Worldbuilding without the post-WW/WWII/Cold War glasses (TL, CR etc.)

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The setting I'm currently GMing, which is the reason this topic presents extra interest to me.

Just from skimming the wiki, I'll say that it seems extraordinarily unlikely to me for them to have any kind of computers in general use and for them to not experience miniaturization and all the other modern advances in those technologies. If you strip them of computers entirely, say the governments never created them or encryption devices, Turing never lived, and so on, then you can get away with it.

But giving them some computers but not digital technologies doesn't seem reasonable. Transistors seem like pretty obvious technology, especially if you have vacuum tubes. Do they have vacuum tubes?


Hmm... I wonder if these people could even have radar.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not looking for a particular other made up world, but mostly looking at things that we take for granted, treating as an assumed part of TL6+, but which are actually merely the logical outcomes of certain political events in our world. The stuff that a worldbuilder should 'Unlearn'.

Also, this works in regards to any genre/setting, too. A lot of our fantasy preconceptions - e.g. folks of either gender walking around town wearing armor and having weapons normally restricted to the nobility or city guard/military not only visible but loose in their scabbards and ready to use without fear of repercussions - come from our modern sense of gender equality. Same with the "slavery is evil" bit; prior to the 1800s, slavery was rarely if ever vilified, and in many parts of the world was considered a way of life.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Also, this works in regards to any genre/setting, too. A lot of our fantasy preconceptions - e.g. folks of either gender walking around town wearing armor and having weapons normally restricted to the nobility or city guard/military not only visible but loose in their scabbards and ready to use without fear of repercussions - come from our modern sense of gender equality. Same with the "slavery is evil" bit; prior to the 1800s, slavery was rarely if ever vilified, and in many parts of the world was considered a way of life.

I feel like these two are a lot easier to explain away. Or to cover up in ways that don't cause very big problems in the suspension of disbelief department. They're not anywhere near as large departures as completely rewriting the twentieth century. Look:

Matriarchal society. Bam! Women can do all the stuff men can, since they're in charge. Economic or religious reason to not have slavery. Bam! No slavery. Ancient Persia didn't have slavery in any recognizable sense, right? And they had matriarchy in Sumer, didn't they? Those look pretty easy to convince players to go along with.

What inventions did or didn't get invented with the absence of those wars? Anybody's guess there. We could argue back and forth on that forever.

[Dorin Thorha]

I'm guessing that what we really want here is "what would a world with no Balkans equivalent look like". Once you have a politically fragmented region with multiple warlike people groups some of whom have various loyalties to different outside entities, you are pretty much going to end up with a ton of skirmishes and deep-seated rivalries, which, once modern technology becomes available, are very likely to produce a world war.

If Europe had been somehow shielded from the Huns and Islamic world, it would have continued to putter along with agricultural and feudal innovations. Thanks to the Scandinavians they would probably still have ended up producing powerful naval empires and colonizing the western hemisphere, but Africa might have been left largely alone, and the world's hotspots would have been in the -istans and the Caucasus.

In more general terms, a world without World Wars would be a world where the great sea powers were culturally isolated from the great land powers and/or there were less reasons for the great sea powers to engage in direct warfare.

[Rocket Man]

I think the biggest assumption that has to be unlearned -- at least for an American -- is the prominence of "the government." As in the federal government. Even after the Civil War asserted that it was "the United States is" and not "the United States are," an awful lot was left up to state and local authorities, or even to no authority in particular. I won't say Washington was without power or authority, but its reach was a lot shorter, both for better and for worse.

[Dorin Thorha]

But isn't that just a quirk of the US's anti-government culture, that under pressure has declined over time? Europe developed pretty strong centralized governments just fine well before the wars.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'm not sure if that's true. They're useful, sure. But I thought they used them because central planners in socialist states decided to churn out gajillions of them, and then they just happened to be available.

Sure, AKs and M16s have been made in vast quantities and are thus cheap, but there's a reason they've been made in vast quantities.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Dorin Thorha

But isn't that just a quirk of the US's anti-government culture, that under pressure has declined over time? Europe developed pretty strong centralized governments just fine well before the wars.

Possibly, but I guess what I'm saying is that absent the World Wars and Cold War, I don't think the pressure would have been there. And even in Europe, the trend toward centralized government seemed to strengthen in that period. (The interwar years were the most notable of course: Italy, Russia, Germany, Spain and more.)

EDIT: Which, to keep it in GURPS terms, might reflect an average rise in the CR of many societies.

EDIT2: And it occurs to me that my original post may have been misunderstood. When I said "for an American," I meant that that's been the biggest change for the United States, not that it was an overall change that an American would have an especially difficult time adjusting to.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

On passports: to the contrary, increased mobility were the reason behind the passports not being strictly enforced before WWI.

The discussion of gun laws in the other threat seems to indicate that many firearms became restricted roughly with the start of WWII. Whether it was linked or a coincidence I'm not as sure as you are that it is the latter.

Al Capone and his ilk were the cause of the restriction on submachine guns in the United States in 1934, but Britain of course started on it much earlier. In 1870 it became illegal to carry a gun off of one's property without a license.

[Lamech]

MAD. There's no MAD. No one in there right mind would use a nuke today because of the well known existence of MAD, and sufficient quantities for Armageddon. Divided two world earth. If Russia used nukes to get its away America follows and visa versa. You risk setting off a nuclear war. If everyone builds up nuclear weapons before the first use in anger... nukes might just be sort of a thing.

Still a powerful tool, but the same degree of paranoia about using them is gone.