Alternate History

[fredrik_nilsson]

There is a short text in Star Hero about alternate histories, but as far as I know that is all that Hero Games has done in that area. Are there any more information on another place? Has anyone of you as ideas about alt. history campaigns you want to share?

 

I found these pages that might be of interest:

 

The Alternate History Travel Guides!

Today In Alternate History

[greymankle]

Re: Alternate History

 

I'm basing a new DC/Star hero game on Alternate Earths. Generally based on a main uber tech Earth. This earth has acheived AE travel and exists as a main trade nexus. Subsequently, the main earth is very rich and corrupt. With a huge military.

 

My ideas for different AEs just stems from what I want the earth to be for the session. What if Hitler won? What if the dinosaurs never left? If you go with the Chaos theory you can justify any history. "Hmm I want a world where the romans and the nazi's co exist in harmony." well you can do that.

 

However I agree, that there is not much HERO stuff out there, that I know of, for alternate earths/histories

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alternate History

 

A Search of the boards for "alternate history" turned up a number of threads with more-or-less detailed concepts:

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33305

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31535

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26338

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15965

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8408

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7995

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Alternate History

 

This is one area where GURPS currently reigns supreme. The quality and range of Steve Jackson Games' historical sourcebooks is, on the whole, superb and they offer an instant distillation of the most game-important information for a given country, genre or period. Since most of them also cover examples of alternate history they save the less research-minded GM a lot of work.

 

Luckily, GURPS already covers the bulk of rules needed to actually play in such settings, so many of the supplements are reasonably rules light. Because of that they are easily adapted to other games systems, which I believe was one of the original design goals for GURPS (make the supplements appealing to non-GURPS players and then slowly draw them in), and the nature of HERO makes it easy - if somewhat time consuming - to replicate the necessary effects.

 

This, I feel, is the way to go with "minor" and variant settings such as alternate history. Not every game company is going to put out a similar line, so adapting GURPS material is a good option. I would also say that the best way to run good alternate history is to read up on the real thing: The more you know, the more you'll understand the ramifications of any changes you make. The game Fvlminata is a fine example of an alternate history setting (Roman, in this case) which nonetheless retains a remarkable sense of reality. My goal when mucking about with the past is to leave the players unsure at the end as to what is documented history and what is fiction.

 

As for dedicated HERO products, the only thing I can think of offhand would be Champions 3-D (and maybe Wings of the Valkyrie), but only you could say if it would fit your Star HERO game.

[CBikle]

Re: Alternate History

 

Well, there is Champions 3D for 4th ed.

 

SJ Games put out a few Alternate Earths book for GURPS. I have 'em and they're pretty good.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Alternate History

 

Another thought: Depending what era you are looking to play with you might want to snag a copy of L. Sprague de Camp's famous novel "Lest Darkness Fall," the story of what happens when a 1930's archaeologist finds himself hurled back to the fall of Rome.

 

The hero, Martin Padway, wants to avoid the fall, but knows he is not well equipped to do anything about it. Most games might propose the discovery and utilisation of gunpowder, or perhaps working magic, but in this book Padway begins by introducing brandy and thus earning money, moves onto the printing press to improve education and rapid spread of accurate news, then creates a system of semaphore towers. In fact he does try to make gunpowder, but even knowing as much about it as most of do he never gets it to work. De Camp avoids the obvious and does not make Padway superhumanly knowledgeable, so when he opts for crossbows as the best military innovation it makes sense; we tend to look back on such things as primitive and lump many such weapons together, not realising what a major (if short-term) effect the introduction of such a device can have.

 

All of which rambling is simply to say that your point of historical divergence does not need to be something major, such as killing a world leader, but could be something less apparently obvious such as discovering and settling America a few centuries early, or introducing modern accounting and numeracy to ancient Rome.

[sinanju]

Re: Alternate History

 

Another thought: Depending what era you are looking to play with you might want to snag a copy of L. Sprague de Camp's famous novel "Lest Darkness Fall," the story of what happens when a 1930's archaeologist finds himself hurled back to the fall of Rome.

 

The hero, Martin Padway, wants to avoid the fall, but knows he is not well equipped to do anything about it. Most games might propose the discovery and utilisation of gunpowder, or perhaps working magic, but in this book Padway begins by introducing brandy and thus earning money,

 

Don't forget teaching a Roman moneylender about arabic numerals and the concepts of ZERO and decimal notation...in return for a share of the guy's profits from using this knowledge. It's a hell of a lot easier to do quick, accurate financial calculations with those tools than with ROMAN NUMERALS....

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Alternate History

 

Paratimewas writen by H. Beam Piper, it was a very good way to look at a multidimensional universe. It had five basic level's, multiple-sublevels, and sectors. I wonder has anyone else read them.

The best was "Lord Kalvan of Othewhen" it was very good.

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: Alternate History

 

Another thought: Depending what era you are looking to play with you might want to snag a copy of L. Sprague de Camp's famous novel "Lest Darkness Fall' date='" the story of what happens when a 1930's archaeologist finds himself hurled back to the fall of Rome.[/quote']

 

Jack, thank you so much for reminding me of something Iread many years ago. Now that my interest has been re-piqued, I must track down this work again!

 

As I recall, one of his observations was about how "street Latin" bore very little resemblance to the Classical Latin that he learned in school.

[Silversmith]

Re: Alternate History

 

Larry Niven also has some very interesting alternate dimension short stories and a couple of books that I didn't find nearly so entertaining. In one of his stories fog is not just caused by the cooling of humid air, forming of a coud at ground level, etc. These are just signs of something else. Fog is a blurring of the borders between timelines. If you venture too far on a heavily foggy night you may not find your way back home. At least not to the home you thought you left.

 

In another one a very tech advanced earth has found a way to travel between AEs and people find out that EVERY decision you make causes another alternate earth. You ate breakfast in one and not in another. During breakfast you choked on a cheerio and died in one and in another you drowned yourself in your milk and in another you ate eggs and survived quite nicely and in another you fell victim to a virulent strain of flu and died and in another you had breakfast with your family which doesn't exist in another world. It can get VERY confusing. Chaos theory to a whole new level, no? A butterfly flaps its wings and causes a tornado, 3 hurricanes, and a sunny day all at the same time as well as you stepping on the butterfly in this reality and thereby terminating it's effects from many (but not all) realities. Made for interesting thoughts about choices we make not mattering much in a multiverse sense.

[Basil]

Re: Alternate History

 

If anyone wants to read some alternate-history fiction, for inspiration and to "get in the mood," possibly the best writer in that sub-genre is Harry Turtledove, who has done a number of books, each in a different "timeline".

 

Eric Flint's "163x" books are also quite good.

 

For those who are Usenet savvy, look over alt.history.what-if and soc.history.what-if. I've never subscribed, or even sampled, so I have no idea how useful they'd be.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Alternate History

 

Jack' date=' thank you so much for reminding me of something Iread many years ago.[/quote']

 

You're most welcome. I tend to take the view that new books and old books are irrelevant, it's good books we need to be reading.

 

At the moment I'm working through S.M. Sterling's Island in the Sea of Time series, an everyday tale about Nantucket being transported back to 1250 B.C. Especially interesting because Sterling opted to go back prior to the classic (and indeed classical) periods beloved of so many authors (Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories, Silverberg's Thebes of a Hundred Gates, Turtledove's Legion books and so on). Modern Americans - and, charmingly, a Kuwaiti camel racer who loves the irony of campaigning in ancient Iraq - facing a world where even knowledge of Ancient Greece and Rome is futuristic.

 

So far (I'm halfway through book two) this is streets ahead of Flint's rather clunky 1632 series, although reviews suggest that it goes a bit pear-shaped at the end. Better writing, superior characterisation. And for those searching for an alternate history roleplaying resource, I'm afraid that the 1632 RPG from Battlefield Press is fairly unexceptional.

[tkdguy]

Re: Alternate History

 

If you can catch them, check out the Ancient Discoveries show on the History Channel. They have some interesting episodes, including ancient computers and "modern" medicine. If such knowledge had not been lost, what would our world be like today?

[sinanju]

Re: Alternate History

 

You're most welcome. I tend to take the view that new books and old books are irrelevant' date=' it's [i']good[/i] books we need to be reading.

 

At the moment I'm working through S.M. Sterling's Island in the Sea of Time series...

 

So far (I'm halfway through book two) this is streets ahead of Flint's rather clunky 1632 series, although reviews suggest that it goes a bit pear-shaped at the end.

 

The reviews are accurate. I loved the first book, endured the second one, and thumbed thru the last one to find out what happened to the bad guy...and then never bothered reading it.

 

I was fascinated by seeing how the people of modern Nantucket coped with finding themselves in a Bronze Age environment. As the story progressed, however, and it became more and more the story of the Nantucketers and their allies fighting wars...I got bored.