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93 Games Studio is pleased to
announce we have acquired the license to produce the
official Twilight 2000 Version 3.0. We are excited about
this project and look forward to expanding this prolific
franchise in the coming years.
The new edition of Twilight will use
our present timeline of events and the current state of
world affairs as the precursors to a devastating and
chaotic WWIII. It will use an improved game system with
plans to include modernized and streamlined features
from older versions. Development is already underway and
plans are for a 2007 release. We are also planning
several fan features, such as a developer's blog and a
chance to become one of several signature characters of
the game.
UPDATE: We are releasing our first
installment of a series of background fiction pieces for
T2K13. I am not going to ruin it for you, you'll have to
read/listen for yourself.
SHALL NOT PERISH at
93 Games Studio
Twilight: 2013 is a roleplaying game
of post-apocalyptic survival and renewal.
Twilight: 2013 is...
We start with the title. Obviously,
we're making a successor to the venerable Twilight:
2000, and the year implies a timeline update.
For some parties, there'll be an
inevitable association with the Mayan calendar, but this
is purely coincidental. Really. Give us flying saucer
influenced Yucatan mushroom fueled prognostications of
apocalypse and I'll eat your freakin' skull.
But... "twilight." The first hit on
Dictionary.com gives us this:
"the soft, diffused light from the
sky when the sun is below the horizon, either from
daybreak to sunrise or, more commonly, from sunset to
nightfall."
That's important. Note that twilight
can be both the beginning or the end of a day, although
common usage focuses more on the latter. That's good for
our purposes. The common view is that a global nuclear
war will lead to the inevitable collapse of all human
civilization - Einstein's fourth world war quote. At the
end of the Last Year, humanity is poised on the edge of
a long, bloody slide into a second Dark Age. The
beginning of night. Twilight is here.
But... how far gone are we? Is
recovery possible? Are the pieces intact enough for us
to pick them up again? Yes, things are going to get
worse than they already are, but is it possible that the
fall will be halted before it drags us so far down that
we'll have to rediscover hundreds of years of progress?
Twilight can imply a coming new day,
too. Don't neglect that.
You can't have Hell without hope.
... a roleplaying game...
Roleplaying. For us and our fellow
gamers, it's the act of escaping our everyday lives
through a shared experience of interactive storytelling,
using characters of our own design - our spiritual and
intellectual offspring - as the heroes of the piece.
It's self-generated vicarious adventuring.
Characters. Characters are important.
Publishers achieve acclaim for systems and settings,
gamemasters receive reputations for their plots, but
players remember their characters. They remember what
they were able to do, albeit at one remove. They
remember heroism and treachery and pain and loss and
triumph and moments in the spotlight and things that
would look so damned good on screen.
We are making a world in which all of
those things can occur. We are shaping a place and a
time that darkly reflect our own daily surroundings, but
in which a small group of people with the will and the
capability can Make a Difference. We game because we
want that sensation, which the constraints of modern
society deny most of us.
Character first. Numbers a distant
second.
If a heroine dies in the forest and
no one sees her fall, does her sacrifice matter?
Yes. If the world is worth saving.
This is what we need.
... of post-apocalyptic...
Apocalypse. Ignoring the
Judeo-Christian writings and associated meanings, the
secularized definition is one involving widespread or
universal disaster or destruction.
Well, that's what we're bringing
about here.
We are bad people. We are the worst
mass murderers in future history. By our keystrokes, we
will enact the death of between 75% and 90% of the total
human population of the planet. The blood of over five
billion of our fellow men is on our hands. Cities will
burn at our whim. The great works on which we so blindly
depend for our daily comforts will be shattered by our
own words.
Fun, isn't it?
The trick here is to titrate the
destruction so it isn't total. No one wants to play "Rat
and Roach War" or wield a length of +2 rusty rebar with
a block of concrete on the end. The popularity of
Twilight: 2000 was, in large part, due to the fact that
the familiar world was blown up just enough to be rugged
and depopulated, but yet was still enough intact that it
wasn't impossible for the survivors to attain a level of
existence with frontier comforts.
As White Wolf has pointed out on
occasion (to no effect), real people encountering
monsters won't jump about and shout four-color
platitudes. They'll shit themselves. However, shitting
yourself isn't very fun, which is why we don't see WWGS
publishing Monster Hunter: The Pants-Shitting.
A similar principle applies here.
Yes, every character has seen (and almost certainly
done) horrible things over the past year. It's going to
leave a permanent impression on their souls. But we
don't need to linger on it to the point of turning off
the reader. That's an important distinction. Just as we
vicariously enjoy the cool stuff our characters do, we
always have the option to snap filters into place to
keep from experiencing the downside of their ordeals.
... survival...
In early 21st-century America,
virtually everyone has access to the basic necessities
of survival. For those who can't provide those for
themselves, extensive charitable organizations exist to
ensure that they receive at least the bottom tiers of
Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
In 2013, there are no charities left.
There are no vast surpluses of goods and money and time
and energy and help on which the needy can draw.
Individuals can depend only on what they can do
personally. If they can't provide for themselves, they
die. In small groups, some specialization - exchanges of
services - emerges. Larger communities have already
figured out some sort of semi-efficient division of
labor or they've collapsed under the weight of their
individual members' combined needs (or are about to).
We take a lot of basic services for
granted - "we," in this case, being the affluent
consumers who can afford to participate in this hobby.
Characters in this game won't be able to take anything
for granted. A not-insignificant chunk of the rules
material is going to address the tasks that characters
have to perform to keep themselves fed, housed, clothed,
medicated, and protected.
What does this mean for the setting
material? It means we need a world from which a
sufficiently capable character can extract the
necessities of survival, and maybe a few luxuries.
Sufficient resources - natural or remnants of man's -
have to be available, and in sufficient quantities to
last long enough to give us a fighting chance at
rebuilding. We aren't writing Caveman: 2015 here.
Should it be easy? Heck, no. Make 'em
work for it.
... and renewal.
This last part is the unexpected one.
Yes, the world is hurt. Bad. But is
it terminal? Are we ready to turn out the lights, close
the door, and leave it to the rats and roaches? No.
I repeat: you can't have hell without
hope.
In this case, the hope is that the
characters can salvage something from the ruins - not
just to sustain themselves, but to start rebuilding. The
war was last year, not a decade or a generation ago.
They aren't sitting around the campfires telling their
children of metal boxes that once moved on wheels and
glass spheres that lit the night without burning. They
remember the glory and the power of civilization in all
its finery, and while there may be a few barbarians who
like things as they are, most of the survivors are going
to want to recapture as much of what they've lost as
they can.
I say, let them try. Give them the
tools and stand back and see what they can do. Do not
assume that the only option is simple subsistence
followed by surrender to the night.
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