Going Home

I've now been refereeing my Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign for three years in real-world time, covering considerably less time within the game world – only about two and a half months. During that time, the character's unit, consisting primarily of American personnel trapped behind Warsaw Pact lines after the disastrous Battle of Kalisz, has attempted to find its way back to NATO-controlled territory. In the course of doing so, they've visited the Free City of Kraków, traveled partway down the Vistula by boat, tangled with marauders, the GRU, and rogue elements of the Red Army, not to mention Polish nationalist groups seeking to rebuild their country independent of both sides in the Cold-War-turned-hot. Consequently, the characters' journey hasn't always followed a straight line.

Recently, though, their travels took on an added level of urgency, thanks to their picking up a radio message announcing Operations Order OMEGA. This order, issued under the extraordinary authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  heralded the evacuation of all US personnel in Europe, civilian and military. The schedule of the withdrawal provides for the departure on November 15, 2000 of as many US personnel as possible from Bremerhaven, West Germany to Norfolk, Virginia, USA. Since departure is largely on a "first come, first served" basis, the characters have decided that they must make it to Bremerhaven well before November, since they have no desire to remain in Europe.

The last few weeks of the campaign have been devoted to the characters' determined efforts to head westward into Germany. This has proven difficult, as what remains of organized Warsaw Pact forces are still operating in that area and, needless to say, are vastly more powerful than themselves. Marauders of all kinds are another obstacle with which they must contend. To date, their efforts have been slow and careful, with the goal of avoiding contact with any enemy forces they can – as well as any remaining NATO forces that hope to enmesh them the final, failing stages of their own operations in Eastern Europe. In short, they simply want to go home.

While it'll likely still be many more weeks of play before they succeed in reaching secure NATO lines and make their way safely to Bremerhaven (assuming they do so, of course), I've nevertheless started thinking about what the characters will find once they cross the Atlantic and return to the USA. In the earlier GDW canon of the game, America is in chaos, with authority – where it exists at all – is divided between Joint Chiefs of Staff, who assumed control after the president, vice president, the cabinet, and a large portion of the Congress were killed, and a civilian government reconstituted under unusual and possibly illegal means. The conflict between "MilGov" and "CivGov," as they are colloquially known, plays a major role in the post-war history of the country.

In general, I like this conflict. I think it works well in a game in which the characters are active duty military personnel, who would be torn between their loyalty to the Army and their oaths to the Constitution. Unfortunately, I don't think the way GDW sketched out the conflict was very good, nor do I think they considered its impact on Twilight: 2000 campaigns set in America. So, I've been trying to give these matters a great deal more thought, with a goal of creating something that's both plausible and playable. In particular, I want to present a situation that's a genuine muddle without obvious good guys or bad guys, where the characters will have sort out the question of whom to support and why for themselves.

I'm actually looking forward to this next phase of the campaign a great deal. While in Poland, the characters never settled down for any length of time. Every time a situation arose that threatened to tie them down, they did the best they could to extricate themselves. As their commanding officer, Lt. Col. J.D. Orlowski, regularly reminds them, "We're US soldiers first and foremost." There was never much chance they'd abandon their duties to the Army, so it was only ever a question of when not if they'd make their way homeward. Now that they are, I can start thinking about the bigger picture and how the characters might make a lasting difference in the post-nuclear world. I'm quite excited by the prospect.