TOPIC: Twilight 2000: You are on your own now

STAY ALIVE
Your most immediate goal in Twilight:2000 is to survive. You will need to scrounge for food, ammunition and fuel for your vehicle from day one. You’re in hostile territory surrounded by enemy soldiers and marauders who will try to kill you on sight and take what’s yours. You need to keep moving, stay alert, and be prepared to fight for your life every day.

HELP THOSE IN NEED
You might be alone and on the run, but at least you have weapons to protect yourselves and the skills to use them. On your travels, you will meet people in even more dire straits than you. Starving refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs, civilians terrorized by some local warlord. It is up to you and your conscience whether to help those in worse need than yourselves, or leave them to their fate.

SEARCH FOR INFORMATION
If you want to stay alive, you’ll need fresh intel – about enemy troop concentrations, other US stragglers, marauders in the area, which bridges are blown and which towns have been hit by tactical nukes. Scout ahead, ask around. If you don’t know what you’re walking into, you won’t make it very far.

FIND A SAFE HAVEN
Safety is a rare thing in the world of Twilight:2000. But there are still some places, few and far between, where a semblance of order remains. Small communities or bases, islands of civilization in a sea of chaos, fighting desperately to protect themselves against the armies and marauders roaming the land. Maybe you can find such a place, and maybe they will let you stay there, at least for a while.

STAKE A CLAIM
Maybe one day, you can stop running. When you’ve gathered enough resources and found a location safe enough, you can create your own sanctuary in a world of war – a home base. The start of something new in the ruins of the old. But be warned, enemies will come knocking and you will need to fight to defend what’s yours.

FIND A WAY HOME
If your character is a soldier in a foreign land, you might be looking for a way to return home. It’s probably nothing but a pipe dream, but someday, somehow, maybe you can make it back.

RESET THE WORLD
The world has gone to hell, and most days are just about making it to the next alive. But what if there could be a way back? To heal the world, to re-awaken of civilization as we knew it? Mad prophets preach of a new dawn, rumours by campfires whisper of mysterious plans for rebooting the world. It’s probably all fairy tales, but what if some of it is true? What if the world can still be saved?

I believe you said you want to do archetypes rather than lifepaths? that's a shame I like the randomness of it

I'll see what others have preference for on the day I think then pick to complement the group.

rhodsey wrote:
I did. I’m trying to give the game as much of the original experience I had with it back in the day.

I acknowledge though that this stance is quite rigid. Therefore I am ok now with allowing life paths as long as everyone chooses this method. It has to be all in as life path generation takes much longer to do and I don’t want people sitting around waiting for character generation to complete.

I do think the archetypes are more generous than life paths too…

Sarge wrote:
That's fair. I'll write up a quick summary of how lifepaths work here for everyone to read then we can decide on the day. I'm happy to go with the majority just like that Lifepath gives your character a bit of history to play with rather than being a caricature and stereotype.


Archetypes.
You choose nationality then choose from a list of archetypes (the heavy gunner, the spook, the infantry man, the kid etc) then tweak from there.

Lifepaths
You basically simulate your characters life up till the point you take over. You can either roll at each step or choose options.

You first roll for nationality and how many attribute points you get to spread out.
You then roll for how you spent your childhood before starting at 18.
You choose your first career (either military or civilian). and can either roll for job or choose from list. You then roll for how many years you were in this career and whether you get promoted.
You then choose your second career (either switch to a new one or progress in your existing path). However at the end,as well as age, you also have a chance that war be declared AND you lose an attribute due to aging.
You keep progressing through careers with an ever increasing chance that war be declared or your lose attributes. when war be declared you stop and this is how you start your char (if civilian at the time you are assumed to have been drafted if you aren't a polish national).

So this way some people might be a fresh faced young soldier when war be declared (you rolled early) or you might have lived several lives before war starts.

You can do it as a group taking it in turn for each career with people stopping at the point war be declared for them.

rhodsey wrote:
There's a bit more to using Archetypes than specified earlier, in fact there's 19 steps! They are a foundation for a type of character with distinct options for each. Archetypes can even be used as a basis for Lifepaths with some wider variability.

Lifepath or Archetype, you should always start by having an idea of the type of character you'd like to play

Sarge wrote:
In my defence before the inevitable calls of bias I was doing that from memory without the book to hand!