[Targan]

Originally Posted by agrikk

Are any convoys organized to get folks back to the West Coast? with what fuel?

Ha! Umm, no, I don't think so. Most or all of that journey would be done at a level of technology of the steam era or earlier (and I don't mean the time before Valve's excellent online games delivery system). As in, wagon trains. I think if MILGOV or CIVGOV wanted to send a small team to the west coast it would be a pretty major undertaking. Sending, say, 15,000 people? It's... well it's just not going to happen.

I could see a lot of semi-official organisations springing up to try to organise people into groups with mutual interests, traveling from Norfolk to certain far away locations for instance. These would probably (at first) have official sanction and some official assistance. I think MILGOV would try really hard to keep things organised and civilised around Norfolk at first but by mid to late 2001 the authorities would be losing their grip on all but the specified east coast enclaves.

By far and away the best source of canon information about conditions and locations along the east coast from Norfolk to New Jersey post-Going Home is the mini-sourcebook A Rock in Troubled Waters in Challenge Magazine issue #42. It is 9 pages long and far, far more detailed than, say, Howling Wildernes. It is set in early 2001 and contains notable remaining MILGOV units, major militia and maurauder groups and even some of the remaining naval assets being operated by MILGOV between Virginia and New Jersey.

This is the opening section of A Rock in Troubled Waters:

"The coastal settlements around south Jersey's shores form a region of small communities that has managed to survive the war relatively intact. This is one of the more stable and lucrative areas held by MILGOV. This article provdes a detailed reference of the area, centering on the Intracoastal Waterway - the most reliable local avenue in the year 2001 - used by slow-moving military and civilian traffic. It is also designed to tie the Going Home module with any adventure set in the northeastern United States. A Rock in Troubled Water (set in early 2001) details and territory and notable clusters of civilization from the Delaware Canal and Cape Henlopen in Delaware, north and east across Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Perth Amboy. This includes Philadelphia, Trenton, Wilmington, Cape May Naval Base, Fort Dix, and Tom's River Naval Station. Also covered are the specifications on several "brown water navy" vessels, as well as the state government and militia system for New Jersey (as organized by MILGOV)."

The Challenge magazine articles and mini modules for T2K were a huge resource of canon material (and they ARE officially canon). Discussions like the ones contained in this thread are likely to fall into two main divisions, those of people with the Challenge mags and those without.

When I was running that part of my last campaign involving the PCs traveling from Norfolk to NYC A Rock in Troubled Waters proved absolutely invaluable. Other Challenge articles very useful for east coast play include Rifle River (covers Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and has excellent details on a big chunk of the remnants of the USCG and the 43 Military Police Brigade), Pennsylvania Crude (covers a largely civilian operation to uncap an old Pennsylvanian oil well), and Strangers in a Strange Land (an excellent mini-adventure about a maurauder band made up of escaped WARPAC POWs roaming around New Jersey). They are all contained in the Challenge mag issues 25 to #50 (issue #50 contains a fantastic index of all the articles to that point). I haven't completed my own index of the issues past 50 yet and I don't have the time right now to trawl through them. There are probably other mini-sourcebooks and mini-modules relevant to this discussion contained in issues #51+.

I would also direct your attention to the essay in Challenge issue #25 titled What Do We Do Now? which offers some great ideas about the choices soldiers returning from the Twilight War are faced with. The article Wilderness Travel and Pursuit contained in Challenge issue #28 is also very useful. Look, there are 55 T2K articles and mini-modules contained in Challenge issues 25 to 50. There are probably a similar number of T2K articles and mini-modules contained in Challenge issues 51 to 77 (the last one published). If you don't have this excellent source of T2K material then I can't urge you strongly enough to obtain them.