Greetings gentlemen,
Not so long lurker, first time posting...
Ever since the USSR fell apart in 1991, Twilight 2000 worked best as alternative history, rather than as speculative fiction. It should have been re-released as an alternative history period piece set at the turn of the millenium. I think the folks behind Twilight:2013 may have made a mistake setting the game in a year that is rapidly approaching. Before you know it, events will overtake the speculative fiction, which will end up looking pretty quaint.
For example, I think we can all see that Frank Frey's moderate Islamic Republic of Iran (as depicted in the RDF Sourcebook) turned out to be as fanciful as the USSR lasting until 2000. And the idea that the Slovenians and Croats would side with the USSR against pro-NATO Serbs shows both it's age and it's false assumptions.
For myself, I've been working on a homegrown history of my own, heavily influenced by the v.1 and v.2 histories. My history diverges in 1989 when hardliners in the USSR assassinate Gorbachev by blowing up his plane while he is traveling to China just before the Tianamen Square Massacre. So, no 1991 coup, no Sino-Soviet War, no wall coming down...
... well, not completely anyways. 1989 to 1991 is an era of extreme crisis, with the USSR desperately trying to hold the Warsaw Pact together, the Gulf War and the break up of Yugoslavia. All these events are recast in light of the renewed Cold War and a hard line USSR.
My Twilight War ends up being a massive confrontation not just between western democracies and a reinvigorated Sino-Soviet alliance, but also between radical Islam. With the Gulf war working out differently, the Serbs engaging in "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims in the Yugoslavia, and the USSR scapegoating their Muslim citizens for the assassination of Gorbachev, leads to the growth of radical Islam into a world-wide threat about 5 years too early.
Rather than bore the crap out of everyone by writing about it here, I'll hold off and post my Twilight War time-line when I've filled in some of the biggest gaps. It currently stands at 37,000 words and tries to incorporate as much real world history as possible. I've also got a sort of global gazetteer in the works, trying to come up with the basic state of the world's governments after the Twilight War. That's currently at 35,000 words and still growing.
Anyways... excellent material on this forum. Keep up the great work guys.
A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing.
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