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Old 10-28-2016, 11:55 AM   #2301
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
This is a fun alternative, too, and a way to bolster Byzantium at the expense of its most intransigent foe -- at least until Mohammed appears.
Added fun, the Arab Agricultural Revolution would have happened early and been a Roman Agricultural Revolution, thus the Arabs can never be as influential in North Africa, Spain, or Sicily.
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Old 10-28-2016, 08:31 PM   #2302
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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This is a fun alternative, too, and a way to bolster Byzantium at the expense of its most intransigent foe -- at least until Mohammed appears.
This could lead to a different Mohammed, a different Islam. Maybe a blend of Islam, frozen out of a stronger Byzantine Fertile Crescent, finds a home in Persia and blends with Zorastianism.

Or Mohammed becomes wedded to Byzantine Christianity, and you get Harry Turtledove's Agent of Byzantium.
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Old 10-29-2016, 05:28 AM   #2303
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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This could lead to a different Mohammed, a different Islam. Maybe a blend of Islam, frozen out of a stronger Byzantine Fertile Crescent, finds a home in Persia and blends with Zorastianism.
That might look far more familiar than you suspect, Islam as it exists today was shaped to a fairly large degree by Zoroastrian (and for that matter Jewish) converts during its first century or so of existence.

The problem would be something resembling Islam arising at all. At the risk of being controversial, the city of Mecca known today is almost certainly not the place refered to by the Quran and there are those who would place the original site within or on the border of the area being discussed. If Persia is taken out of the running at least for a time and especially if the Roman government is both richer and stronger than it was historically is this area going to have the realitively wealthy and independent tribal confederations that served as a nursery for early Islam?

I would be tempted to say that they would not and that the local Islam equivalent would be one of the radical off shoots of Zoroastrianism that cropped up at the time.

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Old 10-29-2016, 12:38 PM   #2304
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That might look far more familiar than you suspect, Islam as it exists today was shaped to a fairly large degree by Zoroastrian (and for that matter Jewish) converts during its first century or so of existence.

The problem would be something resembling Islam arising at all. At the risk of being controversial, the city of Mecca known today is almost certainly not the place refered to by the Quran and there are those who would place the original site within or on the border of the area being discussed. If Persia is taken out of the running at least for a time and especially if the Roman government is both richer and stronger than it was historically is this area going to have the realitively wealthy and independent tribal confederations that served as a nursery for early Islam?

I would be tempted to say that they would not and that the local Islam equivalent would be one of the radical off shoots of Zoroastrianism that cropped up at the time.
Realistic points. The fact of Mecca being both near enough other civilizations to get benefits, while being far enough away from those same cultures to be independent, was vital to the birth of Islam. If the Red Sea is a Roman lake, their would be no Islam.

Heck, without the collapse of Roman law, Christianity would be a minority faith. Buddhism would be likelier to dominate the Mediterranean basin and for that matter the Arabian peninsula.
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Old 10-29-2016, 12:55 PM   #2305
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Try this idea. On a low mana world the alchemistic means to certain limited enchantments is discovered during the Greek Classical period. Most notably the means for creating the keels of flying ships. (Yes I'm thinking of the illustrations of Martian Kites in Space: 1889)

Basically it's the Hellenistic Greece and one or more of the successor states is sending out flying ships to explore the lands beyond those Alexander conquered. Are your PCs ready to dare the shies in order to chart the unknown lands beyond the Indus?

What mixture of Alexandrine Romance and real history would be used is up to you.
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Old 10-29-2016, 03:19 PM   #2306
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Heck, without the collapse of Roman law, Christianity would be a minority faith. Buddhism would be likelier to dominate the Mediterranean basin and for that matter the Arabian peninsula.
I would think that it would depend upon when and how the area took of as a major agricultural centre whether it changed the course of the christianization of the Roman empire.

Realistically Christianity achieved its first foot holds in the empire and began to form parallel institutions in spite of Roman law and achieved wide acceptance as a tool for legitimizing otherwise fairly compromised leaders. Unless a victory over the Persians and or the economic boom from having a second bread basket leads to a cultural and constitutional change on the order of Octavian's usurpation of the republic the scope for Christianization will still exist.
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Old 10-30-2016, 12:40 PM   #2307
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I would think that it would depend upon when and how the area took of as a major agricultural centre whether it changed the course of the christianization of the Roman empire.

Realistically Christianity achieved its first foot holds in the empire and began to form parallel institutions in spite of Roman law and achieved wide acceptance as a tool for legitimizing otherwise fairly compromised leaders. Unless a victory over the Persians and or the economic boom from having a second bread basket leads to a cultural and constitutional change on the order of Octavian's usurpation of the republic the scope for Christianization will still exist.
Widespread forms of the Jesus Movement (a name given to Early Christianity by scholars that wish to stress how little we really know about Early Christian beliefs) would exist. Whether these would even fully separate from Jewish tradition and form their own faith is questionable.

Christianity became dominant in the Mediterranean Basin in a way no previous Faith ever had been or has since been. Major events being radically changed before the year 200AD could easily derail the rise of Christianity to the status of Major and exclusive Faith.
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Old 10-30-2016, 12:57 PM   #2308
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Try this idea. A world-jumper who thinks she is time-travelling to Ancient Egypt introduces several crops into Egypt during the 18th Dynasty. The woman is a major fan of Akhenaten mainly because she has obsessively read and reread The Egyptian by Waltari.

The World-jumper has brought enough plants and information to radically transform Egypt. She has an ally, an Egyptian priest, who knows she's nuts, but assumes she's been sent by the gods. Maize, bananas, mulberry bushes, and several other crops have been introduced. Silkworms are only being introduced at the time the PCs show up. The spinning wheel and the box-bellows (a Chinese design for a bellows that produces far greater heat at less fuel cost than any Western bellows could before the high middle-ages) and clockwork, have all also been introduced as have the Arabic Numerals.

The PCs confront a world in radical change.

Alternately, the PCs could arrive centuries after the world-jumper has died and witness her handiwork.
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Old 10-30-2016, 02:23 PM   #2309
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Confused world-jumpers produce a wide variety of interesting scenarios. "Jumps" that last less than 50 years tends to confuse time-travelers because of the ease of finding oneself, but that is hardly limiting.

Oh, I've got one! It appears that an elaborate Centrum plot is underway! Someone has already assassinated Hitler in this 1936 parallel and there are signs of stock market tampering and -- yes, definitely a few new technologies designed to make surveillance and monitoring easier. It's unusual for them, but not totally bizarre. It looks like they're trying to strengthen the USSR and make it a strong police state on the road to globlal hegemony.

Get in there and sort out the incursion!

On arrival, however, it turns out that Centrum isn't involved at all; the origin is a very near parallel of November 1991 without parachronics. Outwardly the parallel appears normal, although with very slightly different spaceflight history (The USA only landed on the moon twice, probably in response to a weaker Soviet space program). However, the USSR had a secret time-travel-research program that has apparently bore fruit -- a stable time-gateway, discovered in a cave in the southern mountains of Kazakhstan. It's certainly not bourgeois magic; thanks to advancements of socialist science, it is clearly understood and the scientists are weeks away from reproducing the portal ourselves, if only they had some more funding....

With time pressing down, the Soviets have started preparations with their own "past" selves and are determining how to win the war even more efficiently. The Stalin of the past was very difficult to convince; the gadgets and computers of the 90's were unimpressive to him, but detailed accounts of horseraces and betting tables turned him to the idea readily. Unfortunately for the late-era Soviets, the collapse of the soviet union cannot be avoided -- yet. High-ranking officials are already traveling back in time as advisors, hoping to set right the historical past that lead the USSR to its fall.

Experiments with dead-drops and other attempts to leave messages for the future have revealed that changes don't propagate from 1936 to 1992. The scientists believe this may be because changes can only propagate forward in time at real time; in other words, one would have to wait the duration. This is still a controversial opinion, however, and there are other hypothesises, including ones that are worryingly close to the Secret. As for WWII in the 1936 world, the '91 soviets are proceeding sometimes cautiously, sometimes over-zealously. The assassination of Adolph Hitler, for instance, was a mistake made very early on, when one of the first scouting teams was still drunk with power. The future-people are most cautious with their own past counterparts, around whom the future-dwellers are still very much foreigners.

Last edited by PTTG; 10-30-2016 at 06:23 PM.
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Old 11-04-2016, 06:49 AM   #2310
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Confused world-jumpers produce a wide variety of interesting scenarios. "Jumps" that last less than 50 years tends to confuse time-travelers because of the ease of finding oneself, but that is hardly limiting.

Oh, I've got one! It appears that an elaborate Centrum plot is underway! Someone has already assassinated Hitler in this 1936 parallel and there are signs of stock market tampering and -- yes, definitely a few new technologies designed to make surveillance and monitoring easier. It's unusual for them, but not totally bizarre. It looks like they're trying to strengthen the USSR and make it a strong police state on the road to globlal hegemony.

Get in there and sort out the incursion!

On arrival, however, it turns out that Centrum isn't involved at all; the origin is a very near parallel of November 1991 without parachronics. Outwardly the parallel appears normal, although with very slightly different spaceflight history (The USA only landed on the moon twice, probably in response to a weaker Soviet space program). However, the USSR had a secret time-travel-research program that has apparently bore fruit -- a stable time-gateway, discovered in a cave in the southern mountains of Kazakhstan. It's certainly not bourgeois magic; thanks to advancements of socialist science, it is clearly understood and the scientists are weeks away from reproducing the portal ourselves, if only they had some more funding....

With time pressing down, the Soviets have started preparations with their own "past" selves and are determining how to win the war even more efficiently. The Stalin of the past was very difficult to convince; the gadgets and computers of the 90's were unimpressive to him, but detailed accounts of horseraces and betting tables turned him to the idea readily. Unfortunately for the late-era Soviets, the collapse of the soviet union cannot be avoided -- yet. High-ranking officials are already traveling back in time as advisors, hoping to set right the historical past that lead the USSR to its fall.

Experiments with dead-drops and other attempts to leave messages for the future have revealed that changes don't propagate from 1936 to 1992. The scientists believe this may be because changes can only propagate forward in time at real time; in other words, one would have to wait the duration. This is still a controversial opinion, however, and there are other hypothesises, including ones that are worryingly close to the Secret. As for WWII in the 1936 world, the '91 soviets are proceeding sometimes cautiously, sometimes over-zealously. The assassination of Adolph Hitler, for instance, was a mistake made very early on, when one of the first scouting teams was still drunk with power. The future-people are most cautious with their own past counterparts, around whom the future-dwellers are still very much foreigners.
Interesting idea. Because the Soviets could never deal with the facts that A) Not being a Democracy they couldn't be Socialist, B) they had an archaic command economy more like that of 17th century France than any socialist utopia dreamed-up by Marx, and C) the USSR did itself in by being a corrupt dictatorship, the West merely limited the damage done to the rest of the planet, they can only delay the collapse of the Soviet Union and widen the area of damage.

Still, bitter Soviets desperately trying to make their failed Utopia work could make any world into a Hell parallel. Added bonus, a true believer is the Soviet dream would see himself or herself as the true good guy and would have generous motives for their evil acts. The most interesting kind of villain.
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