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Old 03-30-2012, 07:41 AM
Olefin Olefin is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Greencastle, PA
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Love to see that someone has put together an alternate timeline like this. I played T2000 back when it first came out and what eventually killed it was the total revulsion the group took to the way the US modules, especially Kidnapped, Howling Wilderness and City of Angels, were written.

I know that some of the writers of T2000 are part of this forum and frankly they might not like me saying this. But they took a game that made sense and basically took all the fun out of it. And the fact that most of the rest of the world, as depicted in the modules, wasnt going thru that kind of total killoff of its population really showed that what they wanted to do was turn the game into Aftermath, with no surviving government and military at all, at least in the US.

Our Gamemaster bought them and then said that they were total player killers and that he wasnt prepared to cheat that much to keep our group from getting wiped out over and over.

After looking at them we agreed with him. Plus we also played Traveller and we had just bought Traveler 2300 AD. And the timeline as depicted made absolutely no sense with that what was happening to the US as depicted in those modules. With the drought as depicted and the total destruction of the forces of both MilGov and CivGov the US would have taken hundreds of years to ever get back on its feet, if ever.

As to arguments about canon and ignoring it. Canon can be ignored when it makes no sense and kills a game. And in the case of Twilight 2000 the so called canon of the American modules is exactly that.

Which is not to say they were all bad. Armies of the Night, Red Star/Lone Star, the Airlords of the Ozarks, Allegheny Uprising and The Last Submarine Trilogy make sense (even though I highly doubt only one SSN would still be around - what happened to all the Ohios as only one was ever mentioned being sunk) and are good modules. Even Urban Guerilla, while presenting a detestible group, is playable although just barely.

But after that, the canon should be ignored if it goes off into total unreality. And that is exactly what it did. An alternate reality has to be believable - thats why Turtledove's books are so well received and others arent.
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