New Reality Seeds

[PTTG]

A mid-to-late-70s hot war in Iran is not far from real history at all. Change a few people, add or subtract a butterfly, maybe increase or decrease the strength of the USSR.... One critical change is likely that the Vietnam war has to end early.

You could have it be triggered by the revolution or by the hostage crisis or by some invented trigger which could be the divergence point itself.

I myself would consider delaying it a decade into the late-80s specifically to play with early-digital-age mass warfare. You could put the action at sea and in the air with all the bells and whistles of two highly technological factions, or you could keep things in the mud.

There would definitely be some kind of interference from the Asian powers, but probably nothing overt unless someone decides it's possible to escalate juuuust to the edge of nuclear war and no further.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

A mid-to-late-70s hot war in Iran is not far from real history at all. Change a few people, add or subtract a butterfly, maybe increase or decrease the strength of the USSR.... One critical change is likely that the Vietnam war has to end early.

You could have it be triggered by the revolution or by the hostage crisis or by some invented trigger which could be the divergence point itself.

I myself would consider delaying it a decade into the late-80s specifically to play with early-digital-age mass warfare. You could put the action at sea and in the air with all the bells and whistles of two highly technological factions, or you could keep things in the mud.

There would definitely be some kind of interference from the Asian powers, but probably nothing overt unless someone decides it's possible to escalate juuuust to the edge of nuclear war and no further.

It seems to me that the Iran/Iraq War is the best flashpoint. Allow Saddam Hussein greater military success in the first two years. Then in either 83 or 84 have Yuri Andropov be healthier and ready to prove that the USSR is the top dog decide to intervene.
The Iran/Iraq war was a blood spattered mess to begin with. Just upping the stakes a little could get scary really fast.

[YankeeGamer]

Originally Posted by (E)

Refusure worlds, A cluster of worlds where parachronic technology was developed but not used for travel to alternate worlds.

Refusure - 1
This world is very similar to homeline but after parachronic travel was developed it was decided to not use it due to the Reason technologies surrounding parachronic travel are well developed however with detection and sensors relating to incoming travel being possibly superior to homeline's and centrum's.

Refusure - 2
The same technology that is used for parachronic travel by homeline is used on this world for instantaneous point to point travel. This has caused a great leap forward in transportation efficiency and space exploration with Mars being in the early stages of colonization. Social change is also in full swing with traditional national borders becoming less relevant. Parachronic detection technology is also well developed. It is unknown if this world is using high efficiency parachronic technology to "skip" through a world with different physical laws or if they have simply developed a new application of the standard technology.

This, of course, leads to the possibility that they could change their philosophy, and start traveling through the worldlines. That's one worry for Infinity/Centrum.

The other concern: If their detection tech is that well developed, who are they worried about detecting...

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

This is a swashers setting with emphasis on intrigue. The basic changes are A) The Rough Wooing was under Somerset far more successful. Somerset's victory at Pinkie Cleugh was even more profound than in our history. The Scots Lords, already disenchanted with the Catholic Church, decide to revolt against their king in order to preserve their own powers and privileges. They win, and five year old Mary ended up in the English court. Mary and Edward were betrothed.

Change B) is simply that Mary of Scotland grows up as a Protestant with Elizabeth as her mentor and surrogate Mother. Elizabeth and Mary become an inseparable team.

Edward decides that his sister Mary is excluded from the Throne, but Elizabeth, Mary of Scotland, and Jane are not.

The local year is 1554, 21 year old Queen Elizabeth of England, with her heirs, 12 year old Mary of Scotland, and 17 year old Jane, are three of the most sought after brides in Europe. Meanwhile, Mary of England, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII and a close blood relation of the Holy Roman Emperor sees the throne as hers alone. And Catholic Europe agrees with her.

As you can see a younger less experienced Elizabeth with a flighty Mary of Scotland and an unworldly bookish Lady Jane Grey in tow, must survive in a rough political climate.

This is a Q6 world. Homeline favors Elizabeth, Centrum favors Mary. The Cabal sees opportunities, but they favor Elizabeth too and see both Homeline and Centrum as clumsy interlopers.

[Astromancer]

Truman-8

This Q6 parallel diverged from Homeline's history in the 1920s when a different man (One Lloyd H. Bankhead) got nominated to run on the local Democratic ticket for the House of Representatives. For the most part, this was trivial. If he was all that different, he would neither have been nominated nor reelected. But then Truman wanted to pass national health care. That's when Bankhead showed how important he was.

Bankhead had recently lost a beloved cousin to a disease the cousin ignored until it was way too late. The African-American woman who raised his children, whom Bankhead, in spite of his deep and bitter racism, loved like a sister, also had recently died of disease. Bankhead, a racist reactionary, wanted national healthcare in spite of his politics, and he championed Truman's bill. It turned out to be just enough to get the bill through. Bankhead's political career was dead, but he was joyful in his triumph. And though still a racist, went on the fight for the Civil Rights movement until his death in 1957.

Thus from the 1940s on, this USA had national healthcare. Large numbers of people got medical treatment on time and early in their illnesses often leading to longer lives and better health for many people and subtlety altered lives.

The knock on effects of this change continues to slowly and quietly grow. The local year is 2016, the Tech Level is on the transition between 8 and 9, more than a decade ahead of Homeline at the same time in its history. The Space Program has also been better funded because of a congressman (who couldn't run for office because of a child's illness in most parallels) successfully defended NASA's budget against Proxmire's antiscience bigotry.

Homeline's social scientists see this world as a laboratory for subtle changes in society. Many extremist politicians hate this parallel because it shows the benefits of certain social programs. There are rumors that Swagmen have been hired to use bioweapons to destroy this world. Can the Icops find out if the rumors are true? More importantly, can they stop the planned genocide if it is true?

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Homeline's social scientists see this world as a laboratory for subtle changes in society. Many extremist politicians hate this parallel because it shows the benefits of certain social programs. There are rumors that Swagmen have been hired to use bioweapons to destroy this world. Can the Icops find out if the rumors are true? More importantly, can they stop the planned genocide if it is true?

If the attempt gets traced back to those politicians, reelection will be the least of their worries.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

If the attempt gets traced back to those politicians, reelection will be the least of their worries.

Homeline wants to make sure of that. They want to make an example of those treating off-worlders as abstractions instead of people.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Homeline wants to make sure of that. They want to make an example of those treating off-worlders as abstractions instead of people.

Within limits.

If Infinity really considered Outtimers to be people and not abstractions, then Homeline counterparts of Outtime inventors wouldn't get money from outtime patents.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Within limits.

If Infinity really considered Outtimers to be people and not abstractions, then Homeline counterparts of Outtime inventors wouldn't get money from outtime patents.

I don't think that has much to do with regarding them as real or not. It is, like the Infinity monopoly really, an effort to limit how much crosstime travel utterly changes the economics and politics of Homeline. The meta reason being to keep it connected to and understandable by the audience, but it's not implausible for there to be in-world interests trying to keep that under control too.

Realistically it won't help much - there is amazing art and radically transformative technology out there that has no reasonably equivalent owner, and frankly even there weren't the fact stuff as good or better than you could produce with hard work is available from your equivalents for little or no effort has destroyed any real incentive for anybody on Homeline to exert themselves to create anything new. But admitting the capitalist component of intellectual activity is now dead isn't going to come easy to everybody.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

This is a Wierd Parallel but vitally important. This world seems to be an echo of 1995 except that the Tech Level is 0+8. The whole history of technology is different from Homeline's. The limit of this difference is the limits of physics. This means that this world's technology is highly valuable to Homeline because it is a vast series of treasure houses of alternate solutions. Any engineer would dance for joy to see this world's tech and all the solutions that stared them in the face and they missed by inches.