Re: New Reality Seeds
 

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...light=kentucky

I've always that region has wonderful potential for historical campaigns. Imagine an action campaign set during prohibition or the American Civil War in addition to the 1790s. I actually have a Monster Hunters campaign set in Northeast Tennessee during Reconstruction rattling around in my head that I think would be fun to play sometime.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I was more inspired by the late-Colonial/early-national time period, with the over-the-mountains region being a bonus. Looking at it the other way around definitely has its own merits, though.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Here's a fun source, if you can find them. I really enjoyed this comic, back when I used to read comics:

http://www.comicmix.com/2008/09/22/r...messner-loebs/

It's set in the Old Northwest -- what we call the Upper Midwest of the United States, today. It begins in about 1808, but the ideas transfer easily to a couple of decades, prior.

Also, you can't have a campaign set in late 18th Century Appalachia without Daniel Boone:

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/danielboone.htm

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Excellent ideas! Thanks!

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

If that little bit intested you, read An Artist in Treason. It's about James Wilkinson and will provide you with rich info for campaigns set durring his lifetime. I'm a little less than one thrid of the way through, but a highly reccomend this book.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I was looking at a history of the US presidents, and was particularly impressed by one president Polk.

The guy is a four year president by choice. He stated an clear but ambitious agenda: re-establish an independent Treasury, reduce tariffs, and acquire a bunch of Western land. He accomplished these items. On the land front in particular, he acquired Texas, won the american-mexican war, and settled the British-American Oregon territory dispute -- though he tried and failed to get cuba from spain.

Leser bullet points include overseeing the founding of the Smithsonian and the first postage stamps. Despite his short presidency he appointed as many supreme court judges (2) as anyone between Lincoln (5) and Jackson (6).

Ideas centered around Polk:

Have him loose the election, and the US bungle the western land situation. The US will still end up with texas, and probably with California as well, but Oregon may be long gone. More disruptive would be an earlier US civil war -- and Lincoln was preceded by a line of presidents who were considered to not have done a good job, from what I can tell. Without Polk there, maybe the US would have fractured earlier. The union probably wouldn't have as solid a treasury system to fight it with. The real change you can get from all of this is the French conquest of mexico. In RL, it stuck until the US finished their war. With a weaker US with less stake in the west? who knows?

Give the US Cuba. This will bring Hispanic race issues in the US to the forefront much earlier. It will also set a much more colonial precedent for the US, and may trigger a more traditional imperialism in the US.

Building on the first item, start the divergence earlier and have the Civil war earlier -- before the West has been acquired and before the North industrializes to the 1860's point. Run a world with a USA, a CSA, a separate Texas, California, and Deseret, give the French power in mexico and the British control of Oregon. Now run espionage.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

OK, idea time. The USA never signed the Paris Peace Accords (I believe the reason was that they weren't actually peace treaties, given what happened this is a case of Gone Horribly Right), so taking that idea and running with it. In this timeline the peace treaty between USA and Germany was signed AFTER the 1929 stock market crash, and because they were technically in a state of war Germany doesn't suffer the effects of the Great Depression

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The Great Depression was transmitted around the world by the Gold Standard which tied the hands of the world's central bankers and finance ministers. France, which used brillant Beggar thy Neighbour policies, only avoided the depression for about four years. Mexico, China, and other nations on the silver standard, stayed out of the depression for the same period of time. To abort the Great Depression you'd need to either radically change the ecconomic practices of the major nations of the 20th century or to destroy them. The system at that point had regular crashes built into it.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Try this idea, James Wilkinson (mentioned a few posts above) gets killed in the American Revolutionary War several hours before the battle of Saratoga. Benedict Arnold disobeys General Gates and crushes Burgoyne on the first day. Arnold never becomes a traitor but dies in a later battle.

Washington's policy of working to bring the Native American into the nation is never sabotaged. The Five Civilized Tribes become five states. Their is no cotton kingdom or ACW.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I think that might be a little... optimistic. Indians who grew cotton and tobacco as cash crops, in the 18th Century, kept slaves as enthusiastically as anybody. A couple of the Five Nations (Choctaw and Chickasaw) fought alongside the Confederacy.

I think it far more likely those two "states" would do the same in an alt.history ACW, with one or two of the others joining the Union, and maybe one trying (and failing) to stay out of it.