Twilight 2000 for Traveller

[Reynard]

Why not a topic more specific? Twilight seems like a great candidate for a modern/near future Traveller. We see scifi constantly moving The Future up a couple or few decades every time we hit the old timeline. Now we see the Twilight 2000 timeline is 15 years in the past. I recently bought the PDF for the old game and plan to read it over to understand what was the premise, background and technology. Considering the growing body of vehicles and equipment for Traveller, it should be possible to recreate the setting. Now all we have to do is discuss the possible reasons for the WWIII scenario based on what is our current point of view.

Let's discuss the setting and not every detailed historical, political and social debate as to why and, especially, why not there will be a spark to End All Wars.

I'm going to kick back and give the old game a read so I have that perspective for a new game.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Here's an update.

The bad guys won.

 

[sideranautae]

Why not a topic more specific? Twilight seems like a great candidate for a modern/near future Traveller.

What makes it a great candidate? Its inaccuracy or, its game engine?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Why not a topic more specific? Twilight seems like a great candidate for a modern/near future Traveller.

What makes it a great candidate? Its inaccuracy or, its game engine?

I don't know why we need two World War III threads. I assume by Twilight 2000, you want to use the original timeline alternate history and everything?

 

[sideranautae]

Why not a topic more specific? Twilight seems like a great candidate for a modern/near future Traveller.

What makes it a great candidate? Its inaccuracy or, its game engine?

I don't know why we need two World War III threads. I assume by Twilight 2000, you want to use the original timeline alternate history and everything?

Why would you assume anything? YOU just called for using it. Why are you asking ME what YOU want to use?

 

[Rick]

No, I get it. I think what Reynard is saying is that we take the current world situation and military deployments, add in the possibility of building up forces in these regions in the next year or so, then assume a nuclear war starts for whatever (non-specified) reason. By sidelining all of the stuff on the previous thread (which we weren't going to see eye-to-eye on anyway), we can concentrate on the setting and development. So, no timeline leading up to a war, no discussion on who or what triggered it, just start at year 0 after the dust has settled and work up.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

No, I get it. I think what Reynard is saying is that we take the current world situation and military deployments, add in the possibility of building up forces in these regions in the next year or so, then assume a nuclear war starts for whatever (non-specified) reason. By sidelining all of the stuff on the previous thread (which we weren't going to see eye-to-eye on anyway), we can concentrate on the setting and development. So, no timeline leading up to a war, no discussion on who or what triggered it, just start at year 0 after the dust has settled and work up.

we need to know who the adversary is in order to determine what weapons and equipment are used as well as the scene of the battle. The opening adventure in the original Twilight 2000 occurred in Poland for the specific reason that Russia was the adversary at the time. So are the player characters going to be fighting Russian soldiers or Muslim Jihadists that some how got atomic bombs?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

What makes it a great candidate? Its inaccuracy or, its game engine?

I don't know why we need two World War III threads. I assume by Twilight 2000, you want to use the original timeline alternate history and everything?

Why would you assume anything? YOU just called for using it. Why are you asking ME what YOU want to use?

This is a public forum, I am not just talking to YOU on it, it is a general question for anyone who would care to respond.

 

[Rick]

we need to know who the adversary is in order to determine what weapons and equipment are used as well as the scene of the battle. The opening adventure in the original Twilight 2000 occurred in Poland for the specific reason that Russia was the adversary at the time. So are the player characters going to be fighting Russian soldiers or Muslim Jihadists that some how got atomic bombs?

No we really don't. The adversary can be pretty much anybody.
Lets see now - you could be remnants of a US task-force in Iraq. After the dust has settled and you are cut off from your supply chain, you may have to either bargain or fight for supplies with the locals - all the while trying to link up with other units that are as cut off as you are. Think small - no radios or telecommunications, little or no electronics, you're thrown back on the basics and whatever skills you have. Adversaries might be IS remnants, or a local warlord, former allies turned renegade or, indeed, a Russian GRU team that got lost: it would be entirely up to the GM.

In fact - thinking about it, the setting should work equally well for a modern zombie apocalypse. The goals would be more or less the same, you'd have a mix of military/civilian pc's, similar lack of resources and thinking more about a limited, local level rather than globally.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

we need to know who the adversary is in order to determine what weapons and equipment are used as well as the scene of the battle. The opening adventure in the original Twilight 2000 occurred in Poland for the specific reason that Russia was the adversary at the time. So are the player characters going to be fighting Russian soldiers or Muslim Jihadists that some how got atomic bombs?

No we really don't. The adversary can be pretty much anybody.
Lets see now - you could be remnants of a US task-force in Iraq. After the dust has settled and you are cut off from your supply chain, you may have to either bargain or fight for supplies with the locals - all the while trying to link up with other units that are as cut off as you are. Think small - no radios or telecommunications, little or no electronics, you're thrown back on the basics and whatever skills you have.

Why wouldn't radios work? But also Al Qaeda wouldn't have radios either. Basically the task of the PCs is simple, get to the Persian Gulf, steal a sailboat and sail towards America, probably would have to round the horn of Africa, or one could sail to Australia instead, or perhaps New Zealand. What would you do?

 

[Rick]

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of long-range radios (EMP maybe?). Depending on where you were and where you thought the best hope of survival lay - you might consider overland into Kurdish territory, Turkey then on into the mediterranean, assuming the Peshmerga were still friendly (or the Turks, really).
But I think you are maybe starting to see how it would work?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of long-range radios (EMP maybe?). Depending on where you were and where you thought the best hope of survival lay - you might consider overland into Kurdish territory, Turkey then on into the mediterranean, assuming the Peshmerga were still friendly (or the Turks, really).
But I think you are maybe starting to see how it would work?

I would not want to stay in any place that was Muslim or where English wasn't the native Language, knowing what our soldiers are going through over there. I would think New Zealand might be a good place to live after World War III, they speak English, are Christian for the most part, and aren't a bunch of religious fanatics wanting to get into paradise. Also Muslims have a reputation as "back stabbers" they act as your guide one moment and betray you the next!. I would try to get out of there as quickly as possible, a sail boat has effectively unlimited range, you just need to stock it with supplies and water for the entire trip.

 

[Rick]

I would not want to stay in any place that was Muslim or where English wasn't the native Language, knowing what our soldiers are going through over there. I would think New Zealand might be a good place to live after World War III, they speak English, are Christian for the most part, and aren't a bunch of religious fanatics wanting to get into paradise. Also Muslims have a reputation as "back stabbers" they act as your guide one moment and betray you the next!. I would try to get out of there as quickly as possible, a sail boat has effectively unlimited range, you just need to stock it with supplies and water for the entire trip.

This made me laugh. You've never met or talked to a Muslim, I take it? Most muslims consider themselves, Christians and Jews as all 'children of the book' - the Jews got 1 book, the Christians 2 and Muslims 3, but have the same God. There is a general feeling that they can get on with Christians, but not Jews - one Muslim I spoke to said it was because they believe "Jews always lie". Every religion has its fanatics - some of the US bible belt evangelists make the IS clerics look tame by comparison! As to being 'back-stabbers', not really - an Arab would probably knife you from the front; but that reputation is based on the Arab tribal group, where any outsider is fair game unless told otherwise, but that generally applies to the desert Arabs, some of the other Muslim groups are much more open and hospitable.

 

[AndrewW]

Lets leave religion out of it.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, please. I was hoping this thread would not become mired like the other one. Let's stay focused on game element rather that personal issues about the world.

 

[Rick]

Apologies for that, just answering a question. So, were you thinking of setting it immediately after the dust has settled, or a little while after? Twilight 2000 was set 1 or 2 years after, IIRC.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I would not want to stay in any place that was Muslim or where English wasn't the native Language, knowing what our soldiers are going through over there. I would think New Zealand might be a good place to live after World War III, they speak English, are Christian for the most part, and aren't a bunch of religious fanatics wanting to get into paradise. Also Muslims have a reputation as "back stabbers" they act as your guide one moment and betray you the next!. I would try to get out of there as quickly as possible, a sail boat has effectively unlimited range, you just need to stock it with supplies and water for the entire trip.

This made me laugh. You've never met or talked to a Muslim, I take it? Most muslims consider themselves, Christians and Jews as all 'children of the book' - the Jews got 1 book, the Christians 2 and Muslims 3, but have the same God. There is a general feeling that they can get on with Christians, but not Jews - one Muslim I spoke to said it was because they believe "Jews always lie". Every religion has its fanatics - some of the US bible belt evangelists make the IS clerics look tame by comparison! As to being 'back-stabbers', not really - an Arab would probably knife you from the front; but that reputation is based on the Arab tribal group, where any outsider is fair game unless told otherwise, but that generally applies to the desert Arabs, some of the other Muslim groups are much more open and hospitable.

You are forgetting that Iraq is the land of ISIS, and people who wouldn't fight ISIS despite all the training and equipment we gave them, which ended up in the hands of ISIS. Lots of US soldiers ended up missing limbs because Islam turned out not to be such a peaceful religion as advertised. Lots of US soldiers ended up getting killed because their so called Arab allies turned on them, so I would rather not be among people who's loyalty is uncertain, one that pretends to be your friend at one point and then turns on you the next. If it was otherwise, our soldiers would not have been in Iraq for 13 years.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Lets leave religion out of it.

It is hard to imagine any Middle East without religion, the live and breath religion and die for it as well, if you could take the religion out of it, it would not be the same place.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yeah, please. I was hoping this thread would not become mired like the other one. Let's stay focused on game element rather that personal issues about the world.

Problem is World War III is based on real world politics and religion. It would be hard to send soldiers to the middle east and tell them to leave religion out of it, religion is part of the peril, and part of what kills them, You would have suicide bombers without religion, and people often praise God before doing something violent, so an Atheistic Middle East would be a very unreal place. Also if you going to have World War III, somebody is going to have to start it, you don't usually have two sides that are equally at fault stumbling into a shooting war, usually you have one side that is the aggressor and the other side which resists that aggression, that is how it was with World War II.

 

[Reynard]

Tom, you seem obsessed to drag the other thread to this one! Leave those discussions over there so we can enjoy rebuilding Twilight!

I'd say as in the original setting. This gives the players an anchor to their predicament. They not merely dodging the big bombs or firestorms and have a home base of sorts to perform other duties from patrols looking for gangs preying on the survivors to rooting out enemy troops still attempting to invade to more mundane things as finding food and water sources or maybe rescue efforts. A rescue effort can have interesting challenges to a team and lead to other rewards.

Looked over the old book (Twilight:2000 version 2.2) and the weapons and equipment are standard stuff of modern war. No lasers or combat armor. Most is available from sources in Traveller. I need to soon read the background section deeper but there's no need for great amount of the original disaster though it can be important to the why's and hows of the players action in the present. An atomic war will have very large footprint long after the first event while a pandemic could leave the world intact except for a severely reduced human population. The idea though is something affected the world greatly making conventional warfare king of the battlefield and most modern weapons and equipment are failing, running low or disabled.