What are your Homebrew Infinite Worlds... worlds?

[PTTG]

I want to have a huge list of potential alternates for my PCs to end up in. Any ideas?

Here's some of my settings and a few off-the-cuff ideas to get this started...

Capital-1: An alternate-map earth, where the greatest, oldest city in the world is at the temporate-latitude magnetic north pole. TL 5. The sheltered rivermouth there has made this place the perfect place for a low-tech city, this one has a population of millions.

Cybervice-1: 2032, cyberpunk meets pulp fiction. TL 8, with TL9 experiments. Space research is accelerating as corporations reach for new resource pools. Corporations have private police forces... and "troubleshooters".

Rubble-3: 2010 ish, according to star charts. About a decade ago, some bizarre physical change occurred, causing earth (and all other rocky bodies larger than a few thousand Km) to break up into belts of debris. This seemed to happen around the time of the first world-jumping experiments on Homeline, but it could be a coincidence. I'm not sure about the physics of where you'd show up if you jumped there...

Clubs-0: Unknown date. In fact, the only thing that's conclusively known is that this universe is a high-mana environment... and it's full of clubs. That is to say, any conveyer or traveler that arrives there will be immediately buried in a bottemless, topless sea of writhing wooden (and stone, bone, and metal...) maces, batons, and clubs.* [It used to be a fantasy universe until someone Wished for "Infinite clubs!"]

Collins-1: Atomic nuclei are somehow more stable... or at least, less prone to "artificial" reactions due to some means. As a result, though the math works out saying that nuclear bombs should work, they don't. History was almost identical up to the 1940s. The Manhattan Project was a mighty failure, and areospace development lagged with no military funding for faster means of delivering bombs. The long, bloody Siege of Japan involved forces dwarfing that of the Normandy invasion. The result, in the year 1988, is a world still firmly in TL7 and scarred by countless barbaric and crude wars.

Gojong-1: The personalities and structures of many national governments are different here. The year is 2011, and most of the planet is controlled by a few power groups. The United States is oligarchic and only has a sham democracy; Europe is in the US's corporate thrall, and the USSR is still strong. China is a grim and dirty place, where a small hardcore of revolutionaries still struggle to protect human rights even as corporate, nationalist influences from outside fight back. The only place where freedom still reigns is in a small, mountainous peninsula in the Sea of Japan. There, freedom fighters still stand, defending themselves from the ever-encroaching hordes to the south, to the east, and no doubt from across the world as the cowardly Americans plan to strike at this last bastion of freedom! The only defense... is the endless willpower and might of their immortal, perfect, humble, flawless god-president...

Pratchett-1: Earth has a very similar surface layout, but is distorted so that if lays flat on a disk. The edge is a giant waterfall which appears to be endless (it diffuses into rainlike mist and eventually into practically nothing after only a few miles.) Some... thing... keeps the place running; it seems that arrangements are made regarding the supply of ocean water and gravity. Mechanical gadgets and simple electronics function fine, but computers and other complex items only work intermittently, and appear to gain personalities. The inhabitants of this place are ordinary humans, but their cultures are only vaguely related to the region they inhabit (they speak a dialect of English on the land mass that resembles Great Britain, for instance.) The best guess for a date of divergence is the 1700s, which matches up with the current local date. The population, even today, is a fraction of what it was on Homeline at the time.

Chryse-1: Earth appears tectonically normal. Physics are normal, though psionics and magic are entirely dead. The oddity is that the earth is heavily built up with stone structures, roads, and tunnels that resemble modern ones in basic form, but lack ornamentation or obvious furnishings. No large animals (including native humans) exist, though plants are quite prevalent. Star charts put the date in the late cretaceous, but this doesn't match the climate or the life-forms present.

Paleo-1
An early mistake. At first believed to be a human-less world, this parallel's construction rights were sold rapidly. When primitive humans were discovered, it was too late to isolate them from the immigrants, refugees, and other TL-8 people settling there. [Insert number] years later, tensions and conflicts are rising between the natives (who are suddenly faced with advanced technology) and the settlers.

Paleo-2
Similar to Paleo-1 insomuch as primitive humans first arise ~500,000 years later than they did in Homeline. It is currently the astrological year 2013 there. About ten years before the first scouts arrived, a brilliant comet appeared for at least a month, before it grew larger, diffuse, and faded. Ever since, the Earth has been Very High Mana. The people here are just beginning to develop magical rituals.

Dean-1
Reactionless engines, and the nuclear propulsion systems that compliment them, are developed in the early 19th century and are widespread by the 1970's. Nazi groups (and others) depart to space, seeking... living space. WW1 happened, but not WW2; in the Sino-Japanese war of 1946, the Japanese were forced to rapidly industrialize and flee to the Asteroid Belt; the United States colonized the Moon, parts of the Belt, and has scattered bases everywhere. Mars is solely the property of the Soviets. Nobody has heard of the Germans... besides some strange radio transmissions from Alpha Centauri. TL 7^, plus some practically magical things too. Looks like the United Solar States might soon find itself at war with the Fourth Reich!

[robkelk]

I believe I've mentioned Gernsback-2 once or twice... a month.

Alternate setting rather than alternate world: We're working on a variant where the result was parachronics instead of cheap space travel, which has lead to there being five important parachronic powers: Infinity, Centrum, Convention (the Gernsback-3 folks), the Domination (yes, out of the Stirling novels), and the Bureau (from the anime "Lyrical Nanoha"). Infinity and Convention are not exactly allied, but are willing to work with each other. (When Infinity first found Convention's homeline, the Infinity Scout was accidentally dropped into the Convention's survival-training grounds. Discovery of the scout was reasonably quick, as these things go.)

[Pragmatic]

I tend to like alternate worlds that I pick up from novels.

From "The Peshawar Lancers," meteorites have hit the northern Atlantic and parts of North America and Europe in the mid- to late-1800s. The Northern Hemisphere's weather has spent a decade or two recovering, but most of the Northern Hemisphere is depopulated, with a few remnant populations and bands of cannibal savages. The British Empire has relocated to India, South Africa, and Australia (all three territories expanded as the Brits flex their power), but barely managed to rescue 10% of their population. The Japanese took the opportunity to conquer China. The Muslims have their patchwork of minor kingdoms. The French relocated to North Africa. And the Russians... they adopted a cult of cannibalism, the Russian overlords feasting on their Central Asian slaves, and their religion focuses on the destruction of the world--aided by the psychics of a family line of descending-rapidly-into-madness mystics.

From "A Choice of Destinies," a couple of divergence points happen. Alexander the Great has a son at a younger age. And instead of going east to India, he's diverted west, to crush a revolt in Greece, and to conquer and ally with the Romans, against Carthage. His empire ends up combining the pragmatism of the Romans and the Macedonians, the intellectualism of the Greeks, and the mysticism and pageantry of the Persians.

From "A Time of Salt and Rice," the Black Plague wiped out 90+% of Europe. The balance of power in the resulting world changes between China, India, and various Muslim empires. (The story features the same cast of characters reincarnated into each new story...)

And from "Agent of Byzantium," Mohammed converted to Christianity (Saint Moamet, or something like that), and became the patron saint of change. He's the patron saint of Basil Agryros, who recognizes useful inventions, and realizes how to use them for the glory of the Eastern Roman empire. Most of Byzantium is still around. The Persians are still an ancient enemy. The Western European barbarians nibble at the edges of the empire...

[Fred Brackin]

Prospero-1. So named because the year is 1616 and the Duke of Milan is a powerful sorcerer. As are many other prominent persons.

This is "Gurps Magic from the beginning" world that maintains a high degree of (cinematic) parallelism in spite of that. People famous in Homeline are famous in Prospero-1 for something similar but usually magic related.

So Moses not only gave the Israelites a Covenant but the Create Food spell too.

Similar creation of magical spells by well-known persons also took place.

The whole line has been threatening to go clockpunk since Agricola published Shape Metal and the Earth to Metal (but not yet Essential Metal) transformation in De Res Metallica in 1556.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica

Both spells may have been known earlier in Camelot and produced anachronistic plate armor there but they did not survive that city's fall. Also, though Excalibur itself is no longer known its' Penetrating Blade effect is and this has helped keep cheap plate armor in check and generally promotes the importance of sword-wielding heroes.

Greek fire and other self-oxidizing compounds are mostly known for their extremely dangerous ability to attract Fire Elementals. Nitrates need to be kept under Hermetic Seal (a Pentagram variant). Guns are still known but are based on the Boil Water spell and are slow to fire because of that spell's 10 second casting time.

This can alleviated by the Speed Enchantment and Louis XIII has been lavish in buying magical muskets as well as swords for his Musketeers.

The Freemasons were formed out of secret societies using Ceremonial Magic and the Essential Earth/Stone spell to build the setting's 300 ft tall Gothic Cathedrals. Ceremonial Magic is not a common technique and indeed might not work with just any rube off the street.

Essential Wood also makes the setting's sailing ships much bigger and somewhat more advanced than Homeline's at a equivalent period.

By my intention at least the "Prospero" designation should apply to any other "Renaissance + Magic" lines.

The timeline would be a truly great tourist attraction if it weren't for the magic getting it classified.

[Flyndaran]

Grassless: True grass never evolved or went extinct long ago. The effects on human development is massive with no rice, corn, wheat, bamboo, etc.
The Incan empire is slowly taking over the Americas with their energy dense potatoes and quinoa "false grass".

[Flyndaran]

Cryptid 1: Many mythical but feasible animals exist here. Sasquatch is an endangered semi-upright gorilla like ape. Mapinguari is a giant ground sloth that survived the megafauna die off. Sea serpents are giant ocean snakes and not simply oarfish. Sorry, no Loch Ness monster though. ;)

[Gedrin]

Crossroads-1: Turns out, parachronics blocks all known FTL technology...at least all that's known in the Crossroads-1 parallel. The interdict extends forward and back in time, with only a minute period, during conveyor transit, where the cosmos hasn't "settled".

The aliens attempting to warn Crossroads-1 Earth of impending invasion don't know what they hit before they crashed. They're currently in medical hibernation in a military base's secret morgue.

The Reich-5 test pilots don't know what they hit with their stolen Infinity conveyor, they got word back to their superiors about the unique talents of the natives before said natives shot them because "space nazis...burn 'em".

The Infinity agent who recovered the conveyor is positive he hit everyone involved with sleepy forget me now. He's certain it worked...right?

The natives of Crossroads-1 are running around like chickens with their heads cut off because a "large enough" portion of the population has developed, for lack of a better term, "super-powers". They don't know the secret, or that any such thing might exist. They don't know about an impending invasion. They don't know they have live, genuinely friendly, aliens in their freezer. They don't know about Reich-5, but they do have some super high tech wrist watches that, on rare occasion, receive neo-nazi sci-fi propaganda.


This is the world in which I run a 4(and a half) color supers game.

[William]

I and some friends worked up one where America was still run by the Indians.

Iroquois-1, 1833

Current Affairs: The Algonquin Compact, Iroquois League, Cherokee Nation and the Southwestern Alliance divide North America and begin to expand towards Africa and the Pacific, on equal footing with the European powers.

Divergence Point: ca 900; Viking influence penetrates further, bringing ironwork, shipbuilding, smallpox, and minority Christianity to North America. Buoyed by coastal trade, the Indian confederations are stronger and more cohesive. The Iroquois, Cherokee and upper Mississippi peoples solidify control of their regions and enter a medieval age; the nations of the Southwest unite in self-preservation and follow somewhat later. Columbus encounters iron-using Christians and Europe calculates conquest is more costly than trade relations.

Major Civilizations: European (multipolar), Native American (multipolar).

Great Powers: British Empire, Spanish Empire, Iroquois League, Cherokee Nation, China.

Current issues: The Southwestern Alliance is smaller in population denisty than the other powers, and has poorer arable land, but has access to gold and silver in California and Nevada. The Iroquois League and the Cherokee Nation would both be interested in conquest were it not that attempts to do so would bring the other's military might down on their backs. The cotton-growing, sugar-harvesting Cherokee Nation keeps African and South American slaves, while the Iroquois do not, and are more industrialized and trade-driven, much like the North and South prior to our Civil War; indeed, the same factors may cause war within the next few decades, although not having to abide by compromises like the Fugitive Slave Act keeps tensions down. Britain and Spain would both like to foment such strife, since weakened American nations might be more easily conquerable. It's possible that a European invasion would unite old foes, though.

The Cherokee and the Southwestern Alliance expanded southward by conquest after their regional unifications, the Alliance through Mexico and the Cherokee through the Caribbean. The Algonquin Compact is west of the Iroquois League and had the space to expand westward, taking in middle-to-west Canada and Alaska and meeting the Southwest about halfway through Oregon. The Incas collapsed into balkanized states that were variously administered piecemeal, colonized or culled for slaves by Spain, the Alliance, and the Cherokee Nation. South American independence movements are the big issue of the day in the hemisphere. Events outside the Americas are roughly parallel to Homeline of the time.

[David Johnston2]

Amethyst: A reasonable copy of late 19th century Paris plopped in the middle of an Earth that is otherwise in TL2. The reason for that appears to be a clan of world jumpers who rule the place.

MLK-2: Although the point of obvious divergence is the prevention of the death of Martin Luthor King, MLK, now in it's year 1980 is chiefly interesting to Homeline because it is in the middle of a surge of cinematic science fiction that can be profitably copied. The popularity of science fiction films may have contributed to a widespread UFO flap. It is certainly not the case that the science fiction films are being used as cover stories for actual UFO abductions in which people are being kidnapped to be harvested of their organs.

Centrum Gamma: A parallel of Centrum that never quite managed to clean itself up after the collapse of their ecology. Now, having discovered a portal in space to MLK 2, they launch regular raids to abduct the natives of that world to be harvested for their uncontaminated organs.

Ford-3: A world in which in 1916, Henry Ford convinced the warring sides of the Great War to declare a truce. Since then, their world has never actually been at peace. Actual hostilities break out at regular intervals only to be followed by new truces that last for a few years, just long enough for the sides to catch their breaths. Even the invention of nuclear weapons didn't stop it because two sides had developed such advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile capabilities that air delivered weapons are substantially nerfed. The world is now TL 9 and both sides are paranoid enough that Centrum and Homeline stay away from it.

[Ciergan]

Pleistocene-2 - Woolly mammoths roam Siberia. And Rome. Curiously, human history began far earlier here than on Homeline. Picture Hannibal crossing the Alps with giant sloths.

Bakshi-1 - A post-apocalyptic, high-mana Earth. Wizards throw sarcastic magicks at each other. The map has been blighted enough times that only South America can be made out from space; the rest is barren, brown wasteland.

Hothothot - The Darkest Timeline. Pierce suffered a heart attack and Jeff lost his arm.