Burns So Very Very Brightly

It begins with an interview deep in the Rep-Detect Unit headquarters of the LAPD Tower. On one side of the table is a ‘Blade Runner’, an officer belonging to the unit dedicated to apprehending and retiring rogue replicants. On the other is a suspected replicant, a service technician at the headquarters of the Wallace Corporation apprehended after breaking into the company’s Replicant Memory Vault. The suspect lacks a serial number which would indicate that he is a registered Nexus-8 or Nexus-9 model. Surely there cannot be any Nexus-6 models still surviving? Unable to determine if the suspect is a Replicant, the officer has turned to an older method to detecting his status. A Voight-Kampff wheezes between the officer and the suspect. On the table is a list of questions the officer will put to the suspect. Quickly though, the suspect’s brazen refusal to engage with the emotional nature of the questions turns to violence and the interviewee turns on the interviewer. A bruising, bloody fracas ensues. The interviewer is bruised and battered, but his colleagues on the other side of the glass to the interview room were able to come to his help. The suspect is dead, his status is uncertain. Is he an aberration, or there unregistered Replicants on the streets of LA?

This is the set-up to Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels—and it is a great set-up, one that clearly echoes the begin of the film, Blade Runner, itself, when Blade Runner, Dave Holden, is seen conducting a Voight-Kampff test on Leon Kowalski. Dave Holden is, of course, by this time, the head of the Rep-Detect Unit, huffing and puffing through the replacement lungs for the ones that Kowalski shot out of him. Further, this is not the only reference to Blade Runner to be found during the course of the investigation. For example, the officers pay a visit to the Yukon Hotel on Hunterwasser Street where Leon Kowalski stayed, and both Ray McCoy and Runciter’s Live Animals appear from the 1997 Blade Runner video game from Westwood Studios. The Case File is littered with such references which the fan of Blade Runner will appreciate and which will also help to pull the players into the future of 2037. Such refences are not the only immersive elements in the Case File either, for just like ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set, the investigation is supported with numerous handouts that give points of reference and clues to the players and their characters. 

Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels is a scenario for Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game, published by Free League Publishing. Although it can be run on its own, it specifically designed as a sequel to ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set, being part of ‘The Immortal Game’ campaign arc. Even then, the Game Master may need to make some alterations to this new Case File as some NPCs who appear in ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ may have died. Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels comes as a boxed set which contains not only the sixty-page book for the case file, but also a set of fourteen Mugshot cards, seven maps depicting locations pertinent to the case, and a sturdy, buff envelope marked ‘RDU – LAPD REP–Detect’. This contains another eleven clues and Esper images that the Player Characters can search for clues. 

The interview and subsequent death of the service technician triggers an investigation into the possibility of there being rogue Replicants at large in LA and if so the possibility that someone else is using technology stolen from the Tyrell Corporation, technology that is now solely owned by the Wallace Corporation. The investigation is against the clock, just four days before the antagonists’ plans come to a fruition, with numerous leads to follow. As in Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game, the investigation is carried out in shifts—four per day, with one required for Downtime—with the Player Characters, not just encouraged, but actually needing to split up to cover everything and everywhere. Information can be shared and updated between the Player Characters via their KIAs, Knowledge Integration Assistant units. The investigation is very well organised by NPCs and locations, clearly listing what the Player Characters might find should they interview the persons there and look at scenes. Some of the locations are not directly linked to the investigation, but may be places that a Player Character might go to speak to a contact.

In terms of structure, there are scenes in Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels where the action and story are quite directed, even forced. This is intentional, designed to ramp up the tension and even set up events in the sequel to the scenario. One Player Character, ideally a Human, will also find himself in the spotlight for much of the scenario, his integrity and humanity much tested. Other than that, there are tables of Downtime Events for the Player Characters, including a special set for the Player Character in the spotlight, plus a list of Promotion and Humanity awards. The Case File is designed to be played by between one and four Player Characters and if played by one, the single player will find his character placed in the spotlight in more ways than one. 

Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels should provide two or three sessions’ worth of grim, grimy, and uncertain play. Although its Case File could be run as a standalone investigation, it works best as a continuation of  ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ from the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set, and as such, this is an ‘in between’ scenario, which continues the overall plot, but does not finish it. The only difficulty really is making adjustments to take account of the changes between this Case File and ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’, primarily if certain NPCs were killed in ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’.

Physically, Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels is superbly presented. It is a fantastic boxed with great handouts and good maps, many of which could easily be used by the Game Master again for her own scenarios. The scenario is well written and organised and the artwork throughout is stunning, everywhere and everyone seeming to step out of the shadows in Film Noir fashion. 

The unfortunate truth is that there is not great deal of support for Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game, but there can be no doubt that Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Case File 02: Fiery Angels is a brilliant addition to what is a very short line. It explores identity and the nature of what it is to be human from start to finish, really placing one Player Character in the spotlight, and does so in an incredibly good looking package.

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.

Here and There

Grimsbury stands at the confluence of two rivers, some miles inland from the sea, its industry struggling to recover from the return to civilian production following World War 2, and its buildings rising back from the harbour and Lower Town and up and over the steep bluffs on which New Town Sits. Surrounded by forests and a landscape pockmarked with neolithic and other archaeological sites, it is perhaps best known for the nearby Grimsbury Facility, the site of the United Kingdom’s first commercial nuclear power plant, built in 1957. It remains, though, little considered by those outside the town and its surrounds. Located perhaps in the West Country or the northwest of England, this is how many in Grimsbury like it. For Grimsbury has a secret… Magick is never far from the surface in the town and the surroundings. It flows through the ley lines and in and around ancient sites, and from There to Here. Here is the world around us, but There is another realm of existence, a place in between Here and what lies beyond, serving as a nexus point through which mortal men from Here can pass and the denizens of beyond can pass into Here. There is an unnatural world, a place where mortal men will die of thirst and starvation no matter how much they eat or drink. It is best accessed by The Village, an older version of Grimsbury which lies in the There and from which other realms may be found in the rural surrounds as well as monsters and fiends and other dangers. In Grimsbury, magick is to be contested over, between the members of the White Lodge adheres to the ‘right-handed path’ and works to thwart the drive for power and greed of the Black Lodge, whose members follow the ‘left-handed path’. To be investigated and its practitioners monitored, such as by ‘The Chimera Group’, set up by the Military of Defence in the wake of World War 2. To be shared such as the members of The Society of Lightning Strike Survivors whose members meet regularly to share their experiences and prescient visions of the future. To be stolen by the Ironhand, kidnappers and slavers originating from beyond, but accessing the Here via There. It might be 1964, it might be 1974, it might be 1984, or it might be all of them in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG.

The Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG is published by Ubique Publications. As the title suggests it is a Folk Horror roleplaying game set in England. Set sometime in the latter half of the twentieth century, it is inspired by the film The Wicker Man, as well as British television series of the seventies and eighties such as Children of the Stones, The Sandbaggers, Dr. Who, and The Changes. As such its themes are of Ancient Britain, magic and ley lines, errant scientific experimentation, ‘Wyrd’ personalities, and secrets and lies. Mechanically, it uses the Year Zero Engine, first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, so will be familiar to players of a variety of different roleplaying games. In addition to the rules for character creation, it includes its own magick system, as well as a guide to the setting of Grimsbury, the town and its surrounds, as well as the There. Plus, there are plenty of scenario hooks and advice for both player and Counsellor, as the Game Master is known in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG.

A Player Character in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG is defined by his Archetype, Age, Abilities, Skills, and Talents. He will also have Luck Points, Stress, Finances, Reputation, and Contacts, and may be able to use Folk Magick depending on the Archetype. There are twenty Archetypes, each given a single page explaining what they are and what they can do, plus Ability and Skill adjustments, potential flaws, and talents to choose from. The mundane Archetypes are Agent, Archaeologist, Aristocrat, Army Grunt/Soldier, Beatnik/Flower Child, Burglar, Commando, Copper, Mystical Scholar, Paranormal Researcher, Politician, Private Investigator, and Reporter, whilst the mystical are Hedge Witch/Warlock, Potion Maker, Priest, Sorcerer, Summoner, Walker, and Witch/Warlock. All of the latter have the Mysticism Attribute and can use Practical Magick. Age determines how many points a player has to spend on Abilities and Skills, plus his Luck Points and Financial Bonus. Younger Player Characters have more points to spend on Abilities, fewer to spend on Skills, more Luck Points, and no Finance Bonus, whereas Mature Player Characters have fewer points to spend on Abilities, more on Skills, fewer Luck Points, and a higher Financial Bonus. The Abilities are Strength, Agility, Ken—a combination of knowledge, perception, and willpower, and Connect—self-awareness and manipulation of others. They range in value between one and five. The Mysticism Ability is only available to certain Archetypes and represents the capacity to harness and understand Magick. There are twelve skills, three per Ability, and they range in value between one and five, but can go much higher. There are modifications provided if the Counsellor and her players want to roleplay in ‘hardcore’ mode, with lower Ability scores and fewer skills.

To create a character, a player decides on his character’s Age and from this spends the given points on Abilities and Skills, whilst noting down the other factors. He also chooses an Archetype, noting down its benefits. He chooses two Talents. One of these will come from the Archetype itself, for example, ‘We Served Together’ and ‘Do you know who I am?’ for the Politician, whilst the other comes from a general list, such as ‘Crime Scene Investigation’ and ‘Smuggler’.

Our sample Player Character is Snowdrop Jones, the daughter of a hippy who grew up on a commune. She grew up sickly, but the den mother prepared many home and other natural remedies to treat her. In the process she learned many of the recipes and more, gaining more of an education in the old ways and superstitions than from what modern schooling could offer. She has a reputation for being dreamy and a short attention span, but she cares about people and magic, using what she knows to help.

Name: Snowdrop Jones
Archetype: Beatnik/Flower Child Age: 23
Health Points: 5

Stress Points: 8
Luck Points: 5
Magick Points: 7
Financial Bonus: -2
Carrying Allowance: 40

ABILITIES/SKILLS

Strength: 2
Agility: 3 Sneak 1
Ken: 3 Detect/Observe 1, Magickal Focus – Folk Magic 1, Magickal Focus – Potion Making 2, Willpower 1
Connect: 4 Read 1, Manipulate 2, Heal/Console 2
Mysticism: 4

TALENTS
Just the Thing, Keeper of the Old Ways

FLAW
Short Attention Span

Mechanically, the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG uses the Year Zero Engine, which requires rolls of six-sided dice, the aim being to roll sixes as they count as successes. To have his character undertake an action, the player assembles a dice pool formed from the combination of an Ability, skill, gear, and assistance from another Player Character. Typically, a single Success is required for a Player Character to achieve his aims, but further Successes may grant a Bonus Effect determined by the Counsellor. If four or more Success are rolled, the result is a Critical Success, but a Critical Failure if four or more ones—or Banes—are rolled.

Any result with no sixes counts as a failure. At this point, the player can decide to ‘Push the Roll’. This allows him to roll the entire dice pool. A Pushed Roll that generates Successes means that the Player Character achieved his aim, but a Pushed Roll that generates Success and Banes, means that the Player Character achieved his aim, but with consequences, whilst a Pushed Roll without any Successes and one or more Banes is a failure with consequences. The Counsellor has a table to which she can refer to determine what the consequences might be. These might be that the Player Character suffers a fainting spell and loses two Stress points, gains a revival, or wakes up on a train with no idea how he got there, all depending upon the situation in which the action was attempted.

A Pushed Roll also has one other side effect and that is that the Player Character loses a point of Stress, reflecting how unnerving or odd he finds the world of Grimsbury right now. Particularly unnerving or scary situations may require a Player Character to make a Stress Check. Any rolled Success means that the Player Character has passed, whilst no Successes are a failure and the Player Character loses another point of Stress. Worse though, any Failure with a Bane means that not only is the Player Character’s further Stress reduced by one (or more), and he will also commit an involuntary action as determined by the Counsellor, such as falling over or dropping an item or crying out. Lastly, should a Player Character’s Stress be reduced to zero, he is in a state of Panic and needs to roll on the ‘Panic Effects’ table. He could suffer from a cardiac arrest and drop dead or he could suffer from hallucinations for the next few hours.

If all else fails, a Player Character can also rely on Luck. This can be burned to reroll any check, revise a fact or scene, or to use an additional Folklore Magick action and have it succeed. However, burning Luck triggers a Stress Check. Luck is very slow to recover, resetting at the end of an adventure or at least refilling over the course of a year of game time.

Combat in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG, like most roleplaying games using the Year Zero Engine, is short, brutal, and often nasty. Although many of the Archetypes in the roleplaying game will rely upon it, more interesting is the use of Magick in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG. It encompasses more than just casting spells, including ritual, sacrifice, chemistry, celebration, performance (singing & dancing), gathering, geomancy, and more. The roleplaying game keeps the description of magick quite broad, so allowing for the creativity of the players and their character when using it. Magick is also woven into the landscape of both the Here and the There, so the environment, whether that is the alignment of the planets or a nearby ley line, will also often affect Magick and its casting.

Mechanically, knowledge of each of the different types and areas of Magick is treated as a different ‘Focus’, an area of specialist understanding. This ranges from ‘Brew Potions’, ‘Dimensional Travel/Gates’, and ‘Enchant Items’ to ‘Read Minds’, ‘Illusion/Disguise’, and ‘Summoning’ via ‘Mental Control’, ‘Nature – Plants’, ‘Foresight/ Portents/Visions’, and ‘Heal Up’. The player of a practitioner of Magick does not roll to see whether a spell or other magical outcome succeeds, but to see what its effect is and how effective it is. This is called a ‘Magickal Effect Roll’ and in general it works like a standard skill roll in the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG. The base dice pool consists of the Player Character’s Mysticism and a Magickal Skill plus one die per Magick Point invested in the use of Magick. The dice for Player Character’s Mysticism and a Magickal Skill are rolled together, whilst the dice for Magick Points are rolled separately. A roll with no Success and no Banes means that the attempt succeeds with the desired effect. If Successes are rolled, the Magick has an even greater effect than intended. However, if Banes are rolled—and they can only be rolled on the dice for the Magickal Points—there are consequences. This might be as simple as the effect draining more Magick Points than intended (and if that drains all of the practitioner’s Magick Points, there is a chance he will die), the effect simply fizzling out, being more amazing or disastrous than intended, and so on…

All Magickal effects require a minimum of a single Magickal Point. This will be enough to get the desired Magickal outcome, but does not guarantee it. What a player is doing when his character expends more Magickal Points, is not trying to achieve a greater effect, but trying to increase the chances of the desired effect. It has a brute force feel to it, unsubtle and with a higher chance of consequences. Magickal Points can be recovered through rest, through certain abilities and items, and even conducting a Recharge Ritual on or near a Ley Line. Ley lines can also be used to boost Magickal actions, transport practitioner’s of Geomancy, and more.

The setting of Grimsbury is described in in engaging detail, focusing upon individual and interesting locations such as the Old Square in Lower Square with its funicular railway up the bluff to Upper Grimsbury and the Lunchroom, serving the dockworkers daily, where the soup is good, there is time to chat or exchange microfilm, and the owner, Mrs. Mablethorpe, is a dab hand with the potions. Magic tricks can be learned at Ash’s Magic Shop and performances at Rodney’s Puppet theatre have taken on an air cruelty when the puppets talk about Rodney, whilst beyond the town walking paths follow the same routes as hunters did thousands of years ago from cairn to standing stone, the Grimsbury Facility, a secretive team of technomages at the nuclear power plant is investigating far more than just subatomic particles—it is attempting to understand and control the There. The landscape is dotted with neolithic sites and burial mounds like the Hill and Crown, marked with a spiralling path and topped with an ancient sacred grove where Druids still make sacrifices to appease the spirits. Gates and potential gates can also be found, each one offering a connection between the Here and the There, though the means of activating them is rarely the same twice. There is an unnatural and unsettling, faded quality to There, but in the counterpart to modern Grimsbury, the village it once was, a man in a tweed suit with a pot of tea on the go, maintains a chalkboard of names, tasks, and opportunities, an inn stands with plenty of patrons, but no sight of any proprietor, and at the Camera Shoppe, film can obtained that will reveal the invisible. A wonderful range of personalities are detailed, as are numerous factions, such as a flock of shape changing birds that really like to share secrets, the Grimbury Ramblers who walk from one neolithic stone to the next in search of the Blessing of the Stone, and the Conclave, Travellers that move from beyond to There and Here in search of the entities which would do great evil across all of There.

All of this is supported by some decent adventure seeds, both in the Here and the There, some of which are quite grim. There is some serviceable advice for Player and Counsellor alike. However, the rulebook does not include a beginning scenario and it does not include much in way of advice on running the game in the long term. The biggest omission is the lack of threats. No NPC is given stats and neither are there any stats for any magickal threat or threat from the There. To that end, the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG requires a companion detailing more of this aspect of the setting.

Physically, the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG is cleanly and tidily laid out.

The Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG has an engaging sense of otherness to it with the descriptions of the various Archetypes and of the Grimsbury of the Here and the There that somehow give a sense of somewhen between the 1950s and the 1980s. The rules are tried and tested, but the magick system offers a degree of flexibility combined with a sharp edge of danger if pushed too far. Yet the lack of mechanical threat and NPC and monster stats hinder the use of the setting by the Counsellor, which may persuade her to look to other rules that might provide the numbers and those threats where the Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG does not. The Grimsbury English Folk Horror RPG is a very likeable setting as written, but it awaits completion and further support in anticipation of an excursion to its Here and There.

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.

I Sing The Mind Electric

The extinction is coming and America is dying. It began in 1974 in the wake of President Ford pardoning Nixon after Watergate and an assassination attempt on Ford. A civil rights spokesman was blamed and in the demonstrations that followed, the Capitol in Washington D.C. was stormed and the US Army was sent into to quell the protestors, resulting in hundreds of deaths when they opened fire with live ammunition. Across the USA, people took up arms in response and incidents of guerrilla warfare broke out across the country. Within a year, the conflict escalated and first California and then Texas seceded, and the country was in civil war. The Second Civil War lasted until 1984, prosecuted by the sophisticated drone technology adopted by the military following the development of scientific field of Neuronics. There were no winners and the former USA remains divided still thirteen years later. In the west, the nation of Pacifica has arisen out of the old state of California, its wealth built on Hollywood and further development and widespread adoption of neurotechnology. The biggest company in Pacifica and arguably the power behind its president, Sentre, made Neuronics available to the public through Neurocasters. Wearers of these high-tech devices are not only capable of controlling drones, but also of accessing neuroscapes, hyperreal landscapes. With the release of Mode 6 by Sentre last year, something changed—and changed for the worse. Some suggested a God awoke within the Machine, some say Pacifica’s enemies were attacking via the system, but whatever it was, users became addicted to their Neurocasters. They preferred it to real life. Some, deeply immersed in the virtual worlds that give them every experience they want, wear their Neurocasters until they die. Others roam the roads and the landscapes, stilling wearing their Neurocasters and controlling hulking great drones. Nobody was immune. As more and more people have become addicted to their Neurocasters, the more services and tasks have begun to break down. This lassitude is spreading and with it an impending apocalypse… Elsewhere there are rumours of technocults hiding out far from the cities and shambling mechanical creatures assembled by the Neuronic network rather than man. Yet there are a few who are immune to the effects of the Neurocasters and there a few who want to move, to become Travellers ready to make the long and dangerous journey to elsewhere, to get away, to find something, to find someone.

This is current situation in The Electric State Roleplaying Game, a pre-apocalyptic Science Fiction dystopia set in 1997, based on the book by Simon Stålenhag, whose artwork has also inspired the roleplaying games, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was and Tales from the Flood. All three are published by Free League Publishing and all three use the Year Zero mechanics first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. This is the 1997 of Nirvana and Sony Walkmans, Bart Simpson Tee-shirts and Nintendo Game Boys, hoop earrings and slackers, and so on. Recognisable were it not for the rise in advanced technology that has given the world drones, robots, and Neurocasters. It is a world in which the Player Characters want to get somewhere else. They each have their different reasons, but travelling together is safer than travelling alone. Society is not what it was with everyone immersed in the worlds of their Neurocasters. The landscape is not what it was, swathes left untended or poisoned from the Second Civil War. The Journey that these Travellers undertake is the focus of The Electric State Roleplaying Game, its route marked by a Starting Point and a Destination, and in between, Stops. Stops can be a place where the Travellers get food, petrol for the car, find a payphone, and then move on, but they can be a place of danger and mystery…

A Traveller in The Electric State Roleplaying Game has four Attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, which are rated between two and six. Health and Hope are derived from this, with Hope being a personal resource that can be reduced to push rolls or traumatic events. He also has an Archetype, a role representing what he is. The options here include Artist, Criminal, Devotee, Doctor, Investigator, Outsider, Runaway Kid, Scientist, and Veteran. Perhaps the one signature Archetype is the Drone Pilot, who will not bodily appear in play necessarily, but instead be represented by the Drone that he constantly controls via his Neurocaster. Each Archetype provides options—either chosen or rolled for—in terms of starting Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, and Personal Item. The Talent will either grant him extra dice under certain circumstances, such as ‘Drone operator’ or ‘Sleuth’, or provide a more specific benefit, such as ‘Medic’ being able to stabilize someone who is Incapacitated or ‘Neuroresistant’ which means the Traveller is better able to resist the Bliss of neurocasting. Beyond this, the details of Traveller are more personal than mechanical. These start off with a Dream and a Flaw. A Traveller’s Dream is their motivation, their push to go far and make the Journey rather than give into the easy lure of Neurocasting. His Flaw is something that will hold him back and something that he needs to overcome. Roleplaying the Dream and the Flaw will give a chance for the Traveller to improve. The Neurocaster is the model that he owns (though he may not own one) and he also has a Personal Item and a favourite song.

To create a Traveller, a player selects an Archetype and then rolls for the Attributes on a single six-sided die each, with the minimum roll being two Then he rolls for the Talent, Dream, Flaw, Neurocaster, Personal Item, and Favourite Song. This is not the complete Traveller creation process, but that is done collectively during the set-up for the Journey.

Name: Jake
Age: 17
Archetype: Outsider
Strength 3 Agility 5 Wits 6 Empathy 6
Health 4 Hope 6 Bliss 0
Talent: Stealthy
Dream: Get a normal life, like everyone else
Flaw: You don’t trust anyone.
Neurocaster: None
Personal Item: Dog
Favourite ’90s Song: Wannabe (Spice Girls)
Tensions: A dispute about hierarchy (Karen Brooks) [1], Religious or political differences. There’s reason Americans say never discuss religion or politics (Jesus Castillo) [1]

The Journey is the central part of the play to The Electric State Roleplaying Game. Setting this up is a collective process. This includes creating a personal Goal for each Traveller which lies at the end the Journey, whilst the Threat which is working to stop the Traveller from fulfilling his Goal. The Threat is created by the Game Master, whilst key to the Goal is the Kicker, the event that pushes the Traveller to decide to make the Journey in that moment. Together, the Travellers have a vehicle and a shared item, such as a bottle of hard liquor or walkie-talkies. Each Traveller also has a difficult relationship with one of the companions in their vehicle, which could be ‘Hidden contempt pent up for ages.’ or ‘Distrust. Something another Traveler does offends you deeply. It’s all you can do not to scream at them every time they do it.’. This is measured by Tension, which ranges between zero and three. If a Traveller acts against another Traveller who he has Tension with, the Tension value is used as bonus dice. It is possible to reduce Tension simply by talking things through or even arguing about relationships can reduce it and this will restore Hope, but equally, Tension can go up depending on circumstances and roleplaying.

Mechanically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the Year Zero engine, so the rules are light and fairly quick, with dice rolls primarily intended for dramatic or difficult situations such as combat, hiding from members of a Technocult intent on inducting you, making repairs in a hurry, and so on. To have a Player Character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base dice equal to the appropriate Attribute (notably, The Electric State Roleplaying Game does not use skills or skill dice), modified by an applicable Talent and the difficulty. To this can be added Gear dice for weapons and other gear if used. Rolls of six on either count as Successes. One result is enough to succeed, whilst extra successes can be used to do it in a showy fashion, quickly, quietly, and so on. However, if the player does not roll any Successes, which is a failure, or needs more Successes, he can opt to Push. In this case, he rolls any dice that are not showing a one or a six, and any Successes rolled count towards the task.

However, any rolls of one after the Pushed roll, have negative effects. For the Base dice, they reduce the Traveller’s Hope for each one rolled, whilst ones on the Gear dice reduce the bonus provided by the Gear used. When Hope is reduced to zero, a Traveller suffers a Breakdown and is in danger of suffering further mental trauma.

Combat in The Electric State Roleplaying Game uses the same mechanics. Initiative is determined narratively, and when a Traveller gets to act, he has an action and move or two moves. An action be an attack, reloading, taking cover, rallying a demoralised comrade, and so on. If in close combat, the defender can choose to take the hit or fight back, in which case it becomes an opposed roll, whilst if being shot act, the defender can dodge, and that too is an opposed roll. Cover provides protection if Successes are rolled on its dice. If a Traveller’s Health is reduced to zero, he is Incapacitated and if he suffers damage equal to twice his Health in one hit, he is dead. If his Traveller is Incapacitated, the player makes three Death Rolls with four dice. If he rolls a total of three Successes in the course of the three rolls, he survives, if not, the Traveller is dead. It is also possible for another Traveller to rally one who is Incapacitated and the Medic Talent means he can be stabilised without the need for Death Rolls. An Incapacitated Traveller also suffers an injury, which can be anything from a broken finger to internal bleeding.

The most important mechanic in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is Hope. It is a measure of a Traveller’s motivation and it can be lost in a variety of ways, such rolling ones on a Pushed roll or suffering a Traumatic Event like seeing a friend get badly hurt or being confronted by your worst fear. When it is reduced to zero, the Traveller suffers a Breakdown and potentially from mental trauma ranging from ‘Confused’ to ‘Personality Split’. The challenge after losing Hope is that there no automatic means of recovering it. Instead, the players and their Travellers have to work at it. It is possible for a Traveller to be rallied following a Breakdown and this will restore Hope, but otherwise the two means to increase Hope are to reduce Tension with another Traveller or spend time with an item of Gear that will increase Hope, like a dog or a Walkman, or a religious book. Certainly, in the case of Tension, this requires dedicated roleplaying between two players, and The Electric State Roleplaying Game makes clear that time should be set aside for this. Further, these scenes should not always be about reducing Tension, but about increasing it. This is because in the long term, if there is no Tension between one Traveller and another, there is no reason to reduce it and thus no means to increase Hope. It also reduces scope for interpersonal roleplay. This then is the ‘Hope Loop’ at the heart of The Electric State Roleplaying Game.

The ‘Hope Loop’ in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is complicated by Bliss. One of the most interesting aspects of roleplaying game is how Hope and Bliss interact. Bliss is a measure of a Traveller’s addiction to using his Neurocaster. A Traveller is going to be spending most of his time on the road or at Stops along the Journey, so in the physical, rather than the virtual worlds. However, this does not mean he will never have to enter a Neuroscape, which can be global or local, as he may need to find information, use or hack a system linked to the Neuroscape—such as drones and alarms, or interact or fight with the other avatars in the Neuroscape. It is possible to act in the physical world whilst Neurocasting, but it is slow and the option are limited. It is also possible for Travellers to help another who is Neurocasting.

However, any time a player fails a roll whilst his Traveller is Neurocasting, whether any ones were rolled or not, his Bliss increases by one. This is before the player chooses to Push the roll, which whilst the Traveller is Neurocasting, has its own extra danger. This is because any rolls of one after a player has Pushed a roll reduce his Traveller’s Hope by one each, and Bliss has dire effects if it equals or exceeds the value of a Traveller’s Hope. If this happens, the Traveller is trapped in the Neuroscape, is lost in the ‘Electric State’, and cannot willingly disconnect himself from it. A Traveller lost in the ‘Electric State’ can be forcibly disconnected, but this has disturbing consequences. It automatically reduces his Hope to zero, which again causes a Breakdown.

Bliss is lost at a point per day spent without doing any Neurocasting. However, this has its own dangers too, since there is a chance that the point lost that day will become permanent. Effectively reducing a Traveller’s Hope in the long term and modelling the effect that Neuroscaping has had on society with the introduction of Mode 6.

The focus of play in The Electric State Roleplaying Game is the Journey. As described earlier, setting this up involves deciding on a Starting Point, Destination, and the route. It also involves choosing the number of Stops, each one an adventure in itself that the Travellers’ Dreams and Flaws will drive them to explore. The number of Stops determines the overall play length, from one Stop for a one-shot to a long Journey of eight or more stops. The Game Master creates these Stops using the advice and prompts given in the roleplaying game, including a Setting, the Blocker (which what makes the Travellers pause their journey), and Threats, as well as adding a Countdown that is triggered by the arrival of the Travellers and will push events forward during the playthrough of the Stop. There is good advice for both creating and running Stops, including playing Neuroscapes, and it is supported by a range of threats each of which has their own example Countdown. Mechanically, this makes them easy to insert into a Stop. The Threats include people, such as cultists or local business leaders as well as the expected technological ones, like drone growths and robots, and environmental ones, such as extreme weather or disease. There are only two entries listed for the technological and environmental, which feels too few in either case. There are rules for travel and chases to reflect the nature of play as a Journey.

The Game Master is also provided with a complete mini-campaign, ‘Into the Dust’, which takes up a fifth of the book. This is a three-part Journey, though it could easily be expanded and some of the stops could be used as one-shots, which takes the Travellers from San Francisco Memorial City into the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone (former state of Nevada), but a long route which takes them south via the Sierra Nevadas and the Mojave desert in a run-down 1993 Buick Roadmaster Estate. Between them, the Stops involve a cult, a murder mystery, and a strange festival, and between the Stops, there are encounters that the Game Master can use to make the Journey even more interesting and exciting. There is also a pre-generated Traveller with their own Goals and Threats for each of the Archetypes in the roleplaying game, giving the players plenty of choice. Overall, this is the basis for a decent campaign that could expanded to eight or more Stops. Lastly, in The Electric State Roleplaying Game,  there are rules for solo play.

Physically, The Electric State Roleplaying Game is very well presented. It is clean and tidy and easy to read. Of course, what makes it stand out is the artwork of Simon Stålenhag which depicts an American landscape in decline as Neurocasters wander like zombies and kitschy robots loom and lurk almost everywhere. The Game Master should absolutely be using this artwork to show off the state of Pacifica.

The Electric State Roleplaying Game is not a traditional roleplaying game in that its world is designed for long term play. The story of the Travellers is going to be told in a single Journey rather than in multiple Journeys because the surviving Travellers are going to need new Goals if they are to set out again. Further, there is not a huge scope for development mechanically as arguably, if a Traveller is only doing the one Journey, however long it is, there does not need to be. The emphasis on Pacifica as a setting and journeying across it also limits the scope of the roleplaying game. These are not criticisms, because instead, what The Electric State Roleplaying Game is, is a narrative, storytelling roleplaying game designed for one-shots and short campaigns that tell specific stories about Journeys across a strange new landscape within which there is scope for interaction, discovery, and horror. In this way, The Electric State Roleplaying Game adds a new twist to the classic American road trip.

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.

A Date with Destiny

All across England and around her coasts men wait to launch the biggest amphibious assault in history. In just a few hours they will be part of the operation to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation and oppression. Most are aboard troopships, from ports such as Poole, Portsmouth, and Southampton, waiting to disembark in landing craft and assault beaches all along the coast of Normandy. Others pilot the aeroplanes that will give the operation air cover. A few clamber into gliders at Tarrant Rushton ready to be towed over northern France where they will be released to land and capture key locations, whilst others climb into C-47 Dakotas in Upottery from which before dawn they will leap and parachute to the ground to capture, disrupt, and destroy strategic locations all along the Cotentin Peninsula just behind the beaches. They are part of the D-Day landings and together they will make history, they will free Europe, and will prove their bravery and resourcefulness in desperate times again and again.

This is also the set-up for War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book, the first supplement for War Stories: A World War 2 RPG, published by Firelock Games. It is a campaign—both historical and roleplaying—that takes place over the course of two weeks in June, 1944. As members of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US 101st Airborne Division, the Player Characters will parachute into northern France, regroup and begin the liberation of Europe in a series of missions from their initial landing to the assault on the town of Carentan which will connect the beachheads established by the Utah and Omaha beach landings. The Player Characters will face fierce resistance from the Germans, exhausted joy from the French civilians, the cruelty of the Nazis, and tensions within their own platoon that will all come to a head at the culmination of the campaign. War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book includes advice on how to set up and run the campaign, advice throughout including on running the battles that make up the key points of the campaign, and more.

The set-up involves character creation and really choice of company within 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The supplement includes six pre-generated paratroopers, which the players can choose from or create their own. What they definitely have to do is create the Background Characters, the other members of their Player Characters’ platoon and company. These will serve and fight alongside the Player Characters and if the worst happens, serve as a source of replacement characters. The Player Characters should be members of the same squad and there is scope for one of them to be the platoon commander and thus a commissioned officer, though this will, of course, mean extra responsibilities for that character and his player. When it comes to the choice of company within the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, it is highly recommended that the Player Characters are not members of the 2nd Battalion with its Dog, Easy, and Fox Companies, especially Easy Company, since its exploits are so well known, having been chronicled in the book and television series, Band of Brothers. This leaves six other companies to choose from. Although there are missions within the campaign that are similar to those conducted by Easy Company, the point of War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is not to recreate what its members did. Rather it is to tell a story that runs alongside that of Easy Company that is as equally dangerous and heroic.

Each of the seven missions in War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is organised in the same format. This begins with an introduction, a list of the mission objectives, the allied forces involved, new intelligence recently gathered by spotters and scouts, details of the objective, possible events, and information about the wider battle, before coming to a close with what might happen in the immediate aftermath and what battles might take place next. Each mission is accompanied by one or more maps, all full colour, which have a lovely period feel to them.

The campaign itself begins with an overview of the major targets on the Cotentin Peninsula and what intelligence is available before leaping into the first of its seven missions. This begins at Upottery airfield in Devon, waiting for the jump into France, famously delayed a day by the weather. Buffeted by wind and flak, the Paratroopers will land bruised and underequipped, subject to random events between the landing and the rendezvous point. The jump and its consequences could be played through in a sequel session before undertaking the first mission proper. This is to target the coastal battery overlooking Utah Beach outside St. Martin de Varreville. Subsequent missions will see the Player Characters advance down the Cotentin Peninsula, capturing the village of St. Marie Du Mont, capturing a bridge over the River Merderet, withstanding a German counterattack, and beyond to assault the town of Carentan in several days of street fighting. All of these engagements are based on historical events—or at the least, very close to them. For example, famously, as depicted in Band of Brothers, members of Easy Company along with other paratroopers, assault Brécourt Manor, a German artillery battery overlooking causeway exit #2 leading off Utah Beach, but there was another German artillery battery, at Holdy Manor, overlooking causeway exit #1. It is this battery that the Player Characters will assault. The assault is very similar to that of Brécourt Manor, although unlike Brécourt Manor, there are prisoners being held at Holdy Manor. Unlike the events of what happened at Holdy Manor, the Player Characters do have a chance to rescue them.

If played straight through as is, the various missions laid out in War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book will take a session or two to play through. However, there is more to the campaign than the military action. There are downtime activities and a number of mini-missions, more thumbnail hooks, that the Game Master can develop, but in addition there are two story strands that the Game Master is expected to thread throughout the campaign. The first is ‘He Who Would Be King’, which involves tension in the command structure in the Player Characters’ Company, a clash of personalities and competencies that will come to a head in the bombed and battered buildings of Carentan. The second is ‘In the Face of Evil’ which tracks the involvement of elite SS officers in their attempts to bolster German defence against the invading Allied forces by any means necessary. Of the two, ‘He Who Would Be King’ is more roleplaying focused than ‘In the Face of Evil’, as it involves members of the Player Characters’ own Company and pretty much everyone is going to have an opinion about it, whereas ‘In the Face of Evil’ puts a face to the Nazi war machine and gives everyone someone to hate. What it does mean is that with each new mission, the Game Master will not only be preparing that mission be the next sections from each of the two story missions.

Rounding out War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book are chapters with all of the stats and backgrounds to the campaign’s NPCs, mission by mission, the mini-missions, and a set of player handouts and maps. The latter are larger versions of the ones produced earlier in the book.

Physically, War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is well produced. The artwork is excellent, and the cartography is evocative.

War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is an all-male affair. That is understandable given its historicity, but the campaign does not allow for the option of including Partisan or French Resistance members that might have allowed other character options. Then there is the matter of the SS presence in the campaign which leans into caricature just a little too much. Another issue perhaps, with the campaign, is its historicity, the fact that the events of the campaign run very close to the events as they really happen and that may be seen as detracting from the efforts of the soldiers actually involved. This is far from the truth, for although in the course of the campaign, their characters will be involved in historical events and even involved in recreating them, what the players are really doing to coming understand some of the difficulties that the soldiers faced and how determined they were in overcoming those difficulties and so defeating the Germans. Lastly, there is an undeniable familiarity to this campaign. Whether from watching or reading Band of Brothers, or even playing Call of Duty or Medal of Honour or Brothers in Arms. None of that can be helped, but unlike those first-person shooters, War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is designed to tell a story where the players and their characters, together, work, fight, survive, and mourn together.

War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book is a well-researched and solidly written supplement that enables the Game Master to run a game setting during one of the greatest military campaigns and for the players to experience just some of the effort involved. And as an experience, War Stories: Rendezvous With Destiny Campaign Book should be in turns exciting, harrowing, and ultimately about camaraderie.