Gary Con 2021 after-action report
 

Twilight:2000 went really well. There was a lot more role-playing than I thought there'd be, to be honest. I figured a Wandering Encounter would bump into the party and there'd be a protracted firefight, but no, they immediately moved out, had some good role-play in a settlement sized ville, did some trading, etc., then moved on.

They found an abandoned BMD-2 (airborne non-ATGM equipped BMP-2) that had taken a few LAW hits and had its turret disabled. The Soviets booby-trapped it and one of the team lost his arm trying to remove the anti-tank mine they'd put under it. They got him stabilized and tried to make it to a Polish city where they could (hopefully) get him some serious medical attention but the nearest "town" was held by elements of the 89th Soviet Cavalry Div., who defended fiercely, nearly taking out the Humvee with an RPG round. However, the team suppressed an enemy pillbox with Mk.19 and .50 fire from the Humvee and M113 respectively, and withdrew under mortar fire.


By then we were closing in on end-of-game time so we wrapped, I deemed they'd gotten out of the Kalisz encirclement and with some pluck were able to keep the injured team member alive and he eventually recovered, and over the ensuing months made their way back to Bremerhaven and found the remnants of the US Navy and Army Transport division swapping the US's heavy armor and armaments (artillery, missile batteries, tanks, APCs, etc.) for enough fuel to get a handful of cargo ships across the Atlantic and "home"...for whatever value "home" might have, in a Post-WW3 setting.
I think the players liked it, at least, they said they did 🙂
So tired now.

Very cool! Thanks for the AAR

Can I ask, what was the age range of the Players?
In light of recent discussions here about the Merc: 2000 alternate setting, I'm curious to know if younger people are attracted to Twilight: 2000, people who did not grow up in the Cold War era (or even, people who have no military experience).

30's, 40's, 50's.

I was slated to have 8 players, but only 6 showed up, so I don't know about the other two.

Thanks for the information. I find it very encouraging that younger people are interested in older games (it seems to replicate what I have seen with a lot of 20- and 30-somethings and music, not content with music of their era, they've been listening to music from their parent's era).

Whenever I run either Original D&D or 1st Ed. AD&D (the only D&D games I really enjoy, although sometimes Holmes or Moldvay edited Basic D&D scratch the itch), the games are enthusiastically received.

Now, I doubt I would run Twilight:2000 again as a con event - not because I didn't have fun (I did) and not because they players didn't have fun (they did), but because of the "scale" of T2k. It is a game that lends itself to weeks of exploring, hard-fought battles, etc., whereas D&D games can take place in a "dungeon" and the players can skate along the rails as it were. Although I suppose if I ran The Black Madonna, that's a dungeon crawl in T2k...

If the demand were there, though, yes, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Some observations about the 1e rules for T2k that I'm sure have been discussed over the nearly 40 years since their release...80% of the game is easy-peasy. It's OD&D levels of role-vs-roll play, when interacting with the environment. Truly difficult things, the very easy to learn skill system (easy: your skill x2 is the target, average, your skill, difficult, half your skill) handles quite nicely.

The 20% that are fiendishly hard is: character generation (although I found an Excel spreadsheet that lets me generate characters, I still have to do the 4d6-4 and/or slight and favor stats but otherwise it does everything except buying skills for you), and combat resolution. I mean, goddamn the 1e combat system is obtuse. I like it - but it's obtuse.

Conventions and Character Generation.
 

When I was still able to go to events, I was at a local small gaming convention and they had a lecture for an hour about how to be a GM. One of the questions that came up was how to prep a game for running at a convention when you may only have a 2-4 hour gaming session. One of the GM/DMs there mentioned that if the rules were fast and straight forward to let folks roll up their own characters using a cheat sheet. Otherwise, if its complicated (and he called out Traveller for its complicated character generation) then you pre-gen some characters along some themes (the tank, the healer, the mechanic, the sniper, etc) or even potentially appropriate for the one-shot that will be run. Then allow the players to buy the gear they want off again a cheat sheet. Then run the game for some fun.

I've been running T2k1 at Origins for years, and I keep re-using the same pregens, since I find making PCs in that edition pretty tedious. Over the years, I've subtracted 1 PC who died and added perhaps 6. I think that the group is up to 14 now, so there's a diverse group to select from.

I've heard one suggestion for games with complex chargen-- do nearly all of the work, but leave a little for the players to fill in, like a few skills or feats or edges. In the case of T2k1, maybe leave off two or three batches of skill points-- 25 or 50 points each?-- for the player to finalize the character?

Also, one could leave off name, nationality, background, etc., for the player to flesh out. One of my pregens shifted gender, when I had more women around the table than I expected, and Jack became Jackie.

Weapons packages could be another "final detail" to let the players select in lieu of full character generation. I've had several people ask not for a particular person, but "gimme the guy with the M60". Have some weapons & ammo packages on index cards, separate from the PC sheets.

I've reduced my convention games to setting up a short mission (in or around Krakow, mostly)
- a bit of time for planning, shopping, and packing,
- some travel-- a minor encounter or two to show off the world
- recon the site and planning
- the usual firefight (assault, ambush, or defense)
- getting out (throw in another encounter if there's still lots of time left in the 4-hour slot)
- receiving rewards, chatting with players, getting their feedback, and packing up

My rules cheat sheet is pretty simple for everything but combat. I have a game-opening speech prepared, covering setting and rules. I make a point that there is no Charisma stat or Persuasion skill, all of the interpersonal talking is almost purely between the people at the table.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.