What location did Erin Tarn ACTUALLY visited?

[Jedrious]

Didn't they retcon Japan in the RUE? I know technically Japan came out before the RUE, but it seems like they updated the lore.

There are those on these boards that refuse to acknowledge the RUE and instead insist that everyone must use an out of print, obsolete and replaced book that was printed in the very beginings of Palladium

[Proseksword]

so... supposing i was to get into a time machine and go back to a time before rifts Japan was published. and i was to ask you what, canonically speaking, was in Japan.

would you have referred me to what Erin Tarn had said, provided you remembered it was there?

or would you have said "oh, there's no canon information about that", again assuming that you remember that little blurb about Japan?

frankly, i suspect that you would have used what Erin Tarn had said about Japan as canon. i further suspect that is exactly what Kevin intended for people to do when he wrote it, is to interpret that as canon (though of course, as with all canon, individuals are welcome and even encouraged to change it if they prefer).

I'd like to thank you, Mr. Shark Force. In two paragraphs I feel that you've more eloquently expressed Killer Cyborg's argument than he has in eleven pages of posting and argument. I can easily understand how in the absence of any other information, one could easily assume that the small passage in Traversing Our Modern World was the God-given truth. At the time, were I pressed as to the state of Japan, I'd probably have simply mentioned that there were rumors it was mostly wilderness.

Be that as it may, I regarded that information, as I did the entirety of the world overview from the main book, as rumors and an incomplete or fragmentary view of the world. As the information about the rest of the world grew smaller and sketchier, it became clear to me that the author was intended to be less and less familiar with the information being discussed. It struck me that perhaps part of Japan was wilderness, or that perhaps Erin Tarn had been told part of it was wilderness, but plenty of the other parts of the overview, such as that for the Western seaboard, discuss even uninhabited wilderness in a more in-depth fashion.

It always struck me that the entire section was written based on what Erin Tarn had seen personally or had told to her by others, and that the actual depth of her knowledge, even about the lands she had visited, was relatively limited. Erin Tarn's writings are less like scientific sociological studies than they are like a tourist relating a trip they took conversationally, and repeating stories they heard on the way.

Ergo, I had no doubt that there was probably much more to Japan, and indeed, the rest of the world, than Erin Tarn knew, although I couldn't have told you what it was.

[Dr. Doom III]

so... supposing i was to get into a time machine and go back to a time before rifts Japan was published. and i was to ask you what, canonically speaking, was in Japan.

would you have referred me to what Erin Tarn had said, provided you remembered it was there?

or would you have said "oh, there's no canon information about that", again assuming that you remember that little blurb about Japan?

frankly, i suspect that you would have used what Erin Tarn had said about Japan as canon. i further suspect that is exactly what Kevin intended for people to do when he wrote it, is to interpret that as canon (though of course, as with all canon, individuals are welcome and even encouraged to change it if they prefer).

now, obviously asking now, today, you're going to answer differently than you would have back then. why? because the canon for what is in Japan has changed. certainly, the answer to the question of what is canon right now for Japan is the Japan book. but, when it was just the RMB around, the canon on Japan is what is written in the RMB, by Kevin, through the NPC Erin Tarn. that *was* the canon. it is not the canon now. that is exactly what "ret-con" means. what was formerly true is no longer true.

you can certainly argue that the old RMB information is not canon now. and, as KC has stated repeatedly, he won't disagree with you. what he is saying, and what everyone is taking exception to, is that it is a change from what was previously canon. and he's right. it *is* a change from what was previously canon. whether you prefer it or not is beside the point. whether it is canon right now is beside the point. the point he is making is simply that back in the day, that was not canon, and that when Japan came out he was upset because the canon had been changed and he preferred the older version.

could Erin Tarn have been wrong? only if Kevin intended her to be so. but there is no indication that Kevin wanted her to be so, and every indication that what was written in the RMB was intended to be our window into the world of rifts earth. and we are given no reason to assume it is anything less than a fairly accurate portrayal of rifts earth, or at least the parts that it covers and which Erin Tarn indicates to be stuff she knows for herself.

has that changed? yes. it has. and that is exactly the point. it HAS changed. it HAS been ret-conned. that's exactly KC's point. and if you'd stop screaming "Nuh-uh" at the top of your lungs for a while and actually read what he's writing, you'd see that he's made that statement repeatedly, very clearly, with support from the books.

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

[Giant2005]

And please, don't quote those stupid little statements I made about why Tarn could have been wrong and refute them - they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that there are a million different reasons Tarn's statement could be an error but there aren't any reasons why the entire Japan World Book could be made in error.

so... supposing i was to get into a time machine and go back to a time before rifts Japan was published. and i was to ask you what, canonically speaking, was in Japan.

would you have referred me to what Erin Tarn had said, provided you remembered it was there?

or would you have said "oh, there's no canon information about that", again assuming that you remember that little blurb about Japan?

frankly, i suspect that you would have used what Erin Tarn had said about Japan as canon. i further suspect that is exactly what Kevin intended for people to do when he wrote it, is to interpret that as canon (though of course, as with all canon, individuals are welcome and even encouraged to change it if they prefer).

now, obviously asking now, today, you're going to answer differently than you would have back then. why? because the canon for what is in Japan has changed. certainly, the answer to the question of what is canon right now for Japan is the Japan book. but, when it was just the RMB around, the canon on Japan is what is written in the RMB, by Kevin, through the NPC Erin Tarn. that *was* the canon. it is not the canon now. that is exactly what "ret-con" means. what was formerly true is no longer true.

you can certainly argue that the old RMB information is not canon now. and, as KC has stated repeatedly, he won't disagree with you. what he is saying, and what everyone is taking exception to, is that it is a change from what was previously canon. and he's right. it *is* a change from what was previously canon. whether you prefer it or not is beside the point. whether it is canon right now is beside the point. the point he is making is simply that back in the day, that was not canon, and that when Japan came out he was upset because the canon had been changed and he preferred the older version.

could Erin Tarn have been wrong? only if Kevin intended her to be so. but there is no indication that Kevin wanted her to be so, and every indication that what was written in the RMB was intended to be our window into the world of rifts earth. and we are given no reason to assume it is anything less than a fairly accurate portrayal of rifts earth, or at least the parts that it covers and which Erin Tarn indicates to be stuff she knows for herself.

has that changed? yes. it has. and that is exactly the point. it HAS changed. it HAS been ret-conned. that's exactly KC's point. and if you'd stop screaming "Nuh-uh" at the top of your lungs for a while and actually read what he's writing, you'd see that he's made that statement repeatedly, very clearly, with support from the books.

I would have presented her statement as canon.
The thing is that if you were asking what was in Japan, the only answer we would have been able to give with any certainty was wilderness.
Now we can say there is wilderness, Samurai, a Millennium Tree and a whole bunch of other stuff.
What is presented in Japan and her statement are not mutually exclusive. The only contradictory term is the word "quiet," I'm sure I don't have to explain how subjective that term is.
Sure she makes no mention of anything beyond the Wilderness but that doesn't mean there is nothing there but Wilderness, all it means is that there is wilderness.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

So Kevin has a fictional character tell his readers what Kevin believes he wants the world of Rifts to look like... and that character is "wrong" somehow?

How could she have been wrong?
There was nothing to be wrong about.
The Japan book wasn't even a glimmer in Kevin's brain at that point.

[Killer Cyborg]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

[Killer Cyborg]

I think the difference in the weight carried by those sources is the difference between changing reality and correcting the perceived reality.

Care to elaborate?

What I mean is:
Tarn said Japan was a quiet little wilderness place. This can mean one of several different things:
1) Japan is a quiet little wilderness place.
2) Tarn went to Japan, saw a little shrubbery and thought "screw this, these old bones have had enough sleeping in the wild, it is time to go home back to civilization".
3) Tarn never went anywhere near Japan, she just thought she would show off to her friends and pretend she has.
4) Tarn failed her literacy roll: she forgot to mention that she was basing her decision off rumors and hasn't been anywhere near Japan.
5) She did mention she hasn't been to Japan and her opinion was based on rumors but the editor changed things for irrelevant reasons.
6,7,8,9,10) Insert whatever stupid reasoning you like, the reasons themselves aren't important.

And all but #1 assume that Kevin created the character of Tarn to be an incompetent.
Go ask him about that, and see what he says.

Now the Japan World Book is a lot more clear. It directly contradicts possible meaning number one but it is a more reliable source.

No, it is simply a newer sources that replaces the older information.
Just like the population numbers in New West replaced the population numbers in SB1.

And please, don't quote those stupid little statements I made about why Tarn could have been wrong and refute them - they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that there are a million different reasons Tarn's statement could be an error but there aren't any reasons why the entire Japan World Book could be made in error.

No, there is only ONE reason why Tarn could be in error, and that is if Kevin created the character and wrote the passages in order to deliberately have her be incompetent.
And it's a safe bet that's not true.

[Killer Cyborg]

certainly, the answer to the question of what is canon right now for Japan is the Japan book. but, when it was just the RMB around, the canon on Japan is what is written in the RMB, by Kevin, through the NPC Erin Tarn. that *was* the canon. it is not the canon now. that is exactly what "ret-con" means. what was formerly true is no longer true.

you can certainly argue that the old RMB information is not canon now. and, as KC has stated repeatedly, he won't disagree with you. what he is saying, and what everyone is taking exception to, is that it is a change from what was previously canon. and he's right. it *is* a change from what was previously canon. whether you prefer it or not is beside the point. whether it is canon right now is beside the point. the point he is making is simply that back in the day, that was not canon, and that when Japan came out he was upset because the canon had been changed and he preferred the older version.

could Erin Tarn have been wrong? only if Kevin intended her to be so. but there is no indication that Kevin wanted her to be so, and every indication that what was written in the RMB was intended to be our window into the world of rifts earth. and we are given no reason to assume it is anything less than a fairly accurate portrayal of rifts earth, or at least the parts that it covers and which Erin Tarn indicates to be stuff she knows for herself.

Bingo.
Glad somebody is listening!

[Proseksword]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

If I ever learn that Kevin wrote that because he's read one of your posts, I'll crack up.

[Killer Cyborg]

Sure she makes no mention of anything beyond the Wilderness but that doesn't mean there is nothing there but Wilderness, all it means is that there is wilderness.

In other regions, she notes local populations and the presence of population centers, including villages.

[Killer Cyborg]

I can easily understand how in the absence of any other information, one could easily assume that the small passage in Traversing Our Modern World was the God-given truth. At the time, were I pressed as to the state of Japan, I'd probably have simply mentioned that there were rumors it was mostly wilderness.

Then why on Earth have you been arguing all this time that Tarn's word was obviously never meant to be trusted or taken seriously, and that canon had never changed?

As the information about the rest of the world grew smaller and sketchier, it became clear to me that the author was intended to be less and less familiar with the information being discussed.

Why that, and not that Kevin was straying more and more from his original vision?

[Giant2005]

I don't understand what the problem is. Tarn's statement doesn't limit what could possibly be in Japan at all - if I were GMing a game back then and the players took a trip to Japan, you can bet that there would be more there than just trees and I wouldn't be violating canon at all.
Just because Japan has trees, doesn't mean it doesn't have more than just trees.
Sure it is a bit of a stretch to consider the place quiet with a few million people on the islands but it isn't inconceivable.
Unless a GM ignores it, canon is just a limitation imposed upon the game. Those couple of lines in the RMB don't impose any kind of limitation - there really is very little information there of consequence. Until the Japan World Book came out it was (rightfully) left in the hands of the GM.

[Giant2005]

And please, don't quote those stupid little statements I made about why Tarn could have been wrong and refute them - they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that there are a million different reasons Tarn's statement could be an error but there aren't any reasons why the entire Japan World Book could be made in error.

No, there is only ONE reason why Tarn could be in error, and that is if Kevin created the character and wrote the passages in order to deliberately have her be incompetent.
And it's a safe bet that's not true.

Conversely, do you think Kevin created the character to be infallible?
He has never presented her to be anything more than human. As a human, I cannot take her word to be the word of God.
If Kev really did intend that to be her design, I think he was severely underestimating his readers.

[Jedrious]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

This thread is about places erin tarn has actually visited not what is different then how you interpreted the original book. As the most recent info she has not been to japan.

Yes, but this current line of conversation is as effective as breaking into Fort Knox with a sponge, potentially less so, some people are so oppossed to Japan that they refuse any argument that could potentially lead to its validity.

[Killer Cyborg]

I don't understand what the problem is. Tarn's statement doesn't limit what could possibly be in Japan at all - if I were GMing a game back then and the players took a trip to Japan, you can bet that there would be more there than just trees and I wouldn't be violating canon at all.

That depends on what you put there.
If it was something that Tarn could have reasonably missed, then you wouldn't have been violating canon.
If it was something that Tarn could NOT have reasonably missed- something like 6.8 million people and plagues of monsters- THAT would have been violating canon.

Just because Japan has trees, doesn't mean it doesn't have more than just trees.

Agreed.
For example, p. 152:
"The Slavic countries and Russia are vast wastelands and wilderness, broken only by the occasional city ruins or new village."
What's the difference between that and Japan?
The wilderness/wastelands in the Slavic countries and Russia are broken by the "occasional city ruins or new village."
The lands are filled with wilderness, but there are also villages there in significant numbers, so Tarn mentions it.
Also, there's no mention of it being "quiet."

The precedents set from earlier passages are that if there are significant numbers of people, Tarn mentions it.
If there is significant demon/monster activity, she mentions it.
With Japan, she doesn't mention it.
Even with India, she mentions rumors that there are rumors of savage, cannibalistic D-Bees... and she doesn't seem to have a clue what type of D-Bees they are! Are they Floopers? Flying Monkeys? Elves? She doesn't seem to know, but she feels that it's worth a mention.
Again, she makes no mention of anything like that with Japan.

Sure it is a bit of a stretch to consider the place quiet with a few million people on the islands but it isn't inconceivable.
Unless a GM ignores it, canon is just a limitation imposed upon the game. Those couple of lines in the RMB don't impose any kind of limitation - there really is very little information there of consequence. Until the Japan World Book came out it was (rightfully) left in the hands of the GM.

They impose quite a bit of limitation.
They indicate that if there was any kind of large society there, or anything interesting at all that was not hidden in some way, or at least rare and hard to stumble across, Tarn would have mentioned something about it.
And a large, ancient, successful feudal empire that has techno-wizardry, rune weapons, and mystic badass warriors of various degrees, along with plagues of monsters that also inhabit the land, is not hidden, and is neither rare nor hard to stumble across.

And it seems that a "little cluster of islands" would be pretty easy to give a decent exploration of.
Sail around each one a bit. Look on the shore. See if you notice any 1,000' tall trees or feudal villages or rampaging oni.
Land on each one. Walk about a bit. See if you notice any feudal villages, giant trees, or monsters.
Repeat.

Then again, that's another word that doesn't seem to fit the Japan World Book... "Little."

Japan today is about 142,000 square miles.
Japan in the Rifts: Japan book looks to be only slightly smaller if you compare maps, maybe 100k square miles at the smallest.
Great Britain today seems to be about 94,600 square miles.

Does that sound like a "little cluster of islands" to you?

[Killer Cyborg]

And please, don't quote those stupid little statements I made about why Tarn could have been wrong and refute them - they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that there are a million different reasons Tarn's statement could be an error but there aren't any reasons why the entire Japan World Book could be made in error.

No, there is only ONE reason why Tarn could be in error, and that is if Kevin created the character and wrote the passages in order to deliberately have her be incompetent.
And it's a safe bet that's not true.

Conversely, do you think Kevin created the character to be infallible?

What'd I say the last half-dozen times this came up?

He has never presented her to be anything more than human. As a human, I cannot take her word to be the word of God.
If Kev really did intend that to be her design, I think he was severely underestimating his readers.

Her word was never the word of God, only the word of a human that was describing stuff that was in the game world.
You don't have to be God in order to be right all the time- you simply have to be a fictional character who is only covering stuff where the writer wants you to be correct.

[Killer Cyborg]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

This thread is about places erin tarn has actually visited not what is different then how you interpreted the original book.

Yes, but it's a spin-off of a different conversation, and people keep bringing it back to that original topic.

As the most recent info she has not been to japan.

Correct.
And as in the original information, she most likely had.
As I said, canon changes over time, so in order to determine where Tarn has actually been, we not only have to find mentions of all the places that she has been, but also to then sift through them and find out which places she had been at one time, but was later retconned into having never been.

[Killer Cyborg]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

This thread is about places erin tarn has actually visited not what is different then how you interpreted the original book. As the most recent info she has not been to japan.

Yes, but this current line of conversation is as effective as breaking into Fort Knox with a sponge, potentially less so, some people are so oppossed to Japan that they refuse any argument that could potentially lead to its validity.

Pay attention to the conversation.
Nobody on either side is claiming that the information in the Rifts: Japan book is invalid.
I am claiming that it is a change from the original.
People are disagreeing.
That is all.

[Jedrious]

Pay attention to the conversation.
Nobody on either side is claiming that the information in the Rifts: Japan book is invalid.
I am claiming that it is a change from the original.
People are disagreeing.
That is all.

Perhaps if you broached the subject with less hostility than I've seen over the last week....

[The Beast]

...If it was something that Tarn could NOT have reasonably missed- something like 6.8 million people...

...Japan today is about 142,000 square miles....

Working off of those two numbers that's either just under 48 people per square mile, or .02 people per square mile (depending on which number gets divided into the other one, and if that's how you determine "people per square mile" in the first place).

[Giant2005]

They impose quite a bit of limitation.
They indicate that if there was any kind of large society there, or anything interesting at all that was not hidden in some way, or at least rare and hard to stumble across, Tarn would have mentioned something about it.
And a large, ancient, successful feudal empire that has techno-wizardry, rune weapons, and mystic badass warriors of various degrees, along with plagues of monsters that also inhabit the land, is not hidden, and is neither rare nor hard to stumble across.

And it seems that a "little cluster of islands" would be pretty easy to give a decent exploration of.
Sail around each one a bit. Look on the shore. See if you notice any 1,000' tall trees or feudal villages or rampaging oni.
Land on each one. Walk about a bit. See if you notice any feudal villages, giant trees, or monsters.
Repeat.

You are basing all of that on what she didn't mention.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist - she didn't mention the Millennium Tree in England neither. If you want to use the Main Book as your sole reference and consider anything Tarn didn't mention as non-canon, then relatively everything beyond the scope of the Main Book is contrary to the established canon.

Then again, that's another word that doesn't seem to fit the Japan World Book... "Little."

Japan today is about 142,000 square miles.
Japan in the Rifts: Japan book looks to be only slightly smaller if you compare maps, maybe 100k square miles at the smallest.
Great Britain today seems to be about 94,600 square miles.

Does that sound like a "little cluster of islands" to you?

It does sound little to me. Even by today's standards I consider Japan little. I'd consider Japan little doubly so if all I had known growing up was the massive continent of America...

Her word was never the word of God, only the word of a human that was describing stuff that was in the game world.
You don't have to be God in order to be right all the time- you simply have to be a fictional character who is only covering stuff where the writer wants you to be correct.

I would never take the word of a person as certainty, whether they are fictional or non-fictional.
It is our very nature as humans to be untrusting - Kevin knows this as well as I. I assume that is exactly why he chose Tarn to convey the message as opposed to writing it as certainty. He didn't want it to be certain, he wanted the GMs to be aware they have the leeway to ignore her opinions and design the world as they see fit. He didn;t want us to be limited by "canon".
If he truly wanted us to know anything within the setting as a strict certainty, he would have said so. He wouldn't have used a fictional character which may, or may not be correct as his medium.

[Dr. Doom III]

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

So Kevin has a fictional character tell his readers what Kevin believes he wants the world of Rifts to look like... and that character is "wrong" somehow?

How could she have been wrong?
There was nothing to be wrong about.
The Japan book wasn't even a glimmer in Kevin's brain at that point.

No.
Kevin had a fictional character tell his readers what the fictional character believed the world of Rifts to looked like and that character was wrong because he decided she was wrong and put something there either when he wrote it or after the fact. When doesn't really matter.

[Dr. Doom III]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

Quote the relevant passage that says she was ever in Japan or quit making things up.

[llywelyn]

Didn't they retcon Japan in the RUE?

No.

As KC already admitted, her first-hand knowledge of Japan was left uncertain (with second- or third-hand reporting strongly implied).

The RUE wasn't a retcon at all. It was an official update 9 years after the original, where she stated boldly what was implicit before: that she hadn't been and was reporting others' accounts.

(And again, quiet is supremely relative. Japan is quiet from the perspective of everyone else in the world. It's isolated and only in close contact with the equally isolated Chinese and Korean coasts.)

Edit: One thing that is a retcon is that the original stated clearly that she had been to California. The RUE says she's never been past the Rockies.

[llywelyn]

frankly, i suspect that you would have used what Erin Tarn had said about Japan as canon. i further suspect that is exactly what Kevin intended for people to do when he wrote it, is to interpret that as canon

Except it's not.

He didn't write it ex cathedra. He didn't even write it from the POV of a potentially trustworthy source.

He wrote it as the unauthorized mish-mash of numerous primary sources and first-, second-, and nth-hand accounts.

He intended to give future books (and GMs) plenty of wiggle room, so manipulating the reader's impression of Japan changed canon not a whit. [Talk about New West and the first Sourcebook and you'll have a perfectly valid point.]

[Proseksword]

I can easily understand how in the absence of any other information, one could easily assume that the small passage in Traversing Our Modern World was the God-given truth. At the time, were I pressed as to the state of Japan, I'd probably have simply mentioned that there were rumors it was mostly wilderness.

Then why on Earth have you been arguing all this time that Tarn's word was obviously never meant to be trusted or taken seriously, and that canon had never changed?

Because, as I noted, it was mostly rumors and hearsay, just like I said Japan's information was.

As the information about the rest of the world grew smaller and sketchier, it became clear to me that the author was intended to be less and less familiar with the information being discussed.

Why that, and not that Kevin was straying more and more from his original vision?

Because as the information grew scarcer and scarcer, it leaves the impression the author knows less and less what they are talking about. People can't say much about what they know little about. Earlier, Erin Tarn talks at length about the virtually uninhabited wilderness of the American West Coast, but she barely spares two sentances for Japan. Why? Because she knew significantly more about the American West Coast. Obviously, she knew next to nothing about most of the planet outside North America.

[Killer Cyborg]

I can easily understand how in the absence of any other information, one could easily assume that the small passage in Traversing Our Modern World was the God-given truth. At the time, were I pressed as to the state of Japan, I'd probably have simply mentioned that there were rumors it was mostly wilderness.

Then why on Earth have you been arguing all this time that Tarn's word was obviously never meant to be trusted or taken seriously, and that canon had never changed?

Because, as I noted, it was mostly rumors and hearsay, just like I said Japan's information was.

And you were wrong both times.

As the information about the rest of the world grew smaller and sketchier, it became clear to me that the author was intended to be less and less familiar with the information being discussed.

Why that, and not that Kevin was straying more and more from his original vision?

Because as the information grew scarcer and scarcer, it leaves the impression the author knows less and less what they are talking about.

Your impression is noted.

People can't say much about what they know little about. Earlier, Erin Tarn talks at length about the virtually uninhabited wilderness of the American West Coast, but she barely spares two sentances for Japan. Why? Because she knew significantly more about the American West Coast. Obviously, she knew next to nothing about most of the planet outside North America.

That's just your random assumption.
The places that she knows nothing about, she states that she knows nothing about.
The places where all she knows is rumors, she states or indicates that she's going off of rumors.
The description of Japan is stated purely as fact.
And the description is such that there doesn't need to be any elaboration- if she spent 10 years there, she STILL would have summed it up the same way, because there was nothing of note THERE.

[Killer Cyborg]

frankly, i suspect that you would have used what Erin Tarn had said about Japan as canon. i further suspect that is exactly what Kevin intended for people to do when he wrote it, is to interpret that as canon

Except it's not.

He didn't write it ex cathedra. He didn't even write it from the POV of a potentially trustworthy source.

He wrote it from the POV of Erin Tarn, who he portrays as a trusty source.

He wrote it as the unauthorized mish-mash of numerous primary sources and first-, second-, and nth-hand accounts.

I've already explained why and how this is wrong so many times that I'm not going to bother to quote the books yet again.
The World Overview is Tarn's unaltered words, solely her own description of the world.
The World Overview was authorized- it is what she turned in. She just didn't want it jammed in a book with a bunch of her letters and other stuff- not because she felt it was wrong, but because she felt it was incomplete.
Any time she's repeating second-hand information from questionable sources, she notes it.

He intended to give future books (and GMs) plenty of wiggle room,

At the time Kevin wrote the RMB, there were only TWO future books:
-A single world book.
-A single conversion book.

That's it.
He expected to sum up the entire planet in ONE book, one that he intended to write immediately.
There was not a need for much wiggle-room, and any that was needed was addressed in the world overview by being specified as rumors.

[Killer Cyborg]

Didn't they retcon Japan in the RUE?

No.

As KC already admitted, her first-hand knowledge of Japan was left uncertain (with second- or third-hand reporting strongly implied).

KC didn't actually say that.

[Killer Cyborg]

In RUE it states clearly that Erin has never been to Japan.

Japan is another place I have not visited, but we did hear a number of conflicting reports about it while in Russia.

True.
Which seems to be a change from the original book.

Quote the relevant passage that says she was ever in Japan or quit making things up.

How about I quote the relevant passages that make it SEEM like she originally visited Japan, which is what I actually said?

Rifts, 137
Kevin Siembieda, in straight narration writes:
What follows is a brief world overview written by historian and explorer, Erin tarn.
This tells us that the world overview was written by Erin Tarn.

The excerpt which follows is a world overview commissioned by the Council of Learning at Lazlo.
This tells us that what we are reading in the book is, although an excerpt from a book later compiled from Tarn's writings, a complete work in of itself. It is the same world overview that Tarn was paid to write. It is a professional piece by Tarn herself, one that she saw as being worthy of turning in to fulfill the requirements of her assignment.
What we read IS the world overview that she wrote, a complete work.

Kevin writing as Tarn:
...let me set about the task of chronicling my journeys.
This prefaces the entire section, providing the context for everything that follows.
She is describing her journeys as a primary function, while also including information that she learned along the way.
That is the rule for the piece, not the exception: when in doubt, it is to be assumed that she is describing places that she has been.

In her description of Japan, the information is stated as fact, with the same degree of confidence as her descriptions of Chi-Town and other places close to home.
Unlike many other places, there is no note of "I have never traveled there..." or "I am told..." or "Rumors claim that..." or "other scholars have told me..." or anything else to indicate that her description is a departure from the primary context of the article.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe that it IS a departure from the primary context of the article.

[Killer Cyborg]

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

So Kevin has a fictional character tell his readers what Kevin believes he wants the world of Rifts to look like... and that character is "wrong" somehow?

How could she have been wrong?
There was nothing to be wrong about.
The Japan book wasn't even a glimmer in Kevin's brain at that point.

No.
Kevin had a fictional character tell his readers what the fictional character believed the world of Rifts to looked like and that character was wrong because he decided she was wrong and put something there either when he wrote it or after the fact. When doesn't really matter.

What's your source that Kevin decided that Tarn was wrong?

[The Baron of chaos]

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

So Kevin has a fictional character tell his readers what Kevin believes he wants the world of Rifts to look like... and that character is "wrong" somehow?

How could she have been wrong?
There was nothing to be wrong about.
The Japan book wasn't even a glimmer in Kevin's brain at that point.

No.
Kevin had a fictional character tell his readers what the fictional character believed the world of Rifts to looked like and that character was wrong because he decided she was wrong and put something there either when he wrote it or after the fact. When doesn't really matter.

What's your source that Kevin decided that Tarn was wrong?

Hmm I think he did not decided she was neither wrong or right at the moments, as we don't know if he ever suspected Rifts line would go on like it did. But onc eit did, yes he decided she made some mistakes. It was the entire point of our discussion here in the end. Kevin did not wanted to paint himself in corner, but some of the comment made on that world overview were kind of rushed.
It would be more interesting asking why at first He decided that india and Japan were devodi of life completely. (also the hell happened to Corea?). Or at least give that idea? I got why the most powerful human empire is in America(albeit Triax is/was a nice surprise) the game market is mainly/mostly in America. But why he felt Japan should have been devoid of..everything...considering that Palladium Line had always had a strong link with anime(robotech), and jpanaese pop culture(TMNT and N&S....I always wondered why Eric Wujik did not wrote Rifts: Japan).

[Killer Cyborg]

They impose quite a bit of limitation.
They indicate that if there was any kind of large society there, or anything interesting at all that was not hidden in some way, or at least rare and hard to stumble across, Tarn would have mentioned something about it.
And a large, ancient, successful feudal empire that has techno-wizardry, rune weapons, and mystic badass warriors of various degrees, along with plagues of monsters that also inhabit the land, is not hidden, and is neither rare nor hard to stumble across.

And it seems that a "little cluster of islands" would be pretty easy to give a decent exploration of.
Sail around each one a bit. Look on the shore. See if you notice any 1,000' tall trees or feudal villages or rampaging oni.
Land on each one. Walk about a bit. See if you notice any feudal villages, giant trees, or monsters.
Repeat.

You are basing all of that on what she didn't mention.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist - she didn't mention the Millennium Tree in England neither. If you want to use the Main Book as your sole reference and consider anything Tarn didn't mention as non-canon, then relatively everything beyond the scope of the Main Book is contrary to the established canon.

But she DID mention in the World Overview that the more interesting places would get entire chapters later.
It is safe to assume that England, which she spent a bit of time discussing in the overview, would be one of these places. Which would be a good time to mention Millennium Trees and other specifics of the region.
It is likewise safe to assume that Japan, which she spent very little time discussing in the overview, would not be.
If she noted a 1,000' tall tree in Japan, there is no reason why she would not have described the place more along the lines of:
"a small cluster of quiet wilderness islands, the only notable part being the 1,000 foot tall tree that is in the capital for the ancient feudal empire of millions of people that inhabit the islands, who frequently battle with the monsters that are also there."

Then again, that's another word that doesn't seem to fit the Japan World Book... "Little."

Japan today is about 142,000 square miles.
Japan in the Rifts: Japan book looks to be only slightly smaller if you compare maps, maybe 100k square miles at the smallest.
Great Britain today seems to be about 94,600 square miles.

Does that sound like a "little cluster of islands" to you?

It does sound little to me. Even by today's standards I consider Japan little. I'd consider Japan little doubly so if all I had known growing up was the massive continent of America...

Google the phrase "little cluster of islands" and see how many pages you have to wade through to find one that is describing Great Britain or Japan as a region (not just certain clusters of islands within that region).
When I googled it, most of what came up was in the first page was references to small vacation spots like the Maldives (116 sq mile area), and two references to the Falklands (4700 square mile area).

Sure, somebody might describe one of those places with that phrase, in a disparaging or condescending way, but it would be atypical language that is not safely assumed to be the norm.

And to put things into context, the state of Wyoming has an area of 97,105 sq miles, smaller than Japan.
Tarn refers to it as "The American sector once known as Wyoming is a range of grasslands and dense forest..."
Not as "...a small range of grasslands and dense forest..."

The land area of Ohio is 40,953 sq miles, and the land area of Indiana is 35,867 sq. miles, for a total of 76,820 square miles.
Tarn describes the combined area as "a vast wilderness."
She also mentions "one can find tiny towns, villages, and farms scattered throughout the region...", unlike her description of Japan.

The land area of Georgia today is 57,906 sq. miles, and the land area of Florida today is 53,927 sq. miles.
Of course, most of Florida is gone in Rifts Earth, so we can probably cut that down by at least 51%, to about 26,424 square miles.
Even assuming that Georgia is pretty much the same size as it is today, that puts the total area of the Dinosaur Swamp at about 84,330 square miles.
Tarn describes it as "a giant marshland."
Granted, that context probably just means that it's giant in comparison to your average marshland, not that it's a giant area overall.
But that begs the question, where does Japan stack up in size compared to your average cluster of islands?

Her word was never the word of God, only the word of a human that was describing stuff that was in the game world.
You don't have to be God in order to be right all the time- you simply have to be a fictional character who is only covering stuff where the writer wants you to be correct.

I would never take the word of a person as certainty, whether they are fictional or non-fictional.

I don't believe you.

It is our very nature as humans to be untrusting - Kevin knows this as well as I. I assume that is exactly why he chose Tarn to convey the message as opposed to writing it as certainty. He didn't want it to be certain, he wanted the GMs to be aware they have the leeway to ignore her opinions and design the world as they see fit. He didn;t want us to be limited by "canon".
If he truly wanted us to know anything within the setting as a strict certainty, he would have said so. He wouldn't have used a fictional character which may, or may not be correct as his medium.

Fictional narrators are trustworthy as a norm.
This is why writers have to establish their narrators as being specifically unreliable in order for them to be considered "unreliable narrators."
You don't (or, at least, the vast majority of people don't) read Moby Dick, and start off by thinking, "I bet Ishmael's not his real name."
And you (with the same caveat as above) don't finish the novel thinking, "I'll bet none of this ever happened" or "I bet that whale was a lot smaller than he's saying, because people are untrustworthy, and prone to exaggerate their experiences."
Because it's fiction- people already know that it's made up, so they accept it as it is written unless the writer specifically establishes some reasons why the narrator should be considered to be unreliable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
"An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised."
You cannot compromise what isn't there. Narrators start off with credibility as part of their nature.

Not everybody is as untrusting as you claim to be. Most people take what they hear and read at face value unless it directly contradicts what they already strongly believe.
Which is one reason why Onion articles fairly regularly get reported as fact, and why urban legends spread so quickly.

[Proseksword]

That's just your random assumption.
The places that she knows nothing about, she states that she knows nothing about.
The places where all she knows is rumors, she states or indicates that she's going off of rumors.
The description of Japan is stated purely as fact.
And the description is such that there doesn't need to be any elaboration- if she spent 10 years there, she STILL would have summed it up the same way, because there was nothing of note THERE.

Are human beings not capable of discussing rumors without framing them as such?

Are human beings not capable of sharing information without qualifying whether the source is firsthand knowledge or secondhand information?

Is Erin Tarn not supposed to be human?

Has Erin Tarn not discussed rumors?

Has she not shared secondhand information?

Has she not made mistakes? Is she incapable of making mistakes?

If she is human, she is fallible. If she deals in rumors and secondhand information, it's possible she relayed one, intentionally or not, without qualifying it.

If I am to believe she is a human, as Kevin expects me to, I must also expect she is capable of mistakes, and spreading unqualified rumors and secondhand info.

[Killer Cyborg]

Kevin had a fictional character tell his readers what the fictional character believed the world of Rifts to looked like and that character was wrong because he decided she was wrong and put something there either when he wrote it or after the fact. When doesn't really matter.

What's your source that Kevin decided that Tarn was wrong?

Hmm I think he did not decided she was neither wrong or right at the moments,

I disagree. The fact that he consistently has Tarn mention some of the information that she provides in the form of rumors or otherwise questionable information is a very strong indication that he means for her own personal claims to be taken at face value.
When she says, "there are reports of x" that means that there are reports of x.
When she says, "I have seen x" that means that there are x.
I think that we all agree on this.

The problem with Japan and certain other areas is that she does not say either "there are reports of" or "I have seen," but rather states the matter as if it were certain fact.
But since the context is her own journeys, that is the proper context to take such descriptions in.
If somebody says, "I have traveled the world, and there is a beautiful fountain in Cicily," even though they do not specify in that statement that they have personally seen the fountain, it is the obvious implication.
The same is true even when the two thoughts are separated:
"I have traveled the world. There is a beautiful fountain in Cicily."
Even if the two thoughts are separated even further, with a number of sentences or even paragraphs in between the two thoughts, as long as the first thought above is providing the context of the second thought, it still remains the safe assumption that the person talking to you has actually seen the fountain.

The context of the world overview is "let me begin chronicling my journeys."
Thus, the context of the passage on Japan is that it is part of her journeys, as there is no stated exemption from that context.

as we don't know if he ever suspected Rifts line would go on like it did. But once it did, yes he decided she made some mistakes. It was the entire point of our discussion here in the end.

You claim that he decided that she made some mistakes.
In cases where that is not specifically stated, I disagree. All we know is that canon has changed, not how the change affects the previous canon.
Going back to my earlier example of Erin Tarn describing an island as empty, while a later book describes a giant, glowing statue of Mickey Mouse as having been there when Tarn visited.
This is a change in canon. The island was empty, but now it has never been empty.
Since there is no way for Tarn to have missed that statue, and since there is no reason to assume that she would lie about seeing it, the previous canon that Erin Tarn ever made that claim in the first place, or that she ever described the island, is gone.
It is incorrect to call Tarn a liar or an idiot, because we no longer know whether or not she ever even made the claim that there was nothing on the island. The reality of the encounter has been retconned, so the old reality no longer applies.

Here's another example of canon being changed and retconned: the Boom Gun.
In the original Rifts book, the description stated:
The famous "Boom Gun" is a unique rail gun that can accelerate its flechette style rounds to a speed of Mach 2.
In the book Free Quebec, the description states:
The famous "Boom Gun" is a unique rail gun that can accelerate its flechette style rounds to a speed of Mach 5 (mistakenly cataloged by most to be Mach 2).

Apparently, if I were to mention in a post that the stats on the Boom Gun had been changed, I would end up in a 7-year-long on-and-off argument with dozens of people who would claim that I was wrong, that the stats on the gun NEVER changed at all, only that the fictional people inside the world of Rifts had cataloged it incorrectly.
The problem is, that's insane.

What actually happened was that originally Kevin gave the rounds one speed, then realized that it was pretty slow, so he CHANGED the speed in a later book.
The canon is not the same as it was. It has changed.
The old canon (the rounds travel at Mach 2) is no more.
The new canon (the rounds travel at Mach 5) is the new reality.
Kevin's mention that the speed was often cataloged incorrectly is NOT any indication that canon has not changed.
It does not mean that any of us misread the original stats, nor does it mean that Kevin mis-wrote those original stats.
What it does is to establish an additional new canon to the one above (the speed now being mach 5) which is that in the game world, this speed has often been cataloged incorrectly.
The only significance of which is that GMs have an official sugar-coating that makes the change slightly easier, since any times in their campaigns when the speed was described in-character by a PC or NPC as being Mach 2 now have an official reason instead of being a random celestial hiccup.

Meanwhile, the stats on the ammo capacity for the same weapon were also changed at some point.
In the RMB, the ammo capacity for the Boom Gun was 100.
In a later book, it was upped to 1,000.
This time, there is no pill to swallow- there is no mention of any in-game explanation.
Does this mean that the NPC store clerks that told the PCs that the limit was 100 rounds were WRONG?
No.
Does this mean that all the PCs and NPCs that only loaded 100 rounds into their Boom Gun were morons?
No.
Does this mean that the original stats in the RMB were wrong?
No.
It means that, barring GM intervention, any battles where the 100 round limit was a significant factor also need to be retconned in order to fit the new continuity.
This is something that I presume no GM has ever bothered to do, because every GM I know of has either ignored the new stats, or come up with some kind of in-game explanation as for why there was a change in the ammo capacity of the weapon.
None of which means that anybody was wrong when they used or referred to the old stats.
They were not.
They, whether they were NPCs, or PCs, or players, or GMs, or writers and staff at Palladium, were all correct- they were using the current canon at the time.
The fact that canon was changed out from under them does not suddenly make them wrong.

[Killer Cyborg]

That's just your random assumption.
The places that she knows nothing about, she states that she knows nothing about.
The places where all she knows is rumors, she states or indicates that she's going off of rumors.
The description of Japan is stated purely as fact.
And the description is such that there doesn't need to be any elaboration- if she spent 10 years there, she STILL would have summed it up the same way, because there was nothing of note THERE.

If she is human, she is fallible. If she deals in rumors and secondhand information, it's possible she relayed one, intentionally or not, without qualifying it.

If I am to believe she is a human, as Kevin expects me to, I must also expect she is capable of mistakes, and spreading unqualified rumors and secondhand info.

Tarn is not human. Tarn is a fictional character.
She can only fail when that is exactly what Kevin wants her do fail, which is not really failing.
Tarn is no more capable of actually failing than she is capable of doing anything at all on her own- she is not real.

You keep trying to make this about whether or not Tarn can make mistakes, but that's not the issue.
I've already agreed that she CAN... but only when Kevin wants her to.
The question is not whether or not Tarn might have been mistaken when describing Japan, it is whether or not we have any reason to believe that Kevin wants or wanted her to be mistaken in her original description of the region, and we have no such indication.

The fact that the Japan book contradicted her earlier description of the place no more means that her description was mistaken than the fact that the New West book contradicted the SB1 population descriptions means that the information in SB1 was mistaken.
All that the Japan book means is that the old canon is out, and the new canon is in.
Which is change.

And as I've said before, you can make up whatever in-game scenarios you like to come up with reasons why Tarn might have said that in spite of all the stuff in the Japan book, but that's just your own in-game explanation.
Which means it's not real.

The reality is that Kevin intended originally for Japan to have nothing of interest, and he later changed his mind.

[Proseksword]

Tarn is not human. Tarn is a fictional character.

But as a fictional character, Kevin Siembieda wrote her to be human. In order to write a human character, they must behave in human ways. Ergo, Kevin wrote her to make mistakes.

[Killer Cyborg]

To find out where she has been you would start with the most recent information. If the most recent info that she has not been someplace, you do not need to waste your time looking at previous info about that location. Canon says as of 109 PA she had not been to Japan.

Correct.
But people keep wanting to discuss whether or not she'd been there in in the context of the RMB, so that stuff just keeps popping up.
We can safely ignore it as far as the context of "where, according to current cannon, has Erin Tarn visited."
As I believe I already pointed out.

We have the other thread to talk about if it is a change to canon or not.

Agreed.
But I've been posting a lot, and people in both threads want to argue with me about it, so sometimes I respond to the off-topic conversation in this thread instead of referring them to the other thread.

[Killer Cyborg]

Tarn is not human. Tarn is a fictional character.

But as a fictional character, Kevin Siembieda wrote her to be human. In order to write a human character, they must behave in human ways. Ergo, Kevin wrote her to make mistakes.

No. Human characters are not human. The don't behave human- they don't behave at all.
They're not real.
They are just a writer simulating what he/she believes will best convey certain points to the readers.
Sometimes this includes mistakes, sometimes not.

[Proseksword]

No. Human characters are not human. The don't behave human- they don't behave at all.

Okay, pick whatever term you want to use for a fictional character taking a fictional action. They still have to do it in a pantomime of a human-being to be a fictional human being.

They are just a writer simulating what he/she believes will best convey certain points to the readers.
Sometimes this includes mistakes, sometimes not.

....and when the point is to portray a fictional vague, unauthorized document about the limited knowledge about the world of one fictional Erin Tarn, who would not allow her fictional name to be associated with said fictional text, then it is in the interest of conveying said fictional text alleged to be the work of said fictional woman that it include mistakes.

[Dr. Doom III]

What's your source that Kevin decided that Tarn was wrong?

Every book that contradicts her.

[Dr. Doom III]

How about I quote the relevant passages that make it SEEM like she originally visited Japan, which is what I actually said?

Rifts, 137
Kevin Siembieda, in straight narration writes:
What follows is a brief world overview written by historian and explorer, Erin tarn.
This tells us that the world overview was written by Erin Tarn.

Provably false.
That "Kevin Siembieda, in straight narration" is also a passage written in the book "Traversing Our Modern World" It is not straight narration.

The excerpt which follows is a world overview commissioned by the Council of Learning at Lazlo.
This tells us that what we are reading in the book is, although an excerpt from a book later compiled from Tarn's writings, a complete work in of itself. It is the same world overview that Tarn was paid to write. It is a professional piece by Tarn herself, one that she saw as being worthy of turning in to fulfill the requirements of her assignment.
What we read IS the world overview that she wrote, a complete work.

Still taken from the book written by someone else whose veracity is unknown and not endorsed by Tarn.

Kevin writing as Tarn:
...let me set about the task of chronicling my journeys.
This prefaces the entire section, providing the context for everything that follows.
She is describing her journeys as a primary function, while also including information that she learned along the way.
That is the rule for the piece, not the exception: when in doubt, it is to be assumed that she is describing places that she has been.

Kevin writing as someone else writing a book based on Tarn's writings which is not endorsed by Tarn herself.
Also after writing she has never been much past the Rio Grande she describes South America in far more detail than Japan not using words like rumor or "it's been said".

In her description of Japan, the information is stated as fact, with the same degree of confidence as her descriptions of Chi-Town and other places close to home.
Unlike many other places, there is no note of "I have never traveled there..." or "I am told..." or "Rumors claim that..." or "other scholars have told me..." or anything else to indicate that her description is a departure from the primary context of the article.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe that it IS a departure from the primary context of the article.

If by her then you mean the unknown writer and not Tarn since Tarn didn't write the book and Kevin didn't write the book as Tarn either.

[Armorlord]

I'd have told you Erin Tarn said in the main book there was nothing there.
Knowing what we know now she was wrong.

So Kevin has a fictional character tell his readers what Kevin believes he wants the world of Rifts to look like... and that character is "wrong" somehow?

Ok, so, going off of this and most of your responses following it.. You are upset because you think the meta-game of Erin Tarn changed? That, in that one first book, Erin Tarn was meant to be a completely infallible mouth-piece channeling the will of Siembieda? and that her being a human being that is fallible and not been to every major area on earth personally is a gross and unreasonable retcon?

I'm afraid this is a meta-aspect of Ms. Tarn that you have latched onto on your own, judging from the response from others. I know that I, and the people I've gamed with, look at anything provided from an 'in character' perspective as suspect information, and from the GM side as stuff that you have pretty much free reign over.
Even if you were correct about RMB Tarn being meant to be the end all be all of Rifts Earth information, you are going to have a hard time convincing anyone that immediately retconing that in every Worldbook was a bad thing.

So, you can either assume that she is a regular human being and see events as most people here and the books present it, or hold to this meta-game theory regarding the RMB- but you'll still have to deal with every other Rifts book telling you to move on.

[Zer0 Kay]

There is one funny thing you guys keep forgetting to consider to think about. She travels through Rifts are ripe in space, and IIRC and I do, TIME. It is quite possible that the entry's are all out of order as she jumped around in time and the RMB entry is actually after she had gone to Europe but at some point went back in time but after her RMB self left for Mexico and wrote those entries. It's all a timey wimey thing.

[Dr. Doom III]

There is one funny thing you guys keep forgetting to consider to think about. She travels through Rifts are ripe in space, and IIRC and I do, TIME. It is quite possible that the entry's are all out of order as she jumped around in time and the RMB entry is actually after she had gone to Europe but at some point went back in time but after her RMB self left for Mexico and wrote those entries. It's all a timey wimey thing.

Well Killer Cyborg might consider it a retcon but Rifts Vampire Kingdoms was her first time traveling through a Rift.

[Zer0 Kay]

There is one funny thing you guys keep forgetting to consider to think about. She travels through Rifts are ripe in space, and IIRC and I do, TIME. It is quite possible that the entry's are all out of order as she jumped around in time and the RMB entry is actually after she had gone to Europe but at some point went back in time but after her RMB self left for Mexico and wrote those entries. It's all a timey wimey thing.

Well Killer Cyborg might consider it a retcon but Rifts Vampire Kingdoms was her first time traveling through a Rift.

Yup so the "original" her leaves Lazlo and goes through the Rift in Mexico her adventures ensue and by the time she gets back to Lazlo it happens to be a few days before she wrote the entries in RMB... come on ya gotta keep in mind that I'm pulling this theory out of the air (cuz the other place is stinky and would hurt). Ultimate Retcon... Doctor Who... or time travel of some other kind.

[TechnoGothic]

But maybe not her last trip through a Rift either.
Is Erin Tarn incompetent ? No, she is just wrong from from to time as anyone else.
Can Erin Tarn make mistakes ? Yes, and appariently has many times in the past when writting about places.

Until Erin gets a Magic Tattoo which grants her the ablity to Translate other Languages for herself, she also needs to rely on Tanslators who know the language where she is visiting.And Things get lost in Translating all the time or even altered.

Erin Tarn is not 100% correct on anything she writes about.

[Giant2005]

You claim that he decided that she made some mistakes.
In cases where that is not specifically stated, I disagree. All we know is that canon has changed, not how the change affects the previous canon.
Going back to my earlier example of Erin Tarn describing an island as empty, while a later book describes a giant, glowing statue of Mickey Mouse as having been there when Tarn visited.
This is a change in canon. The island was empty, but now it has never been empty.
Since there is no way for Tarn to have missed that statue, and since there is no reason to assume that she would lie about seeing it, the previous canon that Erin Tarn ever made that claim in the first place, or that she ever described the island, is gone.
It is incorrect to call Tarn a liar or an idiot, because we no longer know whether or not she ever even made the claim that there was nothing on the island. The reality of the encounter has been retconned, so the old reality no longer applies.

Assuming I understand your analogy correctly, I don't think it is a particularly fair one.
If I understand right, your analogy includes a tiny island with nothing but a giant statue on it. Obviously it would be impossible to miss that.
Trying to imply that it would be impossible to miss it on a much larger island that is shrouded in Wilderness and dangerous to explore because it is infested with hostiles is absurd.
If she got there before the Republic, the only noteworthy population would have been The New Empire. Look at the map of Japan on page 16 of the Japan World Book. The New Empire covers roughly 1/10th of Japan's territory. The Zone covers about 3/10ths of Japan's territory. If she fully explored Japan, she couldn't have wrote anything on the matter because she would have certainly died in the zone. She would have been far more likely to die in the zone than ever encounter The New Empire purely due to the size differences. It is possible she would encounter the New Empire first but very unlikely.
Now with that in mind, the only way that the Japan Book directly contradicts the RMB is if it is stated somewhere that she explored the entirety of Japan which it doesn't. If you can't prove she explored the entirety of Japan then you can't prove that anything changed when Japan was written - making the assumption that she would have encountered the New Empire while there as a certainty is a mistake. Unless she scouted the entire length of Japan, she would only have a 10% chance of encountering anything significant that wasn't the usual monsters and demons that plague the entire planet.
That is what you need to prove.

[TechnoGothic]

You claim that he decided that she made some mistakes.
In cases where that is not specifically stated, I disagree. All we know is that canon has changed, not how the change affects the previous canon.
Going back to my earlier example of Erin Tarn describing an island as empty, while a later book describes a giant, glowing statue of Mickey Mouse as having been there when Tarn visited.
This is a change in canon. The island was empty, but now it has never been empty.
Since there is no way for Tarn to have missed that statue, and since there is no reason to assume that she would lie about seeing it, the previous canon that Erin Tarn ever made that claim in the first place, or that she ever described the island, is gone.
It is incorrect to call Tarn a liar or an idiot, because we no longer know whether or not she ever even made the claim that there was nothing on the island. The reality of the encounter has been retconned, so the old reality no longer applies.

Assuming I understand your analogy correctly, I don't think it is a particularly fair one.
If I understand right, your analogy includes a tiny island with nothing but a giant statue on it. Obviously it would be impossible to miss that.
Trying to imply that it would be impossible to miss it on a much larger island that is shrouded in Wilderness and dangerous to explore because it is infested with hostiles is absurd.
If she got there before the Republic, the only noteworthy population would have been The New Empire. Look at the map of Japan on page 16 of the Japan World Book. The New Empire covers roughly 1/10th of Japan's territory. The Zone covers about 3/10ths of Japan's territory. If she fully explored Japan, she couldn't have wrote anything on the matter because she would have certainly died in the zone. She would have been far more likely to die in the zone than ever encounter The New Empire purely due to the size differences. It is possible she would encounter the New Empire first but very unlikely.
Now with that in mind, the only way that the Japan Book directly contradicts the RMB is if it is stated somewhere that she explored the entirety of Japan which it doesn't. If you can't prove she explored the entirety of Japan then you can't prove that anything changed when Japan was written - making the assumption that she would have encountered the New Empire while there as a certainty is a mistake. Unless she scouted the entire length of Japan, she would only have a 10% chance of encountering anything significant that wasn't the usual monsters and demons that plague the entire planet.
That is what you need to prove.

Erin Tarn never Fully Explores any land or country.
I see her more as a Tourist than a real sholar, while she explores other places.
Destination Truth Style Exploring is her Style. Research (alittle bit), Visits a Place for a Night or Two, Moves on elsewhere or returns home.

Japan in 2098 maybe had close to Half of a billion people to a Full Billion. With 90% death count, that still lives ALOT of people in the island. 50 Million to 100 Million alive and well.
She could travel and never encounter anyone there for sure. Or just encounter quite little villages with nothing going on.

[Shark_Force]

How about I quote the relevant passages that make it SEEM like she originally visited Japan, which is what I actually said?

Rifts, 137
Kevin Siembieda, in straight narration writes:
What follows is a brief world overview written by historian and explorer, Erin tarn.
This tells us that the world overview was written by Erin Tarn.

Provably false.
That "Kevin Siembieda, in straight narration" is also a passage written in the book "Traversing Our Modern World" It is not straight narration.

The excerpt which follows is a world overview commissioned by the Council of Learning at Lazlo.
This tells us that what we are reading in the book is, although an excerpt from a book later compiled from Tarn's writings, a complete work in of itself. It is the same world overview that Tarn was paid to write. It is a professional piece by Tarn herself, one that she saw as being worthy of turning in to fulfill the requirements of her assignment.
What we read IS the world overview that she wrote, a complete work.

Still taken from the book written by someone else whose veracity is unknown and not endorsed by Tarn.

Kevin writing as Tarn:
...let me set about the task of chronicling my journeys.
This prefaces the entire section, providing the context for everything that follows.
She is describing her journeys as a primary function, while also including information that she learned along the way.
That is the rule for the piece, not the exception: when in doubt, it is to be assumed that she is describing places that she has been.

Kevin writing as someone else writing a book based on Tarn's writings which is not endorsed by Tarn herself.
Also after writing she has never been much past the Rio Grande she describes South America in far more detail than Japan not using words like rumor or "it's been said".

In her description of Japan, the information is stated as fact, with the same degree of confidence as her descriptions of Chi-Town and other places close to home.
Unlike many other places, there is no note of "I have never traveled there..." or "I am told..." or "Rumors claim that..." or "other scholars have told me..." or anything else to indicate that her description is a departure from the primary context of the article.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe that it IS a departure from the primary context of the article.

If by her then you mean the unknown writer and not Tarn since Tarn didn't write the book and Kevin didn't write the book as Tarn either.

seriously? you're trying to argue that the opening blurb was written as the author of the "traversing our modern world" book?

so, to summarise then: you didn't read the blurb in question. let's have a look at a few quotes from it:

"Traversing Our Modern World is forbidden in all Coalition States and affiliates. It currently ranks number one on the list of outlawed books (several of her other books are among the top 20). The Coalition has just recently denounced the 63 year old historian as demonic and a criminal of the Coalition States! Her whereabouts are not known."

"It is this lack of complete knowledge that made her refuse to write the volume herself, or personally endorse the much sought after publication."

these passages BOTH clearly indicate that they are not in the book, because the book could not possibly have been published with information regarding what happens *after* the book is published contained within it.

now let's read another part: "The excerpt which follows is a world overview commissioned by the Council of Learning at Lazlo. It is also the Council at the Free State of Lazlo who have published the tome."

in other words... the part that we read IS endorsed by erin tarn. it IS written by her. she considers it complete and accurate enough to publish, and to receive payment for her work on it. this particular portion is exactly the OPPOSITE of "It is this lack of complete knowledge that made her refuse to write the volume herself, or personally endorse the much sought after publication." because she DID write it herself, and she DID endorse it after publication (by the act of authoring it). the book "traversing our modern world" as a whole does not meet her standards. the passage of the book that we have access to *does* meet her standards. if we had the *entire* volume "traversing our modern world" we might have to worry about the fact that she feels it is too incomplete, and that it wasn't endorsed by her or authored by her. but that isn't the case. the situation is that the only part we have *is* authored by her, it was written as a world overview for the council of learning at lazlo (who are also the author of the book overall, as i quoted above; the fact that you didn't know this also leads me to believe you aren't even passingly familiar with the passage you are claiming to have more accurate information about than killer cyborg), and she considered it complete enough to tender it as payment for services rendered.