New Reality Seeds - Page 467

Astromancer · 04-09-2020, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Would the Crash of '29 have been a plausible point for the leadership to get shaken up in a way that could increase competence?

It's the long term outcome of the Dreyfus Affair. So getting rid of the man who framed Dreyfus might help. I'll post a link later.

Lazor · 04-09-2020, 10:39 PM

So, ‘famous person dies early’ is kind of cliche, but something about this is too interesting to pass up:

France, 1785 AD: Jean-François de Galaup sails from Brest with two ships on an expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, after a stop at a port in Australia, the expedition sets out again and nobody aboard is seen alive again by Europeans. The ships ran aground, and the survivors were either killed by the locals or disappeared at sea on a cobbled-together raft. The crew included a teenaged Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte.

Yeah, that Napoleon. In OTL, he applied to join the expedition but didn’t make the cut. People wouldn’t even be wondering ‘man, if he’d survived this battle, what could he have done?’ He’d just be an obscure footnote.

johndallman · 04-10-2020, 02:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Would the Crash of '29 have been a plausible point for the leadership to get shaken up in a way that could increase competence?

It's verging on being too late, and I don't really see how you get from an economic trauma like that to trusting the military enough to let them reform to a more dynamic structure.

ericthered · 04-10-2020, 07:59 AM

You can make a "surface" change by giving the french a few lucky breaks at the battle of Sedan, and having just a few more aggressive commanders in the right place. The French had a solid plan, they just failed to execute it properly (as in, counterattacked on time). There are a couple of retreats that if not ordered, slow the Germans down at really pivotal moments.

As for political changes: its the 1930's. Politics can move really fast, and make sweeping changes.

We talked about this some around post 4588.

Prince Charon · 04-10-2020, 03:42 PM

The 'Grimoire' worldlines (unless that name has already been used) are those in which Path/Book Magic is taught openly and widely (though they may be former Secret Magic settings, and several are), and in which most known styles are Book styles, with few or no Path styles.

Grimoire-1: Current year 2027 (same date and time as Homeline and Centrum), discovered by Infinity in 2003; mature TL8^ (space industry at early TL9^). This was a 'secret magic' worldline until 9/11/01, when a group of magicians saved the World Trade Center with wind magic and machine control - first summoning powerful updrafts which forced the planes away from the towers, and then sending spirits to take over the airliners and ditch them in the Hudson River, when the planes kept coming around to try again. All aboard survived the landing, and most survived the suicides of the terrorists who took over the flights. Magicians who wanted to stop hiding took advantage of the good PR from that action, and performed demonstrations for scientists, reporters, and the military. People were dubious at first, and even in 2027, many insist that this isn't 'magic,' but the use of psi powers (which ignores the fact that until fairly recently, few made that distinction), or the intervention of aliens, but even at the time Infinity found this worldline, there were already some colleges in the USA teaching classes in practical magic, and 'how to' books being published that in some cases actually worked. By 2027, most countries that allow public magical instruction at all (as opposed to limiting it to government agents and military personnel, or forbidding it entirely) begin it somewhere between the ages of eleven and sixteen.

Technology-wise, this worldline is pretty close to that of Homeline, apart from a complete lack of parachonic science (many local counterparts of Homeline parachronic scientists are instead studying thaumatology), better-than-Homeline's space infrastructure and spacecraft, and a lot of weird gadgets that result from adding spirits to machines (including some of the aerospace tech, which has reduced the cost of space travel, a fair bit of 'cyberpunk' technology, which has not always been to society's benefit, and various other things from science fiction and fantasy). Humans returned to the Moon in 2010, when Rick Husband and Yury Lonchakov broke ground on the internationally-funded Moonbase Alpha; fifteen years later, Alpha is the size of a (very) small town, with a long-term population of 311, and habitable space for a thousand more. Humans first walked on Mars in 2019, and established what is intended to become a permanent colony in 2024. The Space Shuttles were mostly retired by 2016, after the magic-based 'Vulcan' flying saucer program had proved its worth, the exception being Enterprise, which had served as a testbed for upgrading the shuttles with the systems that were eventually used in the flying saucers, and is still in use - often as a testbed for new experimental technologies and magics.

Most magical practitioners on this Earth use one or more single-Book styles (that is to say, Path/Book styles which only have one Book, and thus the Book skill is the same as the core skill of the style), although there are nearly as many multiple-Book styles, total, as there are single-Book styles. Path styles are speculated to exist, and there are reports that they may have existed in the past, but this is currently unproven. A few styles can be considered 'Path-like,' either because they have a fairly clear theme in their rituals, or because the style allows for improvising rituals, or both. Note, however, that an improvised ritual in a Book style will suffer from familiarity penalties (on top of the skill penalty for Effect Shaping magic, if the style uses that) until the user spends a point in a Book skill (not in the ritual's technique) that contains the ritual, even if that requires writing a new Book for the style (which is sometimes how styles get new Books - and also how Books sometimes get new editions, with more rituals). The familiarity penalty is at least -2, but may be worse the more different it is, in the GM's opinion, from the other rituals in the Book the caster is improvising from; optionally, a penalty that starts out worse than -2 may be reduced by practice at the same rate as normal familiarity penalties, but it cannot be reduced below -2 without buying a new Book skill (again, on top of any skill penalty for Effect Shaping magic).

Example 1: 'Balthazzar the Bold' (aka Melvin H. Poindexter), a Diabolist, wants to learn to Embody spirits, both to have minions in general, and as part of his ongoing quest to punish everyone on 'his list' (mostly people who were mean to him in high school). He knows Book of the Hierarch (Thaumatology: Age of Gold p18) at a skill of 15, and Fetish is similar enough to Embody that the penalty is only -2. Since his style is Energy Accumulating and he's using all the normal elements of a ritual (including sacrificing a young lamb), this is the only penalty he takes to his skill (effective skill in Book of the Hierarch thus being 13) - though it helps a lot that the demon he summoned wants to be Embodied, as demons in this setting are far more often spiritual threats, rather than physical.

Example 2: Mary Tanner, a Fourth Year student and member of Lion House at the Monar Academy of Magics (a magical boarding school in Scotland, by Loch Monar), is quite certain that her rival on the school's field hockey team, Ekidna Sackville of Serpent House, is up to no good. Why else would she be sneaking out with Rod Herrington (another Serpent House bully) every Friday night, and not returning until nearly morning? They must be plotting something! Monar teaches a multiple-Book Effect Shaping style, which Mary is rather skilled in, partly due to being a prodigy, with natural Magery 3. Mary's plan to follow them involves turning herself into an owl, which is a bit tricky given that they aren't supposed to learn Shapeshifting until Fifth Year. The closest ritual she knows to Shapeshifting is Reversion of Form, from the Book of MacCruimein (a text introduced in Year 3); she has Book of MacCruimein 14, and has bought up Reversion of Form to 11, due to an evil shapeshifter she encountered in Third Year. Converting Reversion of Form to Shapeshifting (Owl) is not easy, as they are not that similar. Shapeshifting (Owl) has a base penalty of -6, one worse than Reversion of Form, and the two rituals are different enough that the GM decides that the total penalty to her skill with Reversion of Form should be -5, for an effective skill of 6 at Shapeshifting (Owl). (If she were trying to convert another form of Shapeshifting into Shapeshifting (Owl), the penalty would be lower, probably as little as -2.) Perhaps she should try a less ambitious plan...

Mystic Symbols (Thaumatology p124, text box), sometimes called foci (singular 'focus'), are somewhat common on this Earth, in a variety of forms (the materials and appearance are more often dictated by magical style than by personal preference). In many cases, they do not grant Magery, but do grant some often-limited form of Path/Book Adept (e.g. One Book Only, Cannot Wear Armor, Song Aspected, or some other limit). Familiars exist, but are more likely to grant Magery or other advantages, rather than Path/Book Adept. There are rumours and legends of Adepts who didn't get their ability to ignore the usual ritual elements from gadgets or familiars, but no proof.

Unknown to Infinity, Centrum, and the Cabal, several intelligence services in this Quantum 6 worldline are aware of the presence of outtime observers, though they are not aware of the exact details. There is some debate among them as to whether the outtimers are aliens, time travelers, or dimensional travelers.

Thoughts?

Apollonian · 04-10-2020, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Grimoire-1

I like it. (Historical q: did the Pentagon and Flight 93 flights on 9/11 go as in our history?)

Prince Charon · 04-10-2020, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apollonian

I like it. (Historical q: did the Pentagon and Flight 93 flights on 9/11 go as in our history?)

Probably not, but they might have been similar. I did think about it, but came to no solid conclusions.

Astromancer · 04-10-2020, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Probably not, but they might have been similar. I did think about it, but came to no solid conclusions.

Grimoire-1 is grand!

YankeeGamer · 04-10-2020, 07:24 PM

Grimoire-1 is GREAT. Oddly, I've had a few ideas that involved magic coming out on 9/11. One involved a witch on Flight 93 creating a gate to the ground so the passengers could escape--the other one was grimmer, as Djinn, not airliners, attack the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and other targets of interest to Bin Laden.
Both were very sketchy, and with the current disasters, I have no interest in writing something that dark.

dcarson · 04-10-2020, 09:15 PM

How did they know they needed to stop the first plane? Up until the first plane hit no one knew thare was a problem. You could see it coming if looking in the right direction but that gives well under a minute of warning and requires you to know it isn't just off course and will correct to get to the airport. The second plane they could stop since that has 12 minutes warning. The passengers on Flight 93 knew to stop them because it was hijacked 25 minutes after the second WTC impact.

04-09-2020, 10:39 PM	#4662
Lazor Join Date: May 2008	Re: New Reality Seeds So, ‘famous person dies early’ is kind of cliche, but something about this is too interesting to pass up: France, 1785 AD: Jean-François de Galaup sails from Brest with two ships on an expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, after a stop at a port in Australia, the expedition sets out again and nobody aboard is seen alive again by Europeans. The ships ran aground, and the survivors were either killed by the locals or disappeared at sea on a cobbled-together raft. The crew included a teenaged Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte. Yeah, that Napoleon. In OTL, he applied to join the expedition but didn’t make the cut. People wouldn’t even be wondering ‘man, if he’d survived this battle, what could he have done?’ He’d just be an obscure footnote.

04-10-2020, 07:59 AM	#4664
ericthered Hero of Democracy Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: far from the ocean	Re: New Reality Seeds You can make a "surface" change by giving the french a few lucky breaks at the battle of Sedan, and having just a few more aggressive commanders in the right place. The French had a solid plan, they just failed to execute it properly (as in, counterattacked on time). There are a couple of retreats that if not ordered, slow the Germans down at really pivotal moments. As for political changes: its the 1930's. Politics can move really fast, and make sweeping changes. We talked about this some around post 4588. __________________ Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!

04-10-2020, 03:42 PM	#4665
Prince Charon Join Date: Dec 2012	Re: New Reality Seeds The 'Grimoire' worldlines (unless that name has already been used) are those in which Path/Book Magic is taught openly and widely (though they may be former Secret Magic settings, and several are), and in which most known styles are Book styles, with few or no Path styles. Grimoire-1: Current year 2027 (same date and time as Homeline and Centrum), discovered by Infinity in 2003; mature TL8^ (space industry at early TL9^). This was a 'secret magic' worldline until 9/11/01, when a group of magicians saved the World Trade Center with wind magic and machine control - first summoning powerful updrafts which forced the planes away from the towers, and then sending spirits to take over the airliners and ditch them in the Hudson River, when the planes kept coming around to try again. All aboard survived the landing, and most survived the suicides of the terrorists who took over the flights. Magicians who wanted to stop hiding took advantage of the good PR from that action, and performed demonstrations for scientists, reporters, and the military. People were dubious at first, and even in 2027, many insist that this isn't 'magic,' but the use of psi powers (which ignores the fact that until fairly recently, few made that distinction), or the intervention of aliens, but even at the time Infinity found this worldline, there were already some colleges in the USA teaching classes in practical magic, and 'how to' books being published that in some cases actually worked. By 2027, most countries that allow public magical instruction at all (as opposed to limiting it to government agents and military personnel, or forbidding it entirely) begin it somewhere between the ages of eleven and sixteen. Technology-wise, this worldline is pretty close to that of Homeline, apart from a complete lack of parachonic science (many local counterparts of Homeline parachronic scientists are instead studying thaumatology), better-than-Homeline's space infrastructure and spacecraft, and a lot of weird gadgets that result from adding spirits to machines (including some of the aerospace tech, which has reduced the cost of space travel, a fair bit of 'cyberpunk' technology, which has not always been to society's benefit, and various other things from science fiction and fantasy). Humans returned to the Moon in 2010, when Rick Husband and Yury Lonchakov broke ground on the internationally-funded Moonbase Alpha; fifteen years later, Alpha is the size of a (very) small town, with a long-term population of 311, and habitable space for a thousand more. Humans first walked on Mars in 2019, and established what is intended to become a permanent colony in 2024. The Space Shuttles were mostly retired by 2016, after the magic-based 'Vulcan' flying saucer program had proved its worth, the exception being Enterprise, which had served as a testbed for upgrading the shuttles with the systems that were eventually used in the flying saucers, and is still in use - often as a testbed for new experimental technologies and magics. Most magical practitioners on this Earth use one or more single-Book styles (that is to say, Path/Book styles which only have one Book, and thus the Book skill is the same as the core skill of the style), although there are nearly as many multiple-Book styles, total, as there are single-Book styles. Path styles are speculated to exist, and there are reports that they may have existed in the past, but this is currently unproven. A few styles can be considered 'Path-like,' either because they have a fairly clear theme in their rituals, or because the style allows for improvising rituals, or both. Note, however, that an improvised ritual in a Book style will suffer from familiarity penalties (on top of the skill penalty for Effect Shaping magic, if the style uses that) until the user spends a point in a Book skill (not in the ritual's technique) that contains the ritual, even if that requires writing a new Book for the style (which is sometimes how styles get new Books - and also how Books sometimes get new editions, with more rituals). The familiarity penalty is at least -2, but may be worse the more different it is, in the GM's opinion, from the other rituals in the Book the caster is improvising from; optionally, a penalty that starts out worse than -2 may be reduced by practice at the same rate as normal familiarity penalties, but it cannot be reduced below -2 without buying a new Book skill (again, on top of any skill penalty for Effect Shaping magic). Example 1: 'Balthazzar the Bold' (aka Melvin H. Poindexter), a Diabolist, wants to learn to Embody spirits, both to have minions in general, and as part of his ongoing quest to punish everyone on 'his list' (mostly people who were mean to him in high school). He knows Book of the Hierarch (Thaumatology: Age of Gold p18) at a skill of 15, and Fetish is similar enough to Embody that the penalty is only -2. Since his style is Energy Accumulating and he's using all the normal elements of a ritual (including sacrificing a young lamb), this is the only penalty he takes to his skill (effective skill in Book of the Hierarch thus being 13) - though it helps a lot that the demon he summoned wants to be Embodied, as demons in this setting are far more often spiritual threats, rather than physical. Example 2: Mary Tanner, a Fourth Year student and member of Lion House at the Monar Academy of Magics (a magical boarding school in Scotland, by Loch Monar), is quite certain that her rival on the school's field hockey team, Ekidna Sackville of Serpent House, is up to no good. Why else would she be sneaking out with Rod Herrington (another Serpent House bully) every Friday night, and not returning until nearly morning? They must be plotting something! Monar teaches a multiple-Book Effect Shaping style, which Mary is rather skilled in, partly due to being a prodigy, with natural Magery 3. Mary's plan to follow them involves turning herself into an owl, which is a bit tricky given that they aren't supposed to learn Shapeshifting until Fifth Year. The closest ritual she knows to Shapeshifting is Reversion of Form, from the Book of MacCruimein (a text introduced in Year 3); she has Book of MacCruimein 14, and has bought up Reversion of Form to 11, due to an evil shapeshifter she encountered in Third Year. Converting Reversion of Form to Shapeshifting (Owl) is not easy, as they are not that similar. Shapeshifting (Owl) has a base penalty of -6, one worse than Reversion of Form, and the two rituals are different enough that the GM decides that the total penalty to her skill with Reversion of Form should be -5, for an effective skill of 6 at Shapeshifting (Owl). (If she were trying to convert another form of Shapeshifting into Shapeshifting (Owl), the penalty would be lower, probably as little as -2.) Perhaps she should try a less ambitious plan... Mystic Symbols (Thaumatology p124, text box), sometimes called foci (singular 'focus'), are somewhat common on this Earth, in a variety of forms (the materials and appearance are more often dictated by magical style than by personal preference). In many cases, they do not grant Magery, but do grant some often-limited form of Path/Book Adept (e.g. One Book Only, Cannot Wear Armor, Song Aspected, or some other limit). Familiars exist, but are more likely to grant Magery or other advantages, rather than Path/Book Adept. There are rumours and legends of Adepts who didn't get their ability to ignore the usual ritual elements from gadgets or familiars, but no proof. Unknown to Infinity, Centrum, and the Cabal, several intelligence services in this Quantum 6 worldline are aware of the presence of outtime observers, though they are not aware of the exact details. There is some debate among them as to whether the outtimers are aliens, time travelers, or dimensional travelers. Thoughts? __________________ Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

04-10-2020, 07:24 PM	#4669
YankeeGamer Join Date: Dec 2017	Re: New Reality Seeds Grimoire-1 is GREAT. Oddly, I've had a few ideas that involved magic coming out on 9/11. One involved a witch on Flight 93 creating a gate to the ground so the passengers could escape--the other one was grimmer, as Djinn, not airliners, attack the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and other targets of interest to Bin Laden. Both were very sketchy, and with the current disasters, I have no interest in writing something that dark.

04-10-2020, 09:15 PM	#4670
dcarson Join Date: Mar 2008	Re: New Reality Seeds How did they know they needed to stop the first plane? Up until the first plane hit no one knew thare was a problem. You could see it coming if looking in the right direction but that gives well under a minute of warning and requires you to know it isn't just off course and will correct to get to the airport. The second plane they could stop since that has 12 minutes warning. The passengers on Flight 93 knew to stop them because it was hijacked 25 minutes after the second WTC impact.