Friday, April 13, 2012

Yo, Twilight 2K Players!

I've been re-reading Twilight 2000 (again), and my thoughts on the game still stand...if anything, my appreciation may be getting deeper for it...but as I turn a critical eye on the combat system I wonder just how effective it is.

I'm looking for feedback...if anyone who used to (or still does) play T2K can remember what it was like to use the old combat rules, please drop me a comment. It certainly looks clunkier than I'd like, but it's still pretty stream-lined compared to most "modern" style games. The abstract "shots per magazine" is definitely a cool rule and something I should probably swipe.

Thanks in advance, folks. Have a great weekend.
: )

8 comments:

  1. I played the heck out of this game at the time. What I recall is ending up with A LOT of characters with their legs burned off or shot off but still basically alive. So I guess I would characterize the combat system as definitely survivable, but perhaps not really playable.

    One of our skirmishes in Poland ended up almost EXACTLY like that final scene in Saving Private Ryan.where they’re all doing pretty well, holding their own, looking like they might even prevail, until the Germans wheel out that damned Flak 38 cannon, and then things are completely blasted to hell and ten shots take out the entire unit. Same thing basically happened to our unit, which is funny ’cause SPR came out ten years after our hellfire tangle with death.

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  2. I concur. From what I remember, combat left most of our characters hideously maimed to the point of character re-rolls. It was bloody, and usually quick... if you got hit once, that was usually enough.

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  3. Yep, that's what I remember too. Combat was usually short and deadly. I don't recall it being too clunky in practice, probably because it didn't usually last long. I remember the first game we played ended in pretty much a TPK on the first shot (152mm HE round) that hit a vehicle loaded with all the PCs.

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  4. Ditto, here. No outrageous (MMO-style) tanks soaking up damage and fighting through--not "Rambo-ing it" to use a period phrase.

    I remember thinking it was a nice change from the abstraction of D&D. Hit locations that were usable unlike, say, Aftermath!.

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  5. Reading ChrisS's statement reminds me of old adventures in the campaign I played in.... like a bunch of us awaiting our recon team outside a town at night, only to find a radio frequency broadcasting coordinates... OUR coordinates. Cue the indirect tank fire. DEED~! Or our LAV full of characters rolling across a bridge loaded with explosives. Cue "Bridge Over THe River Kwai". DEED~! Or he indirect mortar fire of our boat crossing the Volga. DEED~! Ah, those were the days....

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  6. I GMed T2K a few lunch-hour sessions in the Social Studies alcove in 87/88.

    Heavy weapons wiped out the PCs almost the instant they were deployed. I think that players need to shed their D&D mindset if they hope for long-term survivabiilty in this game.

    But more importantly, thanks for the T2K reminder... I've been meaning to order a boxed set from Noble Knight for months now. Done & done!

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  7. I recall playing T2000 and a character surviving a direct hit from a TOW - maybe we were playing it wrong or maybe the 1st edition rules were broken? Don't know if other people are talking about 2nd edition rules or not

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  8. My memory lines up with Pat Henry's: the hit location system ends up delivering maimed-but-alive (and not mortally wounded) characters on a regular basis. Which feels very weird in contrast to other games, but not completely out of line with the simulationist feel you were talking about in the linked post.

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