Finnish Twilight 2000 sourcebook: the intro page
 

The following text is from the pg 3 intro of the Finnish sourcebook from late 1993.

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It has been five years since the first Finnish translation of Twilight 2000, and it seems impossible to think of all that has happened in the world during this short time period. Some might think that the Twilight 2000 RPG concept was already a doomed one; what madman would go and make an RPG set only a few years in the future? When Twilight was first published in America in 1984, German reunification as described by the background history of that game seemed to be made up out of thin air. The Finnish-language edition had barely been published when this turned out to be true - never mind the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has led to convulsions throughout Eastern Europe.

No matter how prophetic the author writing the game history is, sooner or later events in real life will overtake it. So the American authors of Twilight decided to immediately move over to parallel history, a concept that is used in many other "dark future" games. In this case events diverge from the attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991. Once again the big bad wolf of communism engulfs Eastern Europe in its bottomless gullet. Maybe the Americans can still take pleasure from their old scapegoat, but we felt that was cheating.

There is no particular reason or point of departure in our history that inevitably starts a chain reaction leading to nuclear war. We think it is unnecessary to point fingers and tell horror stories of commie plotters; the current world situation itself is already uncertain enough that such reasons aren't needed. After Christmas 1993 anything could happen in the world. This game is one of the less pleasant imaginations of what hopefully will never happen.

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Changes with regards to vehicles:

Twilight: 2000, 2.2 has the honour of being the first to publish the game statistics of a few vehicles; mostly to replace the imaginative versions of the previous edition.

Leopard 2(I): The old Leopard 2 was very big in 1984, and still is. However, in the past decade the Germans have been able to improve their tank tremendously. This is quite certainly the first time that even a picture of the Leopard 2(I) has been published in any game.

M8 AGS: This then is the light combat vehicle that is meant to replace the M551 Sheridan in airborne and light divisions. Nobody ever built the LAV-75 even though they have on occasion been asked about from scale model manufacturers thanks to the old Twilight.

M1A2: When the first edition of Twilight was being written there was much talk about tanks which would have a small, unmanned and remote-controlled tower. Thus was born the M1A2 "Giraffe", the Leopard 3, T-90 and LAV-75 in the old game. However, the prophecies did not come to pass, and the "real" M1A2 is already being produced.

T-90: This is it? The old game's T-90 was a combination of the cover of Richard Simpkin's Red Armour book and the FST-1 (Future Soviet Tank-1), which was a boogeyman as defined by "defence experts" of the commie supertank.

So what can be said about the real T-90? Same old 125mm gun which can fire a missile (meaning that the gun's accuracy is still off at long ranges), same old engine, same old transmission, same old tank. The T-90 is like a floozy who tries to cover her mid-life crisis with massive amounts of make-up.

BMP-3: Now here is an interesting vehicle. The Soviets started the whole concept of an infantry fighting vehicle with their BMP-1, and they have steadily improved on it. The BMP-3 in the old Twilight was guesswork about what the new version might contain (BMP-2, which contains a 30 mm grenade rifle for fire support - an interesting concept which turned out to be a complete turkey). Now that the real BMP-3 has made it to production we can see that it is almost an entirely reinvented infantry fighting vechicle with a 100mm grooved gun that can take out a light battle tank. The old semi-automatic gun hasn't been abandoned either, and with it the BMP can make short work of enemy infantry fighting vehicles and APCs. The armour has also been improved. Very interesting.

Lol, that text about the vehicles is also in the Twilight 2000 v2.2 rulebook.

this line:

The T-90 is like a floozy who tries to cover her mid-life crisis with massive amounts of make-up.

If I recall, in the T2k 2.2 rulebook, floozy is replaced by whore.

John Farson the Good Man?

If you've read Stephen King's Dark Tower (and the Marvel comics), you know where that comes from...

Aha, so that bit was also in the US version? Good to know. Like I said, I've never seen the US version. This convinces me more that I don't have to include the technical bits since those are also very likely covered in the US version.

Actually, in the Finnish text the word is whore (hutsu), I was just uncertain as to whether to translate the full meaning since I had doubts whether the word was also used in the US version, or whether it was the Finnish' authors' own raunchy language. Good to know I won't have to mince words!:D

oh yeah, I am a fan of Stephen King. I read most of the Dark Tower series.

It might have been hooker not whore, I can't remember.

Not having read any books by King except his short stories, I didn't recognize the name :( but no matter, thanks John, for the translations and letting us get a glimpse into the Finnish books.

I would agree, I think you could ignore the technical and rules sections completely unless they are specific to the Scandanavian countries. I'm taking a big guess but I think what most people are interested in are details on Scandanavian units, vehicles & equipment specific to the region, history of the war in that region and character creation for Scandanavian personnel.

I'm also interested in the point of view of FGH in regards to their treatment of the Twilight: 2000 game. The intro from the Finnish sourcebook indicates they had some different ideas about the game.
Thanks again for your time and effort, there have been many of us 'English-speakers' who have been fascinated by the Finnish books, simply because we could not read them so you have really opened up some new information for us.

OT: I just starting reading The Gunslinger after finishing my first King novel, The Stand, which, not coincidently, I decided to read after learning that it was a post-apocalyptic story. I enjoyed it. The G.S. is pretty good so far. Definitely very different from The Stand.

How do you guys rate the last three books. A lot of reviews on Amazon were pretty harsh. People seem to really love the first 4 books but reviews are VERY mixed on the final three. Opinions?

Actually, it's hooker...

That section is an almost straightforward translation of the page near the back of the Twilight 2000 v2.2 book.

I'd second that.

I had no idea that the Finnish sourcebook was a new timeline that was different from GDW's material - I always assumed it was an expansion to the original in the same way that the Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom was for the UK.

I found the first four Dark Tower books to be very good. They caught the post-apocalyptic feel of Mid-World very well. As I was reading them I constantly had the world map music of Fallout 2 ringing in my head. The city of Lud in particular felt like out of a Fallout game.

After Wizard and Glass though, things got... weird. I wouldn't exactly say bad, because the books were still quite well written, but they just didn't seem... right, somehow. I'd say that King's near fatal car accident in 1999 played a significant part in this. As you know, up until then the DT books had appeared in long intervals, with the Gunslinger published in '82, Drawing of the Three in '87, Wasteland in '91 and Wizard and Glass in '97. This may have frustrated long-time readers, but I think ultimately it enabled King to write good, concise stories in each book. After his accident, I think King became aware of his mortality. This made him hurry up with finishing the Dark Tower, with the last three parts coming out in quick succession in 2003-2004. This may have hurt the quality of the stories, IMHO.

So for the sake of completion I'd recommend reading the last three parts too. Just remember that the last three might be a bit weird.