[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

FYI one way you could look at a rewrite of HW would be from the information we now have that show that the drought as depicted could not have happened - for one reason because of the effect of the La Nina that occurred from 1998-2001 which increased snowfall across the US - meaning that the cold winter without snowfall that HW and Kidnapped promulgated could not have occurred during those years due to the effects of the La Nina - the effects of the war, if anything would have added to the snow fall during those years due to increase of particulates

Completely irrelevant. The events or weather occurring in our reality have absolutely no bearing on the fictional T2K universe. Using this justification there in no war and the T2K timeline has been invalidated by the collapse of the Soviet Union on 9 November 1989.

The weather in T2K is not ours here now or in 98-01.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Also you would have had to change the Pacific Jet Stream in the Pacific itself to have affected the La Nina - and most of the nukes were in the US and Europe and China in the Northern Hemisphere - meaning that they would have had almost no effect on La Nina - meaning that most of the US west of the Mississippi would have had considerable snowfall and thus the winter wheat crop would have the snow cover it needed and the water run off needed for the spring planting

Could you still have the drought in the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic areas - yes that is a possibility so HW in the those areas could have run its course as written - but not in the West and upper Midwest

No one is completely sure what the effect of nuclear might be. Though in the T2K timeline the exchange is in measured doses (tit for tat) that doesn't prelude a cumulative effect compounded by unstoppable forest fires rampaging across the U.S. national forests and the Soviet taiga.

That does serve to mean cooler northern temperatures and Arctic are is dry air. The currents along the U.S. west shores is cold southern flows until past San Fransisco. The hot loop passes up around Hawaii then loops baxk around Hawaii and turns south again.

I grew up in Oregon. Tourists drown going to paddle board in the surf off the Oregon coast due to hypothermia in the 45F waters in August. Locals wear wet suits to play in the surf.

Originally Posted by Olefin

so is there an argument for an updated canon that contains the effects of the drought to those areas and still makes for huge disruptions of the population leaving those areas - yes - and that kind of effect would still leave much of HW intact as to those areas while making the overall effect on the US much less - still a major disruption and still having an effect on the population - but not one that would basically result in the US dying for good as a country

So? Let it die then? Anyone see the Romans complaining?

The U.S. is destroyed. Knocked down to a 3rd world minor power after a nuclear exchange and five years (ten years) of global war. Probably not even 50 states any longer or not a very cooperative Union at that either. There is two competing governments and probably many States accepting the legitimacy of either and not cooperating with either to boot.

There is no Law in the Universe that demands a fully restored U.S.A super power after the events of T2K.

Originally Posted by Olefin

and again Loren when he wrote the modules would not have had that information or the weather models we have today - so the question is not a case of possible rewrites due to the modules being wrong - its more a question of retconning them to make them more accurate for the years involved in the modules to bring a higher level of accuracy and story telling to what is now events that occurred in the past of "real life" whereas when they were written they were attempts at saying where the future was headed

Again irrelevant. The events, i.e. the weather, of our reality have nothing to do with the fictional universe of T2K. Whether Loren had the information or not means nothing.

Originally Posted by Olefin

or to look at it another way - look at what they did to retcon Star Trek when they did the alternate future - obviously they had to eliminate the anachronisms that would have occurred from just reshooting Star Trek with no changes - thus the updates to the computer systems, communicators, phasers, etc. - because in many ways we caught up with Star Trek

I am assuming the Star Trek films produed by J.J. Abrams? The Abramsverse is not an alternate future, it is an alternate universe as well. A timeline that came into existence when the Romulan vessels crossed over through a black hole.

If your speaking of Star Trek Enterprise.... That is probably the reason for the low fan acceptance and cancellation after five seasons. The modern displays and other systems where not "The Old Show" Star Trek.

Originally Posted by Olefin

here any possible retcon if it occurred (not rewrite per se but retcon to bring real world events including weather effects, personalities, films, music, etc. into the game to make it more accurate) would be as improvements for both playability and increased reality

i.e. an example would be playing Krakow and having players mention that they had seen Schlinder's List and thus had some familiarity with the city - a movie that didnt come out till 1993 and whose story was almost completely unknown when the module was written in the 80's

or having a survivor in the US mention that seeing the aftermath of Washington DC getting nuked was nothing like they depicted in the nuking of Buenos Aires in Starship Troopers - which was released only a few weeks before the TDM in the timeline - or Independence Day - which was released the year before

This is all some minutiae that anyone would find unlikely to happen in a regular role play session. Players are operating at village level politics, and if you have them operating at the macro scale; then those become npcs, and your players roll up new characters.