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Those of you who played TW2000 1e probably not so fondly remember the abortion of a game that GDW put out called TRAVELLER 2300 (in 1e your characters had a 50:50 chance of starting the game either with 1 Hit Point or 0 Hit Points [aka DEAD] thanks to stellar proof reading!) ...

For those that managed to avoid that particular disaster, you may be familiar with 2300 AD, 2e or 3e.

Why is this relevant?

Well, I cannot recall for 2e (and I don't have 3e) but for 1e the plainly stated position in material available from GDW at the time (can't remember whether it was in their magazine or in the game itself) was that T2300 was the future of TW2000.

Yes, this was after the fact, but gives an idea of the line of thinking the GDW staff had as regarding the consequences of the Twilight War.

From memory (and I know someone will correct me if I am wrong), but recovery was assumed to be relatively quick in a technological sense.

This is, of course, completely at odds with the description of Poland in all editions and is hinted at by the stories of the survivors of the 5th Mech Division in all editions, who are based in Poland.

So, yes, Poland is something resembling a howling wilderness, as its been fought over for 5 years or so and heavily hit by Strategic AND Battlefield Nukes ... and that's the experience of the POV characters as well.

The rest of the world? The rest of Europe, even?

Given the supposed bad comms, assume the 5th Division guys really don't have a clew.

So, what is the rest of Europe like? Many areas will have been badly hit, mostly with Strategic nukes to major military targets. But the further away from the front lines the less likely they are to have been hit by Battlefield nukes ... and the more likely actual governments are to have survived in some form or another, and the more likely something resembling a function (if badly crippled) economy beyond subsistence farming is to exist.

Something similar applies to the CONUS and Canada outside of the immediate major target zones.

As for Central and South America and most of Africa, it's unlikely many of those countries will suffer any direct attacks (except those with major oil facilities ... and them only those facilities) and, yes, the disruption of international trade and of oil supplies will cripple their economies but won't actually destroy the infrastructure.

Lots of Asia will be the same (well, not Japan, the Koreas, Taiwan, and probably not China and Vietnam) with their economies crippled but not actually destroyed.

And how much do the grunts of the 5th Mech Division know about all of this? Bugger all ... less than nothing, except, possibly, rumours.

So take a lot of the 'Mad Max Howling Wilderness' shtick that the game presents as being unrepresentative outside of Poland.

YMMV,

Phil McGregor
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Author: Space Opera (FGU); Rigger Black Book #1 (FASA); Orbis Mundi 2, The Marketplace, Ithura & Porthaven, Fantasy Europe (PGD); Road to Armageddon & Supplements, Displaced, Audace ad Gloriam, Farm, Forge & Steam (PGD).

Death during character generation was an old feature of Traveller, not only 2300.

France is the major power in 2300 because they were not involved in the 2000 war. Not nuked like in 4th Ed.

Traveller: 2300 (1986)

Into the power vacuum following the war stepped the only European nation not ruined by the fighting: France

Well, 'Howling Wilderness' was in fact a GDW supplement for T2K describing an environmental cataclysm in the US, if I recall (and a supplement that seems to have come in for a lot of criticism).

But I think it was always suggested that Germany and Poland were the most severely devastated regions on the planet, due to the combination of strategic and tactical nukes, conventional air strikes and high intensity ground combat

Death during character generation was an old feature of Traveller, not only 2300

No, you're missing the point.

The character generation system of TW2300 1e 1st Printing was such that you could only create a character who had EITHER 1 HP OR was DEAD

It wasn't intended to be that way, it was sloppy proof reading. AFAIR character generation wasn't supposed to kill 50% of characters, it just did.

Since Australia (in those pre-internet days) was at the arse end of the universe, it was months after shelling out good money for TW2300 that it became usable when the first errata arrived ... by which time all of my gaming group was so p****d off with the whole thing that we'd given up on it.

Phil McGregor
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Author: Space Opera (FGU); Rigger Black Book #1 (FASA); Orbis Mundi 2, The Marketplace, Ithura & Porthaven, Fantasy Europe (PGD); Road to Armageddon & Supplements, Displaced, Audace ad Gloriam, Farm, Forge & Steam (PGD).

TW2300...? I must have missed that game completely!

I played (the somewhat misnamed) Traveller: 2300 (from 2nd ed. known as — the rather better chosen — 2300AD) quite extensively back in the day, but I was completely unaware of a Twilight: 2300 game!

Well, 'Howling Wilderness' was in fact a GDW supplement for T2K describing an environmental cataclysm in the US, if I recall (and a supplement that seems to have come in for a lot of criticism).

But I think it was always suggested that Germany and Poland were the most severely devastated regions on the planet, due to the combination of strategic and tactical nukes, conventional air strikes and high intensity ground combat

Indeed, and I have it somewhere and, of course, instead of the US being an actual 'Howling Wilderness' with no organised government at all, it actually had two competing governments - MilGov and CivGov ... and, even with the insurrectionists of New America, between the two they controlled most of the surviving populace to one degree or another.

Yes, the situation sucked majorly, but it wasn't an actual 'howling wilderness' ... and, as I pointed out, the assumption of the GDW staffers who eventually wrote TW2300 was that recovery was fairly quick.

Phil McGregor
========
Author: Space Opera (FGU); Rigger Black Book #1 (FASA); Orbis Mundi 2, The Marketplace, Ithura & Porthaven, Fantasy Europe (PGD); Road to Armageddon & Supplements, Displaced, Audace ad Gloriam, Farm, Forge & Steam (PGD).

TW2300...? I must have missed that game completely!

I played (the somewhat misnamed) Traveller: 2300 (from 2nd ed. known as — the rather better chosen — 2300AD) quite extensively back in the day, but I was completely unaware of a Twilight: 2300 game!

Darn. My memory is going, and I'm only 66!

You are, indeed, quite correct. We were generally so p****d off with the rubbish first printing of TRAVELLER 2300 1e that we generally forgot about it entirely ... or tried to ... however, it was definitely meant to be a 'sequel' to TW2000 despite my rubbish memory!

Phil McGregor
========
Author: Space Opera (FGU); Rigger Black Book #1 (FASA); Orbis Mundi 2, The Marketplace, Ithura & Porthaven, Fantasy Europe (PGD); Road to Armageddon & Supplements, Displaced, Audace ad Gloriam, Farm, Forge & Steam (PGD).

Ah ... then it makes sense.

I suspect GDW had some idea to follow some T:XXXX naming convention, which led them astray in choosing a name that led most people into believing it was a game set in the TRAVELLER universe, not the TWILIGHT timeline...

The gap between 2000 and 2300 was played out by GDW as a moderated mega game.
http://www.waynesbooks.com/TheGame.html
That then became the backdrop for the follow-up game.
Shame there's no detailed play-through recorded, but I don't think there was a 'quick' recovery to get to 2300. Apart from France, it was mostly the rest of the world that benefited. MilGov and CivGov are listed as being played by separate players so they probably took some time to unify.

Those of you who played TW2000 1e probably not so fondly remember the abortion of a game that GDW put out called TRAVELLER 2300 (in 1e your characters had a 50:50 chance of starting the game either with 1 Hit Point or 0 Hit Points [aka DEAD] thanks to stellar proof reading!) ...

For those that managed to avoid that particular disaster, you may be familiar with 2300 AD, 2e or 3e.

Why is this relevant?

Well, I cannot recall for 2e (and I don't have 3e) but for 1e the plainly stated position in material available from GDW at the time (can't remember whether it was in their magazine or in the game itself) was that T2300 was the future of TW2000.

Yes, this was after the fact, but gives an idea of the line of thinking the GDW staff had as regarding the consequences of the Twilight War.

Not quite, and it wasn't in the rulebooks of 2300, Phil (The only mentions of T2K 1E are in the are in the explanation about The Game, giving Frank and Tim's Bona Fides). The Game has been discussed by Marc a few years back, as well.
It draws from the same source material about the military, but was a compete restart from the beginning of WW III, per the T2300 1E Ref's Manual, inside front cover. Marc has mentioned this more recently, including producing some of the rules documents he still has for it.

(I love having the PDFs... made double checking my memory much more efficient.)

You, Like I did before Marc corrected me, have assumed they didn't reinvent the WW III setting - but they did. There are implications that the 2nd edition T2K was grounded in The Game, but even that's purely conjecture unless you can get Marc, Tim, or Frank to clarify.

Note that the 2 revised don't change the setting from 2.0, but does alter the mechanics considerably - from 1d10 ≤ Skill × DiffMod to 1d20 ≤ (Stat + Skill)× DiffMod, and from 3 to 5 difficulty labels (not counting "Yes"="Auto" and "No"). Note that for purists, Marc does not make the 2.0 available on the CD, only 2.2; I don't know why not. (I've asked. and to borrow a quote, "He's as tightlipped as an Aldebberan Shellmouth!")