Twilight: 2000 – A Look Back at GDW’s Gritty Post-Apocalyptic Masterpiece

Time to print a lot of character sheets...You'll need them

 

Time to review and reflect on another of the games that I played as a teenager, but this time, sadly, no longer have the books for:

This offering by Games Designer Workshop is a great, great game with a gritty realism. For some reason, out of all the games I had back in the day, I sold these… and I can’t really remember why I did, either… ahhh, foolish youth.

For those not in the know, the game covers the events of World War III, starting with the (then) current timeline of the late 80s and the Cold War. From there it branches off to the start of a Sino-Soviet war and then a war breaking out in Europe between the Warsaw Pact forces and NATO. “Limited” nuclear exchanges happen and the war spreads to form a truly world war as industrial capacity breaks down, food becomes scarce, and command and control of the various armies disintegrates. The conflict grows and eventually engulfs most of North America from invasion from the south. In short, the shit hits the fan everywhere.

The players are cast in the roles (most often) of US Army soldiers trying to survive the falling apart of their unit/division as they are left to fend for themselves. In most cases the main overall theme is to try and make it back to Western Europe and get a transport back to the US.

Two main points stick out in my mind from my time playing Twilight: 2000: 

One, combat is downright deadly as would be imagined. Body armor helps, but not enough if the hit happens in the right location. Because of this, we were never that attached to our characters, because death was too common of an occurrence. This is the biggest departure I think that players of Fantasy RPGs struggled with. Armor is there but doesn’t save you like in D&D. Plus there aren’t any clerics to reattach your severed arm…

Two, we quickly learned the value of two weapons that still stand out in my mind nearly 20 years later. For close-in combat, nothing beat the H&K CAW (Combat Assault Weapon), an automatic shotgun. We learned through a few characters to sling the

Speaking of which, we learned that an even better tactic than using a CAW at close range was using an M-19 grenade launcher from a distance. We would stand back and fire from our vehicles at a target, only venturing in after the smoke had cleared.

Another interesting point is the scarcity of gas and diesel. Stills helped offset this (ours seemed to get shot up regularly), and we learned to leave them camouflaged and go back to them after the firefight. We had a couple of HMMWVs and once had an LAV-25.

The problem was the LAV became a burden, as it required so much fuel. Better yet was when we got FAVs (with M-19 grenade launchers, ‘natch). It was much more fun, as speed was a huge advantage compared to the larger vehicles. This represented the setting well — only large installations with solid logistical support could field tanks. Even with a few TOWs or other rocket systems, we avoided fighting them whenever possible.

Another interesting point is the scarcity of gas/diesel. Stills offset this (ours seemed to get shot up regularly...as in EVERY session) and we learned to leave it camouflaged and go back to it after the firefight.  We have a couple of HMMVs and once had a LAV-25. Problem was the LAV became a burden, as it required so much fuel. Better yet was when we got FAVs (with M-19 grenade launchers ‘natch). It was much fun as it would have been for the larger vehicles, speed was much better. This represented the setting well as only large installations with a logistical support could field tanks. Which even with a few TOWs or other rocket systems we avoided fighting.

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Equipment lists and weaponry were up-to-date as of the early 90s and would need some updates if you played the 1st Edition rules. The supplements to the game, like the

Which brings up a related point: trying to figure out vehicle combat was overly complex and frustrating as all hell.

In terms of characters, none were particularly memorable except one that I played in a tournament. The GM ruled that a flash-bang grenade had blown off my Welsh gunner’s leg… mind you, I was on the outer edge of the effect radius. Basically he didn’t understand the rules or what that type of grenade actually did. That incident, along with some neckbeard historical gamers at the same con, turned me off to open gaming for a long time.

The character creation process was good and flowed well, allowing for various nationalities, genders, and areas of responsibility across the service branches. Rank is hardly an issue — outside of your own squad, NCOs and officers can’t just boss you around. The army is falling to pieces and command and control is non-existent.

I only had minimal experience with the 2nd Edition rules. We took our characters from 1st Edition and tried them out. Later on we used the 2nd Edition rules in a modern-day “brush fire wars” type rather than the World War III angle (before GDW did it). We jet-setted around in our Learjet for the highest bidder. Not much came of that, and college beckoned for all of us shortly thereafter, and not long after college, GDW folded in 1996.

The only other thing that I think did not work well in the game system are the hesitation rules. Basically everyone had a factor that governed (more or less) your actions in a firefight, and hesitations required pauses reflecting the PC’s ability to keep it together under fire. While realistic, it was also a drag on the game — you had to wait while everyone else was doing something. One lucky roll during character creation and you were infinitely better in combat than your foes or teammates. If you are like me and roll crappy for your PCs (that’s any system), then this was a source of frustration as well.

Summation: The entire line was well done with very good artwork and an abundance of supplements. We never used the modules all that much, but there certainly was a wide range of them.

In short, a great game — lots of fun. Just don’t play it if you can’t handle the concept of your character dying, because the likelihood of it if you go into every combat like it’s D&D is very high.