The Free City of Krakow
Twilight: 2000 Series Module

Robert Bodine

Reviewed by Rick Swan


Designed by William H. Keith, Jr., Frank Chadwick, and Loren Wiseman
Game Designers' Workshop P.O. Box 1646, Bloomington, IL 61701
Released: April, 1985
Catalog No. 501
Price: $7.00
Complexity: Experienced
Solitaire Suitability: None
****

The Free City of Krakow is Game Designers' Workshop's (GDW) first release supporting their new role-playing game (RPG), Twilight: 2000, a postholocaust game placing the player characters (PCs) in war-torn Poland as World War Three ends with a whimper, not a bang.

Krakow is an adventure module designed to get the PCs into trouble with the DIA, CIA, KGB, the local mob, the Krakow city government, and others. It is also an excellent package describing the free city of Krakow (that is, Krakow has declared itself a sovereign state), its environs, its major characters, power structure, militia, geography, recent history; virtually everything the experienced referee needs to step in and paint his own picture on the nicely detailed background GDW provides.

The module offers suggested plots for the adventure to follow, short narratives to set the picture on the road to Krakow, detailed descriptions of 17 non-player characters (NPCs) most with pictures!, 4 small maps and one 2 page spread map of the city and suburbs, a Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) of the Krakow ORMO (militia) with duty and action stations, encounter charts, lavish illustrations and ... complete rules on how to use helicopters in TW: 2000.

Okay, you say, its got everything but cold beer, but how does it play, you ask? Well, when it's done well; it works like a Mike Hammer novel. Krakow feels like Lisbon in the '30s, Casablanca in WWII, or any of several seedy worlds in Travellerg. it's got meetings in dirty little bars with people who may or may not be what they claim, ambitious underlings, megalomaniacs, beautiful women, star-crossed lovers, damsels in distress, and more spies than you can keep track of. And any one of them will kill you for the secrets you carry, if not the change in your pocket.

Krakow offers a great deal, but it requires a lot as well. This is not a spoon-fed, lead-you-by-the-hand programmed adventure. This is an adventure that requires prior reacting and prior planning. The referee must read, digest what is available, and make rational decisions about which sub plots and NPCs he will include. It is not practical to use all that is offered here in one adventure, but what is left over is still useful in other adventures.

My impression of Twilight: 2000 is that people will not get into it casually. Twilight: 2000 requires effort on the part of the players and referee. The Free City of Krakow is a rich treasure trove of support material for a referee who wants help, but wants to run his own game.

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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