The Solved Unsolved Mysteries of Twilight: 2000

 Twilight: 2000, the TTRPG where you play soldiers stuck in the disintegration of the world in the wake of nuclear war, has gone through a number of incarnations over the years.  The original version came out in 1984, and the start of the "Twilight War" was 1995, a comfortable time away.  However, with the collapse of the Cold War era that was central to the game, a revised 2nd edition came out to alter the timeline to fit recent events (something wholly unnecessary in my eye) before falling prey to the collapse of the publisher, Games Designer Workshop.

Years later, fans published officially licensed material under the old GDW imprint, before Free League - one of the top-tier TTRPG companies - got the rights and created a third iteration of the game and timeline.

What I am focusing on here is the first edition universe, because there are some important mysteries from the original game... that were actually answered within the material at the time!  So, here we go:

How did the war begin?

The actual start of the war is mentioned many times - Russia and China end up having some border skirmishes that eventually become full-blown war.  Russia invades China in 1995, but ends up with a meat grinder,  As such, they remind the Warsaw Pact members of their 'obligations' and then throw their units to the front to die first.  Because of this, East German leadership has enough and contacts the leaders of West Germany about reuniting while Russia is occupied.  So, in October 1996, the war enters a new phase.  When Warsaw Pact units resist the West German forces stronger than usual, NATO goes to assist - but members like France and Italy protest against this and leave the military alliance.  And so the war goes fully worldwide.  When the Soviet Union finds themselves on the losing end on both fronts, they begin using tactical nukes to break through in mid-1997 which gradually escalates on both sides.  Even with most of the world's nations being devastated, the war grinds on to the titular year 2000.

Wars can start over the most trivial of reasons, so this seems less of a mystery.  Still, Russia seemed fairly prepared to go against China initially.  Was there something else going on?

And buried in the RDF Sourcebook - covering the Middle East region centering on Iran in 2000 - there actually is an explicit explanation:

"When the Soviet Supreme Command (VGK) began planning for the invasion of China in 1993..." (p.18)  So the Soviet Union leadership had been planning to invade China for 2 years!

What is Operation Prometheus?

1st edition had a trilogy of adventures called "The Last Submarine" - the first adventure, the players are ordered to retrieve the last nuclear-powered US submarine from New England, the Corpus Christi.  In the second adventure, they are told that they are to use it to travel to Europe, retrieve DIA agents at various locations, and also two Soviet scientists - the latter is called "Operation Prometheus".  However, the description of the operation doesn't actually tell us what scientific knowledge the scientists have!  So what exactly was so important about it?

And it is important - the opening description mentions the players meeting a dozen three-star generals at the send-off (likely members of the USAEUR that returned to the US during Operation Omega).

Since the description of the operation tells us nothing, we should check the final section, where the two scientists are rescued in Romania.  Yet there's nothing there, either!  After the final battle, the setup is made for the third adventure - learning of a Soviet submarine that has also survived, and still has nuclear missiles.

Once again, the details are hidden in an unrelated section and told in an offhand manner.  "Milgov will get the two people on the planet who know a simple, low-technology method of constructing nuclear fusion reactors, wusing a room temperature superconductor easily made under relatively primitive conditions." (p.34)

Yes, one could see why MilGov would prioritize retrieving these two scientists!

What happens after the war ends?

The answer seems an easy one: there's an entire other TTRPG devoted to the answer!  Traveller: 2300 is the future of the Twilight: 2000 universe - 300 years later, if that wasn't obvious - and despite the dire tone of the original game (the Howling Wilderness supplement is notorious for how depressing it is), the Earth managed to bounce back and began colonizing other star systems.

But that isn't the only possible future of Twilight: 2000.

Another TTRPG from the 80s, Paranoia, was a darkly humorous RPG set in a future dystopia called Alpha Complex, a domed city run by the Computer, which was deathly afraid of 'communists', mutants and traitors; the players are tasked with rooting out mutants and traitors while in turn all being mutants and traitors.  Unlike other RPGs, players generally work against each other while being sent on 'missions' that are absurd and/or impossible.

The background of Paranoia was that a meteorite struck the world in 2097; the Computer had most of its archives removed at the time and only was able to access old 50s Civil Defense propaganda, and identified the meteorite as an 'incoming Soviet missile' before the catastrophic event happened.  But even before that, its timeline indicated World War III - which involved nukes - was fought around... the year 2000.

So, with little surprise, when WEG decided to do a time-travelling crossover with other games, Twilight: 2000 was one of them.  (The other, Cyberpunk 2020, had their setting moved to right before the meteor struck).  The module, called Twilightcycle: 2000, is an 'official' product, so in light of Traveller: 2300,  we can label it as an 'alternate' reality - maybe the enemy aliens from 2300 learned of Earth and sent the asteroid?