Two decades later...

[thebitterguy]

Apparently, someone has obtained the license to do a new Twilight 2000 game, only this time it's Twilight 2013. It's already the busiest section of their forum, if that's indicative of anything.

All I remember of T2K was their hasty revamp after communism fell. I wonder if it'll be terrorists this time?

I tried the system in Dark Conspiracy; at least I generated a buncha PCs using it, and I liked the system with its building block packages available for chargen.

Comments

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

The Dark Conspiracy system was the second mechanic for T:2000. Which is a good thing, as the first was too complicated.

I always liked the games, even if I only had a minimal desire to actually run it.

Doug.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

There are other options available for a limited nuclear exchange:

China vs Taiwan and her allies (ie. the US)

Iran vs. Israel and her allies (ie. the US)

India vs. Pakistan and her allies (I'm not certain where the US would side, but Pakistan isn't feeling very friendly to the US right now)

In any of such hypothetical examples (any one which could trigger one of the others), you get complete destabilization of the Middle and SE Asia, the resulting collapse of the global economy, and a world wide depression.

Throw in peak oil, catastrophic weather from global warming, an Avian Flu Pandemic, and perhaps another global catastrophe (Greenland's ice cap melts to rising world sea levels, a massive meteor strike or the eruption of the Canary Island's Cumbre Vieja causing an Atlantic Tsunami), perhaps even a civil war in China, and you have the recipe for a new Dark Age.

::B::

[thebitterguy]

Wow. That laundry list of catastrophes to be will sure help me sleep easy at night.

Yeak, T:2K13 will have a nice interesting setting.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Man, you'd think they'd learn to set the time frame ahead a few years so it doesn't instantly date. I like the stuff from the 80s set in the 'dark future of 1997'. Or hell twilight 2000 itself! If the game is out in 2007 it only has 6 years before it is silly and dated.

Why not just admit it and use an alternate history scenario with a Fall of Communism that didn't go as well as the real one, with an extemist Russian dictator or some such. Or a nuclear 9/11. Or whatever.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

What? You're suggesting using an alternate history scenario in a roleplaying game? That's incorporating fantasy into a fantasy endeavour!

Crazy talk!

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

The first really successful long term game I ever ran was Twilight 2000. Of course, the game ended up as kind of satire of the actual Twilight universe, but it was the first time I managed to elicit real emotional responses from my players - the first really memorable sessions I presided over. It was also the first time I really viscerally realized that 4 determined, inventive players are going to outfox 1 beleaguered GM pretty much every time ;). Poor Black Baron of Warsaw never had a goddamn chance...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Considering that the original version's backstory was also incorporated into 2300 AD's backstory, I wonder what other implications might pop up in future press releases.

Confession: I always liked 2300 AD if for no other reason than that they had the guts to consider the possibility of places like Canada, Ukraine and South Africa as potential Space Powers.

Is anyone actively doing anything with that property right now?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

A new edition of 2300 is already in the works and will be out quite soon - it's being done by the same folks who did Traveller D20.

I thought I'd heard as much...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

...but was blanking out on specific company and creative names.

Re: I thought I'd heard as much...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

And I've since found their site (http://www.travellerrpg.com/2320/). Looks fairly promising, although their original schedule has been waylaid somewhat by the Katrina Effect.

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

maliszew and I actually tried to get the license to Dark Con when GDW folded. Didn't work out; they'd already sold it.

[thebitterguy]

To... uh.. Who? Because, really, I don't seem to recall a new edition being released anytime recently, or even being mentioned.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

It was re-released in small size paperbacks printed on demand by Lightning Print. Thus, the printing quality wasn't the greatest, and they were pretty expensive. I remember that the re-release was divided into a player book and a GM book, but I don't remember whether any actual changes were made to the system. I never picked them up when they came out, as I wasn't a huge fan of the DC background.

I think the company was called "Dynasty Presentations", but they're long-since defunct, AFAIK.

I don't know who has the current rights -- perhaps they're gettable again?

[thebitterguy]

Dynasty was, IIRC, a Ken Whitman organization, so that would explain the strange ideas behind reprinting it as a PoD book.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

And its complete lack of success, all things considered? Has Ken Whitman ever done anything with lasting staying power? He seems to be a bit of the touch of death, rpg-wise...

[thebitterguy]

All I'll say is he never bounced a check on me.

Okay, no one has, but yeah.

He produced some neat stuff (I'd love to get my hands on the Groo card game he produced, for example), but I think it's just that he's done so many enterprises (as opposed to either hitting it big with one, or just quitting after one failure). I mean, Alderac has apparently gone bust, other than the L5R ccg, which they had to license back from WotC.

Long term, continous RPG successes can be counted on your fingers, really; D&D, GURPS, Vampire, Mage & Werewolf, mayyybe Hero (if you ignore it's wandering from publisher to publisher).

If he'd published anything succesful, of course, he'd probably be as popular an RPG Entrepreneur as Steve Jackson.

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

Frank Chadwick transferred the rights to himself when GDW folded. I know he sold them on to somebody else after that, but I don't know who has it now. I suspect that it ended up with someone who's ran out of money or interest in it--certainly web searches turn up nothing.

[(Anonymous)]

Marc Miller apparently holds the right to them now, along with a lot of other former GDW properties. I know because I asked him about it a few months ago.

[bcwalker.livejournal.com]

I'd rather that this dead game stay dead. Its time came and went, along with other '80s artifacts such as The Price of Freedom.

[thebitterguy]

Actually, PoF probably appeals to a certain demographic. They should do a d20 Modern version.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Dear gods, can't at least some old 80s games have the decency to stay dead. Some company called Timeline Ltd. has been alleging that they're going to release a new version of The Morrow Project any month now, and now we have an attempt to reanimate this militaristic thing. I hope this is now evidence that the only people keeping the RPG industry alive are youngest cohort of Baby Boomers and the older members of Generation X. I'd far prefer people to actually create some new games, rather than IP grave-robbing. I'm fine with games that have been going since the 70s or 80s, but dear gods, most 80s games were utter junk, especially compared to the games of the mid 90s onward. Other than pathological nostalgia, I can't see any reason to bring any of these things back. This one in particular bothers me because of the right-wing militarism (the initial premise wasn't that bad, but flipping through some of the later supplements about rebuilding the US convinced me that this was made specifically for right-wing survivalist nutjobs. But even leaving this specific game aside, this whole nostalgia thing definitely makes me worry about the fear of gaming. Do most fans honestly not want new ideas or to many designers simply lack the ability to come up with them?

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

Whether most fans want new ideas is irrelevant. The sad fact is that the people driving the RPG industry are older people (30s-40s) who feel lots of nostalgia toward the games of their youth. Rather than try to recreate that nostalgia by creating new games that elicit similar responses in people, they'd rather just do the lazy thing and literally recreate those old games. Flip open a copy of Dragon, for example, and you'll see plenty of material that's an attempt to summon up the spirit of 1985. You see the same thing in movies and (to a much lesser extent) television, although the spirit to be summoned is generally much older.

There's a reason the RPG biz is headed toward cottage industry status and older gamers unwilling to let go of their rose-colored conceptions of earlier games is one of them.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. There are certainly exceptions, but far too many RPG designers seem intent on replaying and rewriting the games of their youth. The one piece of information I'd like to know is whether this is actually what the fans want. Clearly this worked wonderfully for WOTC with D&D3. OTOH, both Exalted and Eberron are highly successful modern games.

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

My gut feeling is that nostalgia sells well in the short term, but it's not the basis for a long-lasting business strategy, unless all you're looking for is a niche market. Admittedly, niche markets can be lucrative, or at least what passes for lucrative in the RPG biz, especially now that technology has made POD and PDF viable mediums of delivery.

As to what fans want, I have no idea and I expect game companies are, by and large, no more in the know. Again, trusting my gut, I think what's happening to RPGs is a lot like what happened to SF literature: it's now so fragmented that it's hard to snag a sizable piece of the overall audience outside of long-standing brand names and properties. D&D is -- and I don't mean this as a criticism -- as successful as it is in large because it's a recognizable name. I highly doubt that a similar approach to roleplaying, if released today and without decades of history, would be anywhere near as successful.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

most 80s games were utter junk, especially compared to the games of the mid 90s onward.

No, most of the games of the 90's and present day are junk, too.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

One one level, you are totally correct - Sturgeon's Law very much still applies. However, pull down a random selection of 2000-2005 RPGs from a shelf and compare them with a random selection of RPGs from 1980-1985 and you will see poorly done rules, dreadful art, childish layout, semi-coherent settings, and truly pathetic writing. There are certainly exceptions, but the baseline back then was vastly worse than it is now.

Sometimes, we remember these games better than they are. However, when working on one project a few years ago, I had occasion to read over PDFs of the first couple of editions of Gamma World. I remember playing and enjoying it back in 1981, but viewed from a modern perspective, it was an arcane, ill-organized, incoherent mess that was notably worse than most game released today.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

poorly done rules

Today's market is flooded with just about anyone putting out a d20 compatable game, and while some are excellent, most are horribly unbalanced, clunky and should never be published, much less played.

dreadful art

Oh, please. From what I understand the new cyberpunk game has art with dolls in it. And let's not even go to those with crappy drawings.

childish layout

Nope, you're still wrong - the majority of today's games aren't designed with people who have the first idea of what a good layout looks like. Look at the majority of their webpages for an example of that.

semi-coherent settings, and truly pathetic writing

*laughs uproarariously*

Seriously... everything that was just as bad then is just as bad now. I'm not saying the 80's were The Golden Age of gaming - I'm saying that it was no better or worse than today.

And that's the truth.