New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

What is this "Grandfather" people keep referencing?

I was recently reminded of the Derinkuyu underground city and similar places, has anyone done anything with those yet?

"Grandfather" is a hyper-powerful alien in the Traveller game setting. Ask the question on the Traveller board and you'll get full details and deep analysis. But for this thread just accept the answer "God, but without all the limitations."

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, add one or two new islands to the map of an otherwise unchanged world.

A) In the area of the Flenish Cap (the undersea end of the Appalachian mountains, just beyong the Grand Banks) place an island roughly the half the size of Wales. It would have been discovered by the Vikings and settled. Given it's location, and assuming normal soils for the Appalachians, the island would be fertile. It location near the Grand Banks would make for excellent fishing (and outside of Greenland, the Norse loved fish). This colony would survive through the Middle Ages and likely be a jumpping off point for further settlement and cultural contacts with the Native Americans. This could lead to a wide varriety of changes.

B) Place a cluster of islands with a combined area close to that of Ireland along the continental shelf south of Ireland. These islands would be settled by the Celts first, along the Vikings would push their rude way in. Their would likely be both Goidelic and Brythonic Celts amoung the settlers. These Islands would have a better chance of staying independent and gaining full status as Christian Kingdoms than Ireland. Britainy and Scotland both gained and lost full status as kingdoms, these Islands inspite of likely constant interference from England, could have done the same.

Picture an independent Celtic state in the 18th century. They'd constantly need to fear Britain and conquest. They'd be forced to ally with France every time. And given the fact that they'd need to focus on a navy, they'd swing the balance of power dangerously against Britain. This would make a great swashbuckling Napoleonic spy game.

C) Place a groups of islands, some as large as Ireland the whole group having an area roughly equal to the USA, in either the South Pacific at roughly the latitudes of New Zealand. Picture these islands get no human settlers before the 19th century. Then they get settled by roughly the same mixure of peoples from the British isles as Australia or New Zealand.

This might seem dull, but then think, this place would be very like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the USA, with a less brutal history than any of them. It would very likely have a population and living standards like those of the USA and it's position in the Southern Ocean would be even more secure.

From here you could make the place a rival to the USA, or take the whole idea of Australia/Canada/New Zealand/USA hybred in any crazy way you like.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea. In our real history there was an event called The Bonfire of the Vanities. In this event and in similar ones like it, old master paintings and other artworks were burned. The wikipedia article mentions Botticelli, but several other major painters had major works (or at least works called major by the few who ever saw them) burned either in the original Florentine event or in the various coppy cat events.

This sets up an interesting quickie campaign. Go to an echo were fine art in about to be burned to ashes, rescue it. Renaisance Italy, the Dutch Republic in the Rampjaar, the sack or Rome, Byzantium, Bahgdad, or Alexandria, Revolutionary France, Nazi occupied Europe, all provide times and places were major artworks our either destroyed, or go missing perminantly. Any of these makes a lively dangerous setting for clever art thieves.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea. In our real history there was an event called The Bonfire of the Vanities. In this event and in similar ones like it, old master paintings and other artworks were burned. The wikipedia article mentions Botticelli, but several other major painters had major works (or at least works called major by the few who ever saw them) burned either in the original Florentine event or in the various coppy cat events.

This sets up an interesting quickie campaign. Go to an echo were fine art in about to be burned to ashes, rescue it. Renaisance Italy, the Dutch Republic in the Rampjaar, the sack or Rome, Byzantium, Bahgdad, or Alexandria, Revolutionary France, Nazi occupied Europe, all provide times and places were major artworks our either destroyed, or go missing perminantly. Any of these makes a lively dangerous setting for clever art thieves.

Seems to me that would be a great I-Cop campaign. Grab the lost Botticelli's out from under Savonarola's nose - do they go in guns a-blazing or do they do it all quiet like? Then again in an Echo is Botticelli a genious or a hack? Is the Library of Alexandria a repository of lost knowledge, or a 4th Century equivalent of People Magazine, full of stories of ancient Kardashians?

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

C) Place a groups of islands, some as large as Ireland the whole group having an area roughly equal to the USA, in either the South Pacific at roughly the latitudes of New Zealand. Picture these islands get no human settlers before the 19th century. Then they get settled by roughly the same mixure of peoples from the British isles as Australia or New Zealand.

This might seem dull, but then think, this place would be very like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the USA, with a less brutal history than any of them. It would very likely have a population and living standards like those of the USA and it's position in the Southern Ocean would be even more secure.

From here you could make the place a rival to the USA, or take the whole idea of Australia/Canada/New Zealand/USA hybred in any crazy way you like.

There are a few "lost continents", or actually submerged areas that in an alternate not be submerged. Kerguelen, and/or Zealandia, for example.

But it seems a little off to me that no one has gotten to any of these lands. The south Pacific had been settled by at least 1000BC. Maybe they get hit with a big version of Easter Island? Used up all their resources (for their TL), cut down all the trees, famine sweeps the lands and they basically kill each other off, just a few pitiful remnant populations there, surrounded by island cultures that fear the cursed land. British type colonials have there nearly empty America to settle.

Or something else was already there, gobbling up (figuratively or literally) Polynesians unlucky enough to land there, then in the 19th century Europeans. Deep Ones or Old Ones, who'd rather be left alone, don't leave their citadel-temples, but do have wonderous bits of stealable stuff lying around. They're discovery in the 19th century, with the occasional brave/foolhardy group sneaking onto the lands to snatch bits of Mythos "technology" that could drive a steampunkish tech revolution. Magi-steamtech ironclads walk the battlefields of Europe, while Russian mystics use their Fungi-from-Yuggoth bottled brains to gather intel in the Great Game in Central Asia.

PCs could be one of these snatch groups - and each time they daringly raid the forbidden lands they could chance an Old One uprising, wiping the world clean of these mutated apes.

[Flyndaran]

Island chain with "hobbits", but the insidious danger is one of endemic disease. They've developed resistance, but it's a plague to other primates.

[PTTG]

It sounds like it would bump up against Antarctica. Which suggests an interesting direction. Move Antarctica out into the Pacific, rotating it slightly, and putting the bay which is currently the Ronnie Ice Shelf in warmer climates. It'd still be freezing cold and isolated, but larger life could survive there.

Settlements would probably cover the now much-warmer Antarctic Peninsula, and there would probably be intensive exploration of the still-freezing but now much more accessible southern shore of the continent.

[Astromancer]

Having read Eric Jager's Blood Royal: A true Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris I have to recomend it on this thread.

First, the crime itself, hiring a bunch of thugs to chop up the brother of the King of France like a onion in 1407, is a great place to start a varient reality. Say Louis of Orleans escapes. Does this cancel the second half of the Hundred Years war? Or accelerate it?

Second, any Poe fan will recognise the historical event that inspired Hop-Frog.

Third, the ordinary people of Paris whose voices make up a large part of the start of the book are wonderful character ideas.

Fourth, you'll love the maps of Paris 1407. And the discription of the thaw which destroys a major Paris bridge is great too.

[Astromancer]

Assume that Roger Casement's black diaries aren't found. The British government wanted to hang Casement, both for being an Irish nationalist, and because his exposure of the King of Belgium's crimes in the Congo (Leopold was Victoria's Uncle, thus the crimes of King Leopold stained the British monarchy). Releasing the Black Diaries silenced international objects to Casement's hanging. So without the Black Diaries, Casement might go free. Britain feared creating anymore Martyrs for Ireland.

If Casement remains alive, Irish history gets a massive rewrite. Churchill could easily have ignored Hitler to seek ways to squash Casement. There are many ways to go.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

... and because his exposure of the King of Belgium's crimes in the Congo (Leopold was Victoria's Uncle, thus the crimes of King Leopold stained the British monarchy).

No, Leopold II of the Belgians was a cousin of Prince Albert. While this relationship didn't reflect well on the monarchy, arranging for shipments of arms from Germany for a rebellion in Ireland during WWI and arriving back in Ireland in a U-boat does seem rather like treason on Casement's part.