Twilight: 2000. Game 2. Day Zero.

Welcome to the start of my second solo game of Twilight 2000 4th edition.

After the first game being cut incredibly short, I decided to make a team of characters for this game to improve survivbility.

Each entry after the game starts will follow the same pattern as already established. Text describing the mechanics of the game in the main text, character dialogue text in a box out, and notes in italics where needded.

I intend to write each entry from the point of view of one character, switching to another PC for the next entry.

For the team I decided to make a mix of nationalities and careers. A CIA agent for face skills and intelligence, A sniper for damage in small arms situations, a machinegunner for when volume is preferable to accuracy, and a blue collar mechanic for a different point of view from the military characters, and some needed tech skills.

After following the lifepath character creation and choosing gear I got the following characters.

Charles Mckinney, CIA Agent.

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Apple pie wishes it was American as he is. Observant and persuasive. The intelligence and psy-ops specialties will be useful.

Chorąży Dariusz Model, JW GROM Sniper

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Fast and accurate. On the cold side of Calm. Being able to draw two initiatives and pick the best is a great roll for a high damage character.

Caporal Fabien Bouchard. French Army Machinegunner.

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Friendly and a bit loud. Never seen without his lucky ’98 World Cup football shirt. Lower skilled than the previous two characters as he only got a couple of terms in before the war. Useful tank driving specialty.

Zofia Langowska. Civilian Mechanic

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Good metalworker, willing to help out. Again lower skilled due to war breaking out after a couple of terms. Her Pickup Truck will come in useful.

After character generation comes picking group gear and rolling for a vehicle.

From the available gear list I had 4 picks (One per PC) and went for:

• 4 extra food rations (more food is always welcome)
• Extra Fuel (roll d100 for how much) 74 Litres
• Bow + 5 arrows (useful for hunting)
• Anti Tank Rocket Launcher (RPG7V)+ 3 reloads (I took this in case of heavily amroured enemies)

For the vehicle you roll 2d6 and add the number of PCs. I rolled 11, add 4 gives 15. Consulting the chart this gives us a Main Battle Tank! A great improvement over the last game’s jeep. I picked the T-72M from the available options.

Organising the group and gear into the vehicles.

Bouchard will be driving the tank, with McKinney riding in the gunner seat acting as lookout. They will be carrying the RP7V, as they have no tank cannon ammunition. They will be driving in front of the pickup as they are more resistant to attack.

Langowska will be driving her pickup truck with Model riding in the passenger seat acting as lookout. They will be carrying the extra fuel, everyone’s spare food and water rations, and the bow and arrows.

I have already drawn the first encounter card for this group. A group of Soviet soldiers waiting in ambush (Queen of Diamonds for anyone reading who owns the game). Next instalment will cover the resolution of this.

Twilight: 2000 Plans and Preparations.

After the somewhat abrupt end of the last T2K4 solo game I’ve been making plans for the second and possibly subsequent games.

First, I’ve been working on the idea of a persistent map for future campaigns. Marking a .pdf copy of the travel map with each encounter as they are drawn and resolved. So in future if an encounter is triggered when passing through a hex the players will find the after math of the last encounter.

For example, if the next PCs have an encounter in hex S26, it’ll be the ruined bus that the first game’s PC already searched. Or if they go through hex W44 they could hit the same roadblock where the last PC was killed.

Encounters from game 1 marked on the travel map of Poland

Second, I’ve been working on the characters for the next game. Going for a team this time to, hopefully, increase survival chances.

This team will include a CIA agent who is operating on standing orders to continue the war effort. A Polish GROM sniper who wants all these foreign forces to stop using his country as a battleground. A French heavy weapons gunner who mainly wants to go home, And a Polish civilian mechanic who wants the war to end and mostly wants to help people survive.

For those not familiar with this edition of the game, at the start of the campaign you roll 2d6 and add the number of PCs. You then compare this number to a chart in the Players Manual and see what vehicle you get. For this team I rolled an 11, add 4 PCs to get a total of 15. Looking at the chart this gives me an MBT with half a tank of fuel. From the options available I chose the T-72M. With luck that should fare better than the jeep in the last game.

Twilight: 2000. Day One.

This took a bit longer than expected due to outside stuff. Especially as it’s quite a short session, but it’s here now. Last entry I created the character for this solo game Sgt. Harry Matthews, this has the first two shifts of the actual game.

Gam mechanics will be in main body text

Character writing will be in these boxes

side notes will be in italics

The Referee’s Manual lays out the procedure for solo play. On each shift follow the below steps.

1. Roll for weather change
2. Assign and resolve tasks for each PC
3. Draw an encounter card from the deck.
4. Roll Recon to see if it can be avoided
5. Resolve encounter if one is triggered
6. Use the Oracle (p.103 of manual) if needed to clarify situations
7. Proceed to next shift

Shift 1 – Morning -Tuesday – April 18th – 2020 – Kalisz

• Weather – one step worse – fair changes to cloudy

Weather's got worse, just like home. Just gotta wait for it to get quiet.

• Eat breakfast (MRE) and then drive south towards Krakow. 10 hexes, 100km, uses 20litres of fuel. Driving roll success

Finally, it's clear, I can get this crap piled in the jeep and get out of here. 
First up some food. Ugh... Muesli, sodding rat food.*

At least the roads are pretty clear.

*I googled British 24 hour ration packs. There are 20 options I rolled a D20 and got a 10, so he got menu 10 which starts with muesli.

• Encounter card – 4 of Diamonds – Viper’s Nest. Abandoned bus with +2 bonus to scavenging, viper hidden in bus counts as ambush. Scavenging roll gets one success, roll for item gets a teddy bear. Viper gets first initiative due to ambush but misses its attack. Harry hits with a knife attack and kills it.

In a normal game it is up to the referee to decide when an encounter occurs. For this I rolled a D10 to see how far along his 10 hex journey this happened, getting a 4. So 4 hexes, or 40km in.

Bit difficult getting round this jam. Looks like a lot of civilian vehicles got hit by something. Poor bastards.

Let's take a look in that bus. Ah fuck. Snake nearly got me.
C'mere ya little shit.
Got it. I wonder if it does taste like chicken. I'll find out later.

Everything in the bus was too wrecked to be of use. I did pull this teddy bear out though. Gives me someone to talk to on the drive.

Rest of journey continues for this shift.

Shift 2 – Day -Tuesday – April 18th – 2000 – Somewhere near Praszka

• Weather – no change – remains cloudy

Clouds are holding, if I'm lucky it'll hold off from pissing it down for until I can get to shelter.

• Fill tank and continue driving to Krakow. All fuel now in Jeep. Drive further 10 hexes/100km, successful driving roll. 18 litres of fuel left

Less than a third of the fuel left, that should get me a bit closer to Krakow, then I'll have to walk. What do you think Ted?

• Encounter card – 9 of Hearts – Join us or Die – 3 Marauders manning a roadblock. 2 armed with AKMs 1 manning an pintle mounted DShK-38 HMG. Rolled a 10 for how far along journey this took, placing it at the end 20km south of Częstochowa. Selected battle map based on this.
• Ask questions, try to get PC to join them, may attack if provoked.
• Did not notice as cannot roll recon when driving. Another PC would be needed to do that.
• Selected map for encounter based on location. Placed tokens marking characters and vehicles

Yellow = Marauders. Red = Harry

• Tried to bypass with persuasion, failed roll
• Tried to intimidate past by pushing persuasion roll, failed roll

Ah shit Ted, what's this?
Three of 'em, all tooled up and looking sketchy. I'll park up a bit away.
One's coming over.

"Hey, in the vehicle. Where you going? You got anything we want? Want to join us, get some good stuff"

"Sorry mate, not interested, I just wan to get to Krakow"

"I said WANT TO JOIN US?"

"And I said fuck off"

oh shit...

• Draw initiative cards.
• Sgt Matthews – 6
• Marauder 1 (AKM) – 9
• Marauder 2 (AKM) – 2
• Marauder 3 (HMG) – 1
• Two marauders go first, then PC, then other marauder.
• First marauder on HMG rolls, hits for 4 damage. One point is ablated by jeep armour. Roll for hit location – driver – roll location on body – legs. No armour on that location, take 3 damage.
• Second marauder with AKM rolls, hits for 3 damage. Identical location rolls result in 2 damage to legs. This takes Harry to his Hit Capacity, incapacitating him.
• Harry is unable to do anything due to injuries.
• Third marauder walks to jeep. Sees Harry’s condition. Takes the empathy roll needed to execute someone, fails, kills Harry. (An empathy roll must be failed to execute a defenceless opponent. Unfortunately marauders have a REALLY low empathy stat.)

The HMG barks once and I feel an impact in my leg. I don't have time to react before the other lad on the roadblock copies his mate.

Christ I can't think straight. 
That's a lot of blood. 
I think that's an artery.

I manage to get the door open and fall out of the jeep.

Other bloke's walking up, raising his gun

No, no, not like-

And that’s the end of Sgt Matthews. 1960-2000. Longer in character creation than in gameplay. Half a day, two encounters, three bullets.

So what did I learn from this? Combat in this game is deadly, don’t swear at marauders, and have a mate along making recon rolls. Ted let us down on thet last one.

For the next game I play of this I’ll roll up a team and have them working together. Hopefully, that way I can sneak past a few things, especially as there are much nastier encounters in that deck.

Twilight: 2000. Day Zero.

This is the start of the much delayed solo game of Twilight:2000 fourth edition I’ve been planning for a while.

This entry will cover character creation, initial character thoughts and setting up the plan for the game proper.

In character writing will be in these sections...

…whilst game mechanics and explanations will be in main body text like this.

First up, character creation. I decided, as this game would also double as a test of the rules so I can learn them, to only go with one character. If successful, and if he survives, I can add more as the game progresses as if meeting them on the road and joining together.

I decided to go with a straight forward soldier for my first character. I think of this as the closest to the default “Fighter” type that I use to test other less grounded games. I used the lifepath character generation as this throws up some interesting results and often leads to more skilled characters than the archetype method. Also I decided to make him British, as the desire to get home after it’s all gone to shit is a strong motivation and means he’s got a long way to go.

For his history I rolled up a working class background with the “Scrounger” specialty, useful for scavenging.

First term I decided to go with gang member, influenced by my D&D test character who has a similar background and went on to be a fighter. I rolled the “Killer” specialty, he can be cold blooded when necessary.

Second term I went for him going straight. As I’d put most of the stat points into physical attributes I decided on a blue collar construction job. During this term he earned the “Builder” specialty, which could be useful if needing to fortify a position.

This period doesn’t seem to have gone too smoothly for him as he also picked up further close combat skills. I see this as him struggling to stay out of trouble whilst trying to keep this job going.

Third term and onwards I went for a military combat arms career. I saw this as him being unsatisfied with the construction job and needing something else. During this period he was trained in ranged combat, reconnaissance, heavy weapons and driving. Specialties picked up in this period were “Redleg” extra training in mortars and howitzers, not that he’s likely to find either, “Combat Engineer” for setting, disarming and avoiding mines, “Tanker” extra training in tracked vehicle driving, and “Brawler” increasing unarmed combat skill (which I see as him being a member of the Army Boxing Assosiation).He was also promoted several times, achieving the rank of Sergeant.

Then I picked his gear, the main point of choice being his weapons. I opted for a knife instead of grenades as travelling alone would be better done quietly. As for his main weapon I went with an assault rifle. The L85A1 isn’t listed in the main book, but I did find stats for it online so went with that.

Rolling for a vehicle I got really lucky and ended up with a Jeep. As I got this I went with extra fuel from the group gear list. In total I have 58 litres of fuel, enough to get a good part of the way from Kalisz to Krakow (approx 300km).

So then a name was needed, and I can’t resist puns and plays on words. So Harry Matthews, known as “Hazmat” to his friends was born.

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Well, this is fucked. 

"Good luck, you're on your own" the radio said just before it crapped out. 
Yeah, I'd noticed mate, everyone else is dead.

Right, I've got my rifle, a few rations, and managed to get a Jeep to work. What now?

I've got no standing orders and we just lost, badly. So I guess I'll head home. Though I've overheard a few things about Krakow and some interesting stuff happening there, might be worth a look but it's 300km out of my way. 

I'll flip a coin. Heads I go west and as straight a line home as I can do, tails I head south to Krakow...

Tails. 

South it is. 

There we have it, a character with an aim to head to Krakow. I picked this destination as I have the Urban Operations expansion box on order and that’s set there.

I’m not sure how often I’ll update this, it will very much be on a “when I have time” basis.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Post Mortem

Yep, I know this is late, I know I said I’d do it in the first few days of the month. It was delayed for several reasons;

1. I’m Lazy.
2. Hitman 3 just added Freelancer mode and it’s addictive as hell.
3. I’m lazy

Thoughts presented in no real order, other than how they occurred to me when I was putting together the bullet point draft of this post.

Firstly this has been a fun way to engage with the TTRPG hobby whilst I’m still without a gaming group. Going through the rules, creating a character, learning the ins and outs beats looking at the books on my bookshelf.

I am noticeably better at character creation in systems that I carried over from last year. This year’s D&D and CoC characters didn’t take anywhere near as much time as last year.

Also I improved at character creation on games that were new this time as the weeks progressed. Week 4 characters taking a fraction of the time week 1’s did. Dune was the noticeable example here as the looser more narrative system threw me at first, but was more comfortable by the end. I think I’m now at a stage where I’d be comfortable playing Dune, but not running it,I don’t think I have quite enough of a handle on the game system or style just yet.

Free League’s Year Zero system continues to impress. It’s quite something that the system in Twilight:2000 and Blade Runner from this year, and Alien from last year’s challenge, is so similar across games enabling fairly quick character generation if you’re familiar with another system in the family. Yet the tweaks made for each game really tune it in for the required flavour. Twilight:2000 feel desperate and like they’re trying to survive against the odds, Blade Runner characters feel like noir detectives with better gear and a shitty job.

D&D 5e remains familiar. it was my route back into the hobby and possibly where I’ve made the most characters. This year I took the characters up to 3rd level as that’s where subclasses and more interesting features kick in. This didn’t take much longer if at all than last year’s 1st level characters.

Tiny Dungeon was a last minute addition to the roster after my copy of Blade Runner was delayed. I picked this up last year sometime on offer and it was well worth it. The light pick a few options and done character generation was a breeze and would enable you to get into the game quickly. The rest of the game looking as light makes it seem ideal for quick pick up games.

Speaking of quick, Mörk Borg, quick and very dirty, in a grimy way. This was only made possible by the release of the plain text version of the rules last year. I tried with the normal release and can’t look the the page for too long without a basilisk sized headache developing. Character generation for this was fun and quick, ideal for a game that seems to see characters as disposable. The flavour dripped, almost literally, from some of the descriptions too. As I said in one entry, I think this would be fun for one shots or short campaigns with being so over the top. I don’t think I could face a several month long campaign with this much grimness though.

Cyberpunk Red was very straightforward, it’s an update of an older game so you know what you get; skills, stats, gear, and a lifepath character history. The skill list maybe a bit too long, things like accounting, business, and bureaucracy could all be rolled into business maybe. I guess it depends on how specific you want your character’s skills to be.

The free DLC add ons from R.Talsorian’s site were fun. They really help add a bit more flavour to each character, be it a skateboard and no brains, a bunch of TCG cards, older gear for a more mature character or custom netrunner gear. I hope these continue for as long as possible.

Call of Cthulhu was fun, after making mercenaries and soldiers and spellcasters coming up with normal people with normal jobs is a nice change. Though they’re lives are about to be very not normal.

I think I noted it last year, but the charts for background information really spark my imagination and help flesh out who each character is. This is a common thing across games now but I think CoC‘s is one of the best.

However I would like to see some careers that don’t use EDU for career skill points. Whilst I will always say there’s no suck thing as unskilled work, some careers just don’t use your education that much. I guess true to HPL’s characters this does lead to creating weird intellectual nerds though.

Also I’m not keep on Appearance going down and Education increasing as you age, I’ve only got handsomer and stupider as I’ve aged. More seriously, I’m just not fond of APP as a stat. Maybe it’s just my personal dislike of superficial people.

Overall I’ve been quite pleased with this year’s entries. It’s shown the range of possible characters in hobby, even with these pretty mainstream games. From bartender and professional soldier to insect person druid and minotaur ports hero.

Also this year I learned shortcut keys for ü and Å, this will probably only come in useful in next year’s challenge, as we don’t use those characters in English. Maybe we should though, we need more letters with bits on them.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 31

Aaaaand we’re done! Day 31 brings us back around to Twilight:2000 for our final character for the group. Cornelia Strömberg, former mechanic and construction worker.

Cornelia got hit hard by the ageing effects in the lifepath character generation. She started with B’s in the first three stats. Unfortunately rolling two ageing effects in the process meant I had to drop two stat levels. I chose Agility and Strength as I wanted to preserve Intelligence to keep her high Tech skill.

The loss of strength in her last term would have meant a change in career was necessary, as Construction work requires Strength B+. However war broke out, so I guess everyone got a new career.

For her to link up with the rest of the squad, I see her doing work on the hospital they were all in when it got shelled, and she ended up evacuating them in her trusty pickup truck. So now they’re all together and on the run, ready for when I use them in a solo game of T2K4.

I’ll probably write a warp up post with thoughts on the challenge in a day or two. Just going over things that occurred to me, and what I’ve learned about each system, but for now Challenge Done!

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 24

Tuesday again and that means more Twilight:2000. This week’s character is the first of the two civilians in the group. Dr Christian Åkerlund.

I originally intended Dr Åkerlund to be much older, a more mature voice in the party dynamic. However, as they usually do, the dice had other ideas. War broke out at the end of his third term and that was that.

With this change to my plan I think it made a potentially more interesting character. Straight out of med-school and into his first hospital posting when the shit hits the fan on an unprecedented scale. Pitching that optimism of youth agains a world rapidly circling the drain. This would make an interesting character to roleplay.

Even with only 3 terms under his belt he still ends up slightly more skilled, via specialisations, than a similar character if you just picked and archetype. Also, the lifepath char-gen is just more fun. I think I’d only use the archetypes if I needed a quick replacement character or to stat a minor NPC.

As noted on the sheet I see him meeting the previous three characters when they burst into his surgery demanding he pull the bullet out of Zyuganov that he caught whilst escaping.

And with that we only have one week of this challenge left this year.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 17

Day 17, another Tuesday and back to Twilight: 2000 for the third time. This week’s character is Petr Zyuganov a tank driver and machinegunner who deserted from the Soviet forces.

The rolls for Petr were just what I’d envisioned for the character, for once the dice were with me. From the start the idea was for a guy from a small town farming community who was conscripted, found to be good at certain things and then dragged through the shit for years.

I then see him finally acting on his resentment toward the war and deserting as part of the “how did the group meet” thing T2K4 has you write. He was ordered to execute Cunningham and Malmquist after their capture, refused turned on his superiors and helped then escape. Getting injured in the process Cunningham and Malmquist brought him to a hospital where they met… [continued in next week’s entry]

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 10

A third of the way through and the second Tuesday brings us back to Twilight: 2000. This gives us Sergeant Josephine Malmquist of the SSG.

Josephine went into the military, as that’s what her family did. She’s determined to make them proud and do what she sees as her duty.

After being put into a unit with Cunningham (Week 1) for a sabaotage mission, everything went to shit and only her and Cunningham survived, to later be captured. They were saved from execution by Zyuganov (next week’s character) refusing to shoot them, and escaping with them.

As far as playing this character in a game: In a traditional game she’s a bit of a blank slate being almost the default fighter type, so easy to paint more personality over. For my upcoming solo game, she’s one of the useful for when the shit hits the fan characters.

In coming up with her I had to look up Swedish special forces and work character creation around that. At first I thought she’d be part of the SOG, nope not formed until 2011… Ok then the SIG, nope 2007, so SSG it is. The SSG were made official in 1994, just long enough for her to actually have been a member. Ok, so they only allowed women to join as intelligence operators (as per wiki), but I can see that in the rapidly deteriorating conditions of Twilight: 2000’s world this being waived and women being allowed as front line troops.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 3

Day 3, the first Twilight 2sday of the month. Twilight 2000 is a game I played about 25 years ago with an old gaming group so had to pick up 4th edition when I could. Today’s character is Dominic Cunningham, CIA operative.

A dyed in the wool true believer. Determined to win the war, despite the circumstances, at almost any cost. From an affluent background and straight from education into the CIA serving the country that made his grandaddy’s fortune.

He met the first member of his current group, Josephine Malmquist*, when they were assigned to a team to carry out sabotage missions. Before everything went shit shaped.

*next tuesday’s character.

As is typical with Year Zero Engines, this was a pretty quick build, even using the life path method. Dominic here was lucky with the rolls too, earning every speciality possible for his chosen career before the war broke out.

And whilst I normally find characters this cold difficult to play, this one I am planning to use (along with his team mates) in a solo game of T2K4 in the coming months.