“I never dreamed I’d ever hold the real Black Madonna in my hands someday”
excerpt from The Black Madonna expansion book
THE BLACK MADONNA was an iconic module of the first Twilight 2000 edition back in the days. Free League anticipated the eventual release of this module back when the kickstarter for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition took place, and the pdf was finally released in late 2023. The physical boxed set release followed in 2024 and it contains:
- The Black Madonna book (72 pages) with new rules, specifically more detailed rules for minefields and fighting in caves, new weapons, new encounters, a detailed overview of the Silesia region of Poland (geography, towns, factions), new scenarios and of course the Black Madonna campaign.
- A physical 8-page diary that serves as a handout for the players.
- New battle maps for both close quarters and town-level combat, and a travel map.
- 16 new encounter cards that you can swap with the equivalent cards of the core set deck. These have a nice feature: they are marked on their edge as pertaining to The Black Madonna module; this way you can easily take them out of the deck when you deem them not appropriate to the current phase of your campaign.
Also, everything mentioned above is sent to you in digital form when you buy the physical set.
The following is an excerpt from the module’s book itself:
In this expansion to Twilight: 2000, the PCs are given the opportunity to recover a religious and cultural artifact of tremendous value – the icon called Our Lady of Czestochowa, also known as the Black Madonna. […] In addition, this adventure presents the Referee with a wealth of material in Silesia, a region of southern Poland.
If you are running a group of players in the WW3 that never happened, this module offers a great campaign with key moments that are exhaustively detailed and broader stretches that are up to you (and your players) to create out of your imagination, or mold from the vast resources offered in the module itself.
You can also integrate this adventure in your ongoing campaign, even if you have already established a broader arch for your group. The search for the Black Madonna would be a great lure for your players, whether you use the hook provided in the book, or your own personal way of introducing the mystery of the sacred icon.
For my own game, this module feels like a fitting step in my players’ journey, and I think I can get a good story within the story out of its material. Also, I’m going with the hook provided in the module: it’s a great way to leverage the players’ curiosity, rather than pushing them straight into a new sub-adventure (also, it’s a very good hook, but no spoilers here).
The region described in the module is Silesia, and it so happens that my group has now just entered this region. The city of Praszka is briefly described in the module as being inhabited by scroungers, looters and marauders, but I’ll stick to what I came up with in my campaign as it has been so far a cornerstone of the narrative. On the other hand, I intend to use a lot of what this module offers to progress my campaign.
So, from now onward, The Black Madonna expansion is officially part of my campaign.
You can purchase The Black Madonna boxed set on Free League’s online shop here.
Twilight: 2000 4th Edition and all Free League’s products con be found here.
