Worldbuilding without the post-WW/WWII/Cold War glasses (TL, CR etc.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I wouldn't want to end up in an accident in that world. Whole lot of medical advances out of Vietnam.

Note: I'm not talking about Earth With No WWI/II/CW. I'm talking about the preconceptions that we need to abandon when designing worlds with no events that can be compared to WW/WWII/CW. Notably, no Cold Wars might mean not only no nukes, but also less 'government secret' treatment of Space and Computer technologies, and no superpowers can mean some other stuff that I am not an expert on in regards of naval situations.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I don't know about that. Without the gangsters using them in the depression, and without their mass production during the wars, I'm not sure how much exposure people--and politicians--would have to automatic weapons. Would the Thompson have even been invented absent the war? I doubt it.

It wouldn't have been invented without some war, but any setting that doesn't have wars is so alien to human nature that it's really hard to speculate. And gangsters using automatic weapons is nothing special to the depression (barely even related; Prohibition is more to blame, though any form of organized crime will produce similar effects); if you have gangsters, and they're fighting each other, they will use whatever weapons are available and effective.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

But automatic weapons are pretty useless. Without alcohol or drug prohibition, I would expect them to just be something else firearms enthusiasts put in their safes. It looks like a negligible difference to me.

Snrk. Automatic weapons are darned useful, which is why people fighting in small wars all over the world use them.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The discussion of gun laws in the other threat seems to indicate that many firearms became restricted roughly with the start of WWII. Whether it was linked or a coincidence I'm not as sure as you are that it is the latter.

Here in the US, my understanding is that it was combined with high exposure of them being used for villainy, and there coincidentally being politicians in office who were willing to enact those sorts of measures. Alcohol prohibition hit, creating the gangsters, and then the depression hit, which led to the election of politicians who didn't like gun rights very much.

Just a weird coincidence.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Ronin Rabbit

No cold war means no Vietnam, it also ends up meaning no war on drugs. That makes big changes to Timothy Leary and his crew, who may not have ended up being "anti-establishment" poster children but instead been legitimized to some degree which would change a lot as far as both our attitudes towards incarceration/rehabilitation and psychiatry.

the war on drugs would still happen without the could war. the origin of the war on drugs was minority suppression by targeting a vice more practiced by that minority group but not by the dominate group.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Note: I'm not talking about Earth With No WWI/II/CW. I'm talking about the preconceptions that we need to abandon when designing worlds with no events that can be compared to WW/WWII/CW.

Oh, so these are not an alternate earth, but a different made up world that just happens to coincide with our earth's development, diverging in this certain way?

It's really impossible to speculate if that's the case, since so many of our important advances have come from individuals, such as Tesla. And so much of the other--like the automatic weapons ban--are the result of pure coincidence.

There's no Hemingway. If it was going to be a made up world, there never was going to be a Hemingway in the first place. What does that even look like? There's really no way to know. No Murnau or Lang either. We'll have to suppose they have their own great men doing great things.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Oh, so these are not an alternate earth, but a different made up world that just happens to coincide with our earth's development, diverging in this certain way?

It's really impossible to speculate if that's the case, since so many of our important advances have come from individuals, such as Tesla. And so much of the other--like the automatic weapons ban--are the result of pure coincidence.

There's no Hemingway. If it was going to be a made up world, there never was going to be a Hemingway in the first place. What does that even look like? There's really no way to know. No Murnau or Lang either. We'll have to suppose they have their own great men doing great things.

I'm not looking for a particular other made up world, but mostly looking at things that we take for granted, treating as an assumed part of TL6+, but which are actually merely the logical outcomes of certain political events in our world. The stuff that a worldbuilder should 'Unlearn'.

(For the record: Æthereal Sun didn't have a WW/WWII/CW-equivalent, but gun laws vary wildly across the world.)

[Anthony]

Note that, in the US specifically, WWI, the great depression, and WWII did correspond to a rather large increase in federal power, and this probably was not a coincidence; however, it's hard to really tie that precisely in to things like TL and CR.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It wouldn't have been invented without some war, but any setting that doesn't have wars is so alien to human nature that it's really hard to speculate.

But it really had to be that particular war at that particular time. A whole lot of stuff had to come together for those gangsters to be using those weapons. Yeah, they'd have had access to some kind of weapons. But it might not have been so easy to get, or as useful. Without a WWI event with trench warfare, there probably wouldn't have been a need to risk developing such a weapon at that time.

What if the equivalent weapon was made in Germany or England or Russia instead? Then it would have been a lot more difficult to acquire. I don't know.

Snrk. Automatic weapons are darned useful, which is why people fighting in small wars all over the world use them.

I'm not sure if that's true. They're useful, sure. But I thought they used them because central planners in socialist states decided to churn out gajillions of them, and then they just happened to be available. Would those people in small wars really be that different if they had bolt actions designed for long range? I don't know. What's a VC sniper? One who learned how to use his sights.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not looking for a particular other made up world, but mostly looking at things that we take for granted, treating as an assumed part of TL6+, but which are actually merely the logical outcomes of certain political events in our world. The stuff that a worldbuilder should 'Unlearn'.

My point was that everything that happens is the result of certain events. What if Newton had never lived? Or Einstein? If you just lump their advances into a TL score, then it gets incredibly difficult to separate out the stuff you're looking for. Was the rise of Marxism an inevitable part of that TL, or was that all the result of Marx, you know, having existed? If a non-historical-earth worldbuilder puts down TL 6, then which is it going to be? Marxism or not?

It's a lot easier to do at lower TLs, where everyone had iron spears, than it is with the modern world where one single inventor or thinker can so drastically change everything.

(For the record: Æthereal Sun didn't have a WW/WWII/CW-equivalent, but gun laws vary wildly across the world.)

I don't know what that is.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I don't know what that is.

The setting I'm currently GMing, which is the reason this topic presents extra interest to me.