In 2022 I ran a campaign of Free League’s new edition of Twilight:2000. After my review I was excited to try it out, but decided to adapt the premise, instead casting my players as American soldiers and refugees of a nuclear war. The campaign involved a roadtrip throughout the mid-Atlantic United States, meeting separatist groups, civilians, and opportunist criminals, and asking some questions about what the fractured national identity of the US would become in the face of such a monumental crisis. After about eight months the campaign ended, somewhat abruptly; the characters had made their way to Lynchburg, Virginia, home of several key players in the country’s nuclear industry but also, more importantly to the characters, a summer camp with about 400 kids who didn’t know when they’d see their parents again. A strong majority of players voted to end the roadtrip there to protect the kids and, after wrapping up some of the local storylines I had prepped, we concluded.

As much as our story came to an end, the American Roadtrip campaign outline for Twilight:2000 is still one I think holds a lot of promise. As time moves on the campaign shifts from survival to reunification, and has the potential to run for quite a few sessions. In today’s Meet the Party, I’ll introduce you to four characters who also exist in the American Roadtrip setting, albeit a different part. These four characters were generated entirely randomly with the lifepath rules in Twilight:2000 and, as a result, this is hardly a balanced party. That said, the lifepath rules generate characters you otherwise would never have written yourself, and have generated for us the story of a bunch of New England misfits who are crossing into the state of New York with a hope, a prayer, and a few guns.