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randallsquared comments on Replaying History - Less Wrong
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I don't really see a sharp difference between the two types of "What if" you pose.
"What if Vikings had developed a thriving civilization in the Americas?" sort of implies "What if Viking settlements in Newfoundland had not collapsed?" to about the same degree that "What if Viking settlements in Newfoundland had not collapsed?" sort of implies "What if the climate in Greenland hadn't become inhospitable to Viking settlements?". For practical purposes, there's always a step further back to get to the cause of whatever effect you're whatiffing about.
I know, it's somewhat hard to explain. The best way I know to point you towards the difference I see is considering a combination of scale and chance. The events I want to focus on should be small (not in the sense of their significance, but in the sense of their complexity) and easily affected by random variation. I don't know that there's a clear breaking point, and it's possible I'm overly affected by the writing of historians, who tend to tell the story of the past in such a way that certain events and outcomes are seen as "big deals" while others were inevitable steps or random chance. Since I know the history, I know what the "big deals" are and can steer around them and just feel like I'm not committing the sin of alternate history that annoys me.