City of Angels Rewrite?

[Olefin]

A question to the board - has anyone ever attempted to rewrite City of Angels to correct some of the bigger issues with it (like the Mexican Army not matching canon as to its equipment and its units)

From what I understand its officially considered non-canon by the people who currently own the Twilight 2000 game. (Saw it referred to as Apocrypha if I remember correctly)

Just wondering as it seems a great project for the board or some of the board members to do. And while it might be a big project it would be nice to have a "new" module to play.

[James Langham]

I don't have time for a full rewrite but if enough are interested I am willing to help (bearing in mind I'm not a US specialist).

[boogiedowndonovan]

A question to the board - has anyone ever attempted to rewrite City of Angels to correct some of the bigger issues with it (like the Mexican Army not matching canon as to its equipment and its units)

From what I understand its officially considered non-canon by the people who currently own the Twilight 2000 game. (Saw it referred to as Apocrypha if I remember correctly)

Just wondering as it seems a great project for the board or some of the board members to do. And while it might be a big project it would be nice to have a "new" module to play.

Yes, well not necessarily re-writing it but a more accurate portrayal of Los Angeles to be exact.

City of Angels is not one of my favorites. I thought it was very comic bookish in general. I lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, as did Jess (whom hasn't posted here in awhile)

Yes it would be a big project.

BTW the author of City of Angels also wrote the Eastern Europe Sourcebook which probably explains why the Greek and Turk armies are equipped with Soviet tanks.

[Rainbow Six]

I don't have time for a full rewrite but if enough are interested I am willing to help (bearing in mind I'm not a US specialist).

If there's interest I'd also be willing to help out, but with the same caveat as James, i.e that the US is not my area of expertise.

[Olefin]

It does seem there is interest then.

So a question then - besides the obvious problem with the Mexican units lets throw around some other ideas on what is wrong with the module - and I do agree on it being very comic book like in how it was written.

Do we need a sub-forum to do this or could we do the rewrite for those interested within this current forum

As the material I think is still copyrighted it would be of course a fan canon rewrite.

A question - has anyone ever approached the company that still owns the Twilight 2000 material to see if they would be interested in new material written by fans or rewritten to make it canon in this case

[James Langham]

I actually wrote to Far Futures regarding the possibility of writing extra source books but got no reply. :-(

It does seem there is interest then.

So a question then - besides the obvious problem with the Mexican units lets throw around some other ideas on what is wrong with the module - and I do agree on it being very comic book like in how it was written.

Do we need a sub-forum to do this or could we do the rewrite for those interested within this current forum

As the material I think is still copyrighted it would be of course a fan canon rewrite.

A question - has anyone ever approached the company that still owns the Twilight 2000 material to see if they would be interested in new material written by fans or rewritten to make it canon in this case

[Rainbow Six]

Just a thought...

Rather than rewriting something that already exists (and potentially getting involved in copyright and other issues) what about creating our own module from scratch Freely available in the public domain after completed. That way we're not stepping on the original writer's toes so to speak...

Just a thought...

[Legbreaker]

Works for me. There's plenty of proof readers, fact checkers and editors floating about here willing to help out.

[Olefin]

So Leg and Rainbow you are of the opinion it would be better to write a City of Angels rewrite but as a fan canon public access (possibly call it City of the Angels to avoid confusion or possible legal issues)

I think it would be great to see something like that come out of this forum - especially as the current module is seen even by the people who own the game copyright as not being canon - thus it would create a brand new module - we could even use some of the backstory and story elements but in a different form.

[Rainbow Six]

Olefin, what I'm suggesting is that rather than rework City of Angels (which I've never actually read btw!) it might be a better idea if those that are interested focused their efforts on producing a new module of completely original material.

In other words, take a new idea, a location not extensively covered in any of the published modules - it wouldn't even need to be US based (Korea maybe) - and create our own adventure module. Then offer it up for free to the Worldwide T2K community, either via this forum or other options (for some time I've been pondering setting up a website to host my UK material - that will almost certainly happen at some point this year, at which point I'd be happy to host said module).

I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what legal issues may or may not exist in rewriting the original module - it may well depend on how much is changed...but if we went for something completely original that should hopefully avoid any potential legal issues. It's possibly an ambitious project but ultimately we'd be contributing something totally new to the global T2K community.

[Olefin]

Well I may also do City of Angels but this time do it as canon but with some other tweaks as well (i.e. use the right order of battle and equipment for the Mexicans)

And so you know I am in the process of a module for Kenya based on the offical canon notes that Frank Frey posted about the module that was never released for that area - thus it will be canon as to US forces and the general set up but then go on from there with my own touches

That way we do get one last "official" module per se (at least as to the forces and set up of who is there)

And you are right by the way about a lot of areas never covered - I can think of a dozen places for modules that etiher were glossed over or never mentioned besides timeline mentions or US army or Soviet army guide mentions

places like South Africa, Australia, Korea, Alaska, Western Canada, most of the Pacific, the IO, Turkey, and for that matter Yugoslavia

and in the US places like Western NY (lots of water there and Howling Wildnerness never mentioned it) where the Finger Lakes and the Great Lakes make it a very good place to grow crops

[Webstral]

Certainly, lots of places were given short shrift by Howling Wilderness. I'm not complaining, as I understand completely that time is the most expensive resource in these ventures. Nonetheless, Howling Wilderness suggests some hooks and leaves the field wide open for others.

[Olefin]

take it from me - Western NY would have water no matter what - between the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, the very good water table there already and the host of smaller lakes and swamps it wouldnt go dry

and there are a lot of veterans there - always been a lot of people who served - so it would be very well defended - plus a lot of tons have very easy ways to generate electricity between the rivers and creeks there - my own home town had a back up generator that could generate power from the very fast moving creek that run thru it that they put in place after the blizzard of 77 knocked out our power - lots of other towns did the same.

and the NYS Thruway in my area was an emergency landing area for the USAF as well - so you could see a section of of it now being a new airbase after other bases got knocked out

by the way I used to live in LA - and for people who lived there City of Angels definitely makes no sense at all. For one LA is so big that the nuke attack that takes the city out isnt big enough - even with all the hits against oil facilities there is a lot of the city that would be untouched with the nuke strike pattern from Howling Wildnerness

and no nuke on Palmdale where they had SR-71's based and the Lockheed works there

Oh and I have seen what gun stores are like in LA - if even one out of fifty civilians went guerrilla against the Mexicans they wouldnt stand a chance - in that time frame you could still walk into a gun store in LA and get a Chinese knockoff of the AK-47 that took all of five minutes to convert to full auto let alone enough ammo to equip a battalion

its one reason the LA riots were so bad - the Marines were told that they might be facing gangs armed with light anti-tank rockets and Rockeye missiles that were known to be in the hands of some of the bigger LA gangs

[Targan]

Note to self: I really, really need to avoid the rougher parts of LA.

[Olefin]

it wasnt fun - I was there for the riots and the Marines went in loaded for bear - heck they stopped flights going into LAX because they were worried someone was going to shoot one down