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Twilight 2000 for T20

hunter

Ancient - Absent Friend
Anyone interested? We're basically considering a Twilight 2000 campaign supplement based on the T20 rules in the Traveller's Handbook.

I'm particularly looking for one or more authors familiar with the setting to work on the project. Obviously you will need to be familiar with both Twilight 2000 and the Traveller's Handbook.

I know some of you will consider me a heretic for doing this project, but hell I'm already a Traveller heretic. :D

Hunter
 
Have you consider doing T2K with d20 Modern rules (i.e., use the Modern System Reference Document) as well as T20 rules?

P.S. Sorry, I don't have any writing credential.
 
Originally posted by hunter:
Anyone interested? We're basically considering a Twilight 2000 campaign supplement based on the T20 rules in the Traveller's Handbook.

I'm particularly looking for one or more authors familiar with the setting to work on the project. Obviously you will need to be familiar with both Twilight 2000 and the Traveller's Handbook.

I know some of you will consider me a heretic for doing this project, but hell I'm already a Traveller heretic. :D

Hunter
I'd be interested in this, Hunter.
Do you want the discussion here or offline?

William
 
I could see how the Tech equivilent of T2000 could easily be used in T20, with some planet up in arms that Travellers visit. But T2000 on it's own has a very rich and detailed history. Do you think a T2000 suppliment for T20 would do the original T2000 justice?
 
Oh yes, count me in!!! Traveller and Twilight 2000 are two of my favorite game settings. (Twilight is acutally my longest running campaign to date).
 
Originally posted by Shaddath:
I could see how the Tech equivilent of T2000 could easily be used in T20, with some planet up in arms that Travellers visit. But T2000 on it's own has a very rich and detailed history. Do you think a T2000 suppliment for T20 would do the original T2000 justice?
The plan is to do the T2000 stuff as an alternate campaign universe, not as simply a supplement for running a T2000 like adventure in the OTU. The original setting material will be there, as will be additional or modified rules for running a T2000 game using the base rules from the THB.

Does that make sense?

Hunter
 
Originally posted by hunter:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Shaddath:
I could see how the Tech equivilent of T2000 could easily be used in T20, with some planet up in arms that Travellers visit. But T2000 on it's own has a very rich and detailed history. Do you think a T2000 suppliment for T20 would do the original T2000 justice?
The plan is to do the T2000 stuff as an alternate campaign universe, not as simply a supplement for running a T2000 like adventure in the OTU. The original setting material will be there, as will be additional or modified rules for running a T2000 game using the base rules from the THB.

Does that make sense?

Hunter
</font>[/QUOTE]Yes, actually. This might be a very good place to look at your classless materials too as one of T2k's charms was how relatively rules light it was for the time. (Those books were thin!) I better go print them out.

I could see needing only a chapter of rule materials, a chapter on equiptment (including small arms), a chapter on vehicles and the rest being background. It should be more detailed than in the origional box, but how much more?

Perhaps something like this?

1) Introduction
2) Rule changes from THB
3) Iron Mongery
4) Tracks and Wheels
5) Flying Machines
6) History of the War up to 2000
(I strongly suggest original timeline. This is an alternate world now)
7) SitRep - Europe
8) SitRep - Middle East
9) SitRep - USA
10) Sample Adventure like Escape in V1.0 box.

(now if my T2k reprint would just _get_ here... )

William
 
Originally posted by WyldRage:
One thing, talk about North America, not just USA.
Very good point. Perhaps even simply "SitRep - The Americas" and cover the whole hemisphere?

William
 
Well, yes and no.

I think the basic concept is sound, but I am not sure that the original time line will work any more for marketing reasons. I loved the original T2K game and setting, but a lot of that was based on the 1980s. One of the things that made T2K work was the very well thought out future history that was plausable because it was unpredictible enought to sell to anyone who knew enough history to understand that the one thing that is constant about the future is its unpredictibility (Poland fighting willingly for the Russians because of a greater fear of a reunited Germany; Italy switching sides, ect.).

If you want to market to people like me, then it works fine, but I am 38 and the Cold War is a big part of my memory. On the other hand, if you want to market to a younger demographic, you need a new back story. I'm now a 'non-traditional' grad student and the 20 somethings I take classes with and teach don't remember the cold war at all. To them the T2K future history would sound like bad fantasy fiction rather than a scary possable future.

I would build two options into the product. One would be the original background for those of us old enought to remember the tensions of the cold war and what it felt like to live with the possibility of a US/Soviet WWIII. The second would be an updated future history that catches the beleavable but somewhat nonlinear flavor of the original but with modern actors that the younger generation can relate to. The older time line is already supported by a large amount of high quality materials that are coming out in the reprints. Rather than updating that material, I would focus on building new adventures that capture the imagination of the younger gamers as well as us 'old grumblers'.

Just my thoughts,

Rob

P.S. As I mentioned in a previous post in the other thread, I am working on a new time line that (I hope) catches the flavor of the original, but with contemporary actors, so I would like to work on background stuff if your interested.
 
The original Timeline (especially the revised one done in T2k 2nd ed, and the original adventure were excellent in my opinion. Every campaign I ran used the same beginning, but with different elements tossed in, so no two were the same.
Given the times, I suppose a new timeline is necessary, but I still love the nostalgia of the original.
 
I'd be interested in helping out on such a project. But it has some hurdles:

-- The entire concept of the war probably needs to be rethought. Simply put the Cold War is long over and most potential customers have just a bare inkling of what was even being planned. Heck, most people in the military now have never even HEARD of REFORGER, much less how a war against the Soviets in Europe was supposed to have been fought. A Soviet invasion of Europe now is as fantastic as orcs in party hats ;)

-- Twilight: 2000 made some really whacky decisions regarding equipment availability. Most of the weapons are wrong in some form, and many of the vehicles never existed, or even planned to exist (speaking of some of the variants from the vehicle guides). The equipment needs a pretty radical rethinking and revamp.

-- Why not use d20 Modern? It may not be the most astounding set of rules but it has most material needed to run a modern combat-oriented game and is reasonably flexible. Most military personnel can easily fall into the core classes and you can add a Template system to cover skills and feats from the T2K occupations. Vehicles could be worked up using the d20 Mecha rules for even more cross-pollinating fun.
 
To change the background of T2000 is to create a new game. Now, I might be interested in a game that came up with a new theory of how the world could go to hell in a handbasket, but it wouldn't be T2000. I think that any attempt to redo T2000 for the D20 system simply needs to treat it as an alternate universe where things started going different around 1990 and the world ended up at war.

You can tinker around with stuff within that framework (like deciding whether or not the Sergeant York worked or not), but without that framework, you really don't have T2000.

I mean, if you change the rules and you change the background, why exactly would you call it Twilight 2000?
 
Then it better give some background. Twilight: 2000 was dated back in the early 1990s.

The point is that to anyone reading it today the T2K premise (depending on which one you pick, 1st or 2nd edition) looks almost laughable given what we now know of the workings of the Soviet Union in that period.

Frankly I just don't buy that a change to the backstory is bad. In T2K really what did it matter? The endstate was all that mattered -- a shattered world after a limited nuclear exchange with troops left to their own devices. the reason isn't important to this at all, it's all just an excuse really. It could be space bats shooting laser beams that start the war or the Soviets attacking after Germany reunites. So it might as well look a bit more topical. Does the backstory REALLY matter enough that it stops becoming T2K if its changed or is the theme of T2K more important?
 
Originally posted by hunter:
The plan is to do the T2000 stuff as an alternate campaign universe, not as simply a supplement for running a T2000 like adventure in the OTU. The original setting material will be there, as will be additional or modified rules for running a T2000 game using the base rules from the THB.
I´m certainly interested in this! My 2nd RPG played was T2000 (and the 1st I GM´ed) and I know it much better than the Traveller setting (like I mentioned several times).

Anyway... I´ll wonder how much (if any, like Tzeentch pointed out) story should be changed to be updated to current events (just a few tweaks are in order IMO) and to how much space would be devoted to the setting specifics (like OB´s, equipment, GM advice for adventures/campaigns, etc...)

To Tzeentch: You the same Tzeentch from Dumpshock Forum???
 
Originally posted by hunter:
The original setting material will be there, as will be additional or modified rules for running a T2000 game using the base rules from the THB.

Does that make sense?

Hunter
I missed out on T20, so let me just state:

ME, ME , ME, I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA

Seriously, I have been a professional proof-reader and a gamer for longer than I sometimes wish to really remember
 
The 2nd edition of T2000 tweaked stuff to make it try to fit some of the changes that had happened in the world since the publication of the first edition (mostly on how we got from glasnost back to a world war). However, it was nothing like the radical changes that would have to be made now that the year 2000 has passed and we didn't actually have a war. What purpose would be served by updating the background anyway? It would simply mean that you would have to update it again in another year or so if you wanted to keep it "real".

I would have a hard time believing any scenario which led to another world war where the major conflict occurred between Russia and the US. You could easily come up with new scenarios, but they would be centered in the middle east or asia, and would render useless almost all of the old T2000 canon.

The background which is presented in the original rules is a perfectly believable "alternate history". Of course, depending on the page count of the proposed book, and the amount of other information which has to go in it, you could always present three or four separate backgrounds. The original game had the original background, the 2nd edition background, and the Merc 2000 background. You could add a new "updated" background to that if you wanted to.

Another question to consider is what the equipment list is going to look like. Is it going to look like what the US military actually had in 2000 (or will have in 2020 if we create a new timeline)? Or, is it going to look like what GDW predicted it would look like. There are a lot of differences between what T2000 showed and what the US actually had at the turn of the millenium.
 
What purpose would be served by updating the background anyway? It would simply mean that you would have to update it again in another year or so if you wanted to keep it "real".
-- Eh? No, I mean the credibility of the original was a bit lacking given what we now KNOW of Russia in that period. I'm not talking political event X gave rise to event Z which struck off the Twilight War. I mean that there needs to be some serious tongue in cheek alteration of reality to get things to work out like they did in the first two timelines. We're talking Tom Clancy style.

I would have a hard time believing any scenario which led to another world war where the major conflict occurred between Russia and the US.
-- Which unless you're just marketing to old T2K fans is a problem I would think. It's not like WWII where it took place well before the players of the game have any direct experience with, we're talking about an alternate history set just 3 years ago...


You could easily come up with new scenarios, but they would be centered in the middle east or asia, and would render useless almost all of the old T2000 canon.
-- To tell the truth I would much rather prefer a far less detailed background to avoid most of these issues.

The background which is presented in the original rules is a perfectly believable "alternate history".
-- I think the "believeable" part is dubious.

Of course, depending on the page count of the proposed book, and the amount of other information which has to go in it, you could always present three or four separate backgrounds.
-- That would be the best course of action.

Another question to consider is what the equipment list is going to look like. Is it going to look like what the US military actually had in 2000 (or will have in 2020 if we create a new timeline)? Or, is it going to look like what GDW predicted it would look like. There are a lot of differences between what T2000 showed and what the US actually had at the turn of the millenium.
-- With the Russians as well. We know a lot about modern Russian equipment now because they sell it to anyone ;) Some of the stuff in the Russian vehicle guides just makes me laugh now ;)
 
I'll take your word on the russian stuff, but I don't doubt it. I was never a huge hardware buff, but one of the things that I always remember about T2000 is the presence of the Segeant York which ended up getting axed because it never worked, and therefore was left out of the second edition.

I need to reread the background now that I have the reprint volume. The last time I really went through it was sometime around 1990 or so before we really knew a lot about what had really been going on in the USSR.

I still say that without some form of the original background there isn't much point to calling the game T2000. To me, doing T2000 without NATO and the Warsaw pact wearing each other out in Poland is like Traveller without the existence of the Imperium.
 
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