4th ed T2K
 

So, this just happened...

So, it's a D6 system, which I believe many, if not the majority of people did NOT want....

Free League announce new Twilight 2000
 

I've heard good things about some of their other titles- Tales from the Loop and Alien- so I am hopeful.

"Shut up and take my money!"

Yep, I've heard great things about the company and am so happy they're keeping the now retro-futuristic WW3 in 2000 setting.

COUNT ME IN.

OH HELL!!!!

After all that work copying Paul's work and redoing almost all the small arms! Now we got all new stuff coming to play with.

I really dig the art samples. The Shell gas station with the missing S is clever. Wish I'd thought of that.

The art feels appropriate - like a modern take on the original.

Game system aside, I'm happy that they're keeping it in 2000. That's a heck of a design choice to make - it allows them to not worry about creating a new timeline, but it risks alienating some younger players.

I like the idea but I'm pretty sure I'm going to loathe the rules system.
From what little I do know of it, the Year Zero rules system has a watered down Archetype/Role/Class style of character generation so we're probably going to lose the lifepath style of PC generation and Year Zero does love the gimmick dice for deciding actions at the table, something I'm not particularly fond of.
I don't know about the Alien RPG, I have a friend who is a mad fan for Alien and bought the original RPG plus this new one. He said it's a beautiful book to look at but it's a hot mess when it comes to the rules.
So with all that in mind, I'm still very interested to see what Fria Ligan does with T2k but I'm holding off on any commitment to buying it until I see it. If I do, I'm pretty sure I will not be using their rules system.

Well good to see that I can now officially acknowledge it - Marc gave me a heads up on it couple of days ago - cant wait to see it!

I'm pretty ambivalent toward the rules system at this point. I mean, it's not like the original rule system was known for being outstanding or anything.

I'm more concerned with it capturing the look and feel of the original setting, with added content.

i will be getting a copy or what ever the kickstarter is going to offer. I want play. no one in my local area. but I sooo love to read this type of stuff.

It's weird because all the attempted updates are trying to update the setting and keep the rules generally the same. So I'm thrilled that this one seems to want to maintain the setting but update the rules. I don't want as much crunch personally, or at least update and try to streamline the crunch so it isn't clunky.

I backed their Bitter Reach kickstarter which has just started shipping, so my impression of that (plus whatever information they provide during product launch) will determine whether I decide to buy it or not.

I agree. My only concern is the the "Cold War Never Ended" alternate history won't appeal to a new audience large enough to make the new version profitable. I hope that I am wrong.

I hear that. I remember the first time reading through the big yellow book, and seeing the demolitions rules. My teenage brain at the time thought "Square roots? Are you kidding me?".

While I wouldn't doubt that those rules give fairly true to life results, it just seems like there always has to have been an easier way.

Regardless of my feeling towards the rules they might use, I believe this is the real issue.
Military themed RPGs are a niche product already so obviously the audience will be smaller than that for fantasy RPGs and more importantly any new one has to fight against the well established foothold that fantasy RPGs have. That and I think T2k was released at the right time in history for it to resonant with the audience - ancient history (and ancient alternate histories as well) seem to do well enough but modern history doesn't seem to generate enough interest among the audience (unless it's horror).

I'm feeling ambivalent today about this. I'd certainly like to hear more about the system, I'm seeing several references to "hexcrawling", and I'd like to know what that means, in terms of this game.

"Cold War goes Hot" is pretty popular among the board-wargamers, so maybe that trend can feed a new T2k. I can say that a significant chunk of the players at my table at Origins each year are not grognards who played it in the 80s.

Funny, my teenage brain was already neck-deep in physics and pre-calculus classes when v1 came out, so seeing it in a game was water under the bridge. YMMV.

I am hoping that they will make some of the MOS's stand out better. In the old version so many were just the same thing, then they lumped so many into support. So maybe not so much the MOS's but the skills. I am kind of in a weird place as I want more detail on skills and such but less number crunching for some others. For example, I do not think that tracked vehicles should not let you drive anything with tracks, I spent ten years as a tanker, was an expert tank driver, was one of the go to in my battalion to teach others tricks of driving, but I do not even know if I could start a Soviet tank, let alone drive one (if I could even fit into it, but that is a different issue).

Hexcrawling is old school RPG terms back when Chainmail and OD&D were new things in the world. Think of the old hex maps used for wargames and chits on those maps. That is what a hex crawler is in a nut shell. The maps would represent a region and each space would be a hex. See here for an example of Roman era Europa done in hex. Here is some random fantasy map done in hexcrawl format with some simple but easy to understand graphical icons. .

There are some advantages to a hexcrawl map.

• You can assign numbers to your hexes and keep easy notes if a session has to end before combat is resolved.
• If done right you can say each hex is X measurement wide making movement plotting easy verse grid
• With 8 sides facing and weapon usage is easy to figure as well as line of sight
• Hex grid paper is fairly cheap from most office/school supply centers to make your own maps of things like towns or buildings
• It can be easy to scale down with only some minor hassles

However, at the same time there are disadvantages.

• Trying to put a square building into a Hex is a PITA. You will have endless arguements at times with players about whether a corner is in a hex or not.
• Facing issues and movement is always a pain to figure at times. Some rules make you spend movement points/time just to move the 120 degrees to change facing while in the same hex
• movement left->right across a maps is hard to figure since the hexes are off set from each other.
• Hexes are really old school. Going back to the earliest days of wargames from folks like SPI, Avalon Hill, or even GDW.
• it is hard to fit things into hexes at times. See the map of Roman era Europe linked to earlier, see what England/Scotland looks like. Can for some suspend the moment for gaming.

Hope this helps to understand what hexcrawl is.

I concur. While I'll wait to see what the actual kickstarter entails the likelihood is that I'll almost certainly support it in some way however I personally would have preferred something that took the real World timeline and advanced it forward to around 2030 / 2035.

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I know what hexcrawls are, what I should have asked was: I hear this company's games are really good at hexcrawls. Why is that?

Hexcrawls sound more like a style of play (like dungeon-crawling) than a system of play.

On the other hand, certain games use hexes as units of measurement for range movement and whatnot during combat (like D&D 4e and BattleTech).

I'm still not clear on this company's emphasis on hexes.

Advance the timeline. There's a three-way Cold War going on now.

About 2016-17, we played Mutant Year Zero the first time and, that evening, I thought: this'd make a great system for T2k.

About a year later, our group adapted the Year Zero engine to do just that. It was fun for a while, until it wasn't. The d6 gimmick dice—nuke symbol on 6s, biohazard sign on 1s) worked well to quickly discover exposure to radiation and/or biologicals (we still use this method in our 1e-homebrewed campaign).

I own most of Free League's games. And I can say they all look fantastic. The settings are mostly well-drawn and feel alive within their own world. On the other tentacle, there's Alien. I eagerly grabbed it when announced, being a Giger fan and loving the original film, but within a couple hours of playing it, well... as said somewhere above in this thread, the rules are a terrible hot mess some creature left on the sidewalk.

Free League does hexcrawls well (Forbidden Lands & Mutant) because of their random tables and intentionally quick-paced game. But there is a LOT of handwaving. And limited skills that sometimes have to be sussed through because they really don't cover much in the way of skills the way skills-based games do (most of their games have only 12 skills listed). There's a lot of attribute (only 4 attributes) checks in place of a particular skill (is that a Wits skill or an Empathy skill?). Many character/game situations that arise frequently are ignored by the rules, and especially with FL's initial printings, that forego actual proofreading at the expense of initial buyers. The inside cover of Alien has a typo in the name of Weyland-Yutani (the first of at least several dozen) and they character cards feature a Pilot who doesn't have Piloting skill. Fixable errors, for sure, but ones that should have been caught long before the ms. was sent to print. Their proprietary dice—gimmicky and uh, cool—were initially manufactured by Q-Workshop, but for Alien and after, mass produced sticky plastic chunks from Chinese labor. Which would be quite ironical given that the game is going to be published in Poland (Q-Workshop is a Polish company, for those who didn't know).

The other downside (from this perspective) to them as a company, is they tend to cater to the loudest fans (let's make Symbaroum with D&D ruleset, because ... MONEY!), who for T2k, are already shouting for crossovers with Alien or Tales from the Loop. Y'know, cuz aliens and mechanized armor robots are cool in "gritty, realistic" WWIII. (Please, Mr Miller, don't have signed a license deal that allows for crossovers.)

It will have great art. It will probably have great atmosphere.

It probably will not have detailed accurate military orders, despite their PR assurance that military folks have advised them on it. It will probably not have rules that are friendly to detail-oriented/realism-favoring players.

On the fence about it's value with fluff. Highly doubtful the crunch will offer satisfying bites.

I see China and much of the west currently in a tussle, surely you don't mean Russia as the third? They're very much in decline and now little more than a regional power.


You've pretty much confirmed my fears there puška. I am currently talking with them though regarding the ANZAC book and HOPE they can give some reassurances that these fears are unfounded.
Olefin, Raellus, they'd like a chat with you two as well and you should receive an email from them I've forwarded shortly. If you're interested, I can loop you in as well Paul? Pretty sure the mechanics side of your site is incompatible, but the descriptions are pure gold for even non-gamers!

Thanks, Leg! I reached out to them about the possibility of converting my two e-published books the day of the big reveal and haven't heard a thing back. I was starting to lose hope. I appreciate the assist.

Thanks puška, for the information about the way the game rules play out. Two of my gaming friends (I already mentioned the one who's the Alien fan) have had some experience with the Year Zero rules and they were not particularly impressed by them and from your description here I think now I understand why.
And now I'm inclined to agree with them, even without seeing the rules myself.

My bad in misunderstanding the question then.

Longtime lurker, just registered to comment on this.

As to the system, I was willing to keep an open mind, but as for tone and content I'm unmoved.

Unlike the others I was rather disappointed by the art samples. Admittedly, I tend to put a lot of emphasis on art, but it seems far more generic post-apocalypse than military...fine for a reprint of FGU's Aftermath, but the military vibe is kinda lost to me. Secondly, as much as I understand the pandering, the modern "angry grrl" stuff seems equally out of place.

I say all of this as a 1st Edition Twilight 2000 player since 1986, so one can chalk it up to my being a politically incorrect geezer (basically true), but I know I'm not alone...nor is my money.

Now that you point it out, yeah, I see what you mean. I do actually like the artwork but yes, it's quite generic "post-apoc".
There's nothing about it that (so far) makes me specifically think Twilight: 2000 unlike say this: -
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/4/87191.jpg

or this: -
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/4/87196.jpg

As for pandering, I see a real problem with it as it ends up creating meaningless tropes - oh look we have the hip, smart, young Millennial kid, oh look we have the angry Hispanic woman, oh look we have the disadvantaged young black man, oh look we have the privileged, wealthy, older white male (who is most likely going to be the badguy, particularly if he has an English accent), oh look we have the same shallow, bland, over-used stereotypes as every other game/TV show/movie/novel out there...

Precisely, on both counts and very well said.

Pandering seems to be used as a pejorative to describe attempts to have something that resonates with people beyond the person who is frustrated about the 'pandering'.

I'm guessing that the people who see all this as pandering are older white males who feel threatened when something isn't completely customized to their needs and myopic worldview. I mean, is it so upsetting that artwork or story possibilities might include minorities or a woman that might be angry about an apocalypse? Should that not be a part of the depiction of the world of T2K?

I'm hoping this re-boot will be successful and bring new people to a cool setting and expand their understanding of Cold War fears - and maybe even bring in some non 'old white dudes'. As many have pointed out, v1 and v2 still exist and will continue to function to the dwindling audience.

I'm only a 40 year old white male, but I'll be honest, I don't even understand what of the art is 'angry grrl' - or even what that means exactly. I'm assuming it's a reference to the riot grrrl movement, so it's cool that some of you are in touch with the feminist punk movements of the 90s and beyond. But, as for the art, some of it was cool, some of it wasn't, but none of it seemed outlandish or out of place within the context of the setting. It just didn't exclusively represent what you apparently want it to I guess. Going through the art again just now, I still count more white men being represented than any other group, but it's just not enough for some of you apparently.

I quite like the art samples for v4. Yeah, they're a bit generic, but so was v1 and v2 art.

I'll always be nostalgic about v1 art since it was my first exposure to the world of T2K but, really, most of it is not good (no offense to the artists- I'm sure they were doing the best they could). And I don't see much in the original black-and-white interior art that was "specific" to the setting. Most of it could have worked for any contemporary war or post-apoc scenario short of full-on Mad Max or zombies. A lot of it was recognizable as adapted from photos of American troops in Vietnam, which, by the mid-to-late 1980s was already anachronistic. So, if we're comparing v4 with the original art, I don't think the criticism directed at the former is fair.

That said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and everyone is entitled to their own tastes and opinions. I just wanted to share mine.

As for inclusivity... I'm afraid this thread is about to become politicized to toxic levels. Let's make sure we keep any disagreements civil and avoid ad hominem comments.

Personally, I'm all for inclusivity. I can't really understand the mindset of folks who are upset or offended by it. :confused:

I guess if you prefer 90% white dudes in your post-apoc art, there's always the v1 artwork.

I absolutely adore the v1 supplement covers and much of the pencil work in both editions. It was so fantastic for summoning the spirit of what the game could be.

For me personally, I didn't feel as though there was any particular pandering in the images for this new version. I wasn't even aware of any angry grrl theme within it.
My comment about pandering was berating pandering for producing shallow, ultimately meaningless themes withing the greater whole. Something can be recognised and represented without it giving off the feel of sucking up to a particular demographic. Again, I'll say that I did not get a feeling of pandering within this new edition with one exception - the rules, they appear to cater to a crowd that wants instant gratification instead of achieving a reward by working towards it.

And that right there is why I tend to stick with older game systems. Had to play 5e D&D for the last year or so in the hope the other players would eventually want a change to something less....munchkin. Gave up a few weeks ago and just walked away from the group I've been involved with for a decade as I just couldn't handle the continuing brain damage.
When you're zooming up levels faster than an express elevator, and don't have time to try your new abilities and skills more than once before you get yet another power increase, you know something is gravely broken.

In my nearly 40 years of RPGing experience, systems like that promote cookie cutter characters and roll playing rather than roleplay. It's all about min-maxing JUST to keep up with the weakest of the other characters and give yours a chance to survive the next tavern brawl.

That sounds like it could me more of a DM'ing issue than a system issue. I'm familiar with 5e, but not with your ex-gaming group. Ultimately, the DM controls character progression- I can speak to this personally as I've done a bit of 5e DM'ing myself. However, if the other players in your group tended towards power gaming, and your DM was pandering to them, it would explain the super-fast level advancement. Whatever the case, I'm sorry that your D&D group stopped being fun. That sucks. I've walked away from a long-running group before, and it was with mixed emotions for sure.

I see your overarching point, though, and I tend to agree. RPG'ing should be more about the journey than the destination.

Firstly, it wasn't my intention to create a disruption, but the response has been enlightening.

Twilight 2000 is a Cold War product of it's age, one could assume that those who were directly touched by or involved in that Cold War might be the target market. Apparently, the dreaded "old white man" has little place in modern marketing, particularly if the emphasis is on bringing in anyone *other* than "old white dudes". In this regard sellanraa kinda proves the very point and he's not wrong in doing so, the world has changed.

The fault is mine, I shouldn't have de-lurked, nor should I have tossed in a grenade, by being honest. Here's to hoping Twilight 2000 Woketard Edition fails catastrophically and is quickly forgotten.

Stick around here long enough and SOMEBODY'S going to get upset and butthurt eventually. I think it's rule 1 of the internet, or at least very close to the top of the list!

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Honesty is always the best policy. Some will get upset, but facts will always Trump feelings.