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Hello all!

I am a HUGE fan of the Alien RPG and bought the Twilight 2000 box set and it's a fantastic product....however, I am NOT a fan of all the added crunch in the rules.....the different die types, the 8 trillion 'war game' combat rules, etc., etc.

Has anyone come up with a document to use the Alien style YZE rules for TW2K? I was thinking about doing it on my own, but if there's already a set out there, I was curious.....

Thanks to anyone out there who reads this and has any insights!

I would start with the Year Zero Engine SRD which has all of the rules for *both* side by side and should/could make conversion a snap.

Wow.

As someone who played the 2nd edition back in the day, it's a bit of an eye-opener to see someone come in from the other direction.

To most T2K players, this is about as stripped down and light as it gets.

But, I suppose if you want even more trimming, you could just use the alien rules. Of course, without the aliens and such

The thing is that all of the Free League games use the year zero engine as a base, so they're all fairly easily convertable.

But you'll have to do the hard work yourself.

Since you're familiar with Alien, I'd stick with that as the basis and just "import" all the stuff from T2k into that.

To answer your original question, though, no... I don't think anyone's simplified the rules for T2k, since most people who play it already consider it borderline oversimplified

I agree that the best way could be to compare to the SRD and simplify a few things. This would basically be as simple as saying a combination of a few things, such as:
1) only the largest single modifier to apply, or
2) ignore some modifiers (e.g. have range only but ignore concealment / light modifiers in combat)
3) go really simple and say you only have advantage or disadvantage to a roll (which adds or subtracts a whole die from your pool rather than die step size changes)

Probably a better simplification to use would be FL's Walking Dead game rather than Alien - it would work really well with some small changes.

It's not immediately obvious to me that 4th edition is less "crunchy" than the earlier editions (ignoring 3rd ed, which was very detailed).

In 1st / 2nd ed you basically have a list of skills with a skill rating. You need to roll under this (d100 in v1, d20 in v2.2) to succeed at a task. If things are easier or harder you scale the base chance and you pre-write this scaled number of the space on your character sheet so you don't need to compute it on the fly (e.g. harder is x0.6 / x0.3 or x0.5 / x 0.25 for v1 and v2.2 respectively). There are not really many small modifiers for range, cover, movement (there are some, but not really) but rather you have these gross adjustments. And it's as simple as that. Sure 1st ed has damage vary with range and 2nd ed tracks you initiative dropping as you get hit (which is the best way I've seen out of all editions to manage combat damage and ability/will to keep fighting). My personal experience is that 2nd ed combat is faster but I like the CUF / suppression treatment in 4th ed enough that I think it's superior to play with.

Exactly.....I don't like using all the different die types, counting bullets, having to deal with the 'war game' rules in terms of counting squares and having a trillion different modifiers to keep track of largely based on that (this isn't a T2K specific thing for me personally, I like board games and I like RPGs, I DO NOT like combining them), etc., etc.

In essence, my first YZE game was Alien and honestly, most of the other ones I've seen seem to have added layers I'm not looking for. I have a fair bit of old 1st and 2nd Edition T2K stuff and while I haven't played it; the 2E seems fairly simple and straightforward....MUCH less crunch to me than the 4th Edition.....but people's minds work in different ways.

Exactly.....I don't like using all the different die types, counting bullets, having to deal with the 'war game' rules in terms of counting squares and having a trillion different modifiers to keep track of largely based on that (this isn't a T2K specific thing for me personally, I like board games and I like RPGs, I DO NOT like combining them), etc., etc.

In essence, my first YZE game was Alien and honestly, most of the other ones I've seen seem to have added layers I'm not looking for.

Well, if you look at the Year Zero Engine SRD here, you can easily convert most of your information:

Dice: Well, that one's easy. D=1D6, C=3D6, B=4D6 and A=5D6 (there's really no 2D6, sadly).
For converting NPC's and such, of course.

If you're making a character, just follow the formula here:
STARTING SCORES: Typically, you can distribute 14 points
across your attributes. You can assign no less than 2 and no
more than 5 points to any attribute.
KEY ATTRIBUTE: In many Year Zero Engine games, each ar-
chetype has a “key attribute.” You can have a maximum score
of 5 in your key attribute – other attributes are limited to a
maximum of 4.

For skills, you do this:
All skills range from 1-5 instead of D-A.
STARTING SKILLS: Typically, you can distribute 10 points
across your starting skills. In many Year Zero Engine games,
each archetype lists a number of associated skills. You can
only start the game with a skill level 3 in your archetype skills
– all other skills are limited to a starting level of 1.

Also, don't count bullets. Use the system you have in Alien (I forget which version that has).
But here's what it says in the SRD:
Ammunition for firearms can be handled in different ways,
depending on the technological level of the game setting and
level of complexity you want in your game. You can count ev-
ery bullet, handle ammunition via supply rolls (page 7), or
use the more extensive ammo dice system (see the sidebar on
page 19). Simple single-shot weapons need to be reloaded
after each shot. Reloading a firearm is a slow action.

Counting squares is nothing you have to do if you don't use battle maps. I come from a long line of theater of the mind games, so I usually just tell the players what distance enemies are at instead of having a battle map. "The russian that's shooting at you is 50 meters away", and that's easy since the ranges in the game are just x10 for meters range. (pistol with a range of 2 "squares" would have a range of 20, for example, since each hex is 10 meters across)

As for modifiers, just look at the SRD and use the modifiers there.
There's not a lot (in fact, I think it's the exact same as in Alien)

Honestly, though, just download the SRD. The conversion seems super simple. Hell, most of the "converting" will just be the A/B/C/D to Dice system. The rest can just be lifted directly from the SRD instead.
Combat and damage and such can be used directly from the SRD.
Sure, you'll have to convert the weapons and stuff like that, but it's mostly a case of ignoring much of the stuff that's listed on them (like; rate of fire, Reliability and Mag).

I think it would take you, at most, an afternoon of going through the SRD and converting the main stuff.

I have a fair bit of old 1st and 2nd Edition T2K stuff and while I haven't played it; the 2E seems fairly simple and straightforward....MUCH less crunch to me than the 4th Edition.....but people's minds work in different ways.

Well, one of the main complaints when the game was launched was the simplification. What can I say? People thought this version was too simplified.

Personally, I don't think that the 2nd (or 1st) edition rules were more difficult, but rather there were a LOT more specifics.
Like 6 attributes instead of 4. 46 skills(!) instead of 12. Each language was its own skill, for example.

And so on and so forth.

So, just... more rules. Not necessarily more crunchy (but, in my mind that means more crunchy)

If you don't like the Stepped Dice, then it's trivial to convert to Pool dice.

As for the modifiers.

There are three levels of modifiers.
-1 for a minor inconvenience
-2 for a big one.
-3 for something that's challenging

IT's possible to just eyeball stuff using this as a guide.

You might want to look also at the Blade Runner rules. It uses Step Dice but dissolves the mods into just Advantage (+1 dice) or Disadvantage (-1 dice)

But as others have said, this is not a tricky ruleset. It's consistent and once you get the eyeballing down, easy.