In defense of the GDW crew, it's going to be difficult to have a fully unified, integrated vision when module writing work is being farmed out to various freelance or semi-indipendent contributors, especially before the communications advances of the interweb. Those guys didn't have video-chat, instant or text messages, or anything like that. They probably didn't even have e-mail. And the editor/s was dealing with a large amount of material- most of the v1.0 materials came out in a single five-year span.
That said, HW is kind of a mess. Still, I think that some of you aren't giving GMs enough credit. Most GMs are going to be able to make adjustments to the published stuff in order to suit their own tastes and those of their players. Frankly, a GM that runs something straight out of the book without making any mods is probably not a very good one. I think that Web is a great example of how a thoughtful person can take the starting material presented in the official modules and modify them into something better.
I don't have HW in front of me, but I wanted to bring up a couple of points for continued discussion.
I think that the effects of the HW drought might be a bit overstated. One needs to take into consideration a couple of factors, one being the degree to which farming in America is mechanized. The ratio of labor to production is pretty crazy. Large corporate agribusiness farms produce a huge amount of food with a relatively puny labor force. As Targan pointed out, the U.S. is a net food exporter and has been since WWI. If enough farm machinery could be kept running, food could be produced.
There's historical precedence to look at. My AP U.S. History students are currently studying the Great Depression and I've been doing a fair bit of reading about American agriculture during the first half of the 20th century. The Dust Bowl of the mid thirties was an ecological distaster previously unseen in American history. Tens of millions of acres of farmland were effectively put out of use for two years (in some regions, significantly longer). America's Breadbasket was badly hurt by the Dust Bowl but the country didn't starve. In fact, it didn't even need to start importing food. Granted, some parts of the country were not as badly effected by the '30s drought (Florida actually experienced a net gain in rainfall in 1934). Droughts don't often effect an entire continent equally adversely. I would contend that by 2000, the total population of the U.S. would be much closer to 1935 numbers, if not even lower.
Would a bad two-year drought mean the end of American civilization? I doubt it. The Maya survived much worse for much longer before their civilization collapsed.
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