Tag Archives: Twilight: 2000 4e

Twilight: 2000 Edition War

Not much of an edition war, actually. At least, not here, where I’ve turned off commenting.

A couple of months back, someone on the Twilight: 2000 fan forum asked about the relative merits of the game’s second and fourth editions. Having just written up characters for all four editions for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge, I’ve been thinking idly about this subject again. Here’s my take on the best features of each edition:

First edition wins for timeline and setting. It has the deepest library of official publications from which to draw and consequently is the best-developed world. When I’m running T2k, I base my world on the setting presented in the 1e materials, with an alternate-history break point occurring in the early 1980s. I generally like percentile systems, but the mechanics herein are just… odd… in a number of places.

Second edition, specifically its v2.2 iteration, wins for play-by-post. Its mechanics have deeper levels of detail, but that slows me down too much when I’m trying to run a realtime game. I’ve found a number of players willing to try it but none willing to master the rules. Its life path system also tends to generate characters who aren’t competent enough to succeed consistently at the sort of adventuring the setting calls for, so some house-ruling is often necessary for me.

Third edition, i.e. Twilight: 2013, is where I have both some bias and an emotionally complex response. As the lead rules designer, and probably the most visible member of the design team still involved with the T2k fan community, I’m still more than a bit sore about the game’s shitty reception among the existing fan base. Having said that, I also acknowledge that a lot of the mechanics I developed are better suited for computer-mediated play than tabletop pencil-and-paper gaming. Where 2013 sits for me is mainly a source for strip-mining conceptual elements to port to the other editions. Justin Stodola’s work on the ballistics model still sings. The gear library adds the fiddly “what’s in his pocketses?” bits that appeal to my inner twelve-year-old poring over U.S. Cavalry catalogs. I occasionally think about returning to the initiative system to tweak it to feel more like X-Com’s action points, but that would require creative effort better expended elsewhere.

Fourth edition is my current go-to for in-person (or VTT) play. It has enough detail to satisfy my usual groups, none of whom are particularly obsessive about tactical minutiae, and it runs smoothly and quickly enough that I can get an eight-player group through a firefight in a single session with time left over for investigation, exploration, and roleplaying on either side of the combat. It also, generally speaking, offers characters who can be made broadly competent enough to contribute meaningfully outside one narrow niche.

Katie Christensen

Game: Twilight: 2000 (4th edition – Fria Ligan AB, 2021)

My Experience: I’ve tinkered with 4th edition for a while. As amply documented on this blog, I’ve been running a campaign (with added paranormal elements) for about two years now. Haven’t actually gotten to play yet, though.

Captain Katie “Acid” Christensen, Trapped in the Mud but Staring at the Stars

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Custom Specialties II (Twilight: 2000 4e House Rules)

A while ago, I posted a few of the custom specialties I’ve thrown together for Kaserne on the Borderlands. Since then, I’ve added a few more at player request – or because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Here’s the most recent full list.

Battle Planner (Command)

Roll Command when you spend a shift or more planning your unit’s actions in an upcoming combat. You get a +1 modifier for each of the following factors that is decisively in your team’s favor, and a -1 modifier (or greater, at the referee’s discretion) for each one that’s decisively stacked against your team: numbers, troop quality, equipment, terrain, weather, intelligence, surprise. During the planned combat and while generally following your plan, each member of your unit may completely re-roll a number of their own rolls equal to the number of successes you received on your Command roll.

Fireteam Leader (Command)

Roll Command as a fast action. If you succeed, choose one PC or allied NPC per success who can hear your voice. Each target immediately becomes unsuppressed.

Folklorist (Persuasion)

When you encounter a phenomenon that appears to be of supernatural origin, roll Persuasion. If you succeed, the GM will tell you something about related folklore or mythology. You’ll generally get more information on folklore that originated from cultures with which you share a language.

Herbal Medicine (Medical Aid)

When you attempt to forage, you may choose to gather medicinal plants rather than edible ones.  If you succeed, roll 1d12 on the following table and gain one dose per success of the indicated medicine:

  1. Pain reliever
  2. Pain reliever
  3. Pain reliever
  4. Anesthetic, local
  5. Antibiotics
  6. Antacid
  7. Anti-diarrheal
  8. Multivitamins
  9. Sedative
  10. Stimulant, mild
  11. Stimulant, mild
  12. Stimulant, strong

[Some of these meds are also homebrewed. I’ll eventually post them too.]

Insurgent Leader (Command)

Roll Command when you spend a shift or more interacting with allied NPCs. If you succeed, each affected NPC gains Unit Morale one step lower than your own (to a minimum of D6) while within 5 hexes of you. In abstract mass combat, while within voice or visual range of you, each affected NPC gains one step of troop quality, to a maximum of D12. These effects last for one day per success you rolled.

Jerry-Rig (Tech)

Gives a +1 bonus to Survival when scrounging for parts and a +1 bonus to Tech when repairing or improvising construction of simple machines.

[We’re currently monitoring this one to see if it’s too powerful.]

Medical Examiner (Medical Aid)

Roll Medical Aid when you spend a stretch or more examining a dead body.  If you succeed, the Referee should give you some useful information about what happened to your subject and when.

Meteorologist (Survival)

Roll Survival when you spend a stretch or more making weather observations.  If you succeed, the Referee should tell you the upcoming weather trend for a number of days equal to the successes you rolled.

Pharmacist (Medical Aid)

Gain a +1 to Tech rolls for creating medications, and to Medical Aid rolls to use medications or identify and treat poisons.

Prepared Packer (Survival)

Once per session, roll Survival. If you succeed, you may declare that one common item was “in your pack all along.” Add the item to your inventory. The item may not have a weight greater than the number of successes you rolled, may not exceed your available encumbrance, and must plausibly fit inside your backpack or pockets. If you use this specialty to produce a common firearm or limited-use item, it comes with 1d3 reloads or uses.

[Some of us are Night’s Black Agents fans.]

Storyteller (Persuasion)

Once per shift, roll Persuasion when you spend a stretch (5-10 minutes) telling a moving or inspirational story. For each success, choose one audience member who may remove 1 stress.

[We’re also monitoring this one to see if it’s calibrated appropriately.]

Kaserne on the Borderlands: House Rules Recap

I’m preparing to resume running Kaserne on the Borderlands in the near future. I figured it might be useful for my three hypothetical readers to summarize the house rules my group currently uses. In no particular order:

Character creation strikes a balance between the book’s template-based player control and life path power level.

A PC starts with a C (d8) in each attribute. The player gets three increases to apply. If the player reduces one attribute to D (d6), they get a fourth increase.

The player chooses one skill at B (d10), two at C, and three at D.

The player chooses three specialties, one of which must be attached to the PC’s B skill.

The player chooses the PC’s starting Coolness Under Fire (as appropriate to the concept), then rolls that die. The die result is the PC’s starting permanent rads.

I assign starting equipment according to the situation in which the new PC enters play. As the game’s economy is largely driven by salvage and looting, this hasn’t been particularly unbalancing.

Character advancement occurs more-or-less normally (but see Coolness Under Fire changes, below). However, because we’re doing troupe play in which all but one of the players currently have two PCs each, XP is pooled at the player level and can be spent on any PC that player controls.

Coolness Under Fire changes occur at the end of each session in which combat occurred. For each PC who participated in combat, the player rolls their CUF die.

If die comes up its maximum value, CUF increases by one step.

If the die comes up a 1 and the PC took a critical hit or was incapacitated from stress, CUF decreases by one step.

Machine guns don’t suffer Reliability loss or jams from 1s on ammo dice – only base dice. We’ve found that this tweak makes belt-fed automatic weapons much more effective at laying down suppressive fire for multiple turns. They jam much less than assault rifles – but when they do, the party definitely feels their absence.

Initiative occurs each round in three phases:

  1. Fast PCs
  2. NPCs
  3. Slow PCs

At the beginning of each round, each player rolls Coolness Under Fire. As usual, they add Unit Morale to this roll if their PC can see or hear at least one ally. If they succeed, the PC acts in the fast phase. If they fail, the PC acts in the slow phase.

During each PC phase, characters in that phase act in whatever order the table deems appropriate. During the NPCs phase, NPCs act in the order in which I deem appropriate.

(If friendly NPCs are in the fight, the NPC phase is split into friendly and hostile NPCs. GM fiat determines which group goes first. Usually, I give precedence to the side that has the greater in-narrative combination of volume of fire, position, numbers, morale, and effective command.)

Bullpup rifles are treated as carbines, getting a – 1 penalty (rather than -2) for attacks in the same hex and a -2 penalty (rather than -3) for one-handed attacks. However, they always reload as a slow action. This hasn’t come up much in play yet, as I don’t think any PCs have picked up the AUG I included in an early loot allocation, but it feels like a good fit for the handling advantages and disadvantages of the bullpup layout.

Patrolling is a sometimes-used downtime activity documented in this post. It’s basically wandering around an already-explored hex looking for details and trouble.

The Cook specialty has additional functionality if the PC is supervising large-scale mass feeding. Each day that the PC spends a shift on this work, the player makes a Survival check. Each success reduces the community’s total food consumption for that day by 5%. This represents increased efficiency in the communal kitchens – basically, the same effect as the specialization’s as-written function, but scaled up.

A few custom specialties are on offer. They’re documented in this post.

Command, as written, doesn’t do a whole lot, and neither does the vehicle commander crew position. We tinkered with making both of them a bit more relevant as discussed in this post, but we’re currently looking at a broader adaptation of the way the Aliens RPG handles it. Stay tuned.

T2k 4e Life Path Math

Elsenet, a colleague recently asked about the likelihood of Twilight: 2000 4e PCs making it to various numbers of lifepath terms before the war kicks off. Assuming a RAW implementation of a 1d8 roll under the number of terms taken thus far, the distribution looks something like this:

… so your “average” 4e PC will four terms of character development before the war breaks out. Anything above 6 terms is a significant outlier (and probably doesn’t have great attributes from all those aging rolls).

(I think I got this right, but my math is not guaranteed. It’s been a minute since I did anything with probabilities, and I somehow managed to get a master’s degree without ever taking a college statistics course.)

MBT Viability in Twilight: 2000 4e, Part 2

Continuing from the original post here, based on the Juhlin.com forum thread here. I realized I’d never recorded my follow-up thoughts on the blog. Let’s rectify that.

Twilight: 2000 in all its editions is much more post-apoc adventure survival fantasy than excruciatingly-accurate simulation (Apotheosis Saga, anyone?). So treads and lube aren’t usually tracked to the level of tank extinction. But let’s talk about the mechanics of mechanical issues for our hypothetical T-72 owners.

Maintenance

v2

A T-72 requires 14 hours of maintenance per week. Potential breakdowns occur every 8 hours of movement or combat, rolled against the vehicle’s Wear value (10% for like-new, to 100% if it’s on its last legs). If there’s potential for a breakdown, the mechanic who did the last maintenance rolls a Difficult Mechanic check to see if his work prevented the breakdown.

Assuming a well-optimized but not maxed mechanic PC (Strength 8, Mechanic 8), a Difficult Mechanic check has an 80% chance of success.

v4

Every vehicle requires the same amount of maintenance: 6 hours per week in which it was driven at least one hex on the overland map. Maintenance requires a successful Tech roll. Failure reduces Reliability by 1 (with most vehicles maxing out at Reliability 5, so you have some margin for error).

Assuming a well-optimized but not maxed Mechanic PC (Intelligence d10, Tech d10), a Tech roll has a 75% chance of success.

Parts and Repair

v2

A well-buried rule indicates that parts need to come from a vehicle identical to the one being repaired. Furthermore, there’s some text indicating that parts are also component-specific (engine, main gun, radio, etc.). There are no explicit rules for scrounging or buying parts.

No roll is required to cannibalize a donor vehicle’s component for parts. However, if the component is damaged, there’s a 30% chance that the part is useless.

A character who’s a capable machinist (or gunsmith, for ordnance repair) may also fabricate mechanical parts with a successful skill check andaccess to a machine shop.

Most repairs require 1d10 parts (1d5 for minor breakdowns).

Damage is tracked by vehicle component, with most components having two states: OK or inoperable/destroyed. A few have an intermediate damaged-but-still-partially-functional state.

v4

“Vehicle parts” are generic – when needed, a bolt, brake cable, or turbocharger materializes out of the quantum foam of your mechanic’s spares box.

A successful Tech roll when scavenging a vehicle yields one part per success rolled, -1 for a destroyed vehicle. Parts are considered to be “common,” which means a 67% chance of availability in a typical settlement.

Only one part is needed to repair a destroyed item, though each repair only restores 1 Reliability per success, so thorough work will likely consume more than one part. Restoring reduced Reliability on an item that wasn’t fully destroyed doesn’t consume any parts.

A vehicle’s Reliability score covers its overall structural integrity, its transmission, and its engine. Weapons, radios, and other subsystems either have their own Reliability tracks or have OK/inoperable states.

Ammunition

v2

2nd edition provides varying availability levels for different ammo types.

125mm HE is common (80% chance of being available in cities, 70% in towns, 30% in villages).

125mm HEAT is scarce (60% in cities, 40% in towns, 20% in villages).

125mm sabot is rare (20% in cities, 10% in towns).

12.7mm and 7.62x54mm for the MGs are both common.

v4

As a broad category, all non-guided heavy weapon ammo is scarce (33% chance of availability in any settlement).

All small arms ammo is common (67% chance of availability in any settlement).

In both cases, chance of availability is for the broad category of item. The referee decides whether a specific sought-after model/type/caliber from that category is available. The West Possum Trot Trading Post may be fresh out of 125mm HEAT, but surely 122mm howitzer mustard agent shells are close enough for government work, right?

(Really, that last paragraph captures it. Ammo availability, perhaps more than any other resource, will be subject to referee judgement and fiat, even with strict adherence to the framework of the rules.)

To close it out, here’s a price comparison for main gun ammo:

Twilight: 2000 4e Conversion: NM-116

Continuing my fascination with new-to-me Nordic light tanks (see also the Ikv 91), today’s Christmas leftovers offering comes to us from Norway. The NM-116 Panserjager was a Norwegian upgrade of the WWII-vintage M24 Chaffee that served until 1993. Rather than reiterate the excellent Online Tank Museum article, I’ll just link it here. You’re only here for the 4e stats anyway, right?

Because the NM-116 was in real-world service until after the Cold War’s end, we can reasonably assume it would have served in the Twilight War. For those who are using a 1e or 2e alternate history, NM-116s would have been in combat as early as December 1996, when the Soviets made their unsuccessful play for a quick victory in Norway. By mid-2000, surviving examples could have been found anywhere in the Nordic countries. A few might also be floating around the Polish-German coast after being “requisitioned” by American units that fought in Norway and later redeployed across the Baltic (6th Infantry Division and 2nd Marine Division). The sticking point in keeping one operational would be obtaining an ammo supply for the up-gunned 90mm.

Number-crunching on this is pretty basic. Just for fun, I also threw in a stat line for the NM-130, the armored recovery vehicle variant (with all of four built).

If you’re looking for v2/v2.2 stats, Paul Mulcahy, of course, has the NM-116 as a tracked light combat vehicle.

Technically, the coaxial is an M3, but stats should identical to those of the M2HB for game purposes. The 90mm gun is a French low-pressure model (the D/925) also used on some obsolete-by-the-1990s French AFVs. Its ammo selection is limited to HE, HEAT, and smoke, so it’s not going to be punching that far above its weight:

Edited to add: for v2.2 stats, Paul Mulcahy, of course, has you covered.

Expanded Hunting Results (Twilight: 2000 House Rule)

Although Kaserne on the Borderlands is on vacation right now, I still have campaign thoughts. One of them is that the default in 4e is to separate non-threatening-but-edible animal encounters (hunting results) and dangerous animal encounters (card draw results), and I mislike that. I’ve been wanting something a bit more in-depth for both random encounters and Pettimore’s hunting expeditions. Here’s a first stab at it, informed by Wikipedia’s inventory of Polish wildlife:

Yeah, that’s a percentile table. Don’t judge me. Right-click it and select “open image in new tab” to embiggenate.

Additional Pharmaceuticals (Twilight: 2000 House Rules)

As mentioned in my previous post on my campaign’s homebrew specialties, I’ve also added a few more drugs to the team medics’ pharmaceutical inventories. Here’s how we’re handling them:

Antacid

Provides +1 STAMINA to resist food poisoning.

Anti-Diarrheal

Once you’re ill, one dose provides +1 to one infection (STAMINA) roll made for any disease that has diarrhea as a symptom.  Dying ass-first sucks.

Anti-Psychotics

Provides +2 to your EMPATHY roll to recover from long-term mental trauma after your counselor makes a successful MEDICAL AID roll.

Antiseptic

A liquid compound suitable for cleaning medical equipment.  Used during a surgical procedure, one unit ensures the patient doesn’t have to make a STAMINA roll to avoid infection.

Hydration Salts

When taken in conjunction with one ration of clean water, a character suffering from dehydration immediately heals one point of dehydration damage. Further doses have no additional effect.

Morphine

Used for sedation and pain relief.  One does allows an attending physician to roll an extra d8 (treat as an ammo die) for stabilizing critical injuries or otherwise conducting surgery.  A second dose allows an additional d6 on the roll, but one or more 1s on an extra die mean the patient is addicted (if he survives the procedure).

Multivitamins

A month’s supply for one character gives +1 STAMINA to resist disease or infection during that month.

Stimulant, Mild

Once per day, one dose restores one point of Stress.

[We’re also using this rule for coffee, which makes it a desirable trade good for more than – ahem – flavor reasons.]

Stimulant, Strong

Injected pharmaceutical.  One dose provides a +2 to MEDICAL AID when getting a downed character back on their feet from incapacitating damage.  Also usable for other story-appropriate effects.

Custom Specialties (Twilight: 2000 4e House Rules)

I’ve thrown together a few custom specialties over the last few months. Some fill gaps in the 4e character model that my group has identified. Others are just there to add flavor (but should still be worth the 10xp investment). The following are currently in play on PCs or allied NPCs.

Herbal Medicine (Medical Aid)

When you attempt to forage, you may choose to gather medicinal plants rather than edible ones.  If you succeed, roll 1d12 on the following table and gain one dose per success of the indicated medicine:

  1. Pain reliever
  2. Pain reliever
  3. Pain reliever
  4. Anesthetic, local
  5. Antibiotics
  6. Antacid
  7. Anti-diarrheal
  8. Multivitamins
  9. Sedative
  10. Stimulant, mild
  11. Stimulant, mild
  12. Stimulant, strong

[Some of these meds are also homebrewed. I’ll eventually post them too.]

Jerry-Rig (Tech)

Gives a +1 bonus to SURVIVAL when scrounging for parts and a +1 bonus to TECH when repairing or improvising construction of simple machines.

[We’re currently monitoring this one to see if it’s too powerful.]

Meteorologist (Survival)

Roll SURVIVAL when you spend a stretch or more making weather observations.  If you succeed, the Referee should tell you the upcoming weather trend for a number of days equal to the successes you rolled.

Storyteller (Persuasion)

Once per shift, roll Persuasion when you spend a stretch (5-10 minutes) telling a moving or inspirational story. For each success, choose one audience member who may remove 1 stress.

[We’re also monitoring this one to see if it’s calibrated appropriately.]