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What you get: Twilgiht 2000 is a RPG, this volume is 320 pages in length, and softcovered. A few pages of color include the original box art, and ads that ran in Dragon magazine. There is no cover art, and the book is a yellow mustard in color. A few pages include info on the original products, articles on NPCs, and errata. The book is a direct reprint of the 1st Edition of Twilight 2000, and four adventures (The Free City of Krakow, Pirates of the Vistula, The Ruins of Warsaw, The Black Madonna).
The Rules: Twilight 2000 (T2K) uses a system of skills. A task is given a rating from easy to difficult. They player then modifys his skill by this, and must role under it. For example, they player wants to ride a horse at high speed across a open plain. His Equestrian (EQ) skill is 40. The GM states this should be an easy task. The play doubles his EQ skill, and must roll under 80. If he had a villager child on his back, and jumped the horse over a ravine, he would have a difficult task, and he would reduce his EQ. Combat uses the same system with range setting the difficulty. A hit location chart is used for both people, and vehicles.
Other rules include healing, disease (Cholera anyone?), WMD, foraging for food, vehicle breakdown, and distilling alchol (needed to run the vehicles). They do an excellant job of rounding out the world, showing how bleak things are.
The Good: The game is a modern military RPG, the artwork does an excellant job of presenting this. All the pics are top quality, and very grey. This does wonders to set the tone. The artwork for NPCs are not a good, but over all I would say the artwork does it job 110%.
Quite a few weapons are included ranging from pistols, to TOW missiles. There should be enough variety to keep most people happy. Over 20 vehicles are also present.
The Bad: This game is a direct reprint of original material. No changes were made. This causes issues a few things Seven books were combined, and no re-numbering of the pages were done. This book has over 300 pages, and it can be hard to find some things in a hurry. Finding info in a hurry is critical in a book this size and a proper index is lacking. Also some of the critical handouts are stuck in the middle of the book where it is hard to photocopy. A few of the rules (such as macro combat) were left in there original module, making it a little confusing to find. I was forced to give it a Style of 3, becuase of this.
The combat system is a little wonky. Some elements are a little broken. Damage, for example, is a little out of whack. This is not a bad thing. Medical care is almost non-existant in this world, and your characters are 'on screen' the whole time. If it was much more dangerous you would spend too much time rolling up characters.
The skills are abreaveated with two or three letter codes. Combat Rifleman is CRM for example. This can get a little confusing. Some of the vehicles and weapons presented never went into production (they were in development when the game was written), not a big issue unless you are a military purist. This is bound to happen, the Commanche helicopter for example got cancelled today, how many computer games did that wreck?
Some have complained about the origins of the war, again I really dont think the circumstances of the war (a East-West German plot) really matters. This are just nit picks, and do not really take away from the game.
Background: World War Three began in 1995, by 1997 the nukes were flying, by the year 2000 the war is winding down. NATO was attempting one last offensive into Poland when it was stopped cold. The character's unit, 5th Infantry Division, was destroyed. The war has ground civilization to a halt. Most towns have no direct communication with each other, America is fighting a civil war. Poland is full of maruaders, and rouge miltary units. Your characters are left to there own devices.
Over 20 background books were printed and supported via Ebay. If you dont like Poland, most of the US, and Europe is availible to play in.
The Adventures: Including the intro scenario "Escape from Kalisz" this book contains a total of five adventures. There is enough here to run a very long campaign. My favorite part of them is they are presented in a 'playground' format. The adventures present an area, the various factions in that area, and there motivations. Quite a few adventure seeds are included along the way. While there is an overall theme to them, there are things outside the metaplot that should keep any adventures busy.
Overall:
I was very impressed with this. I recomend it to anybody wanted a Post-apocalypse RPG should check this out. The adventures would be pretty easy to convert to any system and are worth the price alone.
