Good Vibrations~!

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Let's accentuate the positive: last night my AD&D group came over and my T2k 1e boxed set was on the table, one of my players asked what it was and I broke it down for him and he was fascinated...at least a couple of them want to give it a try! And they are NOT "grognards" by any stretch. They've only been playing AD&D for a year or so now and to date have played it, one session of d6 Star Wars RPG...and now they wanna give T2k a spin! So cool...

[Mahatatain]

Congratulations!

On a similar vein I've also persuaded my Tuesday night face to face group to let me run T2k when I next take over the GMing position. It won't be for something like 6 months but that gives me plenty of time to prepare. They've also never really played the game before so I can run the classic Poland modules (well at least my personal take on them) again - I first ran them over 20 years ago and I haven't had the opportunity to do it again!

[Legbreaker]

I'm working on my group of f2f players too. Got one really keen and a second expressing interest. Not bad since they're all under 24.
Another month or two and may get something off the ground too!

Who said the cold war was dead?

[Adm.Lee]

Keep them good vibrations a-going! I have small hopes, as mentioned earlier, for my son & his friends, once school lets out....

Lee.

[M-Type]

The D&D group my buddy was in on campus split up, and I basically walked up to him and was like "*cough*Twilight:2000*cough*.

Not many people seem to enthralled with the setting, so I'll have to do a little marketing. Especially since I snagged the v2.2 rules, so I can draw them in with the "d20" aspect.

I'm a big fan of history, so I find the setting fascinating. And I'm not turning 20 until a couple months.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by M-Type

The D&D group my buddy was in on campus split up, and I basically walked up to him and was like "*cough*Twilight:2000*cough*.

Not many people seem to enthralled with the setting, so I'll have to do a little marketing. Especially since I snagged the v2.2 rules, so I can draw them in with the "d20" aspect.

I'm a big fan of history, so I find the setting fascinating. And I'm not turning 20 until a couple months.

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

I guess we like it so much as we expected to live it one day...

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

I've been getting that a lot

As soon as I heard about T2k I jumped on it. I like history, especially military history, and the game was just too good to pass up.

I guess it allows me to play in the (alternate) history I enjoy so much.

But I gotta give respect to everyone who played it when it first came out, the world situation considered. I guess I'll be missing that piece of the game.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by M-Type

I've been getting that a lot

As soon as I heard about T2k I jumped on it. I like history, especially military history, and the game was just too good to pass up.

I guess it allows me to play in the (alternate) history I enjoy so much.

But I gotta give respect to everyone who played it when it first came out, the world situation considered. I guess I'll be missing that piece of the game.

I remember when my Brother-in-law who was a huge computer wargamer (seriously, the guy would spend a day, then a night, then the following day designing stuff in Wargame Construction Set from SSI, then invite me over to play his Cosmic Balance scenarios he'd written on his Atari 800XL) bought the 1e boxed set to build a "Door" or do Play-by-posts for his BBS he ran in like '87 or so (this was all prior to Gorbachev, Perestroika, etc.; not even the most optimistic folks dared whisper that in a mere 25 months the USSR would be out of business as a world power), and as we looked through the contents of the boxed set, he said to me, somberly "You know...this is how it could all really go down."

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Hell, I knew guys who were in the military in 1990 who were certain the USSR was going to use build-up in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War as causus belli and jump off due to the US attacking an ostensible ally...go fig!

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

I'm pushing 40 this year and could be father to almost everyone I'm playing with. Youngest is 11 next month!

Damn they make me feel old....

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

I remember when my Brother-in-law who was a huge computer wargamer (seriously, the guy would spend a day, then a night, then the following day designing stuff in Wargame Construction Set from SSI, then invite me over to play his Cosmic Balance scenarios he'd written on his Atari 800XL) bought the 1e boxed set to build a "Door" or do Play-by-posts for his BBS he ran in like '87 or so (this was all prior to Gorbachev, Perestroika, etc.; not even the most optimistic folks dared whisper that in a mere 25 months the USSR would be out of business as a world power), and as we looked through the contents of the boxed set, he said to me, somberly "You know...this is how it could all really go down."

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Hell, I knew guys who were in the military in 1990 who were certain the USSR was going to use build-up in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War as causus belli and jump off due to the US attacking an ostensible ally...go fig!

Don't forget the worry as the Wall came down that it could trigger WW3 - the British Army at least went onto alert.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

It's a little ridiculous to consider now, but if in 1985 you'd written a game about the distant year 2012 and things called iphones, smart TVs, a defunct Soviet Union, a-capitalist-in-all-but-name PRC, the US being in hock to said China, the literal vanishing of Japan as a world financial power, etc. would it have looked more or less plausible than the 40+ years-in-coming, seemingly inevitable war between the US and USSR.

Heh. Pull out a copy of Cyberpunk 2020 and proceed to giggle at the projections therein.

(I think William Gibson once said something about the great failure of the cyberpunk movement was in imagining a future where the United States was gone and the Soviet Union was still there.)

- C.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Heh. Pull out a copy of Cyberpunk 2020 and proceed to giggle at the projections therein.

Or the first couple of editions of Shadowrun! Wow, did they have things a bit screwed up on the computers/matrix front! 2050 and there's no search engines! WTF???

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I know what you mean about ShadowRun but at least they did get something right with their treatment of mobile/cell phones - even if it was a happy coincidence.
I believe it was also William Gibson who when commenting on his own novels said that his greatest failure was to underestimate the impact of mobile phones. Sometimes when you see the future, you just don't see the little things that are in fact the 'big' things!

[Legbreaker]

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

I hear ya. My dad and I get Popular Science, and I love to read their articles where they look back at their own articles from the 40s-50s to see how close they got to certain modern devices.

Some things are eerily accurate, while others are quite laughable.

[Panther Al]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

Totally agree - I think no one saw the change the mobile phone was going to make, especially as computers kept getting smaller and smaller and turning into smartphones.

I think if some one looks back to the 95-15 era, they will probably come to the conclusion that it was the humble camera cell phone that was the biggest, most influential invention of the period.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Anyway, I think this new group - should we get a chance to actually play - will find the "alt-world" pretty interesting.

One thing about pervasive computing: a LOT of it was predicated on the demilitarization of the internet and supporting technologies. Its no mystery as to why suddenly from 1992 until now it seems like there has been an exponential leap in what we can do with computers not just in terms of local technology but with communications, to the point that consumer technology has lapped military tech and COTS is now the rule of the game in the face of an ever-shrinking military budget: the end of the cold war gave birth to a vastly more open internet, and once those technologies were in place it was Katie bar the door!

However, in T2k, that never happens. 1992 sees a USSR just as immovable and belligerent as always; there is no want cause or need for the US Military to open the floodgates of the Internet to even benign developers like Tim Berners-Lee, et al. Oh, sure, there were already "social websites" (for lack of a better term) in place with CompuServe, BIX, GENie, and so on, but the degree of consumer-level networking that we saw even back in the mid 90s is nowhere to be found in the Twilight:2000 universe. I would say its alternate-setting computing would be that individual workstation/desktop PCs would be more-or-less the same, just with less emphasis on networking them - why fiddle around with an ethernet card for your PC or laptop when there's jack-all to do with them save LAN stuff? And in the mid 90s most of that is all still do-able via sneakernet anyway.

[CarolG]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

It's really just evidence of how useless we are at predicting what technology will do even a decade or so from now. Think back to 1995 or even 2000. How many of us would believe half the stuff that's taken for granted today!?

I become amuse at a lot of the anachronisms in old S.F. One of my current favorites is in Startide Rising by Brin where information is faxed to another part of the ship as the fastest method of transmission.
As a player, I at times have had to stop and think about what technology would have been available to us.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I was reading SLAN, by A.E. van Vogt (winner of the "Weirdest Old-School Sci-Fi Author's Name" award 40 years running) and there was a google-like service whereby a person would make an information request via televisor (very high-tech!)...aaand then a printout of the request was brought via courier to the requester, taking mere hours :P

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Oh my god, kid, I got jackets older than you Here and I thought it was us crotchety old 40somethings who played T2k

40something? YOU are a pup too. I've been doing T2K since 87, and was 40 then!!! LOL
My grandson that is 18 has played T2K.. you should have seen my daughters face the day she walked in and he was READING the BYB asking me questions, he was nine then. Her comment, "OH GOD!! NOT another one." BTW she met her husband at a FTF gaming session at my house LOL. Three Generations of Twilight.

[Adm.Lee]

Re: sci-fi missing the tech advances: Can't find it now, but I recently saw a cover from a '50s sci-fi magazine. There's a space pirate leering through a porthole, with a slide rule in his teeth.

Second thought on failures to predict: I graduated college in 1990, with a degree in military history, and a minor in national security policy, with a touch of Russian language. Unfortunately, it was in Dec. 1990, after the Baltics had started revolting, the Wall had come down, and Saddam had shifted the strategic focus of the US. No hiring at DoD for people like me, nor CIA, nor anywhere else. Ooops.

[Sanjuro]

I guess we like it so much as we expected to live it one day...

The first few times I went to Moscow, Ekaterinberg, Damascus, Baku and Tblisi I thought "I only ever expected to see these places through a bombsight..."

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

I know what you mean about ShadowRun but at least they did get something right with their treatment of mobile/cell phones - even if it was a happy coincidence.

I played a 2nd Edition ShadowRun campaign a couple of years ago where the GM refused to allow mobile phones to have cameras built into them because they weren't on the equipment list like that! All of the players pulled out their own real camera phones and sat there looking at her like she was an idiot. GM's sometimes make terrible decisions.....

Originally Posted by Graebarde

40something? YOU are a pup too. I've been doing T2K since 87, and was 40 then!!! LOL
My grandson that is 18 has played T2K.. you should have seen my daughters face the day she walked in and he was READING the BYB asking me questions, he was nine then. Her comment, "OH GOD!! NOT another one." BTW she met her husband at a FTF gaming session at my house LOL. Three Generations of Twilight.

I have two sons aged 5 and 3 and my subtle indoctrination of them to play RPGs has already started, much to my wife's annoyance!

[Targan]

Originally Posted by CarolG

I become amuse at a lot of the anachronisms in old S.F. One of my current favorites is in Startide Rising by Brin where information is faxed to another part of the ship as the fastest method of transmission.
As a player, I at times have had to stop and think about what technology would have been available to us.

I'm a huge David Brin fan and loved Startide Rising and all the novels in that series but I'd forgotten those tech details! I might have to re-read it...

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by Graebarde

40something? YOU are a pup too. I've been doing T2K since 87, and was 40 then!!! LOL
My grandson that is 18 has played T2K.. you should have seen my daughters face the day she walked in and he was READING the BYB asking me questions, he was nine then. Her comment, "OH GOD!! NOT another one." BTW she met her husband at a FTF gaming session at my house LOL. Three Generations of Twilight.

I think that I am the next oldest here on the board. I played in very late 80's- early 90's. (Gonna be 59 here in May)

Never could get the kids or grandkids into RPG's...(SIGH )

But, I will borrow from Lynyrd Skynyrd.....

"My hair's turning white, my neck is still red, my collar's still blue...."

Long live T2K!!

My $0.02

Mike

[Adm.Lee]

This was the picture.

FWIW, my dad used to work for a big R&D firm. In the late '40s, they helped Xerox develop the photocopier. In their final report, the researchers thought their institute might need as many as two of these things.

[B.T.]

Cool picture, Adm.Lee.
But what does "FWIW" stand for

[boogiedowndonovan]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Let's accentuate the positive: last night my AD&D group came over and my T2k 1e boxed set was on the table, one of my players asked what it was and I broke it down for him and he was fascinated...at least a couple of them want to give it a try! And they are NOT "grognards" by any stretch. They've only been playing AD&D for a year or so now and to date have played it, one session of d6 Star Wars RPG...and now they wanna give T2k a spin! So cool...

cool man, good luck!

post periodic status updates if you can, like Chris does at

http://twilight-later-days.blogspot.com/

I was gonna post something OT related to your subject line, but I'll hold off on that. Webstral may know where I'm going, or maybe not...

[Ironside]

FWIW = For What It's Worth

@Adm.Lee Thanks for the picture