AMARGOSA UPDATE December 2020

[Morthrai]

I got in touch with Mike Strefford of DC4's current licensees Amargosa Press, who kindly put together a list of answers to some of the outstanding questions many of us may have about what's going on.
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Full text:

Amargosa has a license from Marc Miller to do a new edition of the Dark Conspiracy RPG. We have no connection to Uhrwerk Verlag’s 4th Edition Campaign (apart from a number of us being backers for it) or to the company itself.

Is there actually going to be a Dark Conspiracy 4th edition at all?
We certainly hope so, we are fans of the original editions and love the world. COVID-19 and some personal issues have delayed but we are currently talking to the writers who worked on the proposed 4th Edition and moving things forward, slower than we would like but progress is being made.

If so, what form will it take? Will it be its own system or based upon another existing game?
It will be a stand-alone game not requiring any other game to run. The actual rules system is under discussion at the moment.

When can we expect to see it?
Coming to Kickstarter sometime in 2021.

Is it still possible for those who backed the Game On Tabletop crowdfunder by Uhrwerk Verlag to obtain refunds if they have since (and quite understandably) changed their minds?
This is unfortunately something that people will need to take up with Uhrwerk and not something Amargosa can help with.

Will the people who backed the Uhrwerk crowdfunder still be getting copies of the DC4 material, as stated by Amargosa when they took over the license?
Obviously dependent upon the overall success of the Kickstarter but this is absolutely the intent.

Will the people who worked on Uhrwerk's version be getting paid, again as promised by Amargosa?
We are currently talking to the people who contributed to the 4th edition as they currently own their content as they have not been paid. As such if they are interested in working on the new edition and we either re-use their work from the 4th edition or they create new content, then they will be paid (obviously).

As a totally separate entity Amargosa do not have the funds from the Game On Tabletop crowdfunder, nor access to them. That said, where did that money go to exactly?
No Idea, again this is a question that would need to be directed to Uhrwerk as Amargosa had no involvement in their campaign or visibility of anything that happened post campaign.

[ReHerakhte]

First let me say "Thanks Lee" for taking the time and trouble to follow this up

Secondly, as someone who was working on the Clockwork edition... well, call me cynical but...

I find it interesting that they continue to state that they are talking to the writers of the Clockwork edition. I'd really, REALLY, like to know which writers they have been in contact with.
I certainly haven't had any contact from Amargosa and although I do understand that COVID-19 made a negative impact upon the world and that Amargosa has been assisting Free League with it's project to reboot Twilight: 2000, and I do appreciate that personal/family issues have a very big impact upon a team as small as Amargosa... it's been nearly two years since the end of the Clockwork project to launch a new edition.
It cannot possibly be so hard to obtain contact details from Clockwork of those of us who wrote material for Clockwork's edition and then send a group email to us.

[Morthrai]

In the interests of transparency I will say they haven't mentioned anything about my contribution either

[ReHerakhte]

I can appreciate that they have been busy with everything else and I would happily accept a statement along the lines of "we haven't had time/resources to deal with it yet" and their lack of contact with some of us indicates they have been busy with other things
But when they continue to claim they are in talks with the writers from the Clockwork project and at least two of us have heard nothing from them after more than a year, it all feels a bit dodgy and it leaves me in some doubt about their ability to produce a new version of DarkCon

[Morthrai]

Amargosa's Angus Abranson has just posted the following to the DC related Facebook groups and pages:

"Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that we're (Amargosa Press) planning on starting regular updates to keep everyone in the loop on the run up to getting everyone (backers of the Uhrwerk GameOn campaign as well as the Kickstarter that we'll be running later this year) some books to read and hopefully play.
We want the updates to be useful to you so please let us know what type of thing(s) you'd like us to include in them? What's important to you in an update? We won't be able to able to give firm dates (at present) although I know that's something that many people would love to know, but we're thinking of previewing pieces of art, giving overviews of chapters/table of contents, etc.
We also want to answer some of your questions in the updates. So please leave us comments of what you'd like to see in updates and also any questions you'd like to ask and we'll answer several of them each update.
Updates will be posted on the GameOn product platform (access to the platform was transferred over to us when we took over the license so we could communicate with the previous campaigns backers and also because we want to make sure they get something as hate to see fans/anyone lose out), on the Dark Conspiracy RPG Fans and Dark Conspiracy Facebook groups as well as on the Amargosa Press Facebook page.
Take care and stay safe!"

He also posted the following message as a reply to a previous thread:

"Amargosa was transferred access/control of the GameOn Platform from Uhrwerk so we could access all of Uhrwerks backers to make sure when we produce the new edition we can also send it to backers as we don't want the fans out of pocket. It's fully our intention to get backers of the GameOn campaign that was run by Uhrwerk copies of the books we do. They won't necessarily be the exact books Uhrwerk campaigned for (they only had a partial manuscript for the core book written) as Amargosa are doing our own Dark Conspiracy line, but they will be Dark Conspiracy books which we hope everyone will enjoy reading and playing."

[ReHerakhte]

Was pleasantly surprised to find that email waiting for me this morning and I'm quite interested in seeing Amargosa's ideas for a relaunched DarkCon.
Now I'm just waiting to see if Amargosa contacts those of us who were on the Clockwork project because it does sound a little as though they intend to follow their own ideas (i.e. write their own version rather than build on the Clockwork version).

[Morthrai]

Now I'm just waiting to see if Amargosa contacts those of us who were on the Clockwork project because it does sound a little as though they intend to follow their own ideas (i.e. write their own version rather than build on the Clockwork version).

It certainly looks like Amargosa are starting over. That is also the impression I got when I spoke to Mike Strefford in December, though nothing was off the table at that time.

[ReHerakhte]

Well I suppose that does mean that there's likely to a whole lot less legal messiness if I post the material I wrote for Clockwork, to the web.
I'm definitely going to be using what I wrote in my own DarkCon games and I like to believe that it would be useful for other GMs so the thought of posting it to the web has been idly sitting in the back of my head for some time now.

[Morthrai]

If they don't want it then I am sure Marcus would put it up on here, or maybe we could issue it under The Dark Times banner

[ReHerakhte]

If they don't want it then I am sure Marcus would put it up on here, or maybe we could issue it under The Dark Times banner

Slap me for being a dumbarse! <Doh!>
I didn't even think of putting it out as a Dark Times article.
Mighty fine suggestion... wish I had thought of it!

[ReHerakhte]

On a related note... I will be very happy when Free League finally finishes their reboot of Twilight: 2000. Then Amargosa Press will have completed their collaboration with FL and be free to pursue other things, for example, the 4th edition of Dark Conspiracy.
Still likely to take another three or four months yet according to Free League's initial release schedule so I guess we will have a better idea of where things stand once July rolls around

[Marcus Bone]

<Grumpy Marcus>

Yay T:2000... not holding my breathe re: DC

</Grumpy Marcus>

Thanks for the reminder I need to download the Beta!

[ReHerakhte]

Frankly, I am not impressed with Free League's reboot of Twilight: 2000. It strikes me as being Mutant Year Zero without the mutants and has too few connections to the factors that made T2k so memorable for many people.
It looks pretty, but from what I've seen of it, there's no longevity in it (as in 'long campaign' play). At least in the beta they removed some of the utter stupidity in world events that made the alpha so laughable e.g. the Soviet invasion of the UK, the US supercarrier sailing all alone into the Baltic (a carrier that was not even commissioned at that point in time, it was still undergoing its acceptance trails before becoming part of the USN).

[Marcus Bone]

I always sort of knew that the Free League version of T:2000 wouldn't keep everyone happy - it is one of those games with so much history (as in gamer baggage and anecdotes) that it would be hard to follow up.

I thought it looked okay to me from a 'play it a few times' point of view,,,

[ReHerakhte]

The biggest reasons folks are unhappy with it: -

1. FL said they would build upon 2nd/2.2 editions. They did not, they made it Year Zero rules and from the look of the pre-alpha documentation, they never had any plan to make it compatible with earlier editions (I have access to them plus the alpha and beta). They also made it without any conversion guides from original Twilight: 2000 and they made an entirely new background and declared all earlier edition material was not canon. They provided some half-baked conversion guides only after many requests from the audience.

2. the game has some silly rules & mechanics that can break a player's immersion if they have any level of real world knowledge. For example, one person can scavenge a hex for food and find one ration of food in that time, if they get outstanding success they find two rations. Why is this a problem? Because the hex is 10 square kilometres and only one person can search it and the recommendation is that other people who want to scavenge for food should go to another hex. So, you have to spread your group out over several kilometres from each other so that each of them is alone. Anyone who has gone collecting mushrooms or berries in the woods knows how much food you can find in a one square kilometre area let alone how much you could find in 10.

Couple that with the recommendation that the GM basically "pick on" one character that is off by themselves so that something bad happens to them and to test whether the other PCs will come and help... all in the name of making a dramatic story... and what you have is a pulp action game with a "survival lite" feel rather than the more real-world based, survive and try to rebuild theme that was the basis of T2k
I won't even go into their idea that the more you fire a weapon, the higher the chance for it to malfunction, if you follow their original ideas, a machine gun would be malfunctioning every 10-20 shots thus completely negating the benefit of a machine gun.

3. FL claimed that you could have your game set anywhere in the world however they only provided details for a small part of Poland and a small part of Sweden and there are no ways to generate characters outside of being American, Russian, Polish or Swedish. Despite it being a NATO and WarPac fight, the other nationalities are barely mentioned and the current recommendation is to make a character from one of those four nations and reskin them to the nationality you want... even though training, education, equipment and so on are vastly different.
In fact, the area of Poland that FL map out is not even one tenth the size of the area of Poland mapped out in the original edition.

It really feels as though they bought the rights to the Twilight: 2000 name to bring in a ready made audience. They initially said they would be building on the original game and then made a completely different game so for some of us it feels like a bait & switch.
The could have made this game and named it anything else but as you've said, calling it Twilight: 2000 carried with it some expectations (even before the gamer baggage that comes with that) and even encouraged those expectations. However it very much appears that FL had no intention of living up to those expectations and what the audience got is little more than a vaguely T2k flavoured gateway drug to the Year Zero system.