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Yeah,
Your Twilight 2000 story reminds me of mine:
It was 1984...and I was a child of a single parent (folks got divorced and I was living with mom) and I was a navy brat up to that time, having lived for a while at NAS Rota. Well, during the summer, while my mom began her doctral work and worked at a private school teaching summer school to make ends meet, I was being baby sat by the sister of a wargamer and the daughter of a sci-fi nut.
Needless to say, I was in heaven...I read a lot of Analog and other science fiction, read through her brother's copy of Next War (with the admonition to be careful) and worked on wiring diagrams for model railroads. Well, I was reading Analog, and bam, came upon a review for a little game called Twilight 2000. I was hooked..Nukes..Russians, stuck behind enemy lines with a lot of firepower Well, now, this was for me! I was at this point, a pretty hard-core board wargamer at the tender age of 10 as I had tried D & D and found it too magic heavy for my taste, Oh, if only I had found Traveller first! But I digress....
I had to have this game...no really, and I searched high and low...when fate intervened. It was a year later...and my birthday was coming up...and I had discovered with a freind (Chris), the joys of Wheaton Plaza...and Hobbies and Arts game store. And there it was...the 1st Edition Box Set. Guess what Panzerfaust got for his birthday That and the Ruins of Warsaw module! I was hooked..no, really. (I say that a lot, don't I)..At $7 a module, my collection grew as fast as GDW could feed my addicition. When that wasn't enough, I wrote my own stuff...including using the name of a science teacher in Junior High as an NPC (a soldier being blackmailed by New America to betray our heroes!). First edition became second, and then Merc 2000. I still have about 90% of the items for the game (my copy of Last Battle had an accident in a move, sad)! And you know what...I still write for it...as part of a like minded group of folks..my wife accuses us of being the "Society for the preservation of the Cold War", but I think we do alright. Heck, my avatar here is from a T2K module! (Allegheny Uprising for those wondering) The game was a big influence on me, and my writing as a whole.
To be honest, it's fans that keep a game, any game going. I was lucky. I found Twilight 2000, then CBT, then Traveller and 2300, all with fanbases that let me do some amateur writing. I flirted with the idea of making a living out of it..then realized I might not be as good as I like to think I am.
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