‘Day by day, I struggle to maintain not only my strength but my sanity. It's all a blur. I have no energy to write. I don't know what's right and what's wrong anymore…….’
Sometimes you come across a game that just appeals to you. It hits you in the gut and shouts ‘play me’. When I saw a fellow Grogsquad member offering a one shot of Twilight 2000 I was intrigued. For a few years I have been playing in a Twilight 2000 campaign (online) and started running a face-to-face campaign at my local gaming club (Bedford Gladiators – come along if you are nearby!). T2000 is a Free League game (at the moment..) set in the WWIII that never was, it’s a post-apocalyptic world with little in the way cheer and hope. The FL version is the 4e’d. It really is designed for campaign play…..
Here’s why….
It seems to be considered quite ‘crunchy’ in comparison to
most RPGs nowadays, but for me that is part of the appeal. A key component of
the game is its relentless attrition. When playing you must keep track of your
food, water, ammo, radiation levels, stress and hits. Armor ablation – yep.
Rules for starvation and dehydration – yep. Rules for repairing gun jams – yep.
Rules for stress – yep. There is encumbrance and if you are lucky enough to
have a vehicle you are monitoring fuel consumption. For many this level of
detail is way too much.
Then consider reffing it......
It some ways it is very easy, as
the WWIII post-apocalyptic setting is basically a big sandbox world where the
players can go and do what they want in Poland and Sweden (or any country you
care to set it in, but currently only Poland and Sweden have official maps
etc). However, FL provide a range of story ideas and scenario locations for you
to introduce as you see best to the players, but the best bit is the encounter
card deck. Each day is split into four shifts, morning, day, evening and night.
At the start of each shift you draw an encounter card and depending on the
terrain, time of day, and some other factors you can adapt the various
encounters to your campaign. Running the game with all its idiosyncrasies,
including dice being represented by letters, A=D12, B=D10 etc and combat range
modifiers for terrain, cover, armour, visibility, aiming etc make it a tough
nut to crack, particularly in a face to face game.
Certainly, the first few sessions I ran took me and all the players a little while to get used to the rules, just remembering what rule applied to what situation and then the large volume of dice modifiers involved took a while. ‘Why even bother with this?’ I hear you shout at your screen…..well even in the early stages, it became clear that the mechanics really were fitting and drove the game but also the story so well. There was so much variation and the whole point of trying to stay alive in the midst of this hostile environment provided a real challenge to the players. As a ref putting together an ongoing story using the encounter cards and adapting them to your evolving narrative is really very appealing.
I remember the first two sessions
my players were shooting and firing, spraying and praying and using up ammo by
the mag, they soon realized that was not a good option as by the 3rd
session they were nearly out and wondering where they could get some ammo. In
the end it didn’t matter as they got captured by a Russian mafia mob and put to
work in a Gulag….their escape and subsequent story is for another day as I want
to focus on the amazing game of T2000 as a one shot I played at Groglove on the
15th February….read on dear reader, read on…
One shot blues....
So, I had been grappling with how to bring T2000 to a con as
a one shot event for over a year, and I just couldn’t see how it would work, I
was stumped, stymied and frustrated! Then I got wind of Martin who was running
a one shot at Groglove of T2000 but set in Vietnam with a Fall of Delta Green style
mash up. With a bit of luck, I managed to sign up to play after hearing very
good things about a previous run out of the game. Well, it certainly surpassed
expectations.
First of all, the level of GM preparedness was Shift X. Each player had their sheet of course, but then you had a little backpack, with all your gear in, wooden chits for ammo mags, another larger wooden discs with some of the key rules on, and best of all we all got to choose a 25mm US soldier. Expertly painted and looking amazing. Opening up the little ‘backpack’ it felt a lot like Christmas, finding out who had what and how much ammo.
Secondly as mentioned above T2000 if played by the rulebook,
is relatively crunchy with lots of moving parts. Around our table we had
several people that had not played the game before. I was intrigued how the
rules would be approached with ‘newbies’, and to be honest this was my biggest
barrier, I just could not figure out how to keep the core of the game while
removing rules. Martin showed exactly how this could be achieved with a
masterful approach:
1- Key rules were in easy-to-use flow diagram handouts that
Martin had created.
2 - Don’t get bogged down in the combat rules – the main
modifiers were kept and that is all you need, particularly when the game is
fast flowing in a one shot event.
3 – The scenario was all about completing a mission. The
objectives were clear. There was no time to fuck around and find out. The time
scale was short. You were dropped in with enough gear to get the mission done. So,
keeping track of water and rations wasn’t needed. It was assumed you had enough
to get through the mission.
4 – We used ammo, lots of it! We kept track of it using mag
info that had been laminated and marked off the bullets with a water-soluble
pen. When a mag was used you just gave in one of your wooden chits. In the end
I had one mag left (but I did survive :>)
5- It was a bloody good scenario that never felt like you
were being railroaded. The essence of the exploration and sandbox which is the heart
of T2000 had been retained.
I won’t include any spoilers in this, as I urge you to try and find when this is running and take part. It is so much fun.
Lessons learnt....
So, what can I take from this? Well, the first thing is just
getting confidence that T2000 can be run in a one shot format with prep and
some consideration of what type of game you want to run. That is the key that
will determine how heavily you lean into certain aspects of the game. Want to
introduce attrition for food and water? Players start with none and need to
find some? Want them to make serious decisions about how much ammo to use?
Don’t give them much at the start but ensure there are a few encounters, so
they have to be clever about what they do. Want to use the rules related to
stress, consider using it for ‘Sanity’ and whatever horror setting takes your
fancy. Want to have them use Heavy Weapons? Give them some. Want to have them
in a tank, a boat, or a truck? Go for it.
The settings can be as varied as you want, Vietnam, WW2, WW1, modern day, Iraq, parts of London, a farm, with as many different themes, Cthulhu mythos, Rogue Trooper, Zombie apocalypse, post apocalypse horror of your choice. There is even a conversion you can pick up on DTRPG that puts the players in Cthulhu mythos type setting called ‘The Rise of R'lyeh’, there are numerous zombie apocalypse rules available on fan content DTRPG. Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, the fan written content for T2000 is varied and opens up different settings. You are not stuck with Poland and Sweden after WWIII.
The last piece are the map scales – each hex is meant to
represent 10m (in combat mode or 10Km in travel mode). Using standard 20-25mm
figs makes this a bit difficult but actually during the game, and much like
other worries I had about running T2000 as a one shot and how to prepare for it,
this just wasn’t an issue during gameplay. Everyone grasped the concept and ran
with it.
I have an idea for the T2000 one shot I am going to run, and
I am hoping to bring it to the table in the coming months. In the meantime, if
you can catch a game of T2000, give it a try, crunch may be so 80s but in the
case of T2000 it is well worth the effort.
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