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Old 05-19-2016, 07:15 AM
Olefin Olefin is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Greencastle, PA
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Well we do know some things about Cummings and Broward - we know Cummings was part of the Grenada operation in the 80's and got injured and that he has a granddaughter but you are right there should be a lot more

As for your point

4. TF:34

So Task Force 34 sails to Norfolk and all we ever hear later is some mentions of some troops being sent to New York. Say what? A massive--by game standards--force that could (even mainly as infantry) easily defeat New America strongholds, the Mexican invasion, or subdue CivGov just becomes an afterthought. And what of forces like the 8th Infantry Division who stay in Eastern Europe? What becomes of them? What of CivGov's troops in Yugoslavia? You have to buy 2300 to find out what happens to CENTCOM in Iran.

Remember that 2300, which originally was canon, later became more of one possible future - so that future can be ignored if you choose to - which opens up things considerably for GM's who see, as I do, that the US never driving Mexico out of the Southwest and Texas and letting them take over almost the whole Caribbean and Central America makes no sense at all

And the total waste of the Task Force 34 troops is also a very big hole - frankly for me that is where Howling Wilderness fell apart for me even before you got the unreal drought that if it had happened per GDW would have delayed any rise of the US again for at least a century if not forever, not the twenty years of the 2300 timeline

If you add up what HW says basically about 1800 men from Europe were used for reinforcements - meaning 40,000 plus were never used for anything. Which makes absolutely no sense at all. Even if they left half of them go, that leaves 20,000 men to reinforce the 194th, 197th, 49th and get to CA.

And your point 6 - I agree with you there as well - we helped get back that Russian couple who knew how to build the cold fusion reactors and grabbed Reset as well. The way those modules are played its very obvious that is the general intent of the GDW authors - yet where is "Reset allows computers to start going back on line in the US by the middle of 2001, starting in the Colorado Springs area" or "the information gathered from the NA chief leads to the overthrow of the Florida regime by late December and the capture of several NA supply and fuel dumps " or "with the oil from the refinery in Texas, US and Texan forces, led by the Grange, begin to drive the Soviet and Mexican forces out of Texas" or even a simple "cold fusion reactors begin to come on line, with the first being in NJ, IL and CO, late in 2001"

and it didn't have to be in HW's timeline set in stone - a simple Challenge article could have been done saying here is how the timeline changes depending on if those modules come off if for, against or neutral - i.e. "if the players do get Reset back to the DIA, computers come back on line six months later as it goes into production" or the statement above about the reactors

that is a general note that a GM could then use as part of their campaign background and serve to connect the modules results to real world consequences and not just be - ok we did Reset, we did Last Submarine, whats next?

GDW did a pretty good job of having an organized timeline with related modules so that you could really do an organized campaign if you wished to with all kinds of goals. It would have been nice to see those goals being achieved show up - sort of like those old books where there were multiple outcomes and depending on what you did the book changed.

Last edited by Olefin; 05-19-2016 at 08:07 AM.
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