East Coast MilGov Naval assets 2001

[Olefin]

One thing that is interesting about the canon is how Rock in Troubled Waters and Howling Wildnerness, both canon, seem to contradict themselves

The command and control situation in A Rock in Troubled Waters, let alone the situation of the area in general is not what is described in Howling Wildnerness, at least not the conditions in April 2001 which is about the time of the module

Rock in Troubled Waters is written Feb-March 1990 and show the MilGov people in Cape May in communication with MilGov, well organized and a lot of troops in the area, between federal and NJ troops

Howling Wildnerness is written in 1988 so it predates it by two years but it makes the area look much worse than that and of course by the fall its a disaster area - but it also makes the 78th into a dictatorship

but if you look at Rock in Troubled Waters its clear the New Jersey troops answerable to the governor seriously outnumber the 78th - as in 2 to 1 at least

so if anyone is the dictator it should be the local governor

And Rifle River makes it clear that late in 2001 the 78th was still in contact with MilGov - otherwise why are they sending that team to secure the dies for the MilGov enclave in the west at the Colt factory that sets up the adventure? That is not the out of touch 78th now a dictatorhip of Howling Wildnerness

And that was issued even earlier than A Rock in Troubled Waters


Loren Wiseman was the editor for Challenge Magazine and the author of Howling Wildnerness so you almost have to wonder if he started to rethink Howling Wildnerness in some ways after a couple of years and realized he had been too harsh - so he had modules issued in Challenge Magazine not have it be as bad as he said it would have been earlier

clearly at least NJ appears to be is in a lot better shape than what he described 2 years earlier

I have seen this in other modules as well

for instance Alleghany Uprising (which is mentioned in A Rock in Troubled Waters) takes place after Dec of 2000 - but it hints that the module could take place as late as the summer of 2001

by the summer of 2001 Howling Wildnerness has that area having fighting and evacuations that would make Allegheny Uprising a completely different module - but since it had already been printed they couldnt go back and change it

heck the whole start of Allegheny Uprising makes no sense with a summer 2001 start since CivGov by then is in the process of evacuating and that whole area is consumed in the fighting that Howling Wildnerness says destroys all the groups mentioned in that module - but the module clearly gives it as a potential starting point if you happened to do Ozarks or the Texas module

You have to wonder if eventually GDW lost control of the timeline and started having canon contradict itself or interfere with itself because there was either:

a) internal disagreement about some aspects of the official timeline and some authors started to ignore it or plot it without looking at past modules or articles

b) sloppy practices where modules werent checked out so that they didnt contradict other modules or have important things not mentioned - like the tank reinforcment that the RDF got in the RDF sourcebook or tanks being used in one book and AFV's in another but both meaning tanks

c) a lack of a story bible similar to what Battlestar Galactica and Babylon Five had (the new series BSG I mean) so that all the writers had to follow that no matter what so that they wouldnt contradict each other

Especially in a game where the timeline is so important - You see that initially in Going Home - the Polish modules had so much detail you could have played them for a year of play time easiliy - but once Going Home came out if you had already spent more than five months of play timeline advancing you missed the boat home or had to retcon your game to reduce time in Poland -

and god help anyone who's players ended up in Romania or the Balkans and then Going Home came out and suddenly had to have them cross half of Europe in some way

Oh and not in any way trying to start a big canon or non-canon fight or whatever - just a stream of consciousness post on why sometimes canon can be so tricky to wrap your hands around with this game

can see why it could lead to some of the bigger fights that happened here on the board in the past

its one reason I wish that some of the writers and creators of Twilight 2000 would weigh in on some of these issues - I know they have more important things to do surely than talk about articles and modules they issued over 20 years ago

but hey I bet Shatner and Nimoy had better things to do than get asked detailed questions about Star Trek - and they still did their best to make the fans happy (at least when the fans werent too in their face about it)