Twilight: 2000 Reprint

Overall score:

When I was a young boy, cavorting about in the streets of South Korea in my short pants, I often pined for the popular culture of my homeland of America. My best source for information on US culture was the Stars & Stripes Bookstore on the US Army base. The bookstore had a wide variety of publications of interest to Army GIs: smutty western novels, superhero comics, porno magazines, books on bodybuilding, and ... roleplaying games. I guess it makes sense that the 19-year-old boys who want to tote M16s for a living are the same ones who listen to Dio and play Basic D&D. One thing always surprised me when I went to the RPG shelf in the bookstore every month to pick up the new Dragon magazine – the number of books they had for an RPG called Twilight: 2000. All I knew about Twilight: 2000 was that it was a military RPG set in post-apocalyptic eastern Europe, and I couldn’t understand why US Army GIs would want to roleplay as US Army GIs. Later, when I played the game for the first time, I understood the attraction - Twilight: 2000 allowed GIs to live the lifestyle they’d dreamed of when they enlisted. The game let them wander a bandit-infested countryside in an M1 tank, draped with machineguns and grenades, living off the land, and (best of all!) no commanding officer to answer to.

My reminiscing must be very fun to read, but I’m betting that some of you are wondering why we’re reviewing an RPG that came out in 1984. Twilight: 2000 was originally released by Game Designer’s Workshop (GDW), who have a division called Far Future Enterprises (FFE). FFE reprints GDW’s “classic” roleplaying games: Traveller, 2300 AD, and Twilight: 2000. The reprints are unaltered, with the complete original text and art. They add new covers (with a very minimal design) but at least some of their reprints include the original cover art on glossy pages inside. This is the case with Twilight: 2000, which has glossy cover reproductions from the original core rulebook as well as the supplements that have been bundled with the reprint. That’s the other big selling of the FFE reprints - Twilight: 2000 comes bundled with the four supplements that made up the game’s “Poland” campaign. Bound together, the rulebook and supplements make an impressive package, providing everything a GM needs to run a decent Twilight: 2000 campaign. That begs the question of the hour, though: Does anyone want to play a Twilight: 2000 campaign?

There must be a reason that few gamers remember Twilight: 2000 - looking through the rules, the reason (or one of the reasons) becomes evident. Twilight: 2000 is different in several ways from most RPGs you see today – this is a function of its age. It was written during a time when the standards of RPG gaming were not yet codified. As a result, Twilight: 2000 seems somewhat unbalanced to a gamer who is used to dealing with the direct progeny of D&D, the battle-royale winner of the first generation of RPGs. The reprint’s introduction includes an excerpt from Heroic Worlds, Lawrence Schick’s book on RPGs that says it all: “The rules were unexciting but solid [and] catered to players’ fascination with modern military machinery.” What more need I say?

Frank Chadwick, who wrote Twilight: 2000, was obviously what you call a military and history buff. Among the game’s strong points is a technical and historical foundation that would satisfy military-minded gamers. The premise of the game is based on a late 20th century melt-down in Europe (based on the prediction that the Iron Curtain would not fall by that time) that leads to all-out conflict and small-scale nuclear exchange. Chadwick was obviously way off in predicting where we would be in the year 2000, but his history of the events leading to war is scarily feasible. I got chills reading it, especially when I paused to consider that we are at a pivotal crossroads in history that could set a similarly catastrophic chain of events in motion. The technical information on vehicles, weapons, and equipment is excellent, although it does highlight one of the game’s problems. Practically no pictures of the weapons or vehicles are provided, which could be a problem if you’re one of the few people who has no idea what an RPK-74 combat rifle or a LAV-75 light tank looks like. The game assumes a certain intimate knowledge of military workings that can be intimidating. The information in the core rules and supplements on Poland and the Soviet Bloc countries of Europe is very good as well. I would be very hesitant about setting a game in Krakow, but Twilight: 2000 does a good job of bringing the war-torn landscape to life, with vehicles running on alcohol and small communities hoarding resources against wandering military units.

The weaknesses of Twilight: 2000 lie largely in what’s missing. The character generation system requires a lot of math (an insane amount, some would say) but does little to help breathe life into the characters. An odd balancing system is set up so that characters who rolled high attributes start at a lower rank than the less fortunate – this makes little sense unless the US military consistently promotes the wrong people. The GM’s section is similarly lifeless, focusing on mechanics rather than themes, stories, or characters. At least the game now includes a bevy of built-in modules, right? Well, the modules are surprisingly most useful as background information and for the additional mechanics they provide (large-scale combat, helicopter rules, etc.) The introductory scenario, “Escape From Kalisz”, for instance, starts with background information that puts the PCs in the aftermath of a huge battle that decimated their unit. Now they have to find their way back to Allied forces on their own. And the GM basically has to get them there on his/her own as well. The only help the module provides comes in the form of a map, brief descriptions of the places on the map, and rundowns on enemy units. The idea is for the GM to let the PCs come up with their own idea for escaping the enemy. The rest of the modules included are similarly “economical”, and the game really would have benefited from more guidance and unique adventures instead of generic 'here’s-the-map-now-escape-from-the-bad-guys' gaming.

If you have a knack for military gaming and can bring it to life without much help from the game itself, then Twilight: 2000 is an interesting and detailed setting that allows soldiers to play with their deadly toys without having to answer to a CO. Be careful, though – the game’s cover says “YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN!” in reference to the PCs, but this slogan also applies to GMs who want to roleplay actual stories set in the Twilight War.

Written by Kid_Kilowatt on March 22nd, 2003