The Twilight 2000 Campaign And More Thoughts

From my travels across the internet, I’m proud to share the Twilight 2000 Polish Campaign  that I found while looking at the WW3 1987 blog. It’s a good AAR/let’s play of the game at its best.

I’ve blogged about Twilight 2000 in largely critical terms before, but the initial Polish/German campaign setting is the game at its best. There’s talk on the about page of maybe, if/when the players survive, taking them back to the continental US.  Now here I have a recommendation, if that indeed happens (it’s a big if). Ignore the actual 1.0 modules on the continental US and go homebrew.

Maybe it’s because I like the idea of them returning to a battered but largely peaceful homeland as a proper reward. Or maybe it’s because the North American modules I’ve seen basically seize the always-existed dichotomy I mentioned in my previous post and take it to 11. They’re something. In fact, if the game’s plot had existed only of them, I might even consider them worthy of a Bad Fiction Spotlight.

The later v1 modules have the impression of turning more and more from the “survival and maybe solve some local disputes” theme to a full-blown and ultra-blatant Adventure Friendly World. (That was always there, as it would be in any tabletop RPG, but it was more subtle and interesting).  Even a lot of other T2000 fans have been disdainful of the North American modules, one not unreasonably comparing them to “bad Mad Max”.

Having read the “Kidnapped!” module, I can see it. The first is a description of the megadrought that’s about to strike North America. I’ve heard grumblings about its plausibility, but from an in-universe perspective, there’s worse things. Where I think the megadrought goes wrong is that it’s a clear attempt from an out of universe perspective to up the stakes and become “darker” still. So yeah, there’s a megadrought, and food/water is going to become worse yet. I guess that means the scenario will be about…

Seizing a fascist-populist leader in his supervillain’s lair in West Virginia? You don’t say.

The “Kidnap Carl Hughes, the leader of New America” part is incredibly gamey and has obvious contrivances throughout. There’s the necessary evil of an adventure tip, and then there’s the lair itself. In true game fashion, the lair down to its final bunker is drawn out in massive detail, but to balance it for the players, it’s accessible. Hughes conveniently happens to be in the most vulnerable parts of the lair throughout much of the day, and infiltrating a secure complex run by a mega-paranoiac is suspiciously easy provided the players have the right clothes.

Then there’s a second lair that is long-deserted and only exists to provide clues to get the players to the real lair (yet is also massively detailed in its description).

Yeah.

There’s more on New America itself and even the MilGov/CivGov split (in short, the former is clearly there to be a convenient supervillain faction, the latter there for contrived drama), and how it’s handled, but that’s for another time.

 

The Rollback Conundrum

I’ve made two scenarios (the latter more of a Lua experiment than a proper scenario) detailing a planned “Rollback Campaign”. The idea was for a scenario set in Command featuring plans theorized in the 1990s to oust Saddam Hussein by using air power to back a native opposition army.

The actual plans were highly dubious, even in comparison to the actual Iraq War. The non-Kurdish Iraqi “opposition” was far too small to be effective and had very little popular support. And even if the campaign “succeeded”, it would lead to simply another repeat of contemporary Libya’s power vacuum.

But as a Command scenario pack, it held some promise. I made a scenario with the hideously overconfident title of “The First of Many”-naval F-117s conduct a secret attack on the bridging equipment of the Iraqi Army. The remnants of Saddam’s military oppose them.

Then I kind of stalled. There were some inherent problems beyond just the effort.

-Strength of the opposition was one. I didn’t feel like scenario after scenario of the player just beating on MiG-21s, and I didn’t want an “Oh, that SA-2 rolled a one-now you have a major defeat you wouldn’t have if it rolled a ten” situation. There was another option-state the sanctions failed and Iraq was able to rebuild its military with better equipment. This wouldn’t change the outcome, but it would make the battles a lot more challenging-except that ran into plot.

-If the sanctions fail and the Iraqi military is more powerful, having the internal opposition alone being able to defeat it on the ground is an even more questionable concept. While I could use any justification, that one got me stuck.

-One scenario with the working title “Kickoff” stumped me. Huge arrays of enemy ground units, little opposition, but no margin for error (each unit would be worth say, a point destroyed and you needed hundreds of points for victory), massive air forces on your side-it felt like a hard-work little reward experience.
-I’m thinking of scaling Kickoff down into the saga of one smaller unit during the battle.