Guest Post: Twilight 2000 (Part 2)

Part 2 of the guest piece from Brad Smith, the author, curator, and owner of the popular Hexsides and Hand Grenades blog. Brad’s piece is a about a game, Twilight 2000, and how its fiction attracted him to the war gaming hobby.  The first piece appears here. 

Since the nukes have flown, everything has broken down at a basic level. There is no more high tech ammunition--that ran out in the first few weeks of the war. Vehicles run on biodiesel fuel that has to be created by a still. Marauders roam the countryside preying on the weak. Some Soviet or Polish tank divisions simply have no tanks. Some units have stopped responding to orders and have claimed whole communities for themselves. Without any regular supply, armies live off the land, settling in a farming community and raising vegetables to keep their men alive long enough until the next offensive. Warlords have set themselves up in some areas and treat the population under them cruelly. Your players will wander through the countryside and interact in some way with all of these groups and it was completely up to them how they wanted to play it. At the time, Twilight: 2000 was one of the greatest sandbox games ever released and it was such a contrast to the old “The treasure is in X location and you must fight Y dragon to get it,” approach taken by so many other RPGs at that time.

Boomer glides the 84mm round into the breach of the Carl Gustav. After checking the back blast area is clear, he aims for the rear of the T-55 about 138 meters in front of him. The round flies off with a metallic “thunk” and slams into the tank’s suspension. Metal parts fly in every direction and a massive explosion follows.. Chunks of the tank rain down on the nearby Soviet infantry, who watch in helpless awe.

Twilight: 2000 was also unforgiving in a lot ways. It demanded no less than total dedication to the art of bookkeeping. Since the idea of supply in a post-nuclear war world is a joke in itself, every expended round needed to be tracked. Vehicles needed a certain amount of maintenance per week or they would just break down entirely. Spare parts had to be scavenged or shaped out of scrap metal. Wounds could take months to heal and if they weren’t treated correctly, infection would spread and your character would slowly die. There were no save rolls or dice hedging in the game rules. Since these game rules were written by someone who very well understood the lethality of modern weapons systems, it was not unusual to see unlucky or unwise characters expire in rapid fashion.

Having executed an effective ambush, the Americans have thrown the Soviet platoon into sheer panic. Many search with wide eyes for the ambushers while others cringe in what cover they can find. Some wait to see how everyone else is reacting. A few of these guys, however, will probably have the presence of mind to fire back in the coming turn. Let’s go to combat round 2, shall we?

I still play Twilight: 2000 even today although the distance among my old teenage friends has made getting together impossible. We’re using an online system called Storium, which allows people to game together. Technology has also allowed us to use Google Maps to plan routes, battles, and other adventures throughout the burnt out landscape of Poland. As we’ve gotten older and gained more experience with age, the storytelling has become richer and more detailed. I currently run a game where five NATO characters are stranded near Kalisz and who have managed to ambush a Soviet platoon that’s attempting to cross the Posna River all for the sake of a few gallons of gasoline for their worn out M-113. Their long-term goal is to escape from the area to somewhere near Gdansk, hop a freighter and head home to rebuild their lives. How will it all go? I have no idea but I’m having great fun doing it.

Join us tomorrow for part three...