Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 11-27-2021, 04:03 AM   #5731
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Well at least the main change, Edward VIII staying on the throne in WWII isn't changed.
Search on "A Very British Civil War" for a lot of development of a 1938 scenario about that.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-29-2021, 03:52 PM   #5732
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Try this one...

Lucifer-10

A cometary fragment as in Tunguska crashes into the city of London in the year 1806. Most of the government and the royal family were eliminated instantly. The chaos was enough for Napoleon to invade.

The local year is 1809. The British Royal navy is maintaining a government in exile in Bermuda. They seek allies and resources. They're even being polite to the American (they do know how to build ships).

The United Kingdom is now the Hibernian, Caledonian, and Cambrian, Republics, and England which Napoleon hasn't decided what to do with.

Meanwhile, the Bey of Algiers has decided to make pre-emptive strikes against France to prevent eastern expansion.

Basically, your in the French navy. The bitter remnants of the British fleet, the Barbary pirates, British smugglers, and the unstable diplomatic situations with America and the Ottomans are keeping your life unduly exciting.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo

Last edited by Astromancer; 12-12-2021 at 02:21 PM.
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-30-2021, 07:14 AM   #5733
patchwork
 
patchwork's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Don't think Lucifer-10 works to that extreme extent. Through arrogant incompetence of a reality-warping intensity, Boney managed to annihilate his own fleet in 1805. He simply hasn't had time to rebuild it even if he made that his priority, and the sting of 1805 means he wouldn't. A Hibernian Republic looks good, as the RN won't put effort into defending Ireland until it's too late, what with their other fish to fry. Hanoverian Republic too. But even with London nuked I don't think he'd be able to get troops onto the big island in this time frame.

I suppose you can roll it back to 1804, but then you've reset Austerlitz, so that's no fun. Who's King of the UK now?

I'd be more inclined to make it a new age of piracy; the RN has a large fleet of high-quality ships, with pretty adequate crews, and insufficient ability to pay them because there's a crater where Threadneedle Street used to be. And no serious opposition on the seas at this time. What could go wrong?
patchwork is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-30-2021, 07:49 AM   #5734
YankeeGamer
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by patchwork View Post
Don't think Lucifer-10 works to that extreme extent. Through arrogant incompetence of a reality-warping intensity, Boney managed to annihilate his own fleet in 1805. He simply hasn't had time to rebuild it even if he made that his priority, and the sting of 1805 means he wouldn't. A Hibernian Republic looks good, as the RN won't put effort into defending Ireland until it's too late, what with their other fish to fry. Hanoverian Republic too. But even with London nuked I don't think he'd be able to get troops onto the big island in this time frame.

I suppose you can roll it back to 1804, but then you've reset Austerlitz, so that's no fun. Who's King of the UK now?

I'd be more inclined to make it a new age of piracy; the RN has a large fleet of high-quality ships, with pretty adequate crews, and insufficient ability to pay them because there's a crater where Threadneedle Street used to be. And no serious opposition on the seas at this time. What could go wrong?
With the upsurge in piracy, even if it's just a few sloops of war, there's more demand for warships. Some might set sail for British North America, or even the United States.
YankeeGamer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-30-2021, 09:43 AM   #5735
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by patchwork View Post
But even with London nuked I don't think he'd be able to get troops onto the big island in this time frame.
Probably not. The king/government/capital is never as important as people make it out to be, and especially in an era before the railroad and telegraph *everything* is relatively decentralized. You can't move troops around all that quickly, or get orders from HQ in a reasonable amount of time, so you don't organize anything so you need to, which means a lot of it mostly keeps working even if HQ disappears entirely.

Quote:
I suppose you can roll it back to 1804, but then you've reset Austerlitz, so that's no fun. Who's King of the UK now?
My guess would be Ernest Augustus, George III's 5th son, who wasn't in London a lot around this period, though he might have been. Barring any of his sons, George IIIs oldest daughter, Charlotte was definitely in Germany, though she had no surviving children. It doesn't look like any of his other sons, daughters or brothers had children who wouldn't have been in London, so I guess it's his older sister Augusta, who is in Brunswick and has at least 2 sons still alive at this point.

Quote:
I'd be more inclined to make it a new age of piracy; the RN has a large fleet of high-quality ships, with pretty adequate crews, and insufficient ability to pay them because there's a crater where Threadneedle Street used to be. And no serious opposition on the seas at this time. What could go wrong?
That actually sounds like it could be a lot of fun
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-30-2021, 01:02 PM   #5736
dcarson
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

How are the relations with Scotland at the time. With that big a lose of capital and government is there any groups that might rebel wit French support? Even if France doesn't expect them to win tying up some of the British attention helps them.

Last edited by dcarson; 12-04-2021 at 03:55 AM.
dcarson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-01-2021, 10:27 PM   #5737
Prince Charon
 
Prince Charon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by dcarson View Post
How are the relations wit Scotland at the time. With that big a lose of capital and government is there any groups that might rebel wit French support? Even if France doesn't expect them to win tying up some of the British attention helps them.
The capitol of the United Kingdom could have been moved to Edinburgh, which would improve relations with the Scots, but could be an issue with the English. It has the advantage of being a city that had a working parliament only a century earlier, and Parliament House remained intact and in use at the time in OTL.
__________________
Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
Prince Charon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-03-2021, 01:58 PM   #5738
fchase8
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Well at least the main change, Edward VIII staying on the throne in WWII isn't changed.
I had always thought that on GURPS Alternate Earths' Dixie, Edward VIII was on the throne during the Alliance War, the timeline's version of WWII. The divergent USA/CSA would have had no Wallis Simpson (though this timeline has serious inertia, as the likes of LBJ & JFK still lived & were presidents).

The British monarchy would already have been discredited by the loss in The Great War, and Edward VIII probably would have been palling around with his German friends & relatives (who still had their titles). Still a bachelor with mistresses, he would have been a bad king during the Alliance War, and forced to abdicate after the loss of Singapore, fall of the Moseley Conservative-Fascist government (which Edward would certainly have supported), and Britain quitting the war & India.

GURPS Alternate Earths lists the present-day country as 'Great Britain', so I think a republic would have been declared (it is socialist), with the short reign of Henry V ended politely with the family moving to British Canada - Edward Windsor would have gone to the CSA. Princess Elizabeth still lives in Canada, married to some exiled British aristocrat (Prince Philip of Greece would have stayed there with Kaiser's Germany supporting the Greek monarchy, or at least be living in Germany with his aristocratic brothers-in-law).

Oh, and Ireland wouldn't have attained independence in 1921, as the British were too angry about losing Africa to agree to anything, and there was no abdication for even a Dominion of Ireland to formally declare independence. Instead, the British quit Ireland after they quit India, all of Ireland, and now the Republic of Eire (whose Protestant residents either fled or are restricted to trade, like Anglo-Africans of the Republic of South Africa) is an American ally, having been a staging place for American support for its Germany ally after de Gaulle's fascist France invaded.
fchase8 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-03-2021, 04:07 PM   #5739
Prince Charon
 
Prince Charon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by fchase8 View Post
I had always thought that on GURPS Alternate Earths' Dixie, Edward VIII was on the throne during the Alliance War, the timeline's version of WWII. The divergent USA/CSA would have had no Wallis Simpson (though this timeline has serious inertia, as the likes of LBJ & JFK still lived & were presidents).
Is Dixie a high-enough historical inertia worldline for Edward VIII to both exist, and have pretty much the same personality as OTL Edward VIII, though? He was born decades after the PoD (if I'm not confusing Dixie for something else).
__________________
Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
Prince Charon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-05-2021, 03:22 PM   #5740
fchase8
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Charon View Post
Is Dixie a high-enough historical inertia worldline for Edward VIII to both exist, and have pretty much the same personality as OTL Edward VIII, though? He was born decades after the PoD (if I'm not confusing Dixie for something else).
Like I had said, both JFK & LBJ not only lived on this timeline, but were presidents (of USA & CSA, respectively). Dixie is a very high-inertia parallel - kind of ridiculously so, more out of a novel than 'strict' alt-history.

Others who were also alive and seemingly of the same personality include Oswald Moseley (contemporary of Edward VIII's in era & personality), Mahatma Gandhi (martyred by Moseley government), Charles de Gaulle & more.

One figure from that era I thought might not exist: Winston Churchill, whose mother was American, and thus more susceptible to change. He's not referenced in Dixie history, and his absence could have contributed to both a Moseley Conservative-Fascist government, and Britain quitting colonies & going socialist. Or maybe he just never recovered his reputation from Gallipoli, the British public less forgiving when they'd lost The Great War.
fchase8 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
ideas to share, infinite worlds, infinity unlimited

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:47 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.