New Reality Seeds

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Meanwhile, Midwinter Aton is aiding the Nazis. They've introduced Jets into the Luftwaffe. The Cabal has decided to aid anyone trying to bring Germany down.

This is a Q6 Low Manna world.

This bit could be interesting in so many ways. IIRC, Centrum isn't good at dealing with magic, so if they try to work against the Cabal, they'll be on the back foot, especially if the Cabal and Homeline are working together on something. Plus, the presence of magic allows for local mages, potentially.

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I wonder if Centrum underestimates US industrial potential because of course democracies can't be economically efficient, as the Great Depression shows.

Good point. So how surprised would they be when even with all the oil they got to Japan (if Infinity fails to disrupt that enough), the USA still enters the war, but due to Germany's actions?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I wonder if Centrum underestimates US industrial potential because of course democracies can't be economically efficient, as the Great Depression shows.

Centrum doesn't respect democracies period. So they could be making that mistake.

Meanwhile, yes, FDR was trying to cause an incident in the Atlantic to get America into the war.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Centrum isn't that good at Homeline history in cannon. So many of their plans must involve bad history.

Which like so much else of the canon setting doesn't make a lot of sense. Centrum does have historians. They need merely pop over to Oxford and Cambridge in the latest date echo Centrum knows about, buy copies of the current textbooks are for all the undergrad history courses, and in 6 months those historians could understand Homeline history up to that date better than most Homeliners. They may not match Homeline single topic experts, but they aren't going to make errors bone-headed enough to be obvious to most of us.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Which like so much else of the canon setting doesn't make a lot of sense. Centrum does have historians. They need merely pop over to Oxford and Cambridge in the latest date echo Centrum knows about, buy copies of the current textbooks are for all the undergrad history courses, and in 6 months those historians could understand Homeline history up to that date better than most Homeliners. They may not match Homeline single topic experts, but they aren't going to make errors bone-headed enough to be obvious to most of us.

A good point. I am working on a post about Centrum Light and one of the things I am wrestling with is how they can be so good at timeline alteration and cliodynamics, while so clueless and ignorant about outtime histories in general.

Currently I am considering bureaucratic groupthink and having very deep but overly narrow experience in the social science and psychology of conquering and assimilating the barbarian remnants of their own world's Last War. Which gets them very tunnel visioned in a way they are having great difficulty breaking out of. With plentiful resources their methods work very well on the survivors of their own world's history. With limited resources and on alien cultures in alien languages, not so much. And stealth and more advanced tech can only get you so far.

Now I want to write a scenario where the PCs are assigned to a test case program where a Centrum academic iconoclast faction wants to demonstrate their new system, which is heresy to the establishment

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

A good point. I am working on a post about Centrum Light and one of the things I am wrestling with is how they can be so good at timeline alteration and cliodynamics, while so clueless and ignorant about outtime histories in general.

I’m now imagining them being really good at abstract analytical mathematical analysis of history, but a bit crap at the simple gut feel of how people work. Like a mathematical physicist who hasn’t run a lab experiment in twenty years, and can barely visualise what the numbers mean.

This could mean that one failure mode for Centrum ops is a green field officer saying “That can’t be right! People would never be that irrational!” and refusing to follow through on a perfectly good theoretically-derived plan. But equally, it could cause a lot of I-Cops to be horribly blindsided because they think they understand people, in a situation where the Centrum plan looks weird and pointless but is actually bang on the nail, because let’s face it, people are weird but numbers don’t lie.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

A good point. I am working on a post about Centrum Light and one of the things I am wrestling with is how they can be so good at timeline alteration and cliodynamics, while so clueless and ignorant about outtime histories in general.

I don't think they are that good at timeline alteration. They're still just fumbling around. My theory is they found out messing with echoes can move a primary parallel the hard way, by accidentally flinging themselves away from their original place in the quanta. Which explains why Homeline can't find more than one Centrum echo within reach.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Lucifer-7

This Q6 Low Manna world diverges in the 1870's when an asteroid fragment strikes central Asia in 1927. The fragment is large enough to cause worldwide chaos for thirty years. Basically, an ice-age like cold snap from 1927 to 1957.

Most major nations collapse, especially in Europe. China and India are hit with Mega-droughts, Australia, New Zealand, California, experience milder forms of weather issues, and North Africa and the American Southwest, actually have mild and gently rainy weather.

It's now the year 1960, world population is around one billion, half of humanity died in the cold snap. The Union of the Southern Cross (Australia and New Zealand), the North American Union (the Remnants of the USA, Canada, and Mexico), France Outremere (North Africa but retaking Southern Europe as North Africa returns to desert), and Brazil(which controls most of South America), are the major powers. There are small islands of Tech Level Seven, most of the world was lucky to hold onto TL6, and large areas are TL5. This should change rapidly as trade reopens.

This world interests the Cabal because those born since the asteroid strike are about fifty times more likely to be PSIs. Parapsychology is becoming a thing on this world. Neither Centrum nor Homeline is yet aware that this world is anything other than another world where people believe in PSI whether or not PSI is real. The Cabal means to keep it that way buntil A) they discover why the number of PSIs is so far up, and B) they've cherry-picked the best talent for themselves.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Stalin dies suddenly (he was in poor health anyway and never lived a healthy lifestyle) just before Hitler invades Poland. General Zhukov catapults to the role of leader, mainly because everybody wanted someone else to blame. Unlike Stalin, Zhukov always assumed that Hitler would stab the USSR before the USSR stabbed Germany. So he planned for Hitler's surprise attack.

When the fatal day came in June Zhukov struck hard. Barbarossa was thrown back violently. Poland is now the Eastern front in late October 1941.

Centrum wants to keep Japan out of the War. That way the USA never flexs it's muscles, there is no Marshall Plan and the original and progressive form of the Bretton Woods System (which strengthened democracy) will never come into existence. All of which Centrum feels will favor the British Empire and sideline the USA.

Homeline wants to thwart Centrum's plans and get Japan into the war. Meanwhile, Midwinter Aton is aiding the Nazis. They've introduced Jets into the Luftwaffe. The Cabal has decided to aid anyone trying to bring Germany down.

This is a Q6 Low Manna world.

I believe there is already an official "Zhukov" world, where the Russian general was in charge and threw back Operation Barbarossa.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I believe there is already an official "Zhukov" world, where the Russian general was in charge and threw back Operation Barbarossa.

Maybe, but my world isn't that one.

[Astromancer]

Magic was always part of this Q4 world. Mainly it was weak, required elaborate ceremonies, and only the highly skilled got regular high quality results. Except there were functional healers and "Unwitchers."

In the 1970's a group of scientists studying brain function started scanning the brains of healers as they worked. Using biofeedback techniques they gradually came to understand what parts of the brain were needed to unlock magery!

This led to a Magical Revolution! But the revolution is still in it's early stages on Merlin-9. Basic data and showy tricks are the main things mages produce here. Homeline sees a vast opportunity to be in on the beginnings of real functional Magic. This is exactly why the Cabal is freaking out.

The local year is 1983, since Humphrey beat Nixon in this world, and de Gaulle never broke the original Bretton Woods System, it's Ted Kennedy's second term. Russia is desperate to use Magic to prop up the Soviet System (which is looking less like Marxism and more like disaster every day of the 1980's).

So, you have the Cold War under terms of improved prosperity for the West, and both China and Russia (remember Nixon made it so that only he could go to China) deeply paranoid and clutching at straws. Magic is bursting onto the scene and the Cabal is terrified that Homeline might learn stuff.