[IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

[PTTG]

That's why we have inertia. It turns out, in some nearby timelines at least, there's a magical force that makes DVDs inevitable.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by malloyd

How many realities even have anything in formats Homeline audiences expect at all? It seems like most of them diverge before the invention of movies, lots of them before the invention of novels.

Yeah modernish alternate worlds in IW do somehow end up with a lot more similarity to Homeline technology than is really reasonable, but art is even less constrained by natural law than commercial technology is - the mass entertainment forms of places with more than about a century of divergence ought to be radically different. If they even *have* mass media.

Only "weird" timelines have languages that aren't almost identical copies of Homeline ones. Saying, well "obviously", every piece of technology, information, etc. is completely different and incompatible would probably get old quick to most players.
Unless the campaign covers only a few well known and studied realities, I mean.
It's probably a lot of work for GMs to invent and convey truly novel types or examples of art. Especially if they have little understanding of real world versions like I do. (It's certainly not my only sub-par field, but I could at least research and fake it for most others.)

[Astromancer]

They said that fashion was more of a limiter than anything else. When the big star in a contemporary, in that parallel, film is wearing an Afro and sparkly purple pants, and it's Chuck Norris, the audience can't take the film seriously. However, historical dramas set either before or soon after the fashions diverged, have fewer problems.

Myself, I think going back and hiring the stars to make films, without otherwise messing up their lives works better. However, if you have a 1945 Earth about to be hit by an asteroid the size of Texas, and you're evacuating whoever you can get, they were plenty of good people from back then who'd certainly be willing to work for you now. Heck, reset the year as you like or simply rescue folks doomed to die period. Save Mabel Normand from her drug habit and TB. Save Jeames Dean from his car crash, as well as getting him plenty of counseling on his self-destructive habits. Christopher Marlowe and Jim Morrison could go to the same shrink. Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler could also be saved. Make your own list.

Heck, stars from worlds were their careers were ruined by scandals, their homosexuality exposed or something like that, who'd willing come away to find new opportunities free of past fears and limits.

[Flyndaran]

Effective or even really bad counseling would drastically change behavior such that they may not come off as "right" to audiences.
Though radically different on screen personas could make for good sellers too.
Or say highly athletic versions of foppish actors of Homeline's timeline.

Imagine a Danielle Radcliffe martial artist, for example.

[AlexanderHowl]

Imagine a parallel where all of the famous action films of the 80s and 90s are instead martial arts films. Bruce Willis as a Shaolin master stopping German terrorists in Die Hard would be surreal...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Imagine a parallel where all of the famous action films of the 80s and 90s are instead martial arts films. Bruce Willis as a Shaolin master stopping German terrorists in Die Hard would be surreal...

The whole point of Die Hard, before it became famous as an action film, was that someone who wasn't an action star was in an action film. Look at Willis in this film, then compare him to Stalone, Schwarzenegger, Segal, or Van Damme, he doesn't fit the action star mold from before the film. After Die Hard the idea of an action star was changed, a combo of good performance, good script, good direction, redefined the genre.

If Die Hard had been made under those circumstances, Willis wouldn't have been hired for it.

[PTTG]

In Giovanni, the Catholic church expanded its temporal power throughout Europe. This expansion still respected the power of the various feudal leaders, but was nonetheless even stronger than the Catholic church of OTL. Around 1100 AD, the Church forbade non-nobles of the production and ownership of anything that could be considered a weapon, and gave kings and princes wide authority in enforcing the decree (they generally allowed soldiers to be armed, albeit only on campaign). This exceeded OTL versions of the law in scope and thoroughness.

Left with only hatchets and hunting bows, the lowborn of Europe developed, imported, and refined unarmed combat techniques, producing schools of distinctive and sometimes flashy or colorful martial arts.

These techniques thrived through the centuries. It is currently the 1660s, and the arts of the west have begun to face the arts of the east, producing spectacular fights and occasionally, entirely new and quite useful schools.

The name, in this case, comes from the especially skilled Pope who drove much of the divergence between this church and the Homeline one.

[Flyndaran]

How would slightly new styles be anything more than interesting for researchers? Doesn't strike me as "valuables" in this thread's context.

Low magical methods of imparting high skill even without Trained By A Master advantages could be valuable though.
Given a few months with a master, anyone can be turned into a skilled but realistic martial artist, even those as uncoordinated and "anti-talented" as me.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Catholic nations would have been conquered by either a resurgent Byzantine Empire during the 14th century (since they would have lacked the arms familiarity to support the Fourth Crusade) or they would have been divided between a resurgent Islamic Spain and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. The British Isles and Scandinavia might have broken with the Catholic Church soon enough to avoid conquest, but the Catholic Church would have ended up a minority religion in any case (perhaps only practiced in Islamic states because its practitioners would have been even less offensive than the Jews).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Catholic nations would have been conquered by either a resurgent Byzantine Empire during the 14th century (since they would have lacked the arms familiarity to support the Fourth Crusade) or they would have been divided between a resurgent Islamic Spain and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century.

Eh, maybe. The thing is that states that have tried this sort of successfully are large unified ones - they manage to demilitarize their core populations because the borders they need to defend, which *aren't* disarmed, are smallish compared to their total area of control. Catholic Europe isn't, and turning it into a unified empire changes it a lot.

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that "noble" in a lot of places is 10% or 15% of the population - American audiences are I think fooled by assuming England is typical. It wasn't. This may not result in much of a reduction in number weapons out there - many, maybe *most*, of the guys running around with weapons in the first place were patricians or jonkheer or hidalgos or niederer adel or nobile or szlachic or whatever, who'd definitely insist they were nobles and not peasants. For most of the continent it's more like the Kshatriya varna (about 16% of the population of India) than the English gentry (less than 2%).