THE PITCH
It's a road-tripping campaign set in the late '90s. You start somewhere on the East Coast, New York or DC or Boston, and have to go west.It starts out normal enough. You pile into the station wagon starter vehicle, load up all your gear and crap (250 inventory slots!), buy gas and food, and count up your last precious dollars (currently $389 across all four party members).
You take the I-90 West. 2 hours to Albany, another 2 to Syracuse, another 3 to Buffalo. You decide to push on another 3 to make it Cleveland. You pay $60 for a motel with two queen beds; there are some fanfic jokes, and you decide two of you will sleep on the floor. It's another $45-odd for gas, and $20 for road snacks.
Next morning, it's 5 and a half hours to just south of Chicago, where I-90 turns into I-80 and keeps going west. 4 and a half hours from there to Des Moines, where spend $55 on a motel room with shittier art. Another $40 for gas; you splurge and go to a diner, spending $30 on a huge breakfast for all of you.
It's 2 hours to Omaha; mid-morning by the time you leave.
You see the sign, same as all the others:
Thanks for visiting IOWA!Then, you see the next sign;
The state of WINNEMAC welcomes you!What?
You keep driving. Maybe it was a joke?
Then you see the license plates: WINNEMAC, they say, "The Barley State."
After 20 minutes of driving, you pull off I-80 into the town of Cooley, WM. Population: 4,302; ZIP code: 24519. It's a normal farm-country town: couple of gas stations, a post office, town hall, a handful of strip malls. They've got a Starbucks and a BK, but they explain the nearest Walmart is a couple of towns over, in Nadleville.
Eventually, you notice the flags: they've got a lot of stars. A lot of stars. Same ol' 13 stripes, but dozens more stars than the normal 50.
You buy a map. It looks something like this:
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A CAMPAIGN IN GREATER AMERICA
It's a modern-ish campaign, as much or as little magic as you'd like, but set in an impossibly-large United States. It's some 10,000 miles to get from coast to coast, and you all now find yourselves as strangers in a strange land.Except it's not actually a strange land. They still get CNN, you can still buy a Coke, they still drive Fords. There's just... more. More states, more land, more mountains, more people, more.
As GM, you are of course welcome to populate the now-vast interior of the US with whatever you please. Bizarre roadside attractions, strange NPCs, the wear & tear of long-distance travel, dungeons hidden in shopping malls—the works.
The main difference now is that your players won't know all of it. Every new state line is a mystery; every new highway is unfamiliar.
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1D100 MORE STATES
- Jefferson (JF)
- Greyter (GT)
- Fargo (FG)
- Tates (TS)
- Raxlan (RX)
- Green Rock (GR)
- Doramos (DO)
- New Nantes (NN)
- New Madrid (MR)
- Bestings (BE)
- Shandle (SH)
- Trimeda (TR)
- Las Forodas (LF)
- Columbia (CM)
- Delmarva (DM)
- Absaroka (AB)
- Sequoyah (SQ)
- Cumberland (CU)
- Lincoln (LN)
- Kinney (KI)
- Madawaska (MW)
- Westmoreland (WL)
- Cascadia (CS)
- Van Zandt (VZ)
- Franklin (FR)
- Dade (DA)
- Acadia (AC)
- Elizabeth (EZ)
- Yazoo (YZ)
- New Holland (NO)
- Gwinnett (GW)
- Pinckney (PY)
- Sawyer (SY)
- Roberdeau (RO)
- Randolph (RD)
- Fremont (FE)
- Winnemac (WM)
- Keystone (KS)
- Ambarino (AM)
- LeMoyne (LM)
- Disraeli (DI)
- Mercer (MC)
- Tristana (TR)
- Guarna (GU)
- Barona (BR)
- Pawtucket (PW)
- Mucklewam (MU)
- Pala (PL)
- New Tyne (NT)
- Brigham (BG)
- Clingan (CI)
- Spaight (SP)
- Boerum (BM)
- Wolcott (WO)
- Tilghman (TI)
- Ynez Island (YI)
- Seneca (SE)
- Soboba (AB)
- Tuscarora (TU)
- Kingsland (KL)
- Wyandotte (WD)
- Jackson (JS)
- Habamotalel (HB)
- Augustine (AU)
- Cazneau (CZ)
- Fuller (FU)
- Hugueiana (HG)
- New Flanders (NF)
- Aghaboe (AG)
- Saragossa (SG)
- Hesselblad (HS)
- Coushatta (CH)
- Lagoverde (LV)
- Jennings (JN)
- Beveridge (BV)
- Knox (KX)
- Ostend (OS)
- Kickapoo (KP)
- Odawa (OD)
- Manzanita (MZ)
- Nansemond (NA)
- Passamaquoddy (PM)
- Quinault (QU)
- Walacasco (WC)
- Marchant (MH)
- New Sicily (NS)
- Calisota (CL)
- Ames (AE)
- Mickewa (MK)
- Oconee (OC)
- Tippecanoe (TC)
- Boone (BN)
- Ventnor (VN)
- Lyndon (LY)
- Cyrenia (CY)
- Ephesia (EP)
- Claviers (CV)
- Hacklesbad (HC)
- DeWhett (DW)
- Dyer (DY)
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APPENDIX N
- All Gas No Brakes, now Channel 5 News with Andrew Callaghan
- Grand Theft Auto, particularly San Andreas and V
- Kentucky Route Zero
- Overland
- That road trip I took with my friends back in the summer of 2018
