also join clubs, gamble, take out loans, join a regiment, and so on. The aim throughout is for the Player Character to maintain his Social Level at the very least, but really the aim is to increase his Social Level. To do this he needs to acquire Status Points. If at the end of a month, the Player Character has acquired Status Points equal to his current Social Level, he maintains it, but he acquires Status Points three times the next Social Level, he can increase it. Just as a Player Character can rise in Social Level, he can also fall, but he will also be seeking out actions that will gain him Status Points. Being a member of a club, carousing, toadying to someone of higher Social Level, successfully gambling, winning duels—especially members of rival regiments, and belonging to a regiment. Actions such as losing when gambling, losing duels, and not spending enough money to maintain his Social Level will lose a Player Character Status Points and his Social Level. Most of these actions will cost a Player Character money. Most Player Characters have some income, but can gain more from gambling, taking out a loan, making successful investments, receiving an inheritance, being in the military and returning from a campaign with plunder. Conversely, loss of loss money and income will lead to bankruptcy and a Player Character enlisting in a lowly frontier regiment in the hope of restoring his name and fortune.

Once per year, members of a regiment will have to go on campaign for a complete season. There is a chance of a Player Character being killed in battle, but he could try to be heroic and make a name for himself, get mentioned in dispatches, get promoted, and take some battlefield plunder. Being mentioned in dispatches gains a Player Character national recognition and ongoing Status Points. In the long term, a Player Character can apply for various positions in both the military and the government. For example, being appointed regimental adjutant, Army Quartermaster-General, or Inspector-General of the Infantry, or Commissioner of Public Safety, Minster of War, or Minister Without Portfolio. Titles can also be won. Once a Player Character achieves a high position, he gains some Influence that can be used to help others.

Of course, En Garde! is a profoundly masculine game. As the subtitle says, it is, “Being in the Main a Game of the Life and Times of a Gentleman Adventurer and his Several Companions”. Women are not really characters at all, merely dalliances there to prove a Player Character’s masculinity and bolster his social standing. It is difficult to get around this, since the role of women both at the time when En Garde! is set and in the fiction it draws upon, is not as protagonists, but even as in some cases in both, as antagonists.

En Garde! is not a roleplaying game that looks beyond achieving high rank, position, or social status. So, there is a limit to how much play potential there is beyond this. Certainly, in a typical group of players, this would be the case. In a larger group, there is greater room for maneuvering and jostling for status and rivalry with players being members of rival regiments, competing for the same positions, even for the same mistresses, and so on. This lends itself to play at a club if it has plenty of members or simply playing with a more dispersed group of players by mail—electronic or otherwise.

One way in which En Garde! is not a roleplaying game is in how little scope there is for the players to roleplay and affect the world around the characters through roleplaying. Perhaps through delivering an insult to a member of a rival from another regiment? Further, players will find themselves playing at odds with each other when they join rival regiments or compete for the same mistress or position. In some ways, to get the most out of En Garde! it is best for the players to play characters who are rivals and so it is adversarial to one degree or another.

Physically, En Garde! is surprisingly well presented and written. Illustrated with a mix of period pieces, the only real downside is that it starts talking about duels rather than characters and what they do and who interact with each other beyond duels. This organisation lends itself to the idea that the rest of the rules grew out of wanting more to the game and more reasons to duel.

—oOo—

It appears that En Garde! was never reviewed in the roleplaying hobby press, though it was covered by magazines and publications devoted to games. The designer and publisher, Charles Vasey reviewed it in Games & Puzzles Issue 55 (December 1976) saying that GDW has, “…[P]icked a really splendid period for the new duelling game.” He was critical though, saying, “Despite its complexity, the system does not play as well as one might think. Often duels end very swiftly.” and “It is complex and convoluted, and it feels like real life. Players will soon find they have natural enemies and rivals who must be crushed directly or by a hired blade. One must seek to be in the best set, but beware bankruptcy or it’s the frontier regiment and disgrace until you pay off your debts.”

Similarly, games designer Greg Costikyan reviewed En Garde! in ‘Games fen will Play’ in Fantastic Science Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 10. (July 1980). He was very positive, calling En Garde! “[T]he the first well-written set of role-playing rules.... En Garde! was the first role-playing game by a major company and by established designers; and, as one might expect, it set new standards for role-playing rules — standards to which few subsequent games have risen.”

Perhaps the oddest vehicle for a review was The Playboy Winner’s Guide to Board Games (Playboy Press, 1979). Author John Jackson said that, “There is a minimum of player interaction; play is geared toward individual deeds rather than group action.”, but that, “Although lacking neither color nor detail, the rules to En Garde! are clear and comprehensible.” He concluded that, “If it lacks the scope of true fantasy role-playing games, it’s not as time-consuming, either, and it appears to be a pleasant diversion.”

—oOo—

En Garde! is not a roleplaying game per se. There is more of a simulation to it, a means of modelling the life of an officer and gentlemen in the early seventeenth century as he makes his way in life and attempt to better himself. Yet like any simulation, the result of dice rolls on the roleplaying game’s various tables sets up interesting, intriguing, and involving results that draw you in and make you want to explore how to resolve them and how to respond to them. This is where the roleplaying potential lies in En Garde!, even if it is not written to support roleplaying and all but ignores it. Ultimately, it has been shown again and again, in multiple games, all this is best handled and roleplayed away from the table and at distance, whether by mail or email.

—oOo—

The current version of En Garde! is available here.

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.

—oOo—

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.

—oOo—

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.

A Wingless Butterfly

The Mariposa Affair is a scenario for Traveller. It takes place on the balkanised world of Ruie in the Aramis Subsector of the Spinward Marches Sector and continues a storyline begun in Manticore and sees the Player Characters hired to investigate a threat the Third Imperium, one that threatens interstellar war. It ideally requires the Player Characters to have basic training in both weapons and various technical skills, and ideally, a starship. The scenario includes a set of eight pre-generated Player Characters, four of which between them have the skills necessary to operate a starship as well as one of them owning an S-Type Scout. However, one of the problems with this is that the Player Characters are expected to to own a merchant ship of some kind and certainly a vessel capable of carrying cargo. Both the mechanics and the plot of The Mariposa Affair are straightforward enough that running it using Traveller, Classic Traveller, or Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition are all easy enough to do.

The Mariposa Affair is written by Carl Terence Vandal and is a sequel of sorts to The Phoenix Initiative, which ended with the Player Characters being recruited as agents in the service of Duke Norris and his family, and a sequel to Manticore. It begins with the Player Characters on Regina in the Regina subsector in the Spinward Marches Sector, with the sudden interdiction of the planet. This is with good reason—Emperor Strephon Aella Alkhalikoi! is paying Regina a state visit. Then, the Player Characters get an invitation to the state banquet by lottery. This automatically throws them into the spotlight and then again, when a disastrous incident occurs. This is the assassination of the Emperor himself—in 1106 rather than a decade later in 1116—an event which propels the Player Characters back into the service of Duke Norris once again. He reveals that it was not the Emperor who killed, but a clone. Not though a sanctioned clone, designed to stand in for the Emperor, as revealed a few years after his ‘assassination’ at the hands of Archduke Dulinor. He wants them to travel to the neighbouring world of Ruie, which lies just on the other side of the Imperial border and there locate the laboratory and outpost where this clone was created.

The scenario proceeds apace in straightforward fashion, but the plotting is distinctly underwhelming. The Player Characters’ contact is also targeted by an assassination attempt, but no matter what the outcome of the assassination attempt, the clues point to a worked out mine on a nearby continent. Once there, they sneak into the mine, break into the secret laboratory, and destroy it. And that really is it... Effectively, The Mariposa Affair is a dungeon crawl, with seemingly innumerable checks for traps in the mine. In fact, the most interesting aspect of the scenario is the Library Data included at the back. Besides the Library Data, the scenario includes details of the world of Ruie and the Regina Subsector.

There has long been a tradition of writing scenarios based around major events in the canon of roleplaying settings. In the case of The Mariposa Affair, it is the causes behind and instigation of, the Fifth Frontier War. Unfortunately, The Mariposa Affair does not let the Player Characters discover those causes or affect their revelation. Instead, all that is handled by Duke Norris and his staff off-screen whilst the Player Characters are simply dealing with the one aspect of it. So it undermines their agency and the storytelling potential of the plot of both The Mariposa Affair and the other parts of its trilogy. Another issue is that the scenario does not really explore the consequences of what it sets up in any depth. That is, the assassination of a clone of the Emperor and a conspiracy to undermine the Third Imperium. It hints at the possibilities, but never really explores them.

Physically, The Mariposa Affair is cleanly and tidily presented. The maps are decent enough, but layout grates on the eyes where the skills are laid out in bold. These really should have been separated from the paragraphs so that they do not just look like blocks of black text. The illustrations are nicely chosen.

Although it is better organised and written than the previous scenarios in the trilogy, The Mariposa Affair brings the trilogy to a distinctly underwhelming close. It feels as if it should have been a bigger affair with more secrets to be revealed and more interesting things for the Player Characters to do, whereas all that it currently does is let them creep round the edges in a ‘dungeoncrawl’ type scenario whilst someone else makes all of the discoveries. Ultimately there are some interesting storytelling and plot possibilities to be found in The Mariposa Affair and the other scenarios in its trilogy—of which Manticore is the best—but they are simply not developed enough to be interesting.

Double Hubris

Manticore is a scenario for Traveller. It takes place on the world of Pysadi in the Aramis Subsector of the Spinward Marches Sector and involves an investigation into a runaway girl and her connection to a zealous religious cult on a nearby world. It ideally requires the Player Characters to have basic training in both weapons and vacc suit, and if they do possess a starship, that it should be capable of Jump-2. The scenario includes a set of eight pre-generated Player Characters, four of which between them have the skills necessary to operate a starship as well as one of them owning an S-Type Scout. However, one of the problems with this is that the Player Characters are expected to to own a merchant ship of some kind and certainly a vessel capable of carrying cargo. Both the mechanics and the plot of Manticore are straightforward enough that running it using Traveller, Classic Traveller, or Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition are all easy enough to do.

Manticore is written by Carl Terence Vandal and is a sequel of sorts to The Phoenix Initiative, which ended with the Player Characters being recruited as agents in the service of Duke Norris and his family. It is not though, a direct sequel, but rather a thematic one as it deals with the misuse of advanced science. Alternatively, it can also be run as a standalone affair. It begins with the Player Characters on Aramis in the Spinward Marches Sector, spending a little of their recent profits on a night out when they approached by a girl asking for money. Soon after this, she is approached by two men who attempt to abduct her, but she seems able to deal with them in a smart fashion. Their encounter is timely, if not for the Player Characters, then for a local Imperial agent who recruits them with gentle threats of menace. The Imperial Agent informs the Player Characters that the girl, Maxine, has recently fled from the nearby world of Pysadi, an an agricultural world governed by the strict ‘Mother Church’. The two men who attempted to abduct her were zealots of the Mother Church. The Imperial Agent will also tell the Player Characters that the Mother Church has entered into an agreement with an independent military organisation called ‘Manticore’, to launch an invasion of Zila, a neighbouring world on religious grounds and so bring it into the fold of Mother Church. Maxine and her family was being held by Manticore. The Imperial Agent wants the Player Characters to confirm the existence of the invasion plan, the links between Mother Church and the military organisation, and whether or not the Imperial representative on Pysadi, Baron Sir Mikhail Lentreth, is supporting the plan or being held hostage by Mother Church.

Getting to Pysadi will prove easy and the Imperial Agent will even provide goods that merchants on the planet will want to buy. Pysadi is a TAS Amber Zone due to its theocratic government and high law levels, which bans firearms and blades—and worse, alcohol. (In fact, the given reason for the invasion of Zila is that some of the agricultural exports from Pysadi are being fermented into alcohol!). Other than that, the Player Characters have relatively easy freedom of movement on the planet and what they will quickly discover is that everyone on the world is aware of the invasion plan and fully supportive of it. They do not know the exact details, of course, but can point to the rocket being prepared on its launchpad at the starport with no little pride and expectation. In technological terms, the rocket is confirmation that Mother Church has outside help as it is incapable of constructing it using the means available on Pysadi.

The Player Characters have several avenues of investigation. These include locating the Manticore compound, getting a closer look at the rocket, discovering the plans for the invasion of Zila, and determining the degree to which Baron Sir Mikhail Lentreth is involved in the plan. Some information is relatively easy to find, especially given the openness of the members of the Mother Church about the forthcoming invasion, but the Player Character will still need to conform this. Much of this involves stealth and breaking into various buildings, although some paperwork can be obtained to gain access to certain areas. Ultimately, the Player Characters will want to stop the invasion. Which means stopping the rocket. This can be done from the ground, but the security around the rocket is very tight, or it can be done after the rocket has launched. This sets up an exciting chase from Pysadi to the Jump Point as the Player Characters attempt to rendezvous with the invasion rocket, which it turns out, is actually a Jump Rocket and is fitted with a Jump Drive. Once in close proximity, they are to board and capture the vessel and its crew, which leads to showdown with the villain of the piece and a firefight or brawl in the cramped quarters of the rocket.

There are a number of situations which the scenario does not address. What happens if the Player Characters simply decide to launch their starship and use its weapons to destroy or damage the rocket on its launchpad? What if they fire at the unarmed rocket during the chase? Can they sabotage it that way? What happens if the rocket makes it to the jump point and gets away? In the first case, this would also mean firing on the starport, which is Imperial territory—and this is before the number of possible casualties is considered, and in the second, firing on an unarmed vessel would be seen as an act of aggression. If the rocket gets away, the Game Master will have to develop this possibility herself.

The Game Master is given a decent amount of support to help her run the scenario. This includes details and map of the world, Pysadi, the Mother Church and its headquarters, the Manticore compound, and details and deckplans of the invasion rocket. There are a couple of items of new equipment, the Concealed Power Holster and the Hand Needler, which will enable the Player Characters to circumvent the high law level on Pysadi. The last part of the scenario includes a section of Library Data, which is decent enough, but not all of the information is useful and there is some information missing, such as that on Manticore.

The scenario is not without its issues. One is with the NPC, Maxine. She is underwritten, the Game Master needing a little more detail than is given about since her involvement underlies the whole scenario. What becomes clear over the course of the scenario is that she has been genetically enhanced and if the Player Characters do confront the Manticore contingent aboard the rocket ship as the scenario lays out, they will discover that its commander is too. He is a tough opponent and it is suggested that if the Player Characters cannot deal with him, then Maxine can. Which undermines the Player Characters’ agency in what is a climatic encounter. Another issue is that Manticore is underwritten as a presence in the scenario. It lurks in the background and the Player Characters never really have a chance to encounter it and its operatives until very late in the scenario. It does not help that the motivations and background to Manticore are left unexplained. Lastly, the connection between Manticore and The Phoenix Initiative is underplayed, both terms of the background to the scenario and the fact that the Player Characters may have Imperial connections already as a result of playing through the latter scenario.

Physically, Manticore is an improvement on the earlier, The Phoenix Initiative. It is tidier and the world map is better, but it does need another proofing pass. The artwork is decent though.

Manticore is a much better and more interesting scenario than the previous The Phoenix Initiative. It is also better written and organised and so easier to run, but it does leave the Game Master with a number of unanswered questions which she will probably have to answer herself. Otherwise, Manticore is a decent scenario which explores what happens when pride goes too far and someone takes advantage of it.

Cliché or Classic?

The Phoenix Initiative is a scenario for Traveller. It takes place on the world of Wochiers in the Regina Subsector of the Spinward Marches Sector and involves the classic set-up of research facility not having been heard from in a while and the Player Characters being hired to investigate. It ideally requires the Player Characters to basic training in both weapons and vacc suit, and if they do possess a starship, that it should be capable of Jump-2. The scenario includes a set of eight pre-generated Player Characters, four of which between them have the skills necessary to operate a starship as well as one of them owning a an A2 Type Far Trader. Thus, if the Player Characters own their own starship, the minimum number of Player Characters is four, but there is greater flexibility if they do not. That said, the scenario does allow the Player Characters’ employer to loan them a starship if they do not have one and to prevent piracy only a few locations are programmed into the ship’s computer to use the Jump drive. Both the mechanics and the plot of The Phoenix Initiative are straightforward enough that running it using Traveller, Classic Traveller, or Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition are all easy enough to do.

The Phoenix Initiative is written by Carl Terence Vandal and begins with the Player Characters on Regina in the Spinward Marches Sector and short of funds having paid their monthly mortgage payment on their starship. In need of work, they hear of an employment opportunity with Phoenix Enterprises LIC. The company is concerned about the loss of contact from one of its research facilities and will pay handsomely for the situation to be investigated and for the safe return of the staff at the facility. The facility is on Wochiers, a nearby world declared a TAS Amber Zone due to its inhospitable environment which requires enhanced vacc suits. Wochiers is primarily known as a source of crystals, the best of which are used to enhance the performance of both starship computers and starship lasers. As the Player Characters will discover, the Law Level on Wochiers is very high and access limited, done primarily via shuttlecraft rather than starships. So, the Player characters will have to dock at the high port, and then travel down to the surface, the journey involving an engaging recognition of local customs at either end.

The journey from Wochiers Landing to the research facility is relatively straightforward—a week’s drive across the planetary surface in specially adapted ATVs. The main problem on the journey will be the environment rather than planetary species, which are for the most part passive creatures unless provoked or a lone traveller is caught outside in his vacc suit. This all sets up a mystery for the Player Characters when they do reach the research facility. There are signs of a struggle almost everywhere, a mixture of gunfire and animal attacks. The question is, what happened here and are there any survivors? Was the gunfire the result of the animal attacks or is something else going on? The Player Characters will find out, but will also find themselves being stalked by something else in the facility… This may lead to a frantic firefight…

The research facility is described in some details with various skill checks thrown in to determine what happens and what happened from room to room. The floorplans of the facility and its illustrations are decent, and the scenario is supported by a set of good Library Data entries.

The author of The Phoenix Initiative commits one cardinal sin. He does explain to the Game Master what is going on in the scenario, but leaves it right until the very end for the NPCs to do it. Which leads to a very frustrating read for the Game Master as she wonders exactly what is going on and in effect, has to find out when the Player Characters do.

Physically, The Phoenix Initiative is disappointing. It needs a good edit, it is often unnecessarily repetitive, and the map of the subsector is bitmapped and there are no names or locations on the world map. So, the Player Characters will have no idea where their journey on planet starts or ends.

The set-up in The Phoenix Initiative is incredibly familiar. A distant research base. All contact lost with the research base. Itinerant trouble-shooters hired to solve the problem. The base is home to an alien (or not) stalking and slashing the survivors after an accident. Essentially this is Death Station from Traveller Double Adventure 3: Death Station/The Argon Gambit writ large. Well, not entirely. The primary plot for it is, but the secondary plot—which does not really become apparent until the epilogue—is more interesting as it involves Duke Norris and his family, and it sets up the sequels to this scenario, Manticore and The Mariposa Affair.

The Phoenix Initiative is not a bad scenario, but it is not a good one either. It requires development in terms of presentation overall and presentation of its information. Certainly, with the completion of the latter, it might avoid—or at least ameliorate—the Game Master reading through the scenario and getting the feeling of déjà vu. However, The Phoenix Initiative does show potential in terms of presentation and detail and once past the all too familiar plot, there is promise of something more interesting to come.

A Science Fiction Map Kit

One of the fascinations with Traveller is with its starships. Ranging in size from one hundred tons up to hundreds of thousands of tons, the players are exposed to them in the rules fairly on—during the process of character creation. Careers such as Scouts, Merchants, and Nobles all have the possibility of giving the characters starships of a small, but capable size. Of course, a starship will take the Player Characters from star system to star system, from adventure to adventure, but the starship also becomes a home too. As a home, the players doubtless want to know what their starship looks like and if they have a role aboard her, as no doubt they do, where their normal station is and where their stateroom is. Then of course, starship deck plans are just like maps. They provide locations to visit, to adventure in, to explore, to attack and defend, and so on. Which can of course be for the theatre of the mind or with miniatures. Starships in Traveller are also highly technical, designed to be realistic within their setting of the Third Imperium, with much their displacement and tonnage given over to fuel, power plant, and jump and manoeuvre drives. There are plenty of supplements dedicated to starships in the Third Imperium—official and unofficial, but of these few, barely a handful are dedicated to the really large starships, space stations, and other big installations and locations. This is where Starship Geomorphs comes in handy.

Starship Geomorphs is a vast collection of geomorphs—or map sections—which can be slotted together to form larger locations in a wide variety of layouts. This includes starships, space stations, buildings, and massive structures. They are all designed using the architecture and map iconography of Traveller, so there is a high of familiarity for long-time fans of the venerable roleplaying game. However, none of the geomorphs are official Traveller content despite their compatibility. Further, their use lends itself to form and function rather than technical design, with the geomorphs here being slotted together to create their locations and ships rather than the Game Master designing a ship using the rules for naval architecture and adhere to the rules for realisation as a set of deck plans. Consequently, Starship Geomorphs possesses a greater utility than a set of deck plans for a single starship or location might.

Presented in landscape format, Starship Geomorphs opens with an introduction and an explanation of the geomorphs. These are organised into standard, edge, corner, and end sections. In addition, there are aerofins too, the aim being to reduce the starships being more aerodynamic and less boxy. There are suggestions too to flesh out a ship design, including its overall look, occupants, gear, age, level of wear, sounds heard aboard ship, and more. There are suggestions also, to add flavour and detail, including what might be found in the ship’s locker and down a ship’s corridor. Other uses of the geomorphs suggested include combining them to create space stations, like the small Dyson-Class modular Star port, corporate facilities, and so on. In the case of the sample starship and sample corporate facility, references are provided to the particular pages where the geomorphs can be found that make up the particular object or location.

The bulk of the book is understandably given over to the geomorphs themselves. They begin with a multipurpose geomorph, a research area geomorph, cargo bay—full and empty, engineering/sensor ops, flight hanger/crew area, brig/prison, arboretum—upper and lower, a drop capsule/troop deck, an auditorium, a sports complex, high passage (first class) passenger deck, promenade decks—food/retail and casino, cloning facility (or alternatively low berth facility), bride areas, gunnery and sandcaster decks, and much, much, more. Some are quite mundane, such as the battery deck, office space (or cubicle farm, proving that office design does not get better in the future), waste processing, and so on. Very quickly the Game Master can put together a troop or fighter carrier, an exploratory or laboratory vessel, a passenger liner, an imperial throne ship (yes, there really is a throne room geomorph!), a strike vessel complete with weapon turrets and barbettes, and more. Punctuating these are some delightful cross section three-dimensional illustrations of the various geomorphs, including a ‘Flight Hanger with Launch Tube’, a cargo bay with an armed crewman outside ready to shoot some scuttling creatures inside, a corridor with doors off and a window through which can be seen a poor, glowing man having suffered a strange mishap in the laboratory, a low berth area, a steerage compartment for passengers travelling on the cheap, and lots more. There is a sense of humour to a few of these, but in the main, they help bring their locations to life and add an extra dimension to the deck plans.

This is just the starships possible with Starship Geomorphs. Space stations and star ports are also possible, again using many of the same geomorphs. However, mix up the office space, auditorium, lobby, and so on, and what you have is a corporate building. The arboretum, promenade areas with and without casino, swimming pool, and passenger decks all combine to form a hotel, with the steerage decks becoming the equivalent of a coffin hotel. There are tram and train layouts, interstitial spaces for between floors and decks, connecting bridges between buildings and space station sections, and a lot more.

Starship Geomorphs is cleanly and clearly laid out. The writing is fairly light in tone and there are notes here and there throughout. The geomorphs are all well done and easy to use.

As a book, Starship Geomorphs is a superb catalogue of maps, plans, deck plans, and more. If there is an issue, it is that there is a high number of geomorphs labelled ‘Multipurpose’, in fact too many of them, to the point where their purpose is lost without the Game Master going through them one by one. Another issue is perhaps that whilst the print version is lovely, the PDF is actually of greater use because the user can separate the geomorphs and put them together onscreen. Further, Starship Geomorphs is not just of use for Traveller, but will work with any Science Fiction roleplaying. Thus, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, The Expanse, Star Trek Adventures, Star Frontiers, and Cyberpunk Red—all of these would work with a lot of the geomorphs in Starship Geomorphs. If Starship Geomorphs is missing anything, it is a guide or suggestions to create particular ship’s deck plans or building floor plans, but there is plenty of inspiration to be found in the individual geomorphs. The geomorphs can of course be used to create locations for confrontations between miniatures in skirmish wargames.

Starship Geomorphs is delightfully, usefully utilitarian and inspirational in its design and purpose. This big book of map sections is a terrific addition to the toolkit of any Game Master running just about any Science Fiction roleplaying game or even wargame.

Mongoose Misfire

Traveller is one of the hobby’s oldest Science Fiction roleplaying games and still its preeminent example outside of licensed titles such as Star Wars and Star Trek. It is the roleplaying of the far future, its setting of Charted Space, primarily in and around the feudal Third Imperium is placed thousands of years into the future. Since its first publication in 1977, Traveller has been a roleplaying setting built around mercantile, exploratory, mercenary and military, and adventuring campaigns. Inspired by the Science Fiction of fifties and sixties, the rules in Traveller can also be adapted to other Science Fiction settings, though it requires varying degree of effort depending upon the nature of the setting. The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is presented as introduction to the current edition of the roleplaying game, published by Mongoose Publishing. It is designed for scenarios and campaigns that focus on exploration beyond the frontier and provides the tools for such a campaign, including rules for creating Player Characters, handling skills and challenges, combat, spaceship operation and combat, plus equipment, animals, and the creations of worlds to explore.

The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition begins with a quick explanation of what it and roleplaying games are before diving into game conventions—rolling the dice—and creating Player Characters. They are by default Human, and in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition, have had past careers as either Scouts or Scholars. Character creation primarily involves a player putting his character through a series of four-year terms during which the character will gain and improve skills, be promoted, experience events and mishaps, make connections with his fellow characters, and at the end of it, be older, wiser, and experienced. A Player Character will typically be aged anywhere between twenty-two and forty-two by the end of the process—and if older will have suffered the effects of aging.

The skill system for Traveller is straightforward. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls two six-sided dice and adds a Dice Modifier from the appropriate characteristic as well as a skill value. If the result is eight or more, the Player Character succeeds. The skill explanations are clear and easy to understand and include plenty of options as to how they might be used and how long a task might take. For example, for the Astrogation skill, “Plotting Course to a Target World Using a Gas Giant for a Gravity Slingshot: Difficult (10+) Astrogation check (1D x 10 minutes, EDU).” All of the skills are listed for the Traveller roleplaying game, so there are skills mentioned here that the Player Characters cannot obtain during character creation. Combat uses the same basic mechanics and covers both ranged and mêlée combat, and allows for differences in technology and weapon traits. Damage is directly deducted from a Player Character’s characteristics—Endurance, followed by Strength and Dexterity. The rules also cover environmental dangers such as gravity and radiation, whilst encounters are with various animal types.

The equipment lists just about everything a mission will need when out exploring the galaxy. This includes arms and armour, augments, communications and computers, medical supplies, sensors, survival gear, and tools. The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition also explains how spaceships are operated and space combat is conducted, although it should be noted that the rules for the latter cover use of skills that the Player Characters cannot obtain during character creation. For example, the Tactics (Naval) which helpful for initiative and then the Gunner skill for actually operating the ship’s weapons! So using the rules in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition means that any spaceship combat the Player Characters get involved in, they are going to be at a severe disadvantage from the start. Plus, there is only the one spaceship given in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition and that is the Type-S Scout/Courier, which for an exploration campaign makes sense. However, there are rules for space combat, but no other ship stats or details in the rulebook. So, what exactly will the Player Characters be fighting in space combat in their Type-S Scout/Courier? Other teams of explorers and scientists in their Type-S Scout/Courier?

Lastly, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition includes rules for subsector and world creation. This cover world distribution followed by how to create a world profile, including Starport type, planet size, atmosphere, hydrographic percentage, population, government type, Law Level, and Tech Level. Much like creating a character this consists of rolling on tables and some of the ramifications of the numbers are detailed. These include Law Level and the likely types of goods banned and potential legal ramifications. In comparison to the earlier rules for character generation, the rules for world generation will provide for a wide range of possible outcomes and world types, but then these are tried and tested rules.

Physically, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is an attractive product. It is well written; the artwork is decent and the layout is clean and tidy. It also includes an index.

There is one fundamental question which has to be asked about the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition and that is, who is this book for? It is certainly not for the seasoned Traveller player or Game Master, both of whom will already have access to the content in this rulebook. Is it for the Traveller fan and collector who will want to have it to add to the collection? Possibly, but the rulebook does no more than add to that collection and again, that collection, that Traveller fan, and that Traveller collector will already have access to the content in this rulebook in the collection. Is it for the player or Game Master new to roleplaying? Is it for the player or Game Master new to Traveller? The answer to that question is yes, but very much not an unqualified ‘yes’. There can be no doubt that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition presents all of the rules necessary to run a game with an exploration theme, from creating scouts and scholars as Player Characters and equipping them and detailing the core rules to animal types, operating a spaceship in and out of combat, and creating worlds and sectors. However, go beyond that and an awful lot of problems begin to appear for the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition.

The Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is not written as an introduction to roleplaying. Its description of roleplaying is cursory at best and there is no example of what roleplaying is. Similarly, its introduction to Traveller as a setting is equally as cursory. It acknowledges the existence of the Imperium—but no other polity—and explains that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is set beyond the borders of the Imperium. So, in a sense, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is set entirely away from the classic setting for Traveller, and thus arguably not actually an introduction to Traveller as a setting at all. Also similarly, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition ignores Traveller as a roleplaying game. First in ignoring that the roleplaying game has any sense of history going back decades, and second—and more importantly, as an introduction to Traveller, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition, by not having anything that asks, “What’s next?”. There is no page or text saying, “If you played and liked this game, here is what you should look at next.” This is a ridiculous omission for what is designed as an introductory product.

As an introduction to the rules and mechanics of Traveller, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition does a better job. All are clearly and serviceably presented, but no more. This lack of a ‘more’ is where the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition best showcases its real inadequacies and omissions. For an introductory product, there is severe lack of examples in the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition. What examples there are amount to no more than a handful—an example or two of the core rules and an example world. There is no example Player Character, no example of space combat, no example subsector, no example of what a world actually looks like in Traveller, and so on. So nothing that would help the prospective player or Game Master—whether new to roleplaying or Traveller—with what these look like in the game.

Then there is the advice for the Game Master. Or rather, the complete absence of advice for the Game Master. To be clear, in a product that is intended to introduce a player to Traveller and provide him with the tools necessary to create adventures or even an entire campaign as the Game Master, and do so for years at a time, there is no advice whatsoever. So no advice on running a roleplaying game. No advice on running a campaign. No advice on running Traveller. No advice on running an exploration-themed campaign, let alone a scenario. No discussion of what an exploration-themed scenario or campaign would be like. No discussion of what threats might be encountered. No advice on what mysteries might be found. No advice on what discoveries might be made. No advice on what alien life might be encountered. All of which is compounded by a lack of a scenario, a lack of a setting in terms of a world or subsector, or even a lack of scenario hooks or ideas or even encounter tables. If it were a case that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition was designed to introduce the rules to Traveller and exactly that—no more, no less—then this would not be so much of an issue. Yet it clearly states that it is intended to do more than that, that it is intended to be used to run a campaign, a scenario, and so on. Then the rulebook completely ignores this whole aspect of its stated remit. Of course, this is a large subject to cover and the likelihood is that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition could not have covered it all, but none at all? It is as if there are twenty or extra pages that are actually missing from this rulebook. That fact that the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition completely ignores the role of Game Master beggars belief.

Then there is the matter of the price. This varies wildly depending upon format and retailer. As a PDF, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is less than a pound or a dollar, but in print, it costs £15 ($19.99) direct from the publisher, and a wallet gouging £25.99 ($24.99) in retail. The PDF than, can at best, be seen as a bargain—an attractive rules reference if you will. In print, the exact opposite is the case. The purchaser is simply not getting enough content for the money that he paid for it.

Ultimately, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is an astounding showcase for a staggering lack of vision and imagination. Overpriced, over produced, overly utilitarian and technical, but underdeveloped, the Traveller: Explorer’s Edition is a nothing more than a ‘cut & paste’ job that does not so much miss the possibilities of its title and theme and subject as ignore them all together.