Another GDW line gets revived

[Morthrai]

Well, it looks like Angus and Amargosa are going to be even busier in the near future with another of GDW's old lines Your suspicions are confirmed Kevin!

https://frialigan.se/en/news/#/pressrel ... ng-2997937

[ReHerakhte]

Very interesting, particularly that they are in some sort of collaboration with Amargosa Press (who we know as the people taking over the 4th edition of DarkCon).
Can't say I'm interested in their D6 rules particularly as they're related to the rules for the new Alien game which apparently are a hot mess plus it'd be better if they had more than just US military personnel as military consultants but considering they have a Polish game company onboard, the Poland setting should get some decent treatment.

I think this is going to be one for the collectors and nostalgia gamers, military RPGs are too niche to be big sellers and the original versions of Twilight: 2000 were released at the right time in history to resonate with potential buyers.

[Marcus Bone]

I think this is going to be one for the collectors and nostalgia gamers, military RPGs are too niche to be big sellers and the original versions of Twilight: 2000 were released at the right time in history to resonate with potential buyers.

I agree, I think this one is going to be quite a niche game. I like the art and I'm sure it will be great to look at, but I'll just watch and see

And yes Twilight 2000 was a product of its time (the 80s) and even in the 90s it had lost some of its 'shine'

Boy that sound negative - its not!

[Linden]

Mentioned it already but if you want something closer to a GDW system there's Modern War by Zozer Games which runs off Cepheus Engine. I always found T2000 quite boring but I wouldn't mind a game that lets you simulate some fast and furious guys-on-a-mission WW3 action. Like James Rouch's "The Zone" novels minus all the really gratuitous stuff (cannibal Soviets, sexually perverted KGB men, psycho-nympho East German border guards etc).

[ReHerakhte]

Sounds like what you're after is a blend of Twilight: 2000 and Merc: 2000 - T2k for the world background and M2k for the episodic, mission-oriented play style?

I had a somewhat parallel experience to you Linden, I was not interested in what a lot of the North American T2k fans seemed to believe the game was about - the American military fighting the dastardly Red Bear/Commie menace in the ashes of WWIII.
I always saw it as a game of surviving and trying to rebuild in the ashes of WWIII.
Having read the development concept of the game (basically a military themed game that would let you go on adventures like you did in D&D) later on, I realised that I wasn't wrong in thinking that way, the game was not supposed to be about fighting and re-fighting WWIII, instead it was about living in the ruins of WWIII.

Unfortunately I could never really convince anyone to play T2k let alone my idea of it. I arrived just a little too late on the scene to join any of the groups here who had been gaming T2k. By the time I discovered these groups, they had moved on to other games.
I'd still like to play it and run it but in my current game group there's probably three people interested and of them only two would be long-term players. I suspect that my desire to run it is exaggerated by the fact that I can't get to run it

[ReHerakhte]

Having seen some discussion on the Year Zero system being used for the new Twilight: 2000 edition, I am definitely not enthusiastic about Fria Ligan being the ones to develop it. Those rules leave out a number of aspects that some of us feel contributed largely to the feel of the T2k game.
I have no doubt the books will look gorgeous and the addition of Sweden as a play location is not unwelcome but I suspect this edition is going to be very much in the "faster = more intense" school of thought. A school of thought I don't subscribe to because it tends to ruin the atmosphere of some things e.g. the loss of creeping dread by turning zombies (shambling corpses) into running zombies

Ironically enough, I think the Year Zero rules might have been a better fit for Dark Conspiracy because DarkCon has room for the faster, cinematic style that those rules create, although I am still very much not keen on the use of gimmick dice to aid gameplay.

[Linden]

Ironically enough, I think the Year Zero rules might have been a better fit for Dark Conspiracy because DarkCon has room for the faster, cinematic style that those rules create, although I am still very much not keen on the use of gimmick dice to aid gameplay.

The gimmick dice was what put me off, plus there seemed to be numerous "extras" to the main rulebook which I thought were prohibitively expensive. And I've already got Hostile, Cthulhu Rising, 2300AD and Mothership.

Re: T2000, the post apocalypse survival angle sounds interesting. Always thought the system was far too fiddly to simulate guys-on-a-mission type action or anything larger than a scrap with half-a-dozen on each side.

[Morthrai]

Ironically enough, I think the Year Zero rules might have been a better fit for Dark Conspiracy because DarkCon has room for the faster, cinematic style that those rules create, although I am still very much not keen on the use of gimmick dice to aid gameplay.

As I understand it, one of the things that caused the most recent delay with Dark Conspiracy was Amargosa deciding if they should go the Year Zero route or continue developing a system based on/compatible with the older versions. Looks like they went with continuation.

As for the gimmick dice thing I'm undecided, having not played any Year Zero stuff yet.

[Linden]

As for the gimmick dice thing I'm undecided, having not played any Year Zero stuff yet.

Alien RPG game and stress dice - around £15* a set. Whole thing reeks of blatant profiteering to me.

* that's around what I paid for the HOSTILE book i.e. a complete rpg setting based on an open source game.

[ReHerakhte]

I agree, I don't think gimmick dice add anything that couldn't be worked out by a halfway competent player let alone a fully competent GM.
I think almost all the gimmick dice I have seen have been high-price which, as noted, smacks of profiteering.

[Linden]

I'd much rather support an outfit like Zozer who turn out quality material for tried and tested games at reasonable prices, than a publisher whose main effort seems to have gone into massively over engineered products with prices to match, and founded on what sounds like a pretty shaky game system. Never mind the rules, look at the pretty dice. Hmmmm - no thanks.

[ReHerakhte]

Mate of mine is a mad Alien fanboy, he's owned the first RPG for Alien since it was published (the Aliens Adventure Game published by Leading Edge Games) and naturally enough bought the second version, the Alien, the Roleplaying Game, from Free League.

He phoned me one day several months ago to tell me that the Free League book had finally been delivered to him and he'd spent most of the day & evening going over it. His words were essentially this - beautiful looking book but the rules are a hot mess. I couldn't run it with the rules in the book.
No surprise that this new Alien RPG uses a version of the Year Zero rules.
He had been really hyped for it and was pitching an Alien game to the group. Then he got the book, read it, and decided to run Call of Cthulhu instead.

I'd mentioned before that I felt the Year Zero rules were a better fit for DarkCon than for Twilight: 2000. Sad to say, I'm not seeing anything so far to convince me otherwise.

[Marcus Bone]

...then he got the book, read it, and decided to run Call of Cthulhu instead.

Ouch!

[ReHerakhte]

...then he got the book, read it, and decided to run Call of Cthulhu instead.

Ouch!

And keep in mind, he was so hyped for running games based on the Alien/Aliens world that after finding the Leading Edge Games rules to be needlessly & stupidly complex, he practically rewrote the rules from another game system (I can't recall which one) to run an Aliens Adventure Game campaign. He was dedicated.
And he's decided to give the Free League rules a complete miss.

Double ouch!

[Linden]

He had been really hyped for it and was pitching an Alien game to the group. Then he got the book, read it, and decided to run Call of Cthulhu instead.

He could always get the Cthulhu Rising monograph and have the best of both worlds. The CoC rules modifications in that are a bit shaky at times (I think they're actually derived from RuneQuest) but nothing you can't resolve yourself using the main CoC rulebook. Background is pretty good though.