Western Hero Game starting on Roll20

[ZuvielDM]

Western Hero Campaign: Alternative History: Begin Year 1870
Abraham Lincoln assassination in 1863 led to a Confederate Victory.
The USA continues it's path of industrialization as the CSA continues to be largely driven by an agricultural/slave owning society.
The Branson Hart Trade Treaty of 1864 allows commerce with tariffs collected upon it's cheap transport to the Gulf of Mexico. The Indian Territories remain in dispute as does the western terriories. A particular movement, The Ghost Warriors, created by a Northern Coalition led by Sitting Bull and the Indingenous Peoples maintain much of the Dakotas.
Their treaties, recognized by both USA and CSA powers slow the western progress of the USA and the CSA. Railroad line building to the west coast and California are seen as a way by USA Industrialists to take control of the Western Territorries.
You are granted a commision by a group of speculators to survey and secure a proper route to Califorinia.
Or maybe your all just young trailhands. The game begins...

https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/15571434/western-hero-jobbers-canyon

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by ZuvielDM

[GDShore]

A couple of problems with your basic premise, if Lincoln dies in '63 the south's maintenance of slavery is already doomed. First, the south had industrialized, inefficient, yes, but as an independent nation that would have improved, the agriculture that the south depended on was no longer theirs. By 1863, cotton production had shifted out of the U.S. What had been king for the south would no longer be. As such slavery was doomed and would have withered on the vine of its own accord unto extinction within a generation. Next, the south has a massive lead on the north to reach the pacific, they have Texas. There had been a movement in the Dakotas and surrounding to unite the northern tribes, Sioux, Cheyene, Crow and Blackfoot were moving towards an alliance as early as '61, it never fully formed, no such movement existed in the US southwest, while the Arapahoe, Ute  and Piute had a loose alliance they would never, never have joined with the Comanche let alone the Apache. (the word in the languages of the afore mentioned nations for Apache was simply the ENEMY.) Thus the Confederacy would Have a massive advantage to reach the west coast and force California into the southern polity, which would mean Washington and Oregon as well. Finally as soon as the Union saw that it was in danger of losing control of the western territories it would be back at war with the south, a decade maybe 12 years at the most. {the history of the U.S. and treaties in the 19th. century is dismal in that of the more than 300 treaties between the US and the Native Americans between 1800 and 1890 the US broke all of them as soon as it became convenient for the US government to do so.} AS for Lincoln's assassination ending the Civil War, nope. It would have become a HOLY WAR for the Union and the aftermath would have hammered the south flat for half a century, not just the decade of reconstruction. 

[Doc Democracy]

I am for balkanisation on North America, the Western territories becoming their own, third colony nation, independent of both USA and CSA.

 

That provides a lot more opportunities for trade, conflict and politics.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Many years ago, a bunch of us participated in a thread brainstorming a world in which the magic traditions of many cultures around the world were real and effective, providing a counter to the superior technology of the colonizing Europeans, so the latter's impact on the globe was greatly lessened. In the Americas, major indigenous civilizations such as the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas survived contact with Europeans and became significant powers in the modern world.

 

North of Mexico, I would suggest that this premise could allow the more organized and/or culturally sophisticated aboriginal peoples to maintain substantial sovereign territories, including the Iroquois confederacy, the Mississippian mound builders, and the pueblo peoples of the American southwest. European settlement would have been more fragmented, and no one European nation might have achieved dominance over a vast area as in real world history. And of course, if the United States existed it would have remained far smaller.

[GDShore]

The mound builders were long gone before the European's arrived, the pueblo peoples were being worn down by a series of droughts but the Iroquois the Cherokee and Seminole confederacy's were quite complex. The thing that allowed the 'whites' to succeed over the natives, was not the gun, the matchlock loads way slower than a bow and in the primal forest extant at the time on the east coast they have the same range. No what beat the natives was iron working a technology bounce of about 2 -3 hundred years. Both the Iroquois and the Cherokee were getting close in metal working but there are very few deposits of "bog iron" in the America's the iron is there  it just has to be dug out. 

  By the time postulated it is to late for the natives, no matter how big the magic. The whites have repeaters, percussion caps, cased ammunition which allows superior rate of fire not to mention increased range. And then there is the cannon. (a single blast of case - 150 rounds 1"diameter at 300 meters) In order for the native american  to hold the land he had to stop the whiteman on the coastal stripe. Once established they were unshiftable. Not just in the Americas but anywhere the tech imbalance was that large the natives lost, unless the magic was powerful enough to overcome this imbalance they will lose. Technology continues to improve and advance in the end it always will win.

   As a game concept, it has possibilities, the ghost dancers believed that their magic could turn aside bullets, it didn't but if it had maybe victory would have been theirs. In such balkanization could occur, only not a third colony nation but a native confederacy or two. So Doc you are partially right. It would take LL's premise as well, under those circumstances, the history of the world changes dramatically. 

[Lord Liaden]

You should of course use whatever assumptions you like that work for the game you want; but those you mention are based on conditions prevailing in the real world. Effective weather magic would greatly assist certain civilizations to persist well past when they disappeared in real history. Healing magic could help combat the diseases the Europeans brought with them, leaving larger aboriginal populations. Summoned creatures from myth and folklore might be far less susceptible to European weapons than mere mortals. If the early Europeans were forced to deal with the native nations on a more equal footing, it's likely the latter would have over time learned and developed more of the former's technology, and gradually closed that gap, so that by the mid-19th Century they'd be close to parity.

 

One of the choices we did make in the original brainstorming thread, was that the European religious-based persecution of "witchcraft" led to the suppression of Europe's own magic traditions, such that the new peoples they encountered had the edge in that area. Undoubtedly the Old World would have eventually sought to exploit that potential if they saw its benefits in the New World, but that would likely have taken generations to change established ways of thinking, by which time the New would be better with the Old's tech.