Version 4 of the game

[Olefin]

There has been scuttlebutt of a V4 version of the game for over a year (with 2013 being seen as the third version of the game) but until recently it was more just wishful thinking.

However recently there have been multiple posts about it on a facebook group for the game by a person who I have confirmed is working on the effort. I wrote to Marc Miller and he did confirm that its not just wishful thinking. He didnt give me a timeline for when it will occur or what its timeline will be (i.e. Cold War, near future, etc.) or who the new owners/licensee will be but he did confirm it is in progress and that there is a new owner/licensee for Twilight 2000.

[Legbreaker]

Which makes it near impossible for those of us working on new material to be sure we're heading in the right direction with it.
Speaking for myself, I'm a little annoyed that the wider community is only just hearing about this now and that we haven't been given the opportunity to express our preferences about the new game and in particular it's setting.
After all, without us, there is no game, just a collection of printed words that don't sell.
I HATE marketing (studied it long enough, worked in it far too long), but I know that if you're not finding out what your target market wants, you're not going to have a very saleable product.

[Olefin]

Leg - take it from me - neither I or Raellus are happy either - we basically got told that at this time there is no more interest in new works for either V1 or V2 versions of the game - meaning that the stuff we were working on as far as anything official is dead in the water.

Thus after three new releases in two years we get told thanks but the new owners arent interested in anything new for V1 and V2, at least for now. Hopefully they will be open to stuff from writers like us in the future.

[Olefin]

Only details on timing come from Twilight:2000 - Roleplaying In The Aftermath Of World War III facebook group and the person who is working on it - Marc wouldnt give me anything more either

Chris Lites - It will be officially announced in the fall. It's from a large publisher who I think fans will be pleased with. I'll see if I can share anything else.

He also said it wont be anything like Twilight 2013

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Me personally, I heartily encourage people to keep creating material for the earlier game versions if they wish to do so, specifically because there seems to be a trend in modern games for "streamlined" rules and more "narrative" content. Streamlined, meaning little in the way of rules to give you guidance.
I've found that games with those two concepts tend to leave me unsatisfied with the gameplay - they're dull and uninspiring

Naturally it depends on the game system you choose but I've found that for my tastes, certain older game systems offer the right mix of GM freedom and rules/mechanics. I like to have a rules as guidelines but I want those guidelines to be solid & robust. A lot of the games on offer these days come across to me like some tabletop version of interpretative dance while ignoring the idea of teamwork.

Now I'm not saying that this new version of T2k is going to be "rules-lite and catering to the angsty, whiney, tell-my-own-story-rather-than-follow-the-GM's-story player" kind of game but those types of games appear to be popular enough at the moment to be a market-influence on the rules designs.

EDIT: just realized that Chris Lites is probably one and the same guy that wrote the Dust rpg - which is a rules-light, action-adventure style game.
https://www.modiphius.com/dust-adventures.html
I'm not saying that that makes me think a 4th edition of T2k is going to lack the mechanics that make the game something you can sink your teeth into, but it does make me think that I'll wait for some game reviews before deciding to buy it or not.

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Me personally, I heartily encourage people to keep creating material for the earlier game versions if they wish to do so, specifically because there seems to be a trend in modern games for "streamlined" rules and more "narrative" content. Streamlined, meaning little in the way of rules to give you guidance.
I've found that games with those two concepts tend to leave me unsatisfied with the gameplay - they're dull and uninspiring

Naturally it depends on the game system you choose but I've found that for my tastes, certain older game systems offer the right mix of GM freedom and rules/mechanics. I like to have a rules as guidelines but I want those guidelines to be solid & robust. A lot of the games on offer these days come across to me like some tabletop version of interpretative dance while ignoring the idea of teamwork.

Now I'm not saying that this new version of T2k is going to be "rules-lite and catering to the angsty, whiney, tell-my-own-story-rather-than-follow-the-GM's-story player" kind of game but those types of games appear to be popular enough at the moment to be a market-influence on the rules designs.

thank you that is what I needed to hear - even if for some reason the new game isnt looking for stuff on the older versions there is no reason that we cant still publish them even if its "fan canon"

[Sprocketteer]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

A lot of the games on offer these days come across to me like some tabletop version of interpretative dance while ignoring the idea of teamwork.

You Sir, are a Poet.



I own several of the Modiphius games and really do not like their 2d20 system.

Part of what my group and I enjoyed of Twilight 2000 (& The Morrow Project), was the 'feel' of the systems. To us the mechanics of those games worked with, and were an important part of the settings - they belonged together, and worked together - and to us non military types, 'felt' a bit military (and yes, gung ho-ing over the gun porn helped too lol) - for my groups at least.
It is hard for me to imagine a twilight game that doesn't use v1/2 rules.
My groups almost always preferred percentile based systems over d20, always felt more natural to us.


My initial concern was that it might appear using the wotc 5e OGL lol.
"Sarge! The LT is hit, we need a long rest!"

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Speaking for myself, I'm a little annoyed that the wider community is only just hearing about this now and that we haven't been given the opportunity to express our preferences about the new game and in particular it's setting.
After all, without us, there is no game, just a collection of printed words that don't sell.

I hear you and I'm sympathetic, but anyone who watched T2013 getting absolutely pummelled by naysayers during development, let alone once it was released, would understandably be EXTREMELY wary of saying much to the wider community if they were early into the development of a new system.


In any case, what I would want from a new T2K and what most T2Kers would want are likely very different things. I've resigned myself to never getting the levels of crunch I'd be happy with.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I understand your point but I think 2013 shot itself in the foot at least once and that didn't help things much. By that I mean the restrictions they put on people for contributions to the development - I seriously considered submitting information but when I saw the demand for proof of military service by submittal of your DD 214 Form (or equivalent) I decided not to do so.
I completely understand that they wanted to weed out the wannabes but for us in Australia, you can't just send military documents to foreign nationals and besides that, Army Reserve members didn't get discharge papers when they finished their service.

Among some potential contributors that approach created a feeling that there was some sort of elitism going on and they decided not to get involved. The timeline/history that 2013 provided deserved some criticism, for example it failed on some points of geography that would have been very easy to check with a simple internet search.
Having said all that, the rules were (and still are) good and a lot of the support material was equally as good.
But 2013 lost a lot of goodwill when the head honcho blamed die-hard fans of T2k for 2013's lack of success - purely military themed rpgs have always been a niche market, I don't recall any that have ever sold as well as T2k except perhaps Palladium's Recon/Advanced Recon game. So any new military rpg was never going to sell in large volume and 2013's release was around the same time as D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder were getting the lion's share of publicity and the hype for D&D 4 was building up.

[Legbreaker]

As I indicated earlier, market research when developing a product, ANY product whether that be a new design of shoes, confectionery, or a game is absolutely VITAL to it's success. With T:2013 that didn't appear to have happened, as as SSC has mentioned, what little external input they accepted was heavily cherrypicked.
With this new version we've heard absolutely nothing, even though (we presume) development has been going on for quite some time. This does not bode well at all for a successful release and acceptance by the gaming community. All we know for sure is there is a "press release" scheduled for publication sometime in the 3rd quarter of this year.

[Raellus]

I get it what y'all are saying, but I'm not sure that asking the 400-odd fans of a dead system what they want out of the new version of their favorite old-school RPG is the best path to developing a marketable new RPG, c. 2019.

I think that the whole point of developing a new version of the franchise is to move outside of the echo chamber of established fandom. Will this alienate fans of the older versions of the game? Probably. Will this ruin the chances of the new product making money. Probably not.

-

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

I understand your point but I think 2013 shot itself in the foot at least once and that didn't help things much. By that I mean the restrictions they put on people for contributions to the development - I seriously considered submitting information but when I saw the demand for proof of military service by submittal of your DD 214 Form (or equivalent) I decided not to do so.
I completely understand that they wanted to weed out the wannabes but for us in Australia, you can't just send military documents to foreign nationals and besides that, Army Reserve members didn't get discharge papers when they finished their service.

Among some potential contributors that approach created a feeling that there was some sort of elitism going on and they decided not to get involved. The timeline/history that 2013 provided deserved some criticism, for example it failed on some points of geography that would have been very easy to check with a simple internet search.
Having said all that, the rules were (and still are) good and a lot of the support material was equally as good.
But 2013 lost a lot of goodwill when the head honcho blamed die-hard fans of T2k for 2013's lack of success - purely military themed rpgs have always been a niche market, I don't recall any that have ever sold as well as T2k except perhaps Palladium's Recon/Advanced Recon game. So any new military rpg was never going to sell in large volume and 2013's release was around the same time as D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder were getting the lion's share of publicity and the hype for D&D 4 was building up.

This very much. I’m an international politics major/history minor with a background in research and intelligence analysis and have done contract work for the NSA but they dismissed my offers out of hand. When this attitude was brought up on (I think) Yahoo Groups they were less than courteous. I looked over the finished project and found the whole background premise somewhat laughable.

[Benjamin]

The issues I worry about for V4 are...

1. that the Timeline will be too politicized given our current social climate.

2. it will be just generic PA game with no real Twilight War focus.

3. It will very quickly become dated with a background that almost immediately feels wacky.

4. It will overlook the longer conventional war that led into the Twilight, thus lacking leftover forces serving overseas and the foreign and abandoned feel of the original

5. It will lack a good vehicle combat system and all of the in depth vehicle descriptions

What I would really like would be for the designers just to suck it up and make it an alternate history background set in the same time period as the original. Look at how popular the Team Yankee table top miniatures game has become. Maybe do a tie in with that game if possible. Twilight 2000 with integrated miniatures rules and cool minis would be great. A generic Post Apocalypse game is totally worthless to me.

Benjamin

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

This very much. I’m an international politics major/history minor with a background in research and intelligence analysis and have done contract work for the NSA but they dismissed my offers out of hand. When this attitude was brought up on (I think) Yahoo Groups they were less than courteous. I looked over the finished project and found the whole background premise somewhat laughable.

Had a similar experience, and they were even less impressed because I'm a civilian and always have been.

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

This very much. I’m an international politics major/history minor with a background in research and intelligence analysis and have done contract work for the NSA but they dismissed my offers out of hand. When this attitude was brought up on (I think) Yahoo Groups they were less than courteous. I looked over the finished project and found the whole background premise somewhat laughable.

As a man who has had "boots on the ground" in a number of places including The Middle East, South America (as a Civilian tourist in the bad parts of town no less), and Africa, I almost laughed OUT LOUD when I saw the number they attributed to suicides in the intro. The people in Africa live in INHUMAN conditions and aren't killing themselves. That number would have been more realistic if it had been attributed to murder and cannibalism in order to survive. The human animal is "hardwired" to survive and only a small percentage of humans choose to end their lives through suicide. The numbers may seem large when you look at them without context, but the number TW2K13 quoted was like (and I'm guessing because I don't have my copy with me) 2 BILLION(?) who committed suicide. That is a ridiculously large number. ALSO, keep in mind I'm talking about people who actually KILL THEMSELVES NOT people who think about it and don't go through with it in the end. Two billion is a ridiculously large number of people to die by their own hand.