[sglancy12]

Originally Posted by helbent4

Human waves of starving and desperate people rushing a military unit and succeeding is a favourite image of post-holocaust fiction and RPGs, but it doesn't make sense.

Let me rephrase my statement. I said "The only real explanation seems to be the drought/famine." What I meant to say was "The only real explanation offered by GDW seems to be the drought/famine."

I agree 100% that hordes starving refugees are not going to turn into human wave attacks throwing themselves carelessly in front of the guns like something out of 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake. But that sure seems to be the message I get from Howling Wilderness.

Okay, sure, these starving mobs are likely to have plenty of fire arms and act in an organized fashion, but Howling Wilderness seems to think that starving refugees will overwhelm just about every organized area east of the Mississippi.

In my opinion, starving mobs machine gunned and shelled will disburse. More likely starving mobs will vote with their feet and try and move to where they think the food is, taking horrific casualties from disease, malnutrition, and bandits along the way.

Originally Posted by helbent4

As for climate, that unfortunately is realistic, or at least realistic enough. It does get across the global effect of the war.

I can't argue the science. I don't know enough about climatology and how it would be affected by the particulate in the atmosphere from the limited nuclear exchange. A good place to start researching might be conditions following the explosion of Krakatoa in the 19th century.

Wikipedia says In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfurous acid (H2SO3) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.

Anyone care to find out how many megatons that accounted for? We sure don't have a complete list of the megatonage expended during the Twilight War, but I bet someone has already added up all the published data.

No, its not the science of the drought that bugs me. It's the philosophy behind it. When I corresponded with Loren Wiseman back in the day he said (and yes I'm quoting from a 23 year old dot-matrix printed letter he mailed me):

"We felt that the adventures in Twilight:2000 were becoming too tame and the letters we had been receiving from our customers reflected this. The most common complaint was that most adventures were too civilized enough (sic), and that most of them were set in places where the plumbing worked and the electricity was just about to be reconnected. The phrase "wild and wooly" which you use in describing adventures was just the phrase one customer used to detail what Twilight:2000 adventures were missing.

"We felt that the solution was to eliminate the upper levels of government, and leave nothing functioning much above the local community level, putting the players in a situation more like the dark ages than the wiild west. In the dark ages, there was a king and a national government, but in most cases their effect upon local affairs was almost non-existent. The king was a nebulous, quasi-mythical figure that people swore loyalty to, but few ever saw. Everybody was expected to lend a hand (and a pitchfork) to defend the community when the time came. There were even mercenary warriors that local communities would hire for protection from bandits and the like (the inspiration for the Seven Samurai story line).

"A massive drought-induced famine was the method we chose to accomplish this."

Later in that same letter, he wrote:

"I totally disagree that the only way a player can survive is to become part of the problem by turning marauder. Players will still be fighting for the good guys . . . its just that the good guys are now locals rather than some nebulous group in Colorado Springs or Omaha. Your particular town can hang on by the skin of its teeth. Your particular town can be the exception to the rule that everybody has turned marauder. There are still plenty of foreign invaders and home-grown bad guys around to keep the characters on their toes."

Rather than reprint everything here from the four letters I have, let me just say that I got the impression from Loren that the philosophy at GDW was "the more chaos, the more opportunity for adventure, the more fun." Certainly that was the design philosophy behind Howling Wilderness, MegaTraveller and Traveller: The New Era.

Apparently having the country nuked, with 95% of the power out, two rival governments, two foreign invasions, two armies trapped overseas, and a neo-fascist insurgency just wasn't chaotic enough to provide a fun gaming environment. So they threw in the drought.

THAT is why I hate the drought. It's a deus ex machina to promote a game philosophy that I just don't like and don't believe is true.

I have yet to meet a TW2K player who told me that they would have liked the game better if only there had been less societal and economic recovery depicted and more chaos and barbarism.

Originally Posted by helbent4

What I would gripe about is the CIVGOV/MILGOV split and the apparent semi-permanent nature of it (for at least decades). It makes no sense when the US is at its lowest point to hamstring any kind of national organisation and response.

I would have thought the same thing too... and then there was Katrina. If we ever wanted a snapshot of our tax dollars at work on doomsday, that was it. People are very likely to do very dumb things in a crisis. So human folly isn't unbelievable to me. However, I think that it wouldn't go on for the decades mentioned in the Traveller: 2300 books. The split starts in 1999 so I wouldn't be surprised to see it last (particularly seeing as how shabby the communications net is) until 2003.


A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing