Threads and nightmares.........
It is pretty sure that if you meet someone of around my age that
grew up in the 80s and they watched Threads, they will have been terrorised by
the threat of nuclear Armageddon and had nightmares at least through their
teens. Think of all the crazy government
fear mongering of recent times and multiply it by about 1000 to get a taste of
what the apocalyptic doom that we were all subjected to felt like. Threads is truly horrific – so for Christmas
2022 I finally plucked up courage and bought a copy of it for my wife. She was equally traumatised by it. We watched it again and I can say it is still
terrifying. ..what has this to do with a blog about RPGs?
Well obviously it’s my spurious lead into talking about my
recent introduction to Free Leagues Twilight2000 that was updated and published
a few years ago. I actually had the
original box set back in the 80s – part of my doomsday obsession with nuclear warfare
involved reading books about how the two minute warning was a lie (it was more
like 30 seconds if you took into account nuclear subs just off the coast) and
Twilight2000 fell into that category at the time. I don’t have that boxed set anymore but the
new version looked great (as do all Free League games) so I thought I’d get it and
relive some of those nightmares of a post WWIII world.
War torn landscapes...
The game involves you being hardened soldiers or civilian survivors
trying to stay alive in war torn Poland or Sweden (other countries are
available). The Russians and NATO forces
have fought each other to a standstill, communications with superiors has
broken down – you are on your own trying to survive. Nukes have been used (yikes),
biological and chemical warfare has been unleashed. Your aim is pretty much to just survive from
day to day.
This aspect is managed in gameplay by having to be very strict
with rations, bullets, and other inventory items. This is meant to drive the game forward – if you
run out of rations what do you do? Got
no bullets left? Tough. This mechanic is central to the game if you are to play
it with that nagging worry about where the next meal is coming from in a war
torn area. It sounds awfully dull, doesn’t
it? In the session I took part in we had
to camp out for a few days and used up one ration each day. As you only start with a few you do start to
get a bit nervous, forage rolls have never been so stressful!
The game designers in the rules state that the game is designed
to be player led. Players are put in a
situation, things happen and they react and deal with them making their progress
towards a defined objective. The objectives
can be player driven or part of a larger arc in the story devised by the ref. At certain times or due to certain situations
the ref can draw random encounters from a pack of cards that give a situation
and what unfolds will depend on the approach or attitude of the players. I am really looking forward this as a
approach to see how it works. As a ref I
could imagine it will take a bit of practice to respond to the players actions,
but it is a intriguing concept.
Born to kill...
Character creation has two flavours – a short simple way
that would be good for convention play and a more detailed approach where a
character is created from childhood to adult hood. You can be military or civilian and you can roll
or pick different life paths related to social class, education, career, and
tours of duty. The military and civilian
paths are different but equally compelling.
The game I was playing in was set in war torn Poland so I chose the
military pathway – in the end my training resulted in me having the following
specialities - Linguist (childhood) /Communication (Education 1st term) /
Combat engineer (2nd term military) / Infiltrator (3rd term Spec Ops) / Front
line leader (4th term Officer) / Rifleman (war breaks out). These specialisms give your character bonuses
to certain rolls and make it imperative that you have a team around you to make
up for the skills you don’t have.
Hopefully in gameplay this will manifest as a group of players really
working together and bonding much like you may well expect in this kind of high
stress situation.
Each time you complete a part of your career there is a increasing chance that war breaks out at that point and character creation effectively stops. Character creation is relatively simple – even the long form method. There is quite a bit of detail related to weapons and equipment. This is because the encumbrance, which is pretty much ignored in many games, matters here. You can only carry what you have the means to transport – be it a rucksack, pockets or a vehicle and you get penalised if you carry too much.
One of the challenging items for me as an English speaker is
the place names. So to try and keep it a
little bit pragmatic I decided my character would be from the British Army in
the Pathfinder division – so during play my lack of ability to pronounce
eastern European place names wouldn’t be too out of place! Luckily
the other players are German and Polish so they keep me in check and
help me with the tongue twisters.
Into the fray...
As mentioned, I have only played one session so far and it
was excellent – we didn’t even fire any shots!
That was surprising but we are behind enemy lines and nearly walked
right into a Russian infantry division so probably best to keep those guns down
and hold onto those bullets. I got into
it so much I started a ‘journal’ for my character describing what we had done during
the session – I’ll post it here as well if you are interested.
I should also mention the use of Foundry for the game. Roll20 doesn't have the game as part of its VT offering. I have never used Foundry before and it was very good. Having the rules and character sheets and everything to hand built into the VTT was a real advantage. I don't know how feasible it is to play this game in Roll20 - something to think about for when I run the game in the future (and it seems more expense!).
I get the impression that quite a few people bought the game
via Kickstarter when it was released a few years ago and then didn’t really
play it. I understand why – it is quite
crunchy compared to a lot of recent games, it emphasises some of the aspects of
games that others gloss over or don’t bother with (keeping track of items, encumbrance
etc), it’s potentially a depressing world to be gaming in, the rules can be
intimidating in terms of the detail on different military vehicles, equipment
and armaments and in the end its another game sitting on the shelf behind a load
of others people already have and play.
I can see why people are put off but my limited experience of it so far
suggests that these are perceptions - not reality in gameplay. If you have the
game gathering (non radioactive) dust on the shelf, blow the dust off, open
that box and have a good read and consider how much fun you could be having
playing the game and creating your own post-apocalyptic story.
That's it for now, I’ll report more on my experience of
playing Twilight2000 over the coming months…
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