Contents Hardcopy Twilight v1
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Chris KContents Hardcopy Twilight v1
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Chris KK CONTENTS
This compendium includes the following products and articles. The pages are individually numbered
within each publication.
Game Rules Twilight: 2000 Core Game Rules, version 1.0
The original boxed Twilight: 2000 game
Adventure Escape from Kalisz
Scenario included in the boxed game.
Adventure The Free City of Krakow
The first published adventure for Twilight: 2000.
Adventure Pirates of the Vistula
The second adventure in the Poland tetralogy.
Adventure The Ruins of Warsaw
The third adventure in the Poland tetralogy.
Adventure The Back Madonna
The last of the adventures in the Poland tetralogy.
Article Combat Examples (from Challenge 31)
Blow by blow descriptions of game rules in use.
Article The Compleat NPC (from Challenge 34)
Details on characters for Twilight: 2000.
Errata As published August 8, 1985
The definitive corrections list.
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K MILITARY ROLE-PLAYING
Serious role-playing games are built around drama, and there is no situation more dramatic than that of
a soldier in wartime, so you might think the military is a natural setting for role-playing. However, RPGs
work best in anarchic situations---where the player characters are their own bosses--- and, in the army,
discipline and coordinated group action are the keys to success. To get around this, the most successful
military RPGs have settings where small groups can act with a large degree of autonomy, on commando
raids, during guerilla warfare, or (most popular of all) after civilization has broken down due to holocaust
or invasion.
The first attempt at military role-playing was Eric Goldberg's Commando (SPI, 1979), which was
primarily a board game of small-unit combat that had some role-playing features. The first version of The
Morrow Project (Timeline, 1980) was also mainly a set of combat rules, but the designers were
perceptive enough to set it in a post holocaust future where the players could have freedom of action.
This was also the case with Aftermath (Fantasy Games Unlimited, 1981), a game of paramilitary survival
after a nuclear war.
These were followed by Behind Enemy Lines (FASA, 1982), a World War II game; Recon (RPG Inc.,
1982), set on the fringes of the Vietnam War; and Merc (Fantasy Games Unlimited, 1983), which tried to
capitalize on the brief public fascination with mercenary soldiers fighting in Third-World nations. None of
these games met with sustained success. It looked as there might not really be a steady market for
military RPGs until GDW released Frank Chadwick's Twilight: 2000 in 1984. Once again the setting was
after civilization was shattered by World War III, but this time background was more believable and
worked out in great detail. The rules were unexciting but solid, and GDW supported them with a steady
stream of scenarios and supplements that catered to players’ fascination with modem military machinery.
Other contemporary military systems debuted in 1986 (The Price of Freedom, West End Games;
Phoenix Command, Leading Edge Games; Delta Force, Task Force Games; Freedom Fighters,
Fantasy Games Unlimited), but none have been able to make much headway against Twilight: 2000,
which recently received a complete updating and revision.
Lawrence Schick
Heroic Worlds, A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games,
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books 1991
Game Designers’ Workshop began to make a name for itself in modern military wargames with the
introduction of the Assault series in 1983 (Assault, Boots & Saddles, Chieftain, and Reinforcements).
This tactical level wargame series dealt with the capabilities of small units and individual armored vehicles
in the modern (read World War III) military environment. Close on its heels came the Third World War
strategic warfare series (Third World War, Arctic Front, Southern Front, and Persian Gulf) starting in
1984. That series laid out all of Europe in consistent scale maps in four different games. The
contemporary interest in modern warfare helped make the two series extremely successful. In 1986,
Assault and Third World War games together accounted for 17.6% of GDW’s sales while Twilight: 2000
accounted for 41%.
Is it any wonder that GDW turned its attention to a military role-playing game? The initial design
concepts were extreme environments with features of Mel Gibson’s Mad Max and Andre Norton’s Star
Man’s Son. Unfortunately, such concepts were common (and not especially successful) in the market
place already. The breakthrough came on a long drive back from the Origins Game Convention in Dallas
in 1983. In an overloaded rental van, Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, Bill Keith, and Andrew Keith
talked for hours about a modern military role-playing game which concentrated on equipment and realistic
military situations, and by the end of the trip the concept for Twilight: 2000 was far enough along for
design to begin in earnest.
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