The Pacific Northwest

[Tegyrius]

@Jason - thanks for the plug on your blog, and I look forward to the wargaming suitability analysis. While I didn't specifically design New America Idaho for that purpose, I think their force mix would be an interesting challenge for a lightly-equipped (i.e., PC) group.

Your criticism of the lack of maps is valid and expected. I am no cartographer, and in the absence of free maps, I suspect that hiring an artist for that purpose would have cost me more than I stand to make on this product. I used Google Maps and Google Earth rather extensively to try to make the geography make sense, but those aren't period-accurate. On the other hand, anyone who has access to DriveThruRPG for a PDF purchase should have access to those same tools... but I do still feel the lack of cartography in the finished product.

I did recently buy World in Conflict via GOG but I haven't played it yet and wasn't aware of the Washington campaign until you highlighted it. I'm now rather interested to see how that plays out! The Battle of Seattle as depicted in the sourcebook was spun out of a throwaway line in the 104th Infantry Division's original writeup in the U.S. Army Vehicle Guide/Howling Wilderness:

Originally Posted by GDW

The division was formed at Vancouver, Washington on 20 July 1998 by redesignation of 104th Training Division (US Army Reserve). Upon activation, the division came under command of 8th Corps and on 2 August 1998 entered combat against Soviet forces attacking the Fort Lawton area from the north. By late August, the situation was stabilized and the division was withdrawn from the front line to take over internal security duties in the Montana-Idaho region.

That gave me a definite minimum depth for the Soviet advance into CONUS, so I had to figure out how it happened. Really, most of the module is the result me trying to expand and rationalize one-line details from Howling Wilderness... sometimes obsessively.

(I myself am not a fan of ORBATs but I know a large portion of the audience here appreciates them. Rationalizing the 47th ID's real-world history against the fiction's mid-'80s point of departure was something of a challenge, one relieved by frequent creative profanity. But apparently at least one dude on Facebook really appreciated it as a former IL Guardsman in 1-123 Infantry, so I'm glad I brought him some joy.)

- C.