New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Making Europe arid over the same time scale might be an interesting tweak to the concept.

True. Have you read The Death of Grass? Similar stresses over a much wider area. Of coarse with your chosen scenario, focused on Europe, the large scale emigration to the USA, Canada, Australia, and Latin America, would have it own more exotic effects.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, I just finished reading Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Film and Fame which was about fame and celebrity in Nazi Germany and Hitler's obsessions with celebrity and art. It was not nearly deep enough for the topic, it never made it's implied points, but it was a treasure trove for games anyway.

You could read this book and set up several campaigns. Rumors that Zarah Leander was a Russian spy, suggests trying to contact a major German film star who is a deep cover agent. A fun campaign. The sad fate of Ferdinand Marian, who was blackmailed into playing the lead in the most anti-Semitic film ever in order to keep hiding the Jews he hid in his home, suggests a group of stars trying to protect their loved ones by placating the powers that be at UFA.

Of coarse simply using celebrity as a cover, as several of Stalin's assassins did, to get to Hitler or other high ranking Nazis, also has charm. Just because it didn't work in real life, more due to Hitler's basic goofiness than anything else, doesn't mean it would work in some random echo.

Note: Hitler was a huge Marx Brothers fan. Centrum might capture the Marx Brothers in one world, brainwash them, and use them to kill Hitler. Your PCs would have to prevent Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, from messing up history. And more importantly, their films!

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Note: Hitler was a huge Marx Brothers fan. Centrum might capture the Marx Brothers in one world, brainwash them, and use them to kill Hitler. Your PCs would have to prevent Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, from messing up history. And more importantly, their films!

Depends how early they are moving, on the films. Most of the really great classic Marx Brothers movies were in the 1930s. If you wait to capture until 1942 you only lose A Night in Casablanca, Love Happy, and Copacabana.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Depends how early they are moving, on the films. Most of the really great classic Marx Brothers movies were in the 1930s. If you wait to capture until 1942 you only lose A Night in Casablanca, Love Happy, and Copacabana.

Granted, but losing any Marx Brothers film is a great blow.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea, a clever Centrum agent saved his money and bought a clue! Noting that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee had different views of how to win the ACW and that Lee's pointlessly aggressive tactics, myopic focus on Virginia alone, and foggy unclear orders, all bled the South dry, the Agent decides to assassinate Lee. Now all the generals North and South are fighting a defensive war.

This is a disaster. Basically the North needed to actually win the ACW, simply not losing was an automatic Southern win. Davis, who could read about George Washington as well as anyone else, knew that a Fabian strategy would lead to Southern victory. He had no interest in the kind of foolishness that made Lee famous and broke the back of the South.

To keep the USA alive and in the game the PCs need to make sure that some gallant idiot takes over the Southern armies and throws them all away on pointless frontal assaults on irrelevant targets, just like Lee.

Basically the PCs need to win complex social dances to gain command and them use that command to grind the South's armies to powder while looking like glamorous paladins while they do it.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea, a clever Centrum agent saved his money and bought a clue! Noting that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee had different views of how to win the ACW and that Lee's pointlessly aggressive tactics, myopic focus on Virginia alone, and foggy unclear orders, all bled the South dry, the Agent decides to assassinate Lee. Now all the generals North and South are fighting a defensive war.

Why would a Centrum agent want that?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Why would a Centrum agent want that?

Because they calculate that messing with the history of that echo has a 73% chance of undermining Homeline's quantum stability.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

To keep the USA alive and in the game the PCs need to make sure that some gallant idiot takes over the Southern armies and throws them all away on pointless frontal assaults on irrelevant targets, just like Lee.

Luckily for them, neither side is short of generals who think like that. Even generals like McClellan and Joseph E. Johnston, who get cast as overcautious in most Civil War histories didn't attempt to fight a purely defensive war.

And note that one of the critics of Johnston's lack of aggressiveness was Jeff Davis, so he certainly doesn't start out the war with a defensive mindset.

I suspect he, along with every other strategic thinker, was capable of figuring out that the Confederacy's chances were win fast, bring in a major European power, or hope attrition broke the political will of the Union before everybody in the South died. He wasn't going to go to option 3 and fight a defensive war that would ruin his country even if he won if either of the other options - which were going to require offensive victories - were still possible.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Why would a Centrum agent want that?

Because the two greatest forces that brought down the British Empire were the raise of Germany and the rise of the USA. Moreover, it's established that Centrum looks on the USA as basically warped and a threat. They prefer to wipe out any US influence.

[Gedrin]

Unfortunately, it's not enough for the CSA to "not loose". Time is not on their side. The imperatives of each side; CSA survival and USA restore the union, are pretty much exclusive.

Given time, ie the CSA simply not loosing, the USA would build up enough arms, manpower and logistics to completely crush the CSA. To a degree, this is what happened IRL. If the CSA is not aggressive, the USA can do it without suffering losses and discontent. So long as the USA desires to reclaim the CSA, the CSA cannot let the USA have time to build a military machine. The industrial and population imbalance is to large.

The only way the CSA can win, is to deal a crippling blow to its will to fight. The CSA lacks the material or manpower to strike deep enough to deal serious long lasting damage to USA industrial power, much less occupy territory. "Sap the will to fight" is the best course of action. So the CSA has to find targets that are within reach of it's limited power.

The focus on Virginia was with good cause. Look at the positions of the two national capitals. Richmond and Washington are about 100 miles from each other, all through northern Virginia. If either side takes the other's capital, it would vastly shorten, if not end, the war. Battles were fought within earshot of Washington DC on more than one occasion and several runs were made on Richmond.


If your Centrum agent wants to weaken the powers that emerge from the ACW, he should probably target the Union side. The Union is the much bigger threat to establishing an industrial continental scale powerhouse. The only thing the USA lacks to project power, if the ACW draws, is New Orleans and perhaps some natural resources. What's worse, if the idea of a United States stays alive, the two countries probably do an East/West Germany thing in a few generations. Possibly just in time for WWII.
Keeping the CSA alive only does part of the job. Breaking the Union is the real task to tackle. If you're going to assassinate anyone, there are fewer Union generals that are both competent at war and willing to go to the wall for Lincoln and The Union. This, or more draft riots. Killing Lincoln might do it too.
This gets you a loose Confederacy in the South, and with a bit more pushing, possibly a few other fragments out of the Union. Multiple weaker states seems the best option.
I still think you get a reunification in under a hundred years. The rivers and trade of resources seems to make that the easiest path.