Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Guys, please be careful regarding the canon debate. It's historically been pretty toxic here.
It's really cool that Marc Miller has dubbed Olefin's East African Sourcebook canon. Is Mr. Miller sole arbiter of what is and what isn't canon? I don't know. Does his nod make Olefin a co-arbiter of canon? Should we take it on authority, second hand, that HW is no longer canon? This is a slippery slope.
Let's all keep in mind that T2K is whatever the GM running the campaign wants it to be. If a GM likes the America described in HW, cool, let him use it. If a GM hates it, cool, let the GM build a different setting more suited to his sensibilities. Different strokes and all that.
Secondly, there seems to be a bit of a double standard at play here. If it's OK for members to critique HW, it should be OK for members to critique fellow members' works as well. Constructive criticism is not off-limits. According to forum guidelines, criticism is OK as long as its asked for, constructive, and doesn't devolve into personal attacks.
Lastly, if we want to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of HW, there's a whole thread already devoted to that.
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Completely agree with you Raellus - and if anything was just trying to show how hard it is to write new material and keep the majority of people happy when there are so many splits in the fan base as to canon versus non-canon especially when it comes to HW and the drought.
And for the record Marc is the sole arbiter of what is canon and what is not - I have a few suggestions for ideas and have run them by him for future work and he will be the final decision on them not me - he owns the canon (as he owns the rights to the game) and has already told me what ideas he prefers over others - in the end no matter what I write (or others) it wont get published unless he is ok with it - not as official canon for damn sure
And there is a big difference between my personal preference and history of canon - i.e. notice what I was referring to was my GM's view of HW and how our group discussed it and did not use it as such - versus the canon of the module as a whole within the Twilight 2000 world
Keep in mind that the release of the module's themselves by the various authors changed the canon and the history as we knew it from the original boxed set - the original V1 boxed set did not have the US in any way suffering an uber drought - that came about over the course of several module releases - thus the original canon was changed by the authors with each new release
Omega, the drought, Last Submarine (and the cheap fusion reactors the scientists brought with them), New America, the idea of a change in the weather - all of them came after the original release of the game
thus with the start of new canon releases again the canon of the Twilight 2000 world is again being changed in some way just as it was during the original releases, opening the same potential can of worms as before - and thus anyone who does any new releases needs to be as mindful of possible of the old canon when they release their material - which is one reason I am going thru everything I can get my hands on to make sure I didnt miss anything
and as Raellus pointed out - completely and totally correctly - there is no compulsion to have to have your game conform completely to canon - if you dont like the changes, whatever they may be (and there may very likely be none beyond just exploring new areas mentioned but not detailed in the game) then ignore them with my blessing
example from what I just released - if you want the 2nd Armored to come home or go to Iran in your game instead of go to Kenya please feel completely welcome to do that - if you rather use Raellus's version of the order of battle for the US in Kenya than mine please do so if it would be what your players enjoy