Like Ian D mentioned, this product is a gem, well worth the money. Brought to you by the two people behind the "Remnants" comic http://www.remnants-comic.com and featuring some art from the same person responsible for the art in the comic, Tampete brings something sorely lacking in the DC, a city setting for your campaign. The only other city setting is New Centennial City from the 2nd Ed. Sin City set of adventure books.

To quote my own post about this book from the Dark Conspiracy the RPG forum, "...the volume of material in this sourcebook really does make it a sourcebook that you would use for long term campaigns. New Dark Minions, Dark Lords, Dark Tek, some new careers (some specifically for Tampete but I think they could be converted easily enough), new proto-dimensions, tables for urban encounters, darkling activity, demongrounds, merchants and more, 101 plot seeds and a glossary. This sourcebook provides lots of material and in my opinion can hold it's own against any of the original sourcebooks."

Artwork is generally of a much better standard than a lot of the art in DC products released in the 1990s, the layout starts with an overview and follows through from a description of the areas making up Tampete to overviews of factions & personalities, Dark adversaries, new proto-dimensions and then an appendix with many of the things I mentioned in the paragraph above. Then to finish the product the authors have included a glossary and a four page index. The book is liberally sprinkled with artwork, headers featuring images reminiscent of the headers from the old Demonground ezine and some centrespread art that would not look out of place on a GM's screen.

Let me start by saying that I supplied additional material for this product so I am a little biased, however I am also a long time Dark Conspiracy fanboy and even if I hadn't made a minor contribution to this product, I'd still be biased towards it!

Anyway, here are my thoughts... SPOILERS AHEAD Likes: The cover is great, having the Bhuta driving a big rig that's chasing down a fleeing pickup truck is quite evocative and reminds me of the covers of the 1st edition adventures (however I do think that perhaps the 3Hombres logo should have been somewhere on the front cover as well).

Artwork/illustration was good, especially the character portraits for Darien Carter and Doug Wiley. I'd go as far as to say that the artwork is in general, better than some of the artwork in GDW's publications. I'd be happy to see David Lee Ingersoll do the art/illustrations for future products. I'll say it again, I think the front cover is great!

Breaking the adventure down into scenes works really well, it makes everything easier to read in the first place as well as making it quicker to reference when you actually run it for the Players. Scene Three I think it particularly good, the description of the market is pretty well done and illustrates such an important facet of the daily life of Proles and the lower level Mikes. I really appreciate the author/s taking the time to give alternate ways in which the PCs can get involved (Scene One). Even if the Referee didn't want to use them, at the very least it'll probably make them think about ways to get their Players involved. I'm not one for the "you all meet in a tavern and get offered a job to save the Duke's daughter" style of getting PCs involved, I like seeing creative methods for bringing the PCs into an adventure. I liked Scene Eight because I remember a lot of road trips here in Australia where idle chatter made the trip more bearable (Australia, a wide open land with hardly any people, you could travel 250km (155 miles) on a road and see no signs of human habitation in some parts of the country - and that's the populated regions!)

I really, really like the idea of Salvage Inc. as a potential ally of the PCs. It's a very potent tool for getting the PCs into other adventures or even to get them employment where they won't have to make up excuses for why they weren't at work because they were secretly fighting big evil monsters from another dimension. I want to run 'Detour' in my DC campaign, modified somewhat to take place in the UK, so that I can have a Salvage Inc. style group for my own games. I just wish I had thought of it years ago!

Dislikes: As mentioned in the other review, the end feels a little rushed. I think it feels rushed because it seems to have less overall detail than the previous Scenes. By that I mean that earlier Scenes add a lot to the background and to the story in general. The fight against the Bhuta is barely mentioned and feels a little too sparse (although Scene Eleven is a nifty wrap-up for the adventure as it adds some potential wrinkles to the whole affair). I'm not saying the author/s should have described everything the Bhuta and Darbas would do, but as the Bhuta is described as having a 'theatrical streak', perhaps a few lines describing these theatrics could have been included?

I know space/time/copyright considerations are important but I thought the Darbas and Gargoyles warranted a description like the Bhuta recieved rather than a reference to the 'Dark Races' book. I accept that most Dark Conspiracy Referees are going to have the Dark Races book but having everything in the one booklet for the adventure just makes life easier for the Referee and it also helps out those Refs who don't have the Dark Races book. I think this is probably the worst of my Dislikes because it has the potential to limit what the Referee can do if they don't have the Dark Races book.

The map of the Crystal Lake Lodge could have been a little bigger and although it could be enlarged when printing it out, I think it warrants a larger space on the page because the map is trying to cover quite a large area (I like to have two maps, one for the Players and one for me so that I can scribble Referee notes on it so a map with larger detail suits me)

In conclusion, I like it a lot and especially want to use a Salvage Inc. style group for my DC games. Even with the minor Dislikes, I'll happily buy other 3Hombres adventures if they're like 'Detour'. I also think 'Detour' works as a great teaser for the upcoming re-launch of Dark Conspiracy and overall was a damned good way to publicise the re-launch.

Warning - long post. As discussed in some Twilight: 2000 forums many months ago, the background history is good but in some places feels contrived. Some assumptions have been made about various countries & how they fared in WW3 that indicate little knowledge about the places involved. The lack of knowledge of some areas is really shown when referring to the 'Northern Territories' in Australia, there are no Northern 'Territories', there is only one. Any look at a map of Australia would have shown that. There is a reliance on the fallacious 'Nuclear Winter' theory to cause bad weather in Europe so as to further the decline of civilization that probably wasn't really needed (things were bad enough already).

Another irritating aspect is the constant switch between metric & imperial measurements so we have statements like this "The winter of 2012 blankets England and Ireland in over 10 ft of snow and temperatures below the 0° C mark..."

There is the inference that only the USA is involved in War on Terror in Afghanistan & Iraq, little mention is made of the (sizeable) British force in those regions let alone the other nations like Germany, Poland or Mongolia. There are just a few brief comments about 'coalition forces'. There seems to be little understanding of the "British" Royal Family (refered to as the English Royal Family, perhaps the authors are unaware that the United Kingdom AKA Britain, comprises four countries, England & Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales).

This is further compound the comments on the Pope taking shelter in 'Ireland'. He commandeers St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh. Ireland is comprised of two seperate countries, the Republic of Ireland AKA Eire and Northern Ireland. So where was the Pope exactly when the war started? In the Roman Catholic Republic or in the mixed Protestant & Catholic country of Northern Ireland? Armagh is in Northern Ireland so he is obviously in Northern Ireland but that isn't made clear by refering to the whole land mass as Ireland. They also seem to be unaware that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom & they fail to make any mention of that country when giving background information on the UK.

There is a reference to the USA being the last Superpower on Earth which hides the fact that China is still very much a Superpower even if it hasn't been as overt on the world stage as the US. Background conditions in Korea after 2013 get given more coverage than those in China, even though China has invaded South-East Asia and is one of the nations attacking the USA.

Their research on Australia was threadbare as already noted in their reference to the Northern 'Territories' but highlighted by their reference to a British warship sinking off the coast near Garden Island. There are two places in Australia called Garden Island, one is an actual island less than 5000m off the coast of Western Australia. Most of the island is a Royal Australian Navy base. The second Garden Island is also a base for the RAN, it used to be an island within Sydney Harbour in New South Wales (the other side of the country) but land reclamation has seen it joined to the mainland. Seeing how this base is within Sydney Harbour and not on the coast, you could safely assume that Twilight: 2013 is refering to Garden Island in Western Australia... but only if you know something about Australia geography or bothered to check a map. Their statement that Australia uses the Leopard 2 tank surprises me greatly. The decision to purchase the Abrams tank for the Australian Army was a well known fact in 2006.

Another minor irritation is that the world background gives details on how South Africa survived & how it has become a major manufacturer of weapons yet we see none of these weapons mentioned in the equipment lists. For a gaming company that has access to potential Players/buyers from around the world via the internet, the focus still seems to be on Players from the USA with more background devoted to the conditions of post-WW3 USA than any other nation.

And this statement still irritates me greatly, "Fans of Twilight: 2000 will notice that Twilight: 2013 has evolved into a rich character-based role-playing experience, set against a military backdrop, with both military and civilian paths from which to choose." The original game was exactly that in the first place, 2013 hasn't evolved the game (only the timeline and equipment lists), it has simply continued it. Granted, more rules are available to offer guidelines for PC interaction in some situations not considered in earlier versions of the game but 'evolved into a rich character-based role-playing experience is a stretching the idea a bit too much.

However, this statement from one of the authors makes me truly angry, "The targeted audience (yours truly included) of the earlier editions was mostly wargaming grognards..." This statement has little basis in fact, it has been surmised from the contributions of a small group of fans on various forums who in general, weren't able to get a face-to-face game happening (for many different reasons) and instead spent their time further developing the gameworld and detailing the various Orders of Battle. The majority of Twilight fans were RPG players from the start and any discussion with them about their games reveals a very "...rich character-based role-playing experience, set against a military backdrop, with both military and civilian paths from which to choose".

The artwork throughout the core rules PDF ranges from cool to crap with one of the worst images (in my opinion) making the people in it look like midgets. Unfortunately for me, they choose to use that image as the lead-in to most chapters. And for all the effort that went into making some truly evocative artwork for the rule book, the character sheets are rather bland.

To be fair though, their treatment of how MilGov and CivGov in the USA come about is, I think, far better than the original game. The designers provide hard information on how easily a modern Western city can collapse simply because transport itself is not available to bring in all the items a modern city needs to survive. I really liked the twist on the Central American druglords giving up coca production to focus in coffee production as the new cash crop of choice.

I do appreciate the effort the designers went into to make the environment more of a factor in the game, with numerous ways in which noise, lighting, precipitation and wind can affect the outcome of an event. There are also rules for having psychology play a larger part in a PC's or NPC's life and rules for repairing and scavenging to keep equipment from degrading to the point of uselessness. A major plus is the inclusion of rules for rebuilding damaged structures or constructing new ones. There is a good 'cinematic' optional rule that allows a Player to sacrifice a piece of equipment (chosen by the GM) in order to prevent injury to their PC. They also include some good rules for animal training.

I would have rated this higher but the lack of research really bugs me considering how many fans from around the world were willing to offer contributions and how easy it is to do research thanks to the internet(personal idiosyncracy). Typos and bad grammar I can forgive but lack of research and crap artwork I can't.

Any book that allows me to change a monster into something that the Players haven't got much experience with will always get used in my games. I have a group of Players that includes some who have been gaming for ten years or more, thay have a lot of accumulated knowledge about the monstrous manual entries so they have an almost instinctual ability to know a creatures weaknesses. This book changed that.

I like this product because it gave me a lot of 'food for thought', I run a sporadic DnD campaign that doesn't allow Players to take exotic races until they have actually been encountered as friends, foes or neutral. I know that most of my Players have access to the standard AD&D and DnD info on the Drow but they don't have access to this book so far. For me this means that encounters with Drow can include Prestige Classes and magics etc. that they have no knowledge of, so rather than worshipping Drizzt and all his little Drow friends, the Players might actually start to fear them again.

What follows is the comment I left regarding the first book of this series, Volume 1 :-

"I like this product because it presents game stats as a seperate item to the main body of info and with each weapon having its own page (i.e. you don't have two weapons sharing one page), you only have to print out the stuff you want. This also makes updating a hell of a lot easier as the author doesn't need to reformat the entire book and the user doesn't have to print out pages featuring weapons they have previously printed out. The author has also been quite happy to include good, clear pics to show what the weapon looks like.

Also, having spent some time in the army, I get irate at game books that don't bother to research the facts. I figure that if I can go and buy a book from the local bookshop that gives me plenty of factual info, why the hell can't a company producing support products for their rpgs get the same info. Maybe I'm too picky but if I've spent money on an rpg product that ends up being less professional than what I could do myself, then I've wasted my cash. I did NOT have any such complaint with this series, in fact, I look forward to other titles in this series and only hope the author can get the time to put out more of them soon!"

Too all of that I would like to add for this product:- At last, one book that gives me the biggest compilation of RPG-7 ammunition, 40mm low velocity ammunition (for M79, HK69, M203 etc type launchers) I have seen for a long time and some seriously thoughtful game rules for chemical weapons (because my opinion on the rules applied by D20 Modern to chemical weapons is for the authors of D20 Modern to get gassed and see what REALLY happens)

I like this product because it presents game stats as a seperate item to the main body of info and with each weapon having its own page (i.e. you don't have two weapons sharing one page), you only have to print out the stuff you want. This also makes updating a hell of a lot easier as the author doesn't need to reformat the entire book and the user doesn't have to print out pages featuring weapons they have previously printed out. The author has also been quite happy to include good, clear pics to show what the weapon looks like.

Also, having spent some time in the army, I get irate at game books that don't bother to research the facts. I figure that if I can go and buy a book from the local bookshop that gives me plenty of factual info, why the hell can't a company producing support products for their rpgs get the same info. Maybe I'm too picky but if I've spent money on an rpg product that ends up being less professional than what I could do myself, then I've wasted my cash. I did NOT have any such complaint with this series, in fact, I look forward to other titles in this series and only hope the author can get the time to put out more of them soon!

I found this product very useful for my city-based campaign, it saved a lot of hours were I would have had to draw up floorplans. It's formatted in HTML so that the load up time is literally a second or two unlike the 5-10 seconds that a .pdf doc can take. My only complaint would be that there are only a few large, multi-storey buildings but there are 35 individual buildings ranging from small to large so you are likely to find almost one building for nearly every occassion.