Converting popular settings to Infinite Worlds

[William]

Originally Posted by jSarek

Would this designation include the one where the Martians were defeated by a germ warfare agent developed by Dr. Moreau, after it had been located by Miss Mina Murray and Mr. Allan Quatermain?

That world has been hit by so many reality quakes it's not even funny.

Hmm... maybe the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen world is some sort of mythological source-world -- a sort of primary myth-parallel that interacts with Homeline on a regular basis, causing Homeline authors to write stories that split off simpler myth-parallels shaped by various individual stories. Or, vice versa, a timeline extremely sensitive to Homeline fiction, which develops relatively normally -- a couple of hundred years or so in the past, an otherwise normal echo with slightly rubber physics, but with a strong tendency to birth people and plots found in at-all-plausible Homeline fiction. Give it a couple of decades, and we'll be seeing Sam Spade and maybe the Blackhawks.

Or alternatively, it's a deliberate experiment by some person or group that's been planewalking for hundreds of years, from a world like our own, manipulating LXG to produce the stories he wanted.

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by William

Hmm... maybe the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen world is some sort of mythological source-world

Or it could just be "Sherlock-2.1". Sherlock-2 has "other Victorian
characters such as Dr. Jekyll and Abraham van Helsing" so many of the
characters appearing in LXG should exist there, bur presumably
versions closer to the original versions than to the ones used by Moore.

And not the too obviously weird ones, obviously.

Originally Posted by William

Give it a couple of decades, and we'll be seeing Sam Spade and maybe the Blackhawks.

Not to mention Herbert West, Charles Dexter Ward, what'shisname
Pickman and the others.

[elShoggotho]

Richard Upton Pickman, Doktor Totenkopf, the full version of Nikola Tesla (not the crackware we got), Doktor von Ochskahrt... the list goes on and on.

[David Johnston]

Plantagenet 2, 1974

Current Affairs: The Anglo-French Empire dominates while Poland vainly schemes and Centrum cautiously lays far more dangerous plans.

Divergence Point: King Richard survives his infected wound and John never becomes King.

Major Civilisations: Western (bipolar)

Great Powers: The Anglo-French Empire (dictatorship CR 3), Poland (dictatorship, CR 5), Byzantium (dictatorship CR 4)

Tech Level: 5+1
Mana Level: ?
Quantum: 7 Infinity Class z3
Centrum Zone: Red

Uses a kind of psionically based magical aptitude to cast "spells". Centrum is infiltrating with the hope of using the Anglo-French Empire to unify the world since they are very worried about the chance the "magic" of this world could be used to develop a World Jumping "spell" and the proximity to Centrum makes it likely it will discover them.

[Mgellis]

Shado 1

Current year: 1980

Divergence Point: In the 1960s, England realizes that aliens are abducting people, although it's not entirely clear why. They develop a global defense network including a moon base (which appears to be crewed entirely by cute English women with purple hair) with space-based interceptors and a secret anti-alien unit back on Earth, disguised as a film studio...SHADO

Major civilizations, etc.: Pretty much the same as our world (England does not appear to have told anyone about those pesky aliens, although seeing how many orbital explosions there have been in the last few years it's not clear why America and the Soviets aren't suspicious...)

Tech Level: 7+1
Mana Level: Low
Quanta: 4
Infinity Class: Z3
Centrum Zone: N.A.

The aliens appear to have reactionless thrusters, gravity control, etc., allowing relativistic sublight spaceflight. This makes them about TL 7+3^. The aliens are humanoid and kidnap humans for transplant organs. It is not clear what solar system they are from, if they are the only alien civilization in our part of the galaxy, etc. Their weapons aren't actually that impressive; they are frequently shot down by TL 7+1 missiles launched by Terran interceptors.

[David Johnston]

Actually the odds are pretty high that Centrum and Homeline would be oblivious to what was going on that world. SHADO was a secret organisation after all. The visible differences between Straker's world and ours that wouldn't take years of investigation are:

There are a lot of cars on the road with gull-wing doors.
There are a lot more people wearing wigs.
Computer technology hasn't gone so far down the PC road even though their mainframes are if anything, better than those of the equivalent timeframe.
There are a few more cheesy science fiction movies coming out of England, thanks to the existence of a rather bad film studio there.
There is a lot less racial tension.

By far the last difference would strike Homeline as being most significant so it might end up being named after Martin Luthor King or someone else whose existence seemed to be pivotal to the development of this surprising degree of social progress.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

Shado 1

...

Major civilizations, etc.: Pretty much the same as our world (England does not appear to have told anyone about those pesky aliens, although seeing how many orbital explosions there have been in the last few years it's not clear why America and the Soviets aren't suspicious...)

(a) It'd be "the U.K.", not "England". Though I don't remember any Welsh, Scots, or Northern Irish agents.

(b) On the other hand, I do remember an American commander in chief and probably one or two other agents with cure accents. I always assumed that SHADO was an international organisation that just ended up with the traditional plot-convenient anglophone bias. I'm pretty sure that the spinoff comics at least were explicit about this.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston

By far the last difference would strike Homeline as being most significant so it might end up being named after Martin Luthor King or someone else whose existence seemed to be pivotal to the development of this surprising degree of social progress.

This is a pretty cool idea in general for IW games. Give the AE an obvious benign divergence (and a name that goes with it) that Infinity and Centrum both focus on, but that actual difference is much bigger, unfriendly, and non-obvious.

[LoneWolf23k]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

(a) It'd be "the U.K.", not "England". Though I don't remember any Welsh, Scots, or Northern Irish agents.

(b) On the other hand, I do remember an American commander in chief and probably one or two other agents with cure accents. I always assumed that SHADO was an international organisation that just ended up with the traditional plot-convenient anglophone bias. I'm pretty sure that the spinoff comics at least were explicit about this.

Maybe the show just focused on the London office?

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by David Johnston

Plantagenet 2, 1974
Tech Level: 5+1
Mana Level: ?
Quantum: 7 Infinity Class z3
Centrum Zone: Red

Uses a kind of psionically based magical aptitude to cast "spells". Centrum is infiltrating with the hope of using the Anglo-French Empire to unify the world since they are very worried about the chance the "magic" of this world could be used to develop a World Jumping "spell" and the proximity to Centrum makes it likely it will discover them.

I don't see any reason not to use ordinary magery, and declare it a normal or low mana worlld, personally. Only people with "The gift" can use spells, but anyone can study the rituals and theories of magic.