Twilight 2000 - Second Edition

Twilight 2000 is set in an alternate past (alternate future when it was written!) in which World War 3 has broken out and led to widespread devastation and the breakdown of governmental control (in the main).  The players are typically a group of soldiers stuck in Poland when their division is overrun, who now face the challenges of survival and (maybe) getting back home, which may well be equally devastated but hey, home is home...

Obviously whether a setting appeals for gaming is a matter of taste but it appealed to me a lot as a teenager and still does to a certain extent.  On a functional level, the setting is an answer to the question "how can we have a role-playing game that offers a lot of freedom of action to players without playing in a strict military heirarchy but which uses modern weapons and equipment?" and it broadly succeeds in that.

The general action mechanic is very simple.  A character rolls a d20 and tries to get underneath the sum of the characters "skill" in a given task and a supporting "attribute" (Strength, Agility, Intelligence etc. the standard "D&D" set of six), which might be increased or reduced depending upon the difficulty of the task.  Sometimes only the attribute is tested and is modified in a slightly different way to make sure that attribute tests aren't much harder than skill+attribute tests. This is dependent upon the opinion of the GM, although certain tasks are given example difficulties for guidance.  A fair amount of attention is given to travelling and foraging and sleep and so on, as well as avoiding disease, all of which seems sensible and crucially, well-calibrated.

I found the combat system to work okay and moves reasonably rapidly with a little practice, a lot of dice handly (buckets of d20s anyone?) and a system of having all the important information to hand.  The drag on the system is actually one of making sure all the necessary information is to hand in an easy-to-follow fashion rather than the steps being difficult.  It works basically as: roll-to-hit, roll for hit location, check for armour penetration, roll for damage.  It is more complicated than the average wargame, but not too bad for a role-playing game.  There is some chrome but less than in Advanced Squad Leader, say. Small arms fire is not typically very deadly but can be damaging enough (rather than the "padded sumo" of the Shadowrun First Edition combat I looked at previously) and crucially, seems to scale between knife fights and firing 120mm smoothbores at each other reasonably well. There is plenty of detail in the equipment, a lot of it reasonably spurious as far as I can see, but that isn't untypical for a role-playing game, although it does pad out the book quite a lot.   

There are a couple of things about this ruleset which are fairly woeful however.  Character generation is pretty fraught because of the way that the skill and experience system works.  There are rules for both random generation and points allocation, the first being that attributes are generated by 2d6-2, the second being to split 32 points between the six attributes as the player sees fit.  Since performance is measured by attribute + skill, attributes are incredibly, laughably more important than skills.  Most of the combat skills rely on Strength as a supporting attribute, so having a high Strength is far more crucial than any rating in individual skills so min-maxing a character is very, very important, particularly since the standard NPCs are quite strong (Veteran NPCs will have combined skill + attribute of 13 with their primary weapon, Experied NPCs will have 11).  If you play with the random generation, a player needs to understand that a low roll in a given area means that the character will never be good in that area.  This is particularly true since skills are gained linearly in character generation but have exponential costs in game play i.e. if you have 4 skill points at a point in character generation, you can put them all into "Mechanic" and have a skill level of 4 but it will take 5 experience points to raise it to 5 during gameplay (on the other hand, the game does at least have rules for develoment by training as well as experience for a change). A "skill level" doesn't in any way mean how skillful a character is in a certain area: what it means is how much better a character is in a given area in one skill than another.  So "Mechanic" and "Small Arms (Rifle)" which both use Strength as a governing attribute, are both improved by increases to Strength as an attribute but only individually when improved as skills.

There are no differences between male and female characters statistically in the rules except for in physical build, which is of no rules importance.  In some ways I find this surprising, although given the vital importance of Strength in these rules, I can perhaps see why.  The next iteration of these rules (Twilight 2013) was more amusing: in that there are restrictions as to which roles female characters can play (basically, no close combat roles) but there is no statistical reason for this.  Female characters are more effective though, since they have certain higher abilities in resisting disease etc. but are otherwise exactly as physically capable as male characters.

There are quite a large number of different careers to go into to develop one's character.  Basically characters choose a form of education or a job or a particular branch in the military for four year periods, in which they gain a certain number of skills and may be promoted too.  Most of these careers have some kind of prerequisites in terms of attributes to permit entry.  After each 4-year period, the character rolls to see if war breaks out.  If it does, civilian characters are conscripted and serve a term in the military before the start fo the game. As well as different skills, certain careers give bonuses to a character's "initiative" (basically how fast characters react in combat), so it can sometimes be an advantage to change into a more combat-orientated military speciality for this last phase (military characters are allowed to move between branches).  The game is broadly geared to playing characters from the United States, although most nationalities in NATO and the Warsaw Pact are supported (or restricted) to a playable degree in terms of roles and equipment and so on.

There are some very useful sample NPCs given, a random NPC motivation system (based on a deck of cards, very good) and some sample encounters and a long list description of the military units and their current state in Eastern Europe.  There are also broader summaries of how the war came about, what happened and the current state of the world (so there is a paragraph or two on how Australia is doing, if you wanted to set your game there, for example).  For me, stuff like this isn't really helpful since it isn't detailed enough to use but does constrain the setting.  What do I care what state some random Soviet division is in?   The whole game implies quite a motivated GM and group as far as I can see, since guidance as to how it is all going to fit together in game terms is insufficient.  In the PC-version of the game, the team was turned into a kind of "A-Team" outfit solving problems in the Krakow area to try and get round this problem.  The game does discuss the issue in the abstract, but lacks detail in actually solving it.  There were a reasonable number of modules which were released to support the game which offer more detail in this regard.

Although I really want to love this game, I don't think I can because I think the character generation system is so poor, in which randomly generated characters are so ineffective compared to NPCs and points allocation characters are strongly enouraged to be weird two-dimensional things each being one-part combat monster, one-part specialist, although I can see that there are gaming groups that might enjoy the challenge either way.  It is hard to revise this kind of system as well because of the way that skills and attributes are integrated although with enough work it might be done (I liked the way that this was done in the Shadowrun PC games by making specific skills unlock useful abilities in the way that attributes didn't, although because it was based on a (roughly!) 1-6 scale rather than a 1-10, the maths was different.  If I did revisit it properly, I think I might make changes along the following lines:

Reduce the importance of Strength as an attribute by making Agility support firing weapons and Intelligence more important in fixing stuff.
Cap or ratio down Strength for female characters
Consider making Attributes a cap for skills rather than a bonus
Increase the number of Skills gained to increase their importance relative to Attributes, and/or allow linear skill development from experience and instruction during play.
Reduce some of the differences between largely identical weapons (for example, no-one in their right mind would ever carry an FN-FAL or FN-FNC since the G3 and M16A2 are simply the same but better). 

Sample Combat:

The PCs are a group of Brit soldiers that have picked up some useful help in the form of Sam, a USMC sniper.  They start in the middle of the area, on the outskirts of a devastated town somewhere in Poland, exploring the rubble and abandoned buildings for anything of value.  The black buildings represent houses that are more or less intact and have local civilians in and around them.

The conceit of this encounter is that the PCs are going to unwittingly find themselves in the interface between the turf of two rival gangs who are trying to secure this area for themselves.  Each group has sent a small scouting party as an advance guard to recce the area, but will each encounter the PCs first.  I draw motivation card for the leader for each group, since that might help me determine their actions: one leaders has 3-Spades (somewhat ambitious) the other 6-Hearts (moderately sociable).

So there are a group of 6 PCs around the area of the warehouses and the rubble to the centre right of the map.  5 of them are rummaging, whilst Sam is on sentry.  Sam spots the advance of the two recce parties, each consisting of 3 people.  One group is spotted at the the bottom right of the abandoned warehouse (bottom-left) the other skirting through the rubble (top-left).  Both groups are approximately 110m away from Sam.

Sam communicates quickly to the remainder of the group.  4 of the others adopt defensive positions - two with Sam in the rubble, two move into the abandoned warehouses adjacent., whilst the remaining PC (Veronique)is in the centre of the rubble, well-hidden and merely observing.  Since both groups were spotted by the PCs first, each group tests to see if they can see any of the PCs.  The first (top) group noticed some of the movement of the PCs getting into cover in the rubble, the second group didn't.

Ordinarily I might try and hide / bluff my way out of this, but for the purposes of this game, the PCs simply ambush the remaining scouting group.  There are three PCs facing South (Sam, Kate & Jamie), with Veronique staying hidden.  Doug and Mike are in the warehouses and thus can't see this group.

When the recce group is 40m away, the group open up.  Kate has the highest initiative and fires first.  Armed with an L85, she fires four single shots, the first "Aimed" and the remainder "Quick".  At this range, an Aimed shot is an average task, so the "asset" (i.e. skill + attribute) is doubled.  Kate's asset is 19, so this is doubled to 38.  She rolls a d20, only a 20 misses.  7, a hit.  Rolls hit location, left leg.  Damage is 3d6, rolls 17.  Because this is an "Outstanding Success", the damage is doubled to 34.  This is a serious wound (the NPC has 24 hit points in this location).  Next shot is Difficult, rolls 10 which  is under the target of 19, rolls 5 for hit location (abdomen), 10 damage inflicted.  Kate's third hit strikes the right arm, causing 15 damage and the fourth hit hits the right leg for 28 damage.  So she has hit with her four shots and caused 2 serious wounds, one slight wound and one scratch.

Sam shoots next.  He is using an M21 and fires three shots, with the same number as Kate used.  His first shot hits the target in the chest.  A chest shot qualifies for a possible "quick kill", which happens if a d20 roll is equal to or less than the damage value of the shot.  Sam rolls a 4 which is equal to the M21's damage value, so the target drops dead (Kate, with her 5.56mm assault rifle, would not have achieved the kill on the same result).  With Sam's next shot, he switches fire to the third group member, a Difficult task.  A hit, again in the chest.  No quick kill, it does 15 damage, a scratch.  Last shot, hits again, right arm, 14 damage, a slight wound.

In a different situation, the NPC group would act next since they have the same initiative as Jamie (3) but less bulky weapons which entitle them to move first.  However, they are both surprised and the group leader is out of this combat, cannot move and is in effect in permanent panic.  So Jamie opens up with the GPMG...

From a bipod, each burst has a recoil value of 4.  With the 3 bursts, the total recoil is 12, which Jamie can manage (he has Strength 12, the game maximum).  Jamie has an "Asset" value of 19 (Strength 12 + Autogun skill of 7 - are you spotting a pattern here...?).  This is divided by 4 and rounded down for "Impossible" tasks like firing on fully automatic...but you still roll a dice for each round.  So I roll 10d20 looking for scores of 4 or less...and get 1 hit.  13 damage to the left arm, causes another slight wounds.  Next burst again acheives a single hit. 16 damage to the right leg, a slight wound.  Last burst also achieves one hit, goes into the abdomen, 9 damage, a scratch only.  So 30 rounds fired, 3 hits achieved, rather less than Kate managed with her SA80...

With two of the recce group out of the fight (one dead, one badly hurt) and a third walking wounded, Veronique calls out on the two injured Poles to surrender (happily she speaks good Polish (Asset: 14 from CHA 10 + Skill 4; there are native speakers less good than that...).  Given the tactical situation, this feels like a Difficult task only against Persuasion.  Veronique rolls against her asset of 19 (Charisma 10 + Persuasion 9) and gets 8, an outstanding success.  Breaking into narrative time, Veronique, Kate and Jamie go forward, disarm the Polish group leader and pull them into cover.  Sam covers the operations, whilst Doug and Mike remain hidden in their positions covering the Northern approaches (the other gang's recce team has withdrawn, except for a single man left to observe; fairly miraculously, despite his woeful intelligence and observation skills, Doug has spotted the man (rolling '1' for automatic success) but has been content merely to keep him in his sights rather than begin a second engagement).

Veronique interrogates the captured gang members whilst Kate administers first aid, both being outstandingly successful (rolls of 4 and 7 against assets of 19 in interrogation and medical).  Veronique obtains the full story and arranges a deal with the captured recce group leader.  Explaining how they have no interest in getting involved in the gang fight, they will be traded for safe passage.  Since the guy is captured, realizes that they are outgunned by the PCs and have nothing to gain, the plan is agreed.  Tentative handshakes are exchanged and the PCs bug out south, hearing the report of pistol and rifle fire as the groups resume their battle...

Hopefully that gives a little flavour of what the rules and game is all about.

The Player Characters:
(I include a summary of the player characters for reference.  Or even use!  I haven't bothered to include all their gear and contacts and son on...)

Sam, American, USMC Sniper, Master Sergeant

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI: 1 CON: 10 INT: 10 EDU :1 CHA :1 IN :4

SKILLS : English 10, Spanish 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 5, Survival 3, Tracking 3, Farming 2, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Small Arms 7, Swimming 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 7, Observation 9, Stealth 2, Leadership 1, Instruction 1, Persuasion 1, Navigation 1

GEAR: M21, M9, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Mike, English, Royal Marine Commando, Sergeant

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI:10 CON:9 INT:1 EDU :1 CHA :1 IN :5

SKILLS : English 10, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 9, Unarmed Martial Arts 7, Small Watercraft 2, Riding 2, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 5, Small Arms 7, Swimming 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 1, Leadership 1, Instruction 1, Persuasion 1,

GEAR: L85 w/GL, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Doug, Scottish SBS Officer, Captain

ATTRIBUTES: STR: 12 AGI:1 CON:10 INT:1 EDU :9 CHA :1 IN :6

SKILLS : English 10, Small Watercraft 8, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Riding 2, Computer 5, Armed Martial Arts 0, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Small Arms 7, Swimming 2, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Tac Missile 0, Thrown Weapon 1, Combat Engineer 9, Leadership 2, Navigation 1, Scuba 1

GEAR: LSW, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Kate, English Officer (Airborne), Major

ATTRIBUTES: STR:12 AGI:1 CON:9 INT:1 EDU :12 CHA :1 IN :6

SKILLS : English 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Computer 6, Swimming 3, Riding 5, Biology 4, Chemistry 4, Geology 1, Metallurgy 1, Meteorology 1, Construction 4, Excavation 1, Medical (Trauma Aid) 8, Observation 1, Small Arms 7, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Leadership 2, Navigation 1, Parachute 2, Tac Missile 2

GEAR: L85, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Veronique, English Military Intelligence Officer, Major

ATTRIBUTES: STR:1 AGI:1 CON:5 INT:7 EDU :6 CHA :10 IN :1

SKILLS : English 10, Language 8 (Russian), Language 4 (Polish), Language 4 (German), Survival 2, Instruction 3, Persuasion 9, Small Arms 2, Unarmed Martial Arts 2, Swimming 1, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 0, Grenade Launcher 0, Leadership 3, Disguise 1, Interrogation 9

GEAR : Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest

Jamie, English Tank Crewman, WO2

ATTRIBUTES : STR:12 AGI:1 CON:12 INT:8 EDU:1 CHA:1 IN :3

SKILLS : English 10, Unarmed Martial Arts 4, Survival 2, Farming 2, Tracking 2, Small Arms 2, Swimming 1, Ground Vehicle (Wheeled) 1, Ground Vehicle (Tracked) 2, Thrown Weapon 1, Autogun 7, Grenade Launcher 0, Heavy Gun 7, Leadership 1, Persuasion 1, Instruction 1, Mechanic 7

GEAR: GPMG, Browning, Kevlar Helmet, Kevlar Vest