Re: New Reality Seeds
 

This is a damaged Earth. That might attract impractical idealists with "surefire plans." That could keep the PCs busy.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Spector in the James Bond books was an amalgam of Fourth Reich sliminess and organized crime. It was rewritten to to Communist. So there would be agents trying to stop 4th Reich wannabes, mobsters, stomach Communists, and other low life's. The PCs would be trying to prevent the Cabal from taking over Europe.

Good atmosphere and interesting challenges. I envy your mind.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I assume that the US is divided. The New Dealers want to prevent wars. The Dixiecrats and the Republicans tend towards isolationism. So unless the New Deal Democrats are riding high, I assume the Anglo-American alliance is diffident.

The European refugees are going to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Try this idea. Thomas Morton founded a colony near what is now Quincy Massachusetts in the 1620s. Morton's business partner, Wollaston, deciding that neither the Pilgrims (Brownists and thus religious separatists who wanted out of the Church of England) and Puritans (who wanted to purify the Church of England) were his choice as neighbors, left for Virginia. Upon becoming the sole resident founder, Thomas Morton renamed his colony Merrymount.

Merrymount was a lively hedonistic place. So in 1628 the local Puritans forcefully shut it down. The many claims of paganism, and orgies both interracial and bisexual, are at present seen by historians as gross exaggerations. Thomas Morton's practice of selling liquor and guns to the Native Americans is now seen as the probable cause of his exile from New England.

However, many people have seen Thomas Morton as a kind of hero. They picture him as a pagan champion of ecstatic pleasure. An early NeoPagan culture warrior. These ideas are laughable, but fun.

Imagine that Thomas Morton and his business partner Captain Richard Wollaston (a known Pirate) really were NeoPagan revolutionaries. Let's remove them from mainland Massachusetts and set them up at Montauk at the end of Long Island. And let their NeoPagan colony of hedonistic witches, pirates, sorcerers, and similar types thrive.

Picture a late 18th century America with ritual magicians. These spellcasters are working class outcasts. There are Maguses among the Freemasonic lodges, but these learned magicians are respectable.

This 18th century America would find itself being infiltrated by the Cabal. Meanwhile, Centrum, as much as it loathes magic, is trying to infiltrate the Freemasonic lodges in order to get America's Occult secrets for Britain. Britain locked in deadly struggle with Revolutionary France.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

If this campaign included a thoughtful comparison and contrast between the two ways of thought, I'd play in this campaign. I find the story of the Wollaston Plantation a compelling alternative to that of Plymouth, and sometimes kick around "might-have-beens," had the British government been more assertive in their protection of Merton's rights as an Englishman.

But if it just turns into an excuse to "bash the Puritans," I'd take a hard pass; the emotional discipline the Pilgrims brought to American culture has served us well, even as we've had to figure out how to deal with the legacy of intolerance they (and others) also carried to these shores.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Your response was perhaps more thoughtful than my idea. I was mainly rifting off the fantasies of people like Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bay) and was thinking of an America with functional Temporary Autonomous Zones and similar silliness. Although the 18th century Freemasonic lodges with their values of freedom, respect, and community, would make interesting intellectual counterballances to mystical hedonistic anarchists. Puritans, the group most responsible for America becoming a democracy, would make and interesting third force. They might need back up from the Quakers thought. The Puritans were the group in early America least likely to practice anything like magic. The Quakers in the 17th century, very open to magic and experimental about it too.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

A Quaker friend of mine once noted that they were somewhat irritated to be confused with the Puritans, just because they dressed similarly in the 17th century. He pointed out that one early accomplishment of the Puritan colony in America was martyring a couple of Quakers.

That leaves me with the feeling that making the two groups allies might be a stretch.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Agreed! I think the Pilgrims (who like the Quakers were religious separatists) might have a better chance. But then I was clutching at straws.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Try this one. The Ayatollah Khomeini has a fatal heart attack on November 1st 1979. This not only canceled the attack on the US embassy but more importantly it has thrown the Clerical faction into chaos as they struggle to choose a successor.

Khomeini lives far longer than this on most parallels but the Cabal and Centrum are highly active in this Q6 parallel's Iran. This is a mainly low Mana parallel but areas of normal and high mana are known. Still, Iran during the Iranian revolution is a dangerous place to be. What would pull those two factions in? It's assumed that either Centrum or more likely the Cabal killed Khomeini. But what made them risk it?

Espionage with an Arabian Nights Flare (I know Iran isn't Arab, but then most of the stories in the Thousand and One Nights aren't Arabic either).

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Try this one. Trotsky wins at Warsaw 1920 and then invades Germany through Prussia. This creates WWII in 1920. Europe is in chaos through the 1920s. Hitler, Stalin, and other dictators die before becoming prominent. Europe's talent flee to America and get blended in with the Jazz age.

The European colonial empires end in the 1920s and early 30s. By 1940 Europe is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The PCs are part of an expeditionary force to try to establish areas of order to begin rebuilding.

Basically, it's the middle section of Things to Come the PCs are American GIs doing the job Wings Over the World had in the movie. Combat and diplomacy in an anrachic Europe. Do you want the talk to the BOSS or his Woman?