A coue of things... If you do not have skill you just roll the attribute. So if you do not have Ranged Combat you just roll your Agility die. So you always roll one die. With modifiers you always try to balance your dice. Meaning on a + modifier you always raise the lowest, on a - modifier you always lower the highest.
Cheers for clarifying that, I did mention those things in the video, but not as clearly as you've laid out (I think I say that you roll the Attribute and Skill if you've got it, without clarifying that you can just roll the Attribute itself), but I'll pin this comment to help anyone out who didn't pick up on my meaning.
Excellent overview! I have loved Twilight 2000 since 1e, and think this edition has beautiful mechanics, and further think the mechanics are the best I’ve seen from the mutant system, too.
Having gone back and run some 2e Twilight 2000 recently, I've really come to appreciate the rules, they've got a very clever way of enticing players to burn through their ammo. This version is more psychological, with characters suffering from the apocalypse in a more realistic way. Great game.
It's good that it's so easy to fail in alien because it's a horror game. You can also push rolls in Alien and it adds to your stress and the stress and panic system in that game is awesome.
I ended up playing an Android in the sample adventure we played (set in Hadleys Hope), and with the high strength and the fact that Aliens attacks often do Stress damage, I was terminatoring my way through a bunch of Aliens (the rest of the group were in trouble, and the personality I was given for my Android is that he would sacrifice his life for the humans), it was great fun, but I feel that the Android kind of broke the system.
Really! Cool to know, and makes me wonder if the Goth / Roleplayer crossover of Vampire and the 90's, has now been replaced by a Survivalist / Roleplayer crossover of the 2020's.
I just got my backer kit in the mail and started going over the rules, ending up a *bit* frustrated. The layout of the books isn't exactly optimal for learning rules. For example, character creation relies on quite a few places on things that are explained later on in the book(and this is not mentioned anywhere in the creation flow). It's one of those flip-back-and-forth sorta books. Your video definitely helped me understand the core fundamentals of the system a lot better. The whole deal with the ammo dice and whatnot is still mighty confusing though!
Glad to have been of help. I'm fairly impressed by the rulebook, but haven't dipped into it close enough yet to encounter the problems you've seen. Free League have definitely learnt from their Alien RPG though, as this fixes a load of problems with that particular game. But in modern RPG's, the king for layout so far has to be Cyberpunk Red, which just makes everything so darn easy to find and learn (and I'm not just saying nice things about them because they've said nice things about me). There is something about the Free League games though which are starting to feel a little production line to me, where there's not as much care and attention being paid to them as in other modern RPG's.
Thank you for putting together the video, very much appreciated. I think the chances of failure in Alien is mostly by design, you are not supposed to be a super hero or to survive. Additionally, rolling dice should happen only very rarely and when the situation is very critical. So indeed, under those circumstance, the chance of success should not be too high. It took me some time to adjust to the philosophy and understand it required a lot less dice rolling than say D&D. Try to look at it under the "we roll when it's desperate" perspective.
I can totally understand that, but the game doesn't seem to make that really an option, as many of the story building elements are tied into your dice rolls. In my experience (7 sessions playing through the adventure set before Aliens on Hadleys Hope), and the Aliens themselves suffered from the same problems as the players, in that an Alien would jump out at a player and roll to hit and fail. I had happened to choose the Android character, who gets to resist damage with his Strength unlike humans (Robust advantage), so I ended up as a total terminator, being able to slug it out one on one with Aliens, mainly because many of their special attacks are stress based, and androids don't suffer from stress. It's a great game, but I think that the version of the rules given in Twilight 2000 fix the problems (rolling bigger dice rather than more dice, so the chance of rolling a failure is reduced but not removed). The stress rules themselves are amazingly good.
I picked this up and it looks extremely good! I'll probably be converting some 1e materials to use with it, but I'm also excited about what Free League has in the pipeline for it (apparently a city set as well as a riverine / maritime supplement).
Great explanation, thank you sir. I'd love to play or to DM this one but I'm pretty sure my friends are not going to like it. Looks like it's a good successor to the Twilight 2000 name.
Was actually having that discussion within my group of friends this week. It's a great game, but not sure how many players will like playing it. It's definitely got a niche who will love it though.
Funny side note: I came here to learn about the dice system of the upcoming Blade Runner RPG and noticed the sound sample in your chapters sounds quite similar to the one in the Blade Runner opening sequence.
Errr, I might just have grabbed the sound from there. I was making a video with dramatic titles and grabbed the sound for that, and then continued to use it for these titles.
It's not a terrible update, but for all of the subjects it covers, the game seems very shallow as if only the most cursory thought was given to everything. But it does cover a lot of things that the original didn't, a fixes some problems of the original as well.
thanks for the video. Have you started playing it yet? Loved the original 1987 game idea and scenario but the actual system was a bit clunky my gaming group decided. So this sounds very interesting.
Got a recommendation on a different video to use this for a command and conquer Tiberian series game I'm running. Definitely like what I see so far, but would anyone have some advice on how to make some of the more fantastic elements of the setting? Tiberian fauna, cyborgs, power armor, etc
I don't have any advice personally, but it looks like there's a decent threat over on rpg.net about making T2K weird, so maybe that would be helpful? forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/making-twilight-2000-weird.891041/
This game might be relevant today with Russia having annexed Crimea and its troops recently sent to Kazakhstan to support that dictatorship. And of course about 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border threatening possible invasion. You could put Twilight 2000 in 2022.
Well, given the Twilight war involves both sides throwing nuclear weapons at each other, I really hope that 2022 doesn't become T2K. I think the rules hold up okay for a game based in the current day with NATO vs Russia, but the fact wounds are pretty serious and hard to heal in the game (because of the lack of facilities, medicines and the fallout) would probably need some houserules.
I've not played either of those, and Alien was in my mind as my group were playing it when I received my copy of T2K, so the rules seemed very familiar.
It's a massive improvement on the Alien RPG rules, but they still don't feel particularly well tested, I think a lot of house rules are in order to make them playable.
What I really dislike about Alien, Bladerunner, Vaesen and this is that there is almost no character developement when it comes to game mechanics. I know it´s supposed to be a fast story and play driven game but I would appreciate it if there was something to gain more than a few skillpoints. In Vaesen you can develope your HQ and this is neat but in Alien whatsoever there is nothing to achieve and also almost no differences between classes besides three talents that you barely use. This is ok for oneshots or short scenarios but a problem with longer campaignes I guess.
While I like a lot that Free League does, I keep feeling as if it's not been as heavily play tested as it might. In Alien I played an Android (pre built character), and discovered that due to many of the status effects caused by the Aliens being based around causing stress (which androids don't get), I was more like the Terminator than Bishop, standing toe to toe with Xenomorphs (my characters motivation was about protecting the Humans, so he put himself between them and danger whenever possible). And I really don't think it was supposed to work like that. I get the same feeling from some of the rules in Twilight 2k, that they haven't really been thought through.
The new version is very nice. But to a degree it feels kind of shallow in comparison to the older version (for example, equipment wears out, but you just need generic repair parts to fix them, feels very computer gamey). But it looks lovely, and the rules are pretty solid, so I don't hesitate in recommending it.
