BLUF: Title, basically.
Extra Context: A couple years back, I picked up the 4th edition of Twilight: 2000. For those don’t know, this is a post-apocalyptic RPG which was first released during the absolute peak of Reagan-era Cold War saber rattling. Unlike other, more fanciful or escapist takes on life “after the end”, Twilight skewed much more simulationist, with Tom Clancy levels of hard-on for NATO and Soviet personnel and equipment statistics. Think This War of Mine meets ARMA 3, moreso than Fallout or Wasteland.
I start with this preamble to communicate how different in tone this system is from the games of 5e DnD I’ve played and run in the past. While the latest version of the Twilight rules is, to my understanding, significantly less packed with grognard crunch than previous iterations, I still find myself overwhelmed with all of the various mechanics and slight rule variations. As an example I hope is illustrative, to fire a weapon classified as a machine gun, your character uses their “heavy weapons” skill, but they follow the “ranged combat” rules, because heavy weapons typically refers to explosive type weapons. You also have to remember whether the MG you’re using is classified as Light, Medium, or Heavy, as there are different requirements/penalties based on your character’s stance. In and of itself, not too bad, and it pretty much tracks with the considerations I would put in place if I were designing this system, but it becomes a bit much with the everything else of the system. Case in point: the entry for hand grenades states: “grenades use the same rules as heavy weapons, with these exceptions:” and then goes on to list 6 bullet points, which makes me think that it hardly uses the same rules as heavy weapons at all lol.
To be clear, I don’t necessarily want to jettison this level of crunch, as I think it’s integral to the tone the system is designed around, but fuck me if it isn’t a lot to keep track of, especially since I’ll have to shepherd potential players through it efficiently if I have any hope of actually playing a game.
With that being said, any advice from the field? Experience with Twilight would be a bonus (any edition), but if anyone has general tips for tackling new systems, I’m all ears.