American Revolution
 

I am surprised no sourcebook covering the American Revolution was ever produced back in the days of 3rd Ed. So would one use High Tech, Age of Napoleon and maybe Swashbucklers to make a game set in the 1770s ?

Re: American Revolution
 

Those, yes, plus Low-Tech—this is sort of the "transitional" period between High and Low Tech.

Re: American Revolution
 

The original manuscript for Age of Napoleon did cover the American revolution but it did so from the perspective of a Brit who thought his side had won all the important battles and yet had no good idea why they had lost the war.

I believe changes were made but the open playtest of that era caused me to believe I ddin't need that book.

Swashbucklers is definitely aimed earlier but that doesn't mean you wouldn't find something.

Re: American Revolution
 

As one of the playtesters on GURPS: Age of Napoleon I got a clear impression that the author of the book was fairly close to the opinion of his mouthpiece character. His posts seemed to suggest that he saw the "Land Speculation Theory of the Origin of the American Revolution" as correct. This theory was first put to paper by Banastre Tarleton in his history of the American revolution. Even the Soviets gave up on the theory in the 1950s because it was embarrassingly false and wrongheaded.

I think the whole thing left a bad taste in the mouths of the SJGames staff and they decided that both the American Revolution and the American Civil War were too politically troublesome to touch. At least it looked that way to me.

Re: American Revolution
 

I'd note that SJ himself mentioned at the recent Fnordcon that one of the two historical periods GURPS didn't cover enough was the ACW [1]. Not saying that wasn't the case at the time, but it apparently didn't leave a lasting impression on Steve.


1. The other was WWI.

Re: American Revolution
 

As another of the playtesters for Age of Napoleon, I mostly agree with Fred Brackin and Astromancer yet I also remember that the main thrust of the book was far more on the European side of that time frame. (I don't have my copy handy, so I can't check to be sure.)

Re: American Revolution
 

Good news. Oh, and books on the ACW and WWI would be wonderful. Tossing in the ARW, the English Civil Wars (17th Century) and the Thirty Years War, would be wonderful. As would a book on English colonial wars 1815-1960 and a British Raj book.

Re: American Revolution
 

A GURPS Hot Spots: Revolutionary Era Boston, Massachusetts would be a good first book for covering the American Revolution, probably followed closely by GURPS Hot Spots: Revolutionary Era Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I pick Boston as that's where the war started, and Philly because it's where the Continental Congress met prior to the city being taken by the British (the Philly book would also cover nearby Valley Forge).

For the American Civil War, I'd probably go with a trio of Hot Spots books: Gettysburg, PA; Washington, DC; and Atlanta, GA. (I pick Gettysburg because it was the northernmost battle fought; most of the North was spared the horrors of the war.)

Re: American Revolution
 

I once ran most of a Time Corps adventure that took place around the Boston Tea Party. This would have been immensely useful.

Re: American Revolution
 

Ah, no. High-Tech starts around 1715 or so. By the time the revolution starts it's been in progress for more than half a century.

Re: American Revolution
 

I would note, though, that Robert Heinlein, a staunch American patriot, described the War of 1812 in Starship Troopers as one of the brushfire wars that sprang up on the periphery of the Napoleonic conflict. So at least treating the Anglo-American conflict as a series of minor wars has precedent.

Re: American Revolution
 

It would be valid for the war of 1812, which was a side effect of the Napoleonic wars. However, while we were having the American Revolutionary War here in North America, Europe was going through what they call The Wars of the American Revolution. The American event setting off the world war, rather than the world war setting off the American event.

Re: American Revolution
 

Who does that? I live here, studied here, and never heard that term before.

Re: American Revolution
 

I know one of the causes of the French Revolution was the American Revolution bankrupting France (after France got involved in the war, then the Treaty of Paris not having any provisions for France), but I hadn't heard of this "Wars of the American Revolution" reference. How do the UK and France refer to that war?

Of note: the Treaty of Paris refers to "the conflict between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the States of..." (proceeding to name each state individually), rather than to "the United States of America".

Re: American Revolution
 

Sure, but a lot of the stuff from Low-Tech is still around and in some degree of use—specifically some of the guns described. And that's neverminding the Amerindian tribes. I wouldn't leave it out.

Re: American Revolution
 

I don't have a problem with that. I'm just pointing out that it's not a "transitional" period.

Re: American Revolution
 

Mod notes:

(1) We do not need UK/US sniping in this thread. I've issued one infraction for a particularly unnecessary comment and considered a couple of others before I decided to write a general post. Particularly right now, this is a good time to take the "no political discussion" rule as having VERY narrow definitions of what is "political."

(2) Discussing the history of GURPS Age of Napoleon is going back almost two decades and really serves no useful purpose; whatever was decided then doesn't need to be re-litigated now. If you want to discuss that book's application to an American Revolution game, that's fine, but the side discussion is off topic.

(3) Aside from the usual "don't talk down to fellow gamers" rule here, this is a subject with particularly emotional resonance to many people in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Assume good intent when you reply to someone, even if you think they are mistaken, and don't feed trolls -- if you believe someone has posted something completely outside the pale, report the post and let the mods handle it.

Thanks, all.

Re: American Revolution
 

What does the American Revolution have to do with a world war? Was there a world war 0?

Re: American Revolution
 

One source for WW1 that provides lots of ideas to avoid the "WW1 gaming means you just die from gas, going over the top or artillery" is "Charley's War" an excellent and quite influential comic book series.

It's very much in the Battle style but the plotting and art are top notch.

I never managed to convince my players the setting was worth a shot, but perhaps others may have more luck.

Re: American Revolution
 

Many consider the Napoleonic Wars a "world war" as they engaged most of the world powers at the time and was fought not just in Europe but also in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, among other places.

They were just fought well before the term "World War" came into usage.

As has been noted, the American Revolution had France entering the war on the side of the Americans. The big "world powers" of the time in the world were Britain and France, who had previously fought four wars (at least part of the reason the American colonies were in revolt was because of new taxes imposed by the British Crown to refill the treasury following what we Americans call the French-and-Indian War*). These four prior wars were fought in part in the Americas over ownership of Canada and in the fourth war the Ohio River valley.

The British-French portion of the war continued for a bit after the Treaty of Paris was signed. As a result, several naval skirmishes in the American Revolution were fought in the Caribbean between British and French ships without any American ships getting involved.


* Known in Europe as the Seven Years War.




(Apologies if anyone takes offense to anything here; I am trying to maintain a neutral stance. Real life is messy.)

Re: American Revolution
 

In history class, they told me that British Historians and the British Foreign Office used a different list of wars they called "World Wars." Given several 18th-century wars were fought on more continents than the 20th-century world wars. so they have a point.

Re: American Revolution
 

I'll try to answer. Several college textbooks used that term, mainly western civ. and American History. I've read the term used in a book of Academic Articles by Dutch, Danish, and German historians translated by Scots and French historians. A French professor I took an 18th-century history colloquium from used the term. And an Italian historian whose self-translated book on the political evolution of Europe in the 1780s I read used it too.

However, I haven't heard the term since the year 2000. It may be out of date. As for names dates and book titles, I would need to go across town and sort through my storage unit. I simply lack the energy, forgive me.

Re: American Revolution
 

I’m sure one could split hairs on definitions until the cows came home, but I think that most sensible definitions of “world war” would end up calling the Seven Years War the first. Dragged in the Mughals and the Iroquois...

(And yeah, I guess you could even say it was fought on more continents than WWII, so long as “being firebombed” doesn’t count as fighting...)

Re: American Revolution
 

I suspect it is just none of these wars were important enough in the long run for most Europeans to cover them in their history classes, as you might expect from the names - the Sixth Anglo-Spanish, Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, Second Anglo-Maratha Wars and the First League of Armed Neutrality

Though the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War does seem to have been relatively disastrous for the Netherlands and might be remembered more if the French Revolution hadn't overshadowed everything a decade later.

Re: American Revolution
 

I think most people here (In the Gurps forums anyway) either know or know where to find information about these times in history. I think what might be useful though is a series of Loadouts for the troops and civilians involved in these conflicts.

Re: American Revolution
 

It's been a few years since I looked through AoN, but HT and Swashbucklers would be useful (the ship combat in SB especially, although it's repeated in one of the Compendiums).

GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel is set in the right time period, but the focus is quite different. Also never owned it, so I can't say more about it.

Re: American Revolution
 

WWII = Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands.

Seven Years War = Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, the Caribbean.

Yeah, the Seven Years War wins.

Re: American Revolution
 

In North America, prior to the Revolution, we had:

- King William's War (1688-1697), the North American theatre of the Nine Years War (1688-1697)
- Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), the North American theatre of the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714)
- King George's War (1744-1748), part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748)
- French and Indian War (1754-1763), part of and lead-in to the Seven Years War (1756-1763).

And then the American Revolution (1775-1783), which included in later years not only France starting in 1778, but Spain and the Dutch Republic in the periphery; Spain was an ally of France at the time and declared war on Britain that same year, and the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784) broke out over Dutch trade with the Americans during the Revolution. (I'm uncertain whether Spain or the Netherlands fought on North American soil during that time, nor am I certain as to whether or not they were officially allies of the Americans the way France was.)


Note that the French Revolution broke out in 1789, and lasted until Napoleon became dictator in 1799.

Re: American Revolution
 

I'd forgo Gettysburg, as it's only famous for the one battle. Important as that battle may be, it's a bit short for a campaign. Instead, I'd probably go with Union-occupied New Orleans or Richmond. Or, of course, New York City. You could even do a pair of NYC hot spots, one for the AWI when it's occupied by the Brits, and the other during the ACW when you've got the draft riots and Gangs of New York action.

Having a bunch of information in a game-ready packet complete with adventure hooks, NPCs, and maps is extremely valuable to me. And I'm personally well equipped to do the research; I just don't want to. I'd rather spend my gaming time prepping adventures or something. Also, if I start doing research I end up running down rabbit trails and the players get a lecture on the importance of the logistics of the Mississippi instead of an actual adventure running past the guns of Vicksburg.

Re: American Revolution
 

I think I mainly agree with you. Although a GURPS: Hot Spots: Vicksburgh would be valuable, it is an even more important battle than Gettysburg. A Hot Spots Civil War Virginia would cover many of the most vital campaigns and battles. But an overarching book would still be grand.

Agreed, but it's so useful to know that Vicksburg's guns couldn't aim low enough to hit boats sailing close to the Vicksburg side of the river.

Re: American Revolution
 

Significant parts of GURPS WWII are useful for a WWI campaign, as well as the Spanish Civil War and Korean War.

Re: American Revolution
 

If I was running an game set during or nearby the american revolution...

I'd probably use high-tech as the primary gear book, calling on low-tech or more likely a low-tech compendium occasionally.

There is a fairly high likelihood I'd eventually need stats for a sailing ship.

I'd want to make sure that the players understood the way warfare of the time worked, if we were going to do anything beyond skirmishing (and perhaps even then). There are some common misconceptions/disagreements there.

I'd probably stay away from famous events that players would be able to complain about errors in (unless intentionally running alternate history of some sort).

The choice of state operating in would be HUGE. New england is not mid-atlantic sea-board is not the south, is not the wooded interior, especially in the revolution.

I would need a theme beyond "American Revolution". Are the players scouts? spies? commanders? political activists? Assistants to a diplomat? Privateers? Smugglers?

Re: American Revolution
 

Not as helpful as you might think if you're imagining a river running straight past a city off to one side. One thing I didn't realize until I visited the place was that the Mississippi takes a big loop (map) at Vicksburg. There's a long hairpin turn where blockade runners would be sailing straight toward the city's guns (with most of their own pointing rather uselessly at the riverbanks); then a tight bend under the guns, leaving the ships sailing away down that hairpin while being raked from behind. The bluffs are unusually high for that region, so I can believe guns up top couldn't hit a ship down below. But the problem area is really when sailing three miles toward the city and three miles away again, not just the mile when you're at the closest range to the batteries.

Re: American Revolution
 

An earlier thread discussing a possible GURPS campaign involving the American War of Independence/American Revolution.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=26645

Two other threads on the subject

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...can+Revolution

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...rge+washington

Re: American Revolution
 

Including India. Just remember Wellington won a "land war in Asia."

Overlapping wars might be a better term. There has in a sense never been a such thing as a World War. What really happens is different polities take advantage of a war somewhere else to do dirt on the guys they have bad blood with.

Re: American Revolution
 

If you include naval engagements, you can count the South China sea in as well - IIRC the French sent a fleet to engage the China convoy somewhere around there.

The Thirty Years war would certainly be an interesting setting … interesting times at the very least. Actually, I'd settle for someone doing a good splatbook on the HRE, which is a goldmine very rarely tapped in English...

Re: American Revolution
 

The Holy Roman Empire (niether holy, Roman, nor an empire. Voltaire) would be wonderful.

And it's beginning to look like the Seven Years War would be massively juicy RPG territory too.

Re: American Revolution
 

I like the idea of South Asia during the transition from the Mughals to the Raj as a game setting. Weird cultures mixing together, lots of people who switch sides several times or change careers, devious plots and mad mystics, magic and cult and piles of gold and gems. But SJ Games does not seem to be in the business of full-sized historical suppliments any more, Hotspots: Silk Road and Renaissance Florence are more booklets.

I think creating models for the type of campaign you want to run is important. Most of us learned dungeon fantasy by doing, Ken Hite uses thrillers and mystery novels to model Gumshoe campaigns, what are the models for a campaign in 1770s Pennsylvania with the necessary player agency and fantastic elements?

Re: American Revolution
 

James Fenimore Cooper's characters were two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who never experienced growth or change during the course of the stories, but the stories do have a lot of ideas to mine -- as well as a solid sense of time and place.

A lot of early American literature consists of diaries. I'd definitely look through those -- especially those written by secular people with more interest in daily life, as opposed to Cotton Mather's sermons and suchlike.

Definitely read Benjamin Franklin's early stuff, written for common consumption. It's fun and accessible, even today.

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason introduces the most radical, progressive political thinking of the time. Paine popularized a lot of the ideas being kicked around in mid-1700s, being looked at in more depth by Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and others.

Modern writers who do a good job in the era are Tim Powers (On Stranger Tides); Neal Stephenson (yes, I know, The Baroque Cycle takes a long, long time to get moving, but it has a lot of ideas to steal); and Gregory Keyes' The Age of Unreason is a play on Paine's work.

Keyes includes a lot of magic and Abrahamic myth, which I don't particularly like, but it has some ideas to steal.

For an offbeat source of ideas, see if you can dig up an old comic from the 1980s, Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine McAlistaire. It follows a trapper in the Old Northwest region around the Great Lakes, in the early 19th Century, but some of those stories could easily be set 50-75 years earlier.

Also, check out Jason Momoa's 2016 TV series, Frontier. It's set in Canada in the 18th Century, and conflict revolves around the fur trade, and its impact on both settlers and First Nation people.

Re: American Revolution
 

I'd add to the above, 2015's The Revenant. The movie is based on the experiences of a far west trapper named Hugh Glass, but the movie embellishes the story considerably. Nevertheless, it is a powerful and haunting movie. The basic plot could ported to the Revolutionary War or French and Indian War period very easily.

Has anyone checked out the series Barkskins created by National Geographic? I've not watched it, but the trailer looks interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-C7U3-veI

In terms of cinema, I think the best representation of the era is Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans (1992). It gives a very clear, and I think a nuanced treatment of all sides. Perhaps only the French are not fully developed, but it does a good job of showing motivations of the colonial powers and the colonists and the Native Americans. Best of all it has a good handle on material culture, and the gun handling is solid, too. It's a brutal and beautiful film.

I have gamed the era with GURPS several times. I provide some support here:
https://sfisher221.wixsite.com/darkj...intlock-gun-fu
https://sfisher221.wixsite.com/darkj...he-blunderbuss

Re: American Revolution
 

The first two books in John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles - The Bastard and The Rebels - are set during the Revolutionary War period, and the third book of the series - The Seekers - is a generation later, about the 1820s. (The books were published in 1974 and 1975.)

There were miniseries adaptations (four hours total each) for all three produced in '78 and '79; I've only seen the first one, but might be worth watching (if you can find it).

Re: American Revolution
 

The one of the problems of historical settings is what are you going to do? A bit like reenactment, it's history and the outcomes are known.

I had a plan for a WW2 scenario that involved a few German Soldiers on the Eastern front, they maybe have a half track and a large gun. The idea was they knew that it had all gone wrong and they were trying to find a place to hide, avoiding the Wehrmacht and the Russians etc. Regrettably it did not come to fruition.

Possibly the better idea is not to have the campaign during the major event but after it. The post American Revolution etc, but it is a history not for the rose tinted lenses.

The biggest issue is that Revolutions by their very nature are intensely political and if your group doesn't mind that's great.

Re: American Revolution
 

In the states, the vast majority would see the ARW as good/just, whereas even in the 1770s and 1780s there was divided opinion on the same thing. In one of his fits of insanity, George III claimed he was George Washington. The king was nuts but not so crazy that he didn't want to be the George people respected. Similarly, the English Revolutions and Civil Wars, although massively important to what the USA became, are so obscure here that they are apolitical. No, the ACW and Vietnam are the only non-contemporary wars that can stir political fights here in the states.

Re: American Revolution
 

There was a TV series called Hawkeye back-in-the-day based on Last of the Mohicans.

Re: American Revolution
 

I think the Revolutionary War, itself, would probably be fine.

However, if the campaign extended into the years of the Articles of Confederation, and some of the intrigue that went on during that very difficult period, then you might run into some hot-button issues.

Now, granted, those would have much more to do with modern American political issues than with the problems the people faced in that time, but that might still poison a campaign.

That said, I think any such player conflicts might be restricted to those of us in the United States. I think players and GMs in other countries could get a lot of mileage out of a campaign set in the era -- especially if they threw in some magical realism or wainscot fantasy elements.

You could mine Manley Wade Wellman's Silver John stories for some ideas for magic and monsters, or Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, even though both were set two centuries later.

Re: American Revolution
 

The British don't call it that in the present day. We call that one "The American Revolution" or "The American Revolutionary War". The war against the French and Spanish just gets lost in the long series of wars we had against them.

The lesson learned was "Treat colonies better", and we managed the transitions of other colonies into independent states better, mostly.

Re: American Revolution
 

I have half of an idea for a WWI campaign, but have not figured out the rest. Tip #1 for keeping characters alive in military games is "Don't make them front-line infantry."

Re: American Revolution
 

Probably the single greatest resource for a WWI campaign, IMO, would be this YouTube channel (assuming someone interested in WWI was not already aware of it)

Re: American Revolution
 

See Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series.

It's early 19th century, so would be a little post-Revolution if it weren't for the fact that it's alternate history, so there's not a single United States. (IIRC, New England was separate from the US (in the mid-Atlantic), with the southern coastal colonies being a monarchy.) Stronger native American nations. The books are set on the American frontier when that meant the Midwest between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, so the coastal nations are more distant background than important nations.

Re: American Revolution
 

I do, and if I get to teach history I will carry on calling it the American Revolution. In the same way I will call the ECW the English Revolution.

Re: American Revolution
 

There was also a miniseries on Masterpiece Theater back in the 1960s or 70s. Originally made in the UK, I believe.

Re: American Revolution
 

...I was always taught it as The American War of Independence and AWI is also a fairly common period designator in wargaming.

I'd never heard it called the American Revolution until a decade or two ago and would normally expect a revolution to take place within an existing nation state, not to mark the emergence of a new one.

Re: American Revolution
 

It is called the American revolution as early as the 19th century ... in France.
Obviously in parallel with the French Revolution.

https://books.google.lu/books?id=Ouka3JBXKF4C&pg=PA59

Re: American Revolution
 

Foreign countries are like the past … they do things differently there. ;-)

Re: American Revolution
 

Both the Mandate and India and several African and Asian country are arguable counterexamples although the problems in transition seem to have been mostly local.

Re: American Revolution
 

I think that a problem with ACW is with Age of Napoleon it would have had an undercurrent of been there done that. Of the various Dixie realities I would say that only Dixie-1, 4, and 6 are viable without invoking any ASBs. Early’s Raid was IMHO to late in the war to do any good and Dixie-2 and 3 have a 'how did that happen' feel.

WWI gets overshadowed by WWII. Heck, one of the few video games set in WWI (Battlefield I) effectively turned it into WWII with a different skin. Its like no one knows what to do with it.

Re: American Revolution
 

WWI has a few things of note:
- Trench warfare
- Aircraft dogfights
- Armored tanks

All of which were new, and the latter two are also representative of WWII.


And trench warfare is not something anyone really wants to game, as it was a literal meatgrinder, infantry charging machine gun nests.

Re: American Revolution
 

You could do a comedic Blackadder goes Forth style campaign.

Re: American Revolution
 

Like a lot of aspects of mass combat in general, this wouldn't be very playable as the focus of a campaign, but can be really tense and chaotic as the background of one.

Re: American Revolution
 

True but the main reason for trench warfare was there was a mammoth overestimation of how fast objective would be reached.

There is a reason the Operation Archduke mission in the Time Corp section deals with what is viewed as the key trigger to WWI but there were plenty of points where it could have still not happened.

Re: American Revolution
 

Part of the reason is that the history of the Great War is overlaid now with layers and layers of a-historical nonsense. Some of it is later-period political stuff added on, some of it is sentiment or anti-sentiment, some of it is just confusion and misunderstanding.

From the POV of the victors, WW II is 'simpler', the issues superficially (but not really) more clear-cut, than WW I. The technology and tactics are also more familiar, again superficially, because of Hollywood and because lots of people have known people who were part if it first-hand, and it's still, just barely, part of living collective memory.

But if you look at the Great War on its own terms, it's a fascinating period of history with many interesting story/game hooks.

Re: American Revolution
 

Where that particular war could have been avoided, yes. But IMHO, almost all of the alternative scenarios still involve some kind of blow up at roughly that time. Like an overloaded snowbank on top of a mountain, an avalanche is likely even if one particular stone doesn't fall.

But what's interesting is how many different ways it all could have shaken out. IMHO, a major European/global war of some kind in the 1900-1920 period was almost inevitable, but the details and which power allied with which were highly fluid and could easily have fallen out very differently, with substantial later effects.

Returning to the American Revolution, I think it falls somewhere in the mid-range of 'inevitability'. Pressure had been building up for decades, in part because of unwise decision making in London (as documented by Barbara Tuchman among others), but more fundamentally because the enormous oceanic gap, and the communication and travel gap it generated, led to a widening cultural gap between the Colonies and the home country. Even when there was good will on both sides, they increasingly 'talked past each other'.

I don't know that a crisis of some kind was avoidable, but a full-on revolution might have been, and it's possible that loyalist feeling might have prevailed in some Colonies if the British government had been wiser in preceding years. A time travel campaign might not be able to prevent the crisis, but they might be able to reshape the outcome, maybe creating something like dominion status decades ahead of time.

Which might in turn rewrite history enough that something recognizably akin to the British Empire remained a dominant power into the 21C.

Re: American Revolution
 

The book Three Victories and a Defeat: The Fall of the First British Empire makes it clear that, once the Tories came to power, their political ideals and goals were going to lead to a disaster. They built their coalition on people who saw the Whigs as crooks and grifters (they all called the government "The Old Corruption." They were determined to do things right but disinterested in finding out why things were done.

From the 18th Tory point of view Americans were freeloaders. That America had been taxed in lives lost in war and Indian raids, lost trade, years driven away from their farms, and economic chaos, never occurred to the 18th century Tories. Tory attempts to balance the books both ignored the suffering of the colonies and threatened the entire social structure of the colonies.

The Quebec Act and endless drive among the Tories to establish Anglican Bishops in American sees, something central to their identity, threatened to both close the frontier and to cancel all American deeds and inheritances. Basically. if the Tories got their way, all marriages not solemnized by the Church of England would be declared null and void. This would retroactively make almost all Americans illegitimate, in period this would make any inheritances invalid without special arrangements. Further, the Quebec Act, and rumblings by the government, convinced that Parliament was going to cancel all local legislatures.

By the 1770s the Tories had alienated the majority of the population, Even the Loyalists were constantly complaining about how Westminster treated them. The 18th century Whigs knew to build bridges, the 18th Tories totally rejected the idea.

Re: American Revolution
 

Yep, definitely.

I actually quite liked Battlefield one for the simple reason that it showed more than just slogging through trenches in the western front. I mean where else does the Italian/AH front in the mountains get any love!

I think the several mini campaigns format worked quite well for showing different aspects of the war.

OK yes they did raid every single prototype gun cabinet of the period, but it's a online FPS it need's it's gun bling

Re: American Revolution
 

I think lessons were learned in London from the American War of Independence. No other British colony left the empire in such a violent fashion for a long time afterwards (maybe even until after WW2, not sure). I remember reading there was a reasonable amount of sympathy in the UK for the colonists at the time, at least until it became violent, so it's possible that a solution could have been found.

In a way, that's good for Infinite Worlds, either solution is plausible. The Britannia timelines include ones where there was a political solution acceptable to all parties, as well as military solutions where the colonial rebels lost. But equally, you could have alternate timelines where there was a solution in America, but the government in Westminster made the same mistake twice, so there was a War of Indepedence elsewhere in the 19th century. A "South African War of Independence", for example.

Which is a fertile ground for gaming if your group is interested in the different possibilities!

Re: American Revolution
 

I would suggest the other reason that Parliament was so down on the aspirations of the American colonists was fear of a rival. It was not so long ago that Parliament had had to forcefully depose the King, and had since learned to control him by throttling the money supply to the royal exchequer … most parliamentarians feared another assembly that the King could persuade to grant him taxes, or who could otherwise be used to undermine Westminster.

Later independence movements sidestepped this because in the meantime Parliament had taken stronger controls of the reigns of power and was more self confident and better protected from royal meddling.

Re: American Revolution
 

There was certainly sympathy in parts of Britain, but (a) So what? 18th century Britain wasn't exactly excessively democratic by modern standards, so even if some independent thinkers and wealthy industrialists sympathised with the general American position, Parliament could just ignore them, and (b) Liberal-minded middle-class Britons who were all in favour of Liberty! would periodically visit London, meet visiting Americans who turned out to be slave-owning plantation aristocrat wannabes who'd come over here to go to the theatre and get laid, and conclude that liberty for slave-owners wasn't a cause worth defending.

I suspect a friendly-compromise political solution would involve American diplomacy hitting cinematic levels of awesome...

Re: American Revolution
 

The first wasn't really new. It went back to the dawn of the gunpowder age. And that is just not counting temporary earthworks like what Romans made.

Re: American Revolution
 

WWI tanks and dogfights are both pretty profoundly different from WWII tanks and dogfights.

Most of the tanks are much larger, very short of power due to the weaker automotive technology, and have nothing like what later tanks would consider a main weapon. Tanks hardly ever fought each other, and anti-tank weapons hardly existed.

...Probably not great for gaming in most cases, since probably the biggest danger to a tank is mechanical failure or getting hung up in the terrain in a location where it's unsafe for the crew to get out and break it loose. But very, very different from the tank action of WWII.

In the air, the planes are also direly underpowered and very light by later standards. WWI is probably the only historical occasion where planes fighting an airship could be interesting or significant, thanks to the weak armament and climbing power of the fighters of the day. The same paltry armament made it possible to build an armored bomber that was highly resistant both to air attack and to most ground fire of the time (a spur for heavy machine gun development later). With poor streamlining, low power, and lightweight construction a lot of air combat maneuvers get pretty different too.

Re: American Revolution
 

I remember studying the ACW and wondering why no-one in command during the Great War seemed to have studied it and learned the lessons of trenches, barbed wire and what have you. Then I saw that they had, and what they had learned is that siege warfare had changed incrementally over centuries - there is a reason that some of the crustier sources refer to barbed wire "abbattis" - they saw no fundamental difference between it and the chevaux frises and similar things of the past.

They had also learned the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan War: that, given sufficient aggression and a willingness to tolerate casualties, it was possible for lightly supported infantry to force their way through modern field defences.

They didn't count on the huge volumes of fortification materials that the Great Powers could create and deliver to their own back yard, which meant that trench warfare could move from siege conditions to ubiquity and that your aggressive, lightly supported infantry might well be able to break one line of trenches, maybe two … but sooner or later you would run out of men. They also missed a lesson available (if not obvious) from the ACW: that the train could bring up men to close a breach faster than the attackers could exploit it.

Re: American Revolution
 

The presence of unprecedented concentrations of machine guns and artillery, and the impact of such massed artillery on the contested terrain, probably didn't help the perspective either.

My impression is that the common knowledge of the 'trench stalemate' tends to gloss over the fact that while costly, the massed infantry attacks were in many cases successful in taking the enemy lines, but were prevented from making a decisive impact by the depth of the defense.

Re: American Revolution
 

The proof of how right you are lays in how Ben Franklin was treated when he came to England later in life to offer his services to the British government. Not only did he find out that all the credit for his scientific work been assigned to well-born non-entities in the Royal Society (every nation in Europe did something similar at the time) but he was as much as told that, as he had no patron, his talent, honesty, devotion, industry, education and other gifts, were a threat to the clients of important patrons.

For trying to defuse a crisis, Franklin was hauled in front of the House of Lords (a body so famous at the time for being a pack of useless lackwits as to be beyond satire) and publically humiliated. Franklin swore revenge, he got it.

Re: American Revolution
 

Absolutely - a "break in" was possible, and often achieved, but never a "break through" because at that time no element existed that was sufficiently mobile to exploit the gap in the enemy's lines before reinforcements could be brought up by rail to plug it. Also, the refusal to accept limited objectives attacks tended to mean that attacking forces were left overextended and exhausted in their gains, still trying to advance, when the counterattack came. And in both world wars, the Germans in particular were very good at counter-attacking.

Re: American Revolution
 

The Third Battle of Ypres/Battle of Passchendaele (31 July – 10 November 1917) showed that with the right tactics the allies could take and hold ground, and that the Germans had no answer to it. Accepting the attritional nature of the war, and that a decisive breakthrough would not be achieved was a key to that. Not long afterwards, the success of combined arms attacks with tanks led to a lot of people writing that lesson off.

Re: American Revolution
 

Or an earlier departure point.

I said I thought a compromise outcome was possible, and I do, but I also think a time traveler trying to make it happen would need to make his intervention before the crisis really heated up. It was gradually building up for at least ten years before it turned violent, probably longer.

Our time traveler would also have to intervene on both sides of the Atlantic.

Re: American Revolution
 

An interesting alternative would be if Britain had granted titles in the new world so that there were a few seats in Parliament for the colonies. As the population grows add a few seats in the House of Commons. The friction and crisis then comes when the number of seats for the colonies start to get big enough that they are a voting bloc that actually matters.

Re: American Revolution
 

Read up on the background of the Reform Bill of 1832. The sensible solution is wildly unlikely in this context. Having watched British films and read British fiction, although I'm not making a claim of special expertise, I notice that people who use the word "democracy" as if it was a pejorative, were a recognized type into the 1970s. Now, a recognized type isn't the same as an actual cultural group, and types outlast the groups they represent, but there's plenty of evidence that Britain's elites always saw democracy as equal to social revolution well into the 20th century.

Your solution would have worked, but neither the Kings nor the parliaments would have tolerated your solution until the early 20th century.

Re: American Revolution
 

One problem they still had to solve was reconciling each other's interests. As it was trouble on one side of the pond could spread without the other side's say-so. Problems in negotiations were similar: they were extremely angry at having to give back Louisberg after the War of the Austrian Succession (quite reasonably as it's possession by New France was a threat to security and the provincial forces had been to some work reducing it).

By way of contrast the main reason Britain got into the Seven Years War was originally disputes along the Western Frontiers.

Re: American Revolution
 

To be fair, they had the French Revolution as an example of how noble ideals could lead to things going seriously sour. So it wasn't just reactionary stubbornness.

I don't know that it would have worked, actually.

One of the underlying things driving the crisis was the ~3000 mile oceanic gap. It took months to travel from London to any of the Colonial capitols, or vice versa, in the middle 18C, and information moved at the speed of travel.

The official British position was that Parliament was the legislature for the entire empire, and that all populations were 'virtually' represented there. The overseas territories saw this as nonsensical, there was no way their interests could be properly represented that way, plus the fact that Parliament was months away and could not be well-informed or reactive in reasonable time.

Adding American representatives to the chambers in reasonable numbers might have addressed the first issue, but it would do nothing for the travel/communication time problem. To function viably, a world-wide empire in the 18C pretty much had to be very loosely articulated, with most of the decision-making handled locally. Which in turn meant conflicts of interest in a big way.

One huge one was based in British economic policy of the time. The 'theory' behind mercantilist colonialism was that you established colonies, who provided raw materials to the newly-built industrial machine at home, who in turn provided finished products to the colonies in a closed system.

National/tribal loyalty might have made that work if the colonies were only days away from the metropole, but with months of gap, the colonies inevitably started thinking of themselves as somewhat separate units, and wanted to trade where it as convenient, or establish their own industries, and the economics of the situation favored that. (It makes a lot more sense for a settler in New York Colony to send iron ore to a local smith to make nails than it does to send ore across the ocean to get a nail back across the ocean.)

'Defusing' the American Revolution would have probably required the creation of a 'federal' empire. Which was in fact proposed, but nobody was able to get it past the vested interests.

Re: American Revolution
 

Another way to defuse it is less political, and more technological (or rather, the effect of technology on politics): Go Steampunk and speed up the development of steam-powered ships. A Frenchman had a primitive steam car in 1769 (and it had probably the first automobile accident in 1771), and he wasn't the first person to try. Accelerating the timeline of steam power just a little starting in the 17th or early 18th century, or just having one specific thing invented sooner (e.g. a faster advance in materials science, thus stronger pressure vessels), could potentially allow for practical steamships in the 1760s. It's a stretch, but not a huge one, and the greater speed permitted would allow for decisions to be made with more up-to-date information, and reinforcements delivered much faster when needed (which reduces the probability of revolution because the colonists would know that as well).

The gunpowder engine is an amusing alternative, but has enough problems that it requires a bit of handwaving to make it believable, especially as they kind of need the gunpowder for the guns. Much less plausible than faster development of steamships.



Another interesting option is from a timeline that I've forgotten the author or title of, that I think was on Alternatehistory.com: Issac Newton invents a radiotelegraph in the 17th century, allowing (once improvements are made) much faster communication between continents. It still means that the journey between Britain and the Colonies would take months, but they'd know what was going on when they left.