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Old 05-15-2009, 05:43 PM   #1
Qoltar
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Default "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Alright, I've often seen it said on gaming forums that this or that Alternate History or alternate timeline (What GURPS calls Infinite Worlds) isn't that good or believable.

Okay, fine.

Which Alternate History timelines for RPGs do you think are GOOD or believable?

Which ones are just really fun?

Which AH timelines are just extreme over the top silly - but you still might want to play an RPG with it?


- Ed Charlton
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Old 05-15-2009, 07:26 PM   #2
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

I suggest you try alt.history.what-if. You'll get plenty of opinions there.
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Old 05-15-2009, 07:40 PM   #3
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow
I suggest you try alt.history.what-if. You'll get plenty of opinions there.
No, here is a good spot.

There at least two threads on here already talking about alternate trimeline ideas.

This is also the forum of a company that has published Game sourcebooks called ALTERNATE EARTHS and INFINITE WORLDS.


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Old 05-15-2009, 11:36 PM   #4
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontiers, has an extremely plausible alternative history. This western game by Kenzer & Company has more frontier action options because the United States entered the Civil War earlier and the South won.

The changes start with James K. Polk not becoming President in the 1844 election and snowball from there. James K. Polk was a darkhorse candidate who favored expansion north towards the Oregon Territory, west towards California and into Texas. Take him out of the equation and the Mexican-American War may not have happened. The West develops differently without the U.S. taking control of all that land from Mexico. . .

Besides being plausible, a good alternative history in an RPG has to give you something enjoyable to play in. Sure, you could play in an very plausible alternative history where every PC was an accountant working in an office and the lack of development of electricity made them work by gaslight or candlelight, but you'd still be playing an accountant in a dimly-lit room.

Aces & Eights takes its point of departure from James K. Polk and resolves to build a more open West, more befitting cinematic tales than the West as a colony which is more historically accurate. Instead of a West settled by a vast array of settlers from a strong U.S. central government, in Aces & Eights you have the U.S.A. the Confederate States of America, Deseret (Mormon nation), the 5 Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma (As the state of Sequoyah), Mexico, a free California, France and Britain all vying for power on the frontier. You still have your cattle drives, card games (poker and faro), horse chases, but with a more open frontier, you are more free to engage in political intrigue. Or, if you hate politics, there's a lot less central government to ruin your western.

So, you've got a West that you could believe happen if you understand the historical depatures and you've got a West that gives you more gaming opportunities than one dominated by a single nation.

Plausible and fun equals a better game. There's nothing wrong with a silly setting, if you like the silliness, but you enjoy a game more if you can sink your teeth into it and feel like you're eating something like a tasty steak instead of some weird chewing gum.. . .
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Old 05-16-2009, 09:21 AM   #5
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

I'm not sure I have many opinions about really believable future histories and I'm not sure how broad the question is meant.

Cyberpunk 2020 is just fun (even though it wasn't really intended that way its now alternate history since we've obviously taken an alternate technological path now)

Original World of Darkness alternate (hidden) history is fun even if they fall flat occasionally.

Steampunk and Deadlands alternate history are fun.

Pretty much any alternate history that takes the -- and then something cool happened (cool to the player viewpoint) are going to have their moments:
Examples -- Marvel and DC universe (from comics)
GURPS 3rd ed Supers
Wildcards
Steampunk and Deadlands fits in this category
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Old 05-16-2009, 12:37 PM   #6
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Space 1889 is a favorite that I've run a number of times.

So is Castle Falkenstein. Of course, I'm a Jules Verne fan, so I'm a sucker for anything with Victorian Era Uber-tech.
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Old 05-16-2009, 02:41 PM   #7
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

GURPS International Super Teams, the base world for GURPS Supers prior to GURPS 4e, were both fun. IST was more believable than the old World of Darkness. This was because IST didn't go into as much detail and made supers a post-World War II phenomenon, for the most part. Thus while social changes were accumulating in the IST world, only about 50 years of change had happened and so the long-term social changes had not completely altered society.

The old World of Darkness had a good twist in having the supernatural beings hide, making it a conspiratoral and secret powers genre. The problem became when major humans either became supernaturals, had supernatural patrons (often secret) or were pawns. The World of Darkness became a world where there were at most, 3 normal humans. Every other being was a supernatural in disguise.

Both settings were fun, but by the end, the old World of Darkness had a horribly unbelievable AH.
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Old 05-16-2009, 02:52 PM   #8
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Gernsback I really like, even though I'm not sure I'd want to live there.

The two incarnations of Red Alert histories are fun, but silly (the RA3 one definitely is), but it's still fun.

I think the Hitman 47 universe can be considered an alternate timeline (TL8 clone assassins?), or a cryptohistorical one (but set in the recent times).
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Old 05-16-2009, 06:01 PM   #9
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Qoltar
Alright, I've often seen it said on gaming forums that this or that Alternate History or alternate timeline (What GURPS calls Infinite Worlds) isn't that good or believable.

Okay, fine.

Which Alternate History timelines for RPGs do you think are GOOD or believable?

Which ones are just really fun?

Which AH timelines are just extreme over the top silly - but you still might want to play an RPG with it?


- Ed Charlton
Well, i like Brittainica 3, but for all the brilliance of the screw over of Parliament that James III's recognition of "Our American Parliaments", I find it hard to believe James' descendants could let alone would keep the pro Colony policy in effect for the next 298 years.

In that move, the Crown took it's North American Colonies (unspecified if this covered Britains South and Central American holdings0 out of Parliaments hands. giving the throne separate sources of revenue Parliament could not control. This should have lead to either a serious schism between Parliament run Britain and the Americas or to the effective nullification of Parliament's power of the purse, which is the foundation for it's other powers.

In the latter case you'd expect to see similar reductions of power hitting the individual American Parliaments when it suited the Crown. And Brittanica 3 becoming an absolute Monarchy instead of a Constitutional Monarchy.

in the former case, Britain looks to be a basket case torn in internal strife and several civil wars.
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Old 05-16-2009, 06:06 PM   #10
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Default Re: "Alternate Histories" for RPGs; which ones are good? Believable? You like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by baakyocalder
Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontiers, has an extremely plausible alternative history. This western game by Kenzer & Company has more frontier action options because the United States entered the Civil War earlier and the South won.

The changes start with James K. Polk not becoming President in the 1844 election and snowball from there. James K. Polk was a darkhorse candidate who favored expansion north towards the Oregon Territory, west towards California and into Texas. Take him out of the equation and the Mexican-American War may not have happened. The West develops differently without the U.S. taking control of all that land from Mexico. . .

Besides being plausible, a good alternative history in an RPG has to give you something enjoyable to play in. Sure, you could play in an very plausible alternative history where every PC was an accountant working in an office and the lack of development of electricity made them work by gaslight or candlelight, but you'd still be playing an accountant in a dimly-lit room.

Aces & Eights takes its point of departure from James K. Polk and resolves to build a more open West, more befitting cinematic tales than the West as a colony which is more historically accurate. Instead of a West settled by a vast array of settlers from a strong U.S. central government, in Aces & Eights you have the U.S.A. the Confederate States of America, Deseret (Mormon nation), the 5 Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma (As the state of Sequoyah), Mexico, a free California, France and Britain all vying for power on the frontier. You still have your cattle drives, card games (poker and faro), horse chases, but with a more open frontier, you are more free to engage in political intrigue. Or, if you hate politics, there's a lot less central government to ruin your western.

So, you've got a West that you could believe happen if you understand the historical depatures and you've got a West that gives you more gaming opportunities than one dominated by a single nation.

Plausible and fun equals a better game. There's nothing wrong with a silly setting, if you like the silliness, but you enjoy a game more if you can sink your teeth into it and feel like you're eating something like a tasty steak instead of some weird chewing gum.. . .
The problem with the Free (Northern) California here is that Freemont and the other 'Rebels' were likely agents of the Polk government who immigrated to California to form a core fifth column as it came to be known during the Spanish Civil war.

Without Polk's secret aid, it's kind of a stretch that they had to Military clout to take the part of the province that they did.
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