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Twilight 2013 to end publication in December 2010
Thought I would pass this along:
http://www.93gamesstudio.com/forum/v...php?f=5&t=2982 Quote:
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Author of "Distant Winds of a Forgotten World" available now as part of the Cannon Publishing Military Sci-Fi / Fantasy Anthology: Spring 2019 (Cannon Publishing Military Anthology Book 1) "Red Star, Burning Streets" by Cavalier Books, 2020 https://epochxp.tumblr.com/ - EpochXperience - Contributing Blogger since October 2020. (A Division of SJR Consulting). |
#2
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That is a real bummer. I hope the reflex system finds a home.
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#3
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Huh. I'm really surprised at this development. It is sad. Still, following on from Teygyrius's withdrawal from involvement in 93 Games Studio's publications I guess the writing was on the wall that all was not well. It must be really difficult to be an independent RPG publisher these days.
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"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli |
#4
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The Halycon days of RPG publishing are long gone. The industry has contracted, and MMOs and Millenials are eating it's lunch. Very sad to see Twilight:2013 go away, I really like the system, just can't find anyone to play it with, which I guess is symptomatic, eh? |
#5
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What's even sadder is that NONE of the T:2013 materials made it into this part of the world. They might as well not exist from looking in the various stores that could have stocked it.
My guess is the distributors could have done a better job....
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem |
#6
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If they'd have ever gotten the vehicle combat system and other rules sorted out I would have like to have given the Reflex rules a shot for my T2K game. Background aside, there was a lot of cool detail there. As for availability, I live in Canada and never saw anything in actual print. That's pretty unusual, we generally see most of what's on the market eventually. I really wanted to like this game but those three factors made it a losing proposition on a personal level, and didn't help in today's market. Tony |
#7
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They could maybe make an MMO version of T2K? But true roleplaying would lose out to the combat...I think a good T2K MMO would need more AI on the part of its servers.
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I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...First We Take Manhattan, Jennifer Warnes Entirely too much T2K stuff here: www.pmulcahy.com |
#8
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My thoughts; they produced too many gun books at the expense of role playing material |
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Ditto for my part of the World (granted there aren't that many RPG stores in my part of the World!).
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Author of the unofficial and strictly non canon Alternative Survivor’s Guide to the United Kingdom |
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imo the Background sucked so bad I wish I had saved my money. not sad to see it go tbh
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"There is only one tactical principal which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time." --General George S. Patton, Jr. |
#11
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I bought my hardcopy of the T2013 rules at my local games store in Perth. Half way around the world.
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"It is better to be feared than loved" - Nicolo Machiavelli |
#12
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I know of the shop of which you speak and if I remember correctly what I was told, they were only able to get three or four copies in total - hardly a worthwhile number and certainly not enough to generate word-of-mouth interest or make international sales profitable
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#13
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Three or four copies for PERTH!? :O
Ok, maybe a few more for the other stores, but seriously, how the hell did they expect to break into the market with such low penetration? That's just STUPID. Is it any wonder they've gone under when they didn't even bother to supply the market properly?
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem |
#14
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Quote:
I never saw a hardcopy, I got the .pdf for Christmas. Vancouver is a little out there but not exactly the end of the universe. Certainly, distribution was not 93 Studio's job of course, and that's a hazard of business that has sunk other gaming companies. I counted five sourcebooks for weapons, including one alone on M16s and variants (seriously?) which was within their control. One problem was the background, although not for lack of thought or detail. It wasn't that it was bad but frankly seemed to belong to a completely different game. I was very amused at Canada invading the USA, shades of "Amerida" from SNL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGQuRDjo7TI Phil Hartman as the angry American... classic! I'm not privy to the decisions that resulted in "updating" most of the original background, but it would seem the licence to T2K was both besides the point and meant they are now forced to abandon the project when it ran out. I presume the revised timeline was intended to make the setting more timely and relevant, and maybe appeal to a wider audience that doesn't remember the Cold War. In practice it worked out to being TNE all over again. (As well, The Morrow Project appears to be heading down this revisionist road, too.) If one (or more) of the gun books had been dropped and a sourcebook or two updating T2K to the Reflex system been added it would have been worth it, or at least made better use of the licence. (I don't know about the "Cold War" gun book, so maybe that was their nod to previous editions?) Tony |
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Although hardware is cool, you can't write a game based solely on that which is what I gather they tried to do (I haven't laid eyes on anything beyond the promotional material from a few years back).
A believable story is VITAL (unless it's supposed to be totally out there such as Tales from the Floating Vagabond).
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem |
#16
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To many that i talked too just couldn't get over the fact the president 'disbanding the federal government with an executive order'... when it takes 2/3rds of the states to disband it! Now the president could order Federal assets to stand down, and place themselves under the authority of State and Local governments during the 'period of emergency/national disaster'... But at least they touched on the legality of the order in their own narrative prose of two rich @$$holes talking about setting themselves up as Lords of the Manors and such.
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Fuck being a hero. Do you know what you get for being a hero? Nothing! You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy! You get divorced... Your wife can't remember your last name, your kids don't want to talk to you... You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy. I do this because there is nobody else to do it right now. Believe me if there was somebody else to do it, I would let them do it. There's not, so I'm doing it. |
#17
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Well, the license comes open in December...
Richard, I know you had big ideas to revitalize T:2K...
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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. |
#18
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It was going to be a big idea for the game set up. even drew up mock ups for the covers of the core rulebook and each of the sourcebooks. If anyone is interested in what i wanted to do.. i can post it here and have everyone though their two cents in and possibly get a damn good set up (and help bridge the gaps from my brain damage).
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Fuck being a hero. Do you know what you get for being a hero? Nothing! You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy! You get divorced... Your wife can't remember your last name, your kids don't want to talk to you... You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy. I do this because there is nobody else to do it right now. Believe me if there was somebody else to do it, I would let them do it. There's not, so I'm doing it. |
#19
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Hmm, I wonder what the licence would cost.....
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If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives. Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect" Mors ante pudorem |
#20
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THat I don't know... but wish i did!
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Fuck being a hero. Do you know what you get for being a hero? Nothing! You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy! You get divorced... Your wife can't remember your last name, your kids don't want to talk to you... You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy. I do this because there is nobody else to do it right now. Believe me if there was somebody else to do it, I would let them do it. There's not, so I'm doing it. |
#21
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lets try and find out.
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"There is only one tactical principal which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time." --General George S. Patton, Jr. |
#22
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I think that it is sad that T2013 has ceased but I think that some decisions were made by 93 Games Studio that made the success of the game unlikely.
1. The game background is weak in places and is quite US centric. The details of the UK made me cringe and I read one comment (from an Australian) when the game was realeased that he suspected that the writers hadn't even looked at Australia on a map! It seemed to me that the game background was written for a US market without any thought to an international market as it plays heavily to US stereotype views of the rest of the world. My instant reaction as a GM therefore was that I would have to rewrite the game background or simply use the system in a different setting. 2. There are some flaws in the combat rules (in my opinion) and that put several players I know off the game after an initial session. 3. Their business model seems to focus around people purchasing pdf versions rather than actual books in most countries and that seems wrong to me. Most gamers (and the majority of T2k fans) are "older" gamers and are more likely to spend the money for a good quality hardback book (which is what they produced in some markets) rather than a pdf. None of the supplements were ever more than pdfs though (I believe). 4. They initially focussed on firearms supplements rather than sourcebooks or adventures and when they did release a sourcebook it was for their "Everytown" generic setting rather than the Czech sourcebook Tegyrius developed - http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2355 It's sad when any game fails but I think that their approach was flawed in the first place. They seem to be nice guys however so I hope that they do well in the future. They've done more to contribute to the gaming hobby as a whole than I've ever done! |
#23
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I think that the guys at http://www.farfuture.net/ might well know who owns the licence.
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#24
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- C.
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Clayton A. Oliver • Occasional RPG Freelancer Since 1996 Author of The Pacific Northwest, coauthor of Tara Romaneasca, creator of several other free Twilight: 2000 and Twilight: 2013 resources, and curator of an intermittent gaming blog. It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't. - Josh Olson Last edited by Tegyrius; 10-30-2010 at 07:17 PM. |
#25
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Clayton,
No disrespect is meant to yours or anyone else's efforts on T2013. You seem to imply that "93 Studios" is not some kind of monolithic entity. To be fair, gaming companies did use to be fairly monolithic entities, so for those of us that have been gaming for a while that's a natural if outdated assumption. We regular gamers are probably not as privy to the inner workings of any company as an insider would be. From a design point of view I can see there being a desire to get away from going over ground that's been thoroughly covered because old-timers would be bored and/or insulted and new players not already familiar with the setting would not be attracted. Hard Eight Enterprises licenced the 1st edition AD&D rules and refined them while also recapitulating classic dungeon crawls on a literal module-per-module basis. The resulting "Hackmaster 4th edition" was probably financially successful and definitely award-winning; HM still has momentum even after the end of their licence. Granted, there was a considerable advantage because of the prior connection to 1st ed. AD&D and awareness created by KotDT. I'm less familiar with Mongoose Traveller, but I believe Mongoose licenced Traveller from FFE and made a success by building on CT rules and the style of the old adventures and 3rd Imperium setting. In other words, when gamers read HM 4e and Mongoose Traveller the response wasn't "groan, same-old, same-old" but "yes! This was what we should have had instead of 2nd/3rd/3.5/4th edition and/or MegaTraveller/TNE (especially)/M0/T20/G:T". I can't speak for Mongoose Traveller but I've not had any problems with younger or other players without AD&D 1st ed. experience in playing HM 4e. That said, as to what could have been added was at least a recap and clean-up of T2K, perhaps a re-work of at least some of the original adventures (like v2.2 attempt that was abandoned with Krakow). Then working within the same (or similar) timeline until 2013. Regarding the vehicle rules, I'm glad you came up with some additions. I'll certainly have a look at them! When I was considering adapting Reflex for my T2K game I checked the 93 T2013 forums and discovered there were problems with the vehicle rules regarding movement and penetration. I backed off until this could get sorted out, and there it is. Quote:
Edit Added: After reading the notice of a new game using Reflex with T2K and the classic modules, I see someone else was waaaay ahead of me! Tony Last edited by helbent4; 10-30-2010 at 07:53 PM. |
#26
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As far as the rules/setting relationship... it's complicated. I think it's fair to say that Keith had a lot of problems getting writers not to flake on the setting side of the project. That's an occupational hazard of the RPG business. It's damned hard to find people who (A) know how to write English at a professional level, (B) consistently adhere to deadlines, (C) are willing to work for crap word rates, (D) can produce compelling and coherent setting and/or rules material, and (E) understand what the line developer/director's vision is. I like to think I usually satisfy requirements A, C, D, and E. I'm still working on B - I like writing but life gets in the way. I like writing setting material and I wish I could have done more of it in 2013. However, during that whole time of turmoil, I was off trying not to completely screw up the rules side of the project, either either by writing it myself or by doing outlines for other rules writers and then developing their manuscripts to align with the engine. Because the setting was fluctuating, I couldn't and didn't write something whose mechanics were in thematic lockstep with the world (for an example of that, see, oh, Deadlands or Houses of the Blooded). So what you guys got in Reflex was a halfway decent generic modern system with an integral rules pack for post-apocalyptic play. Like I said, one of my objectives was to make Reflex usable with the GDW settings, not just with the specific world of 2013. Quote:
... well, I thought it was interesting, anyway... Quote:
- C.
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Clayton A. Oliver • Occasional RPG Freelancer Since 1996 Author of The Pacific Northwest, coauthor of Tara Romaneasca, creator of several other free Twilight: 2000 and Twilight: 2013 resources, and curator of an intermittent gaming blog. It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't. - Josh Olson |
#27
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Heh, looks like I was modifying my post when you replied; I do see the game was Max's idea, not yours. Your defensiveness does seem misplaced. No one is making comments about 93 Studios out of knowing malice and no one begrudges the fact that someone wants to make money as long as they're offering quality in return... and a product people want to support. I agree there was no conspiracy to "shit on everyone's fond memories of 1e and 2e", so presumably it was done for the best reasons and with the most noble intentions. Does it matter? As you say, the "line developer/director's vision" was ultimately responsible for the product and the lack of success, not the customers who ended up deciding not to buy the product, or did and were disappointed, like me. Thinking that the licence for T2K wasn't put to the best use doesn't make me some kind of ungrateful wretch or unwashed conspiracy theorist. As for the Cold War sourcebook, hey, I would definitely pay for that! That was a cool thing about T2K, the wacky and outdated weapons added in the Small Arms and heavy Weapons handbooks. Interesting thing about Deadlands, eventually the rules were "reverse-engineered" by way of the Great Rail Wars to be more generic and universal. I'm running Hell on Earth and might convert to Savage Worlds if the right supplement comes out. Reading up about HotB, maybe not so much. Tony Last edited by helbent4; 10-30-2010 at 10:27 PM. |
#28
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Czech was my second choice (and I will run a group there once they are familiar witht he system) but what made me choose the original modules was that I was clearing out my storage unit and pulled out my collection. As I was thumbing them I felt nostalgia hit me and thought the rookie group might like to experience the fun I had with the original modules - modified.
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Max M. "aka Moose" Last edited by Twilight2000v3MM; 11-03-2010 at 01:12 PM. |
#29
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I've been stewing over this for a couple weeks now and I suppose if there is a silver lining to be found in Keith's decision to shutter 93GS it is that, with the license back in play, anyone who thinks they could have done a better job is now free to put their money where their mouth is and prove it. I really don't mean for that to come across as bitter as that sounds because I have seen a lot of really good ideas tossed around here over the years and there is certainly a lot I would have done differently had it been my ship to steer. Running a boutique RPG publishing outfit is a near-zero margin business, and not for the likes of me to pull what's left of my hair out over - but I really look forward to somebody scraping up that seed money and presenting the owner with the business plan that will allow them to pick up that torch and run with it. For what it's worth, my career as a Twilight:2000 fanboy has been long and distinguished and my playtesting credentials are impeccable. Excellent references provided upon request. Good luck, you're on your own.
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#30
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Well, poo. This is a bummer. Does this mean I've got to hurry up and get all the sourcebook pdf's I'm lacking before they go away into the ether?
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If life is but a dream, I've definitely got to stop eating pickles before bedtime. |
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