A Look at the World War III That Wasn’t

In the midst of a Cold War that at times seemed like it might turn hot at any moment, a game company known for its tabletop wargames and its science fiction tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG), Traveller, created a TTRPG set in a world broken by a limited nuclear war and full-scale conventional war between the United States and its NATO allies and the Soviet Union pand its Warsaw Pact allies. I got my first look at Twilight: 2000 in the late 1980s when a friend let me look at his copy of the game.

At the time of the game’s initial release, the game’s vision of a future World War III was set in the not-too-distant future. Scary stuff really. The game featured a post-apocalyptic setting where war had not entirely destroyed mankind, but had definitely derailed civilization and made survival very, very difficult. While you could set your game in any location affected by World War III, the default setting was Europe. Specifically, Poland. The player characters were likely to be members of the military that were freed from their command structure by the fact that their unit had more or less disintegrated and ceased to exist as an organization. Evasion, escape, and survival would be the immediate concern of the player characters. After that? Perhaps forming or joining a community of survivors and rebuilding in the wake of the war. Perhaps finding a way back home. Perhaps setting themselves up as warlords or pirate kings/queens and carving out a place for themselves in the new world created by the war.

I never actually played the game with my friend, but I enjoyed reading the game material that included fictional accounts from soldiers in a small group of survivors from the 5th Infantry Division. I also enjoyed creating some characters for the game (as I did for Game Designers’ Workshop’s or GDW’s Traveller game where your prospective player character could die during character generation). The game was very “crunchy” with rules to account for a variety of circumstances and situations that might come up during play.

My understanding is that the latest version of this game from the 1980s created after the demise of GDW is more of a “rules-light” game than previous editions of the game. With that being said, it is also my understanding that the game is “crunchier” than many of the TTRPGs created by the publisher, Free League Publishing, even though it uses the company’s more rules-light Year Zero Engine system.

Of course, the year 2000 has came and went (thankfully without a global, thermonuclear catastrophe), so this game has an alternate history setting that requires that you accept the setting where a far-darker, far-more-ominous future was mankind’s fate. As someone that lived during the Cold War, it isn’t difficult for me to imagine all the “what ifs.” While it might be a troubling setting given all the conflicts taking place in the world now, at least the game is set in the past and involves two superpowers that were even more powerful, better equipped, and more poised for such a catastrophic war.

For a history of the game and a glimpse of the real-world history and the alternate history of the game’s fictional setting, check out this video (click the first link below) on the WarLore YouTube channel. And if you’re interested in buying the game, you can go to the Free League Publishing website (click second link below).

“Twilight 2000 4e RPG & The History of Wargaming RPGs”

Free League Publishing - Twilight: 2000

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/games/twilight-2000/