The words in bold are key. You can't really argue with that statement as written. If it's an issue for you then you should address it, without a doubt. It isn't an issue for me, but that's at the same level of personal taste and style. This only turns into an issue when you take those two bolded words out and people start trying to argue about absolutes, which is silly IMO. The fact that I might present reasons why this sort of detail doesn't bother me, and ways that I might deal with the inconsistency in play, is not me suggesting that everyone should adopt my answer, nor that their issues are baseless.
You're right, I can't make a claim on how big of an issue this is for you. Or most other people. And from the amount of dismissal I and others who do have this issue have recieved, it is clear that others don't have this problem.
And, a lot of people have said that our issues are baseless. In fact, you yourself made this statement:
Anyone who wants to get all tangled up based on a single line of fluff text is probably having less fun than me. I never worry about crap like this, I can change it or tell the story slightly differently if I want to, or I can treat like the text of a story where the description has some dramatic license baked in. If the players care about the question they can play to find out and we can find out how the 10 towns survived winter's embrace together.
So, according to your own assertion, I am having less fun than you. I'm worrying about "crap" instead of focusing on just enjoying myself.
And, as we have found, it is more than a single line of fluff text. Not only is there the line in the opening about it being two years of darkness and winter, but as was shown when you find a description of Auril casting the spell, it has been an immediate effect. This "single line of fluff text" is in fact the entire point of conflict. Auril has cast a spell that has left Icewind Dale in Darkness and extreme winter for two years.
One of the first adventures you can have is going out on a lake to confront a fish monster destroying boats. And you are told that because a sage interrupts a greedy dwarf who was going to send you out to fish without that knowledge. Purely because he wants to make a profit, not because, oh, I don't know, people are starving in the streets due to limited supplies and most of the big game dying off due to an endless winter.
We have human sacrifice to break the curse side by side with "business as usual".
It isn't a problem for you, I get that. But I can bold those two little words as well, and point out that just because it isn't a problem
for you, doesn't mean it isn't a problem for the structure of the module.
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I understand that you feel that way (and that's okay), but I disagree that it would somehow be changed to an inconvenience - the idea of the situation getting gradually worse not only doesn't stop it from being an apocalypse (in fact, if it continues to get worse from there than it really would be absolutely terrible) - it just deals with the "How is anything still alive?" question. (Along with stuff like Druids and Clerics helping out as best they can).
It's still a horrible situation to be in, and (to me at least) still allows for things like cannibal cultists. I for one, would not play any of it as a simple inconvenience, but anyone who wants a lighthearted romp in the snow could play it that way if they choose to.
Which sounded like a reasonable solution, until it was pointed out that the module is actually fairly explicit. Her spell prevents the sun from rising. The situation did not gradually get worse, except potentially in terms of the cold (which would have been very quick, as we do all tend to know that it gets colder at night fairly quickly) one day, two years ago, the sun did not rise.
We would actually have to change, not only the text in the intro to describe it slowly growing worse, but also change the spell Auril is casting, to instead have been a slow changing of the day cycle, instead of just a complete stopping of the sun.
And also remember, the Druids and Clerics helping was something we added in as well. Of course we can keep adding things to make this better, but at some point I think it is fair to acknowledge that there was a mistake made, because the module presents us with two versions of events, both of which cannot be true.