New Reality Seeds

[PTTG]

What would be the most interesting time period for a neanderthal/elf/dwarf/goblin population to suddenly appear in due to time-quake, time-phoon, or time-nado?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What would be the most interesting time period for a neanderthal/elf/dwarf/goblin population to suddenly appear in due to time-quake, time-phoon, or time-nado?

Well. Pick a time when the area of the world in which they arrive is already in upheaval. Neanderthals all died in TL0. What's the TL of the rest? Do they have any substitutes for tech that make them formidable? Psionic neanderthals?

Magical Legolas elves would be pretty scary, no matter when they appeared, and techno-magic dwarves could be a blast. How lucky/serendipitous are the goblins, and how quickly do they learn? Or are they the single-minded savages that Tolkien conceived?

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Drifter

New Zealand and/or Australia work for a lot of that sort of thing.

A world wide plague, zombies, nukes, anything that could, by very slim chance, be ducked, avoided, blocked or just plain "we forgot to bomb them".

As I recall GURPS Reign of Steel has New Zealand enveloped with nanotech grey goo. So pretty much anything can be happening in there.

Off the top of my head some stories on this theme.

Orion Shall Rise and the the other Maurai stories by Poul Anderson.

The Phoenix Legacy books by M. K. Wren

Maybe some of those aggressive anarchist alien stories by Vernor Vinge

[PTTG]

I imagine that the conditions that are most receptive to nonhuman immigrants would actually be rather invader-agnostic.

I suppose Dwarves arriving in Germany at the height of the depression might be anything from tragic to terrifying... Tolkienesque elves appearing in the pacific northwest of the USA mid-'60s would also be entertaining.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by dcarson

GURPS Planet Krishna is based of L. Sprague de Camp's stories where Brazil ends up as the major power after a nuclear war.

That would be a good resource for Rosewell-2, to resurrect an earlier parallel.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I imagine that the conditions that are most receptive to nonhuman immigrants would actually be rather invader-agnostic.

I suppose Dwarves arriving in Germany at the height of the depression might be anything from tragic to terrifying... Tolkienesque elves appearing in the pacific northwest of the USA mid-'60s would also be entertaining.

It really depends on what sort of campaign you want to run.

High fantasy, what with all the standard races, might be best with the Carolingians, especially since we have a lot of info on Charlemagne.

Weird techno - maybe during the October Revolution. Communist dwarves, goblins that work for the Tsars, elves in Sweden.

How do neanderthals fit in this mix?

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Drifter

It really depends on what sort of campaign you want to run.

High fantasy, what with all the standard races, might be best with the Carolingians, especially since we have a lot of info on Charlemagne.

Weird techno - maybe during the October Revolution. Communist dwarves, goblins that work for the Tsars, elves in Sweden.

How do neanderthals fit in this mix?

I imagine any single one race alone is a good start. Neanderthals appearing at the Scopes Monkey trial could be interesting.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I actually had a New Zealand empire in one campaign. The rest of the word was devastated in a nuclear war. For some reason no one bothered to nuke the Kiwis. So they took over the ashes and made it work.

There was one Lucifer parallel where the only still inhabitable place was New Zealand, which had reduced to TL2 savagery a 100 years after a 1900-ish meteor strike.

Originally Posted by ericthered

That's essentially centrum's story, as I understand it.

I had long wondered how New Zealand would have fared in Centrum, where the post-Last War world government began in Terraustralis. I had thought that it would have joined early, but would have been a bit different, maybe freer-thinking (relatively), like the 'alt-Centrum'.

Something like that happened in Shikaku-Mon - New Zealand was settled by Japanese in the nineteenth century, and developed its own independent, more free-thinking culture (aided by the distance from Japan proper, and Australia being the very separate 'Nieuw Holland').

I'd also love to know what Homeline New Zealand's parachronic program is...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by dcarson

GURPS Planet Krishna is based of L. Sprague de Camp's stories where Brazil ends up as the major power after a nuclear war.

Brazil has most of what it takes to be a major power. Fairly small changes could have made Brazil a power player.

A brilliant Emperor in the early 19th century getting Brazil on the road to industrialization might be one way to do it. A reliable and cheap food crop that would have supported the population more effectively would have been good too. Something like a wide spectrum Quinine, which would have allowed early exploration and exploitation of their resources far earlier, would have been good too.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by fchase8

I'd also love to know what Homeline New Zealand's parachronic program is...

A Sargasso of Lost Parachronic travelers would be an interesting place. Start with a badly failed experiment at Cal-tech during some parallel's 1920's, giving a tech level six California for a start. They drop in people from dozens of different worlds over a century or two.