[Frollein]

As the title says, world building, and ooc stuff goes here.

What we have so far:

Ok, I tried to summarize what we have on historical setting so far. Feel free to add, comment or correct:

Europe:

Apparently USA never joined the war (Lusitania didn’t happen, and it was busy fighting the 2nd Civil War)
Paris did get taken by the Germans in WWI, but unlike the Franco-Prussian war or WWII, the Allies successfully resisted, leading to the bloody armistice and the Peace of Verdun in 1922.
In this timeline, Imperial Germany did not suffer the total collapse of its Home Front, so a long Cold War developed between Germany and Russia on one side and France and Britain on the other side.
Both Britain and Germany are in pretty poor shape. Millions are dead, they both have depleted workforces and are both basically broke. Hence the 'noir' atmosphere. This is why the Armistice was signed in 1922 - both sides needed to break off hostilities or face total internal collapse.
Basically, the "war to end all wars" didn't even result in defeating anyone - bloodshed two or three times what the actual Great War accomplished - just another four years in the trenches - and the only result is a status quo peace (except for some changes in the east) meant by all sides as nothing more than a breather until conflict renewed.
Germany is experiencing enormous problems rebuilding with America in civil war and unable to provide any sort of goods or manufacturing. The influx of Americans fleeing war could also be doing damage to Germany's economy.
France loses Alsace-Lorraine, and its African colonies to Germany. But it’s not occupied and the 3rd republic is busy rebuilding and hating on Germany.
Austria would keep the whole of Tyrol. It would nevertheless lose the Balkans entirely and reform itself to grant Hungary more autonomy, thereby basically pushing through the United States of Greater Austria plans that Franz-Ferdinand had intended before his assassination (without the Balkans).
Italy wasn't a cunt in this timeline and did join the war on Germany's and Austria's side. Austria thought the Balkans were too much trouble to keep anyway, so it was them who promised Istria and Dalmatia to Italy instead of Britain. With Libya on the other side of the Med and their newly won Balkan prize, they are now in over their head.
The Balkan states never stopped fighting and are currently teaching Bosnia and Albania a lesson... they are paranoid about the Ottoman Empire or what’s left of it. Greece has been able to throw out their Ottoman masters as well and regained Constantinople.
We are still undecided on Spain.
Scandinavia is better off in this universe, as they have no Islamic migration wave to contend with.
As for the Brest-Litovsk territory won by Germany, this was a poisoned gift for them both IRL and in this universe, a source of continuous trouble, just like the Balkans were for Austria. Especially Poland could be the "France of the East" in terms of Vichy/Résistance dynamics.
I also think we should let the Holodomor happen and have Germany "liberate" Ukraine, because that would be the only effective countermeasure against soviet agitprop which IRL led to uprisings and acts of sabotage that tied down German troops. Obviously, Ukraine can't into independence in any universe.
Getting Ukraine would also position Germany close to that sweet oil in the Caucasus... perhaps we could make a deal with the Soviets, setting up a "Karpaten-Öl" company and provide the pipelines and the oil pumps.
Politics between Germany and Russia could emulate the German-French reconciliation after WWII. Each country is the other's ticket out of economic devastation, Germany has the tech, Russia the resources. It's a marriage of convenience, made palatable for the population with a sauce of Völkerfreundschaft bullshit.
It’s a strained, tentative alliance/peace agreement between them. There is a lot of resentment in Soviet Russia towards the Germans, expressing itself in several proxy wars, for example in China and America.


Russia:

In Soviet Russia, Stalin briefly came to power from 1928-1934, but was overthrown in a coup d'etat by the Red Army because of the political fallout of the failure of the collectivisation of agriculture (the Holodomor), and Trotsky was invited back from Mexico to become the Soviet leader. The Great Purge never happened, the NEP was restored, and the Soviet Union is gradually evolving into pragmatic state capitalism, vaguely resembling modern Communist China
I’d also suggest that while Germany demanded a lot of territory from Russia, they did not demand the insane amount of money like in our timeline. That way, they wouldn’t antagonize Russia as much as ours did, and Russia wouldn’t be too broke to realize all the crazy utopist projects we all know and love from their propaganda posters. In other words, utopist Soviet Union can happen here.
Which is where their space project comes into play.


The Anglos (Britain, USA):

In this world, King Edward did not abdicate after marrying Mrs Simpson. He remained King, and formed a political alliance with Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. The fascists have not officially seized power yet, but they are controlling the British government in all but name. Some factions of the British ruling elite have already been purged (including an obscure figure called 'Winston Churchill', who is now running a power station in Battersea. Lol.)
Ireland is still part of Britain. Casement's landing had the full backing of the Germans extended the WWI lines there. Then the British kicked the Germans out, slaughtered everyone that resisted them, and reorganized everything as they felt fit, thereby reminding everyone that they are the most evil bastards on the planet.
Britain isn't as powerful before but it isn't as devastated as germany. While it hasn’t officially lost its colonies, independence movements are on the rise. Britain tries to appease these populations by granting them more autonomy and dominion status (namely India and Egypt), but they are only buying time.
Britain can’t devote as much time, energy and weapons to its rebellious colonies as they’d like to, since they are tied down in a long, drawn out conflict in North America.
Here goes the long, insanely detailed USA scenario. I just want to say this much: I agree with Bulaba that the „Blue Boys“ evoke Northern Unionist pictures even in me, who is not even American, while the Whites conjure up pictures of the KKK, so I’d see them as white (ha! pun!) supremacists/fascists. It seems that each faction has taken one color and its motto from the Grandfather of all popular revolutions, the French one: red - egalité (the Commies), blue - liberté (FreedomTM! FuckYeah!), white - fraternité...
I like the idea of much of the Rocky Mountains being a disputed territory between all three sides, and large parts of the Midwest also being a contested zone between all three factions. It can add in the Man in the High Castle feeling of lawless stretches of American territory.


Asia:

China: In firm alliance with Imperial Germany to check Japan and in return getting technological benefits. With help of Imperial Germany, China is making tremendous progress which is sending panic waves in Japan. Also China can threaten British position in India that way.
Nationalists and Communists are fighting it out in China, with much of eastern China from Canton up to Manchuria being held by the Nationalists and backed by foreign powers (with Britain still maintaining influence over parts of southern China).
Zones of influence are controlled in some degree by France around Indochina, Britain around Shanghai/Hong Kong, and Japan near Beijing and Manchuria. The Germans could be explained as having some kind of non-aggression pact or alliance with the Bolsheviks and they've been able to increase their influence in the western half of China, above India (threatening it) via their access through Soviet territory. The Soviets of course support the Communists.
Japan would focus on soft power expansion in China if it didn't outright invade Manchuria and begin a slow conquest of China itself.
A Communist underground/resistance is focused in western China and Outer Mongolia (Mongolia being under the thumb of the Bolsheviks)
India: They are a dominion now (as great powers were too bled in money and flesh) but looking to get complete independence, at the very first shot of war they could switch sides.
A joint British-Japanese fleet is stationed in India to support their interest in Arabia.
Japan: It never suffered any threat of losing access to industrial resources like it did during the 30s and 40s because the British and Russians would have been more than happy to trade with Japan, and the Japanese would have been able to exploit American resources in the Western states, too.
In this kind of universe, the Japanese government managed to keep a tighter leash on its military (since it was Army leaders who acted to seize Manchuria and drive Japanese territorial gains into China itself), and the Japanese simply opted for soft power in China, happily settling for exploiting China's resources and propping up a pro-Japanese government in China.
The Pacific - since the Americans are no longer involved - is between the British and the Japanese. The alliance can’t conceal the fact that the two sea empires are actually competitors, though, so the relations are strained and the peace is shaky. A war in the pacific may be on the horizon.
All American territories (including the Philippines and Hawaii) are occupied by Japan. American ports on the Pacific are mostly occupied by Japan with a few exceptions that are now part of the Commonwealth.
Japan is also supporting the whites or blues and has set up camp on the American West coast.


Africa/Middle East:

Historically, Imperial Germany had pretty good relationship with the Ottoman Empire, so there's Germany's foot in the Middle Eastern door.
I suggest the Ottoman Empire would have lost some of its outer provinces, namely the Balkans and Greece, Egypt (coming under British protection as a dominion in 1914), and Armenia, but would keep the rest and reap the fruits of its reforms.
In reality the middle east wasn't a leading oil producer until some time after WWII. The US was the leading producer until the 70s. In this universe, however, whatever oil the US produces (which is not much, owing to the civil war situation and the Irish being fond of blowing things up) is not exported.
So the Arab oil fields are as important to our dieselpunk world as they are now in our world, and that they are in the Ottoman’s possession makes them a major player - they are no longer the sick man.

It would be better for the American storyline if America had, for various reasons, not been dragged into siding with the Allies outright in WWI, and for Mexico to remain a non-belligerent neighbor of the US, otherwise it would interfere with the events and continuity of the Civil War II.

Frollzy mentioned this in a post, but we discussed how it would probably be better to simply say that the US was not dragged into WWI, that if there was the equivalent of a roaring Twenties in the US that it was far less of an economic and cultural boom, and that the speculative market near the end of the 20s did crash, but that the resulting Depression wasn't quite as severe as the one in our world (but it was still an economic depression).

It also sounds like having much of Europe be in a slow process of economic recovery, set back for a time by the Depression, but swinging back by the mid 30s to at least allow the Japanese, French, and British to "occupy" some Pacific and Northeastern American cities, would be good all-around. I don't know about Potemkin, but I am still preferring the idea of the Soviet Union weathering out the effects of the Depression better (perhaps with a better-managed socialist system without Stalin, who was executed for his failures with the Holodomor?) and being able to turn Moscow into the kind of glamorous proletarian showcase capital of the world (the kind of grand style and public works one would see in Pyongyang) it deserves to be!

I think if we can agree on a vision of Europe at this point, we'll get the last major thing done with our world building itself (ironically the most important part, but we Americans like to make everything about us ).

More later... Feel free to move other posts from the original thread here (your America scenario, for example), but please select only the later ones where we have already agreed on a scenario - I don't want the whole back-and-forth brainstorming process here, because that makes it impossible to find relevant information.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

When we need to update the original post in this thread, we can ask one of the admins (assuming we have text on hand for them to copy-paste) until we get a dedicated moderator or so worked out.

Until that point, we should probably just stick to discussing smoothing out any rough edges while leaving enough room for people to be creative and such: i.e. general outlines mostly.

More later... Feel free to move other posts from the original thread here (your America scenario, for example), but please select only the later ones where we have already agreed on a scenario - I don't want the whole back-and-forth brainstorming process here, because that makes it impossible to find relevant information.

As long as we can keep the OP updated from time to time, discussion shouldn't be an issue. The thread could go 10+ pages but we'd be able to keep the OP updated to provide a concise and roughly definitive vision of this world.

______________________________________________

By the way, we lack a cool title for this 1937-ish world we've built. There's a number of interesting alt history universes in print and other mediums, like Fatherland, Man in the High Castle, and so on. We need something cool for ours.

... hmm.

[Potemkin]

By the way, we lack a cool title for this 1937-ish world we've built. There's a number of interesting alt history universes in print and other mediums, like Fatherland, Man in the High Castle, and so on. We need something cool for ours.

How about The Big Freeze?

This would refer to the Great War turning into an extended Cold War, of course - the characters themselves might call that transition in 1922 "the Big Freeze". And any title having the form 'The Big [X]' sounds sort of 1940-ish and noir....

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

The following is a combination of Frollzy's post and material in the recent "history" posts. I tried to account for much of the apparent consensus as well as different people's visions of different areas of the world. This is only my summation of people's posts, so please (everyone in the RP) feel free to point out things that need to be changed.

Also, and I'm sure this is obvious to everyone, but just because we'll end up agreeing on a general outline doesn't mean we can't take creative liberties. The first person to write a scene set in, say, Moscow or anywhere in Russia, could approach it from the angle of whether Moscow is truly a proto-utopian socialist showcase city, or a 1937s version of Pyongyang and simply a big stage to impress the world, or something like that.

____________________________________________________________________________________



The Big Freeze

The Great War ended in 1922 after Paris was taken briefly by the Germans, but the Allies were able to push the Germans back and agree to an armistice in the Peace of Verdun. America never got involved: there was no Lusitania incident, and the ostensibly isolationist President Wilson did not directly involve America in the war. The treaty was signed somewhat in Germany's favor, as the Germans kept their Brest-Litovsk possessions, some French colonial territories in central Africa, and Belgian Congo (as Germany was already in full control of Belgium itself, and forced the Belgians to sign away the Congo for peace in 1922). The German colonies in the Pacific were retained by Japan, against whom the Germans were in no position to possibly retake them. Both Britain and Germany are in pretty poor shape. Millions are dead, they both have depleted workforces and are economically devastated, hence the "noir" atmosphere. This is why the Armistice was signed in 1922: both sides needed to break off hostilities or face total internal collapse. The "war to end all wars" didn't even result in defeating anyone (bloodshed two or three times what the actual Great War accomplished; just another four years in the trenches) and the only result is a status quo peace (except for some changes in the east) meant by all sides as nothing more than a breather until conflict is renewed. In this timeline, Imperial Germany did not suffer the total collapse of its Home Front, so a long Cold War developed between Germany and Russia on one side and France and Britain on the other side. Simultaneously, while Imperial Germany and Bolshevik Russia have been forced into an alliance/mutual cooperation (whether it's truly an alliance is up to the perspective of each player), the Russians still hate the Germans for what they took from them in the Great War, and use political unrest in China, North America, and elsewhere as proxy fronts in a budding Cold War between both of them.

The year is 1937 and in every smoke-filled shadowy cafe, jazz music fills the air as everyone waits for the next Big One to tear the world apart.

Europe

Spoiler: show

Germany - Germany kept its Brest-Litovsk territory from Russia and is still in the process of recovering from the Great War (albeit probably a bit better than Britain and France as Germany was on the "winning side" and gained more than the Allies did), and annexed Luxembourg at the conclusion of the war.. Germany is currently engaged in a major Cold War with the Allies and in an unofficial Cold War with its official Russian partner/"ally". As for the Brest-Litovsk territory won by Germany, this was a poisoned gift for them, a source of continuous trouble, just like the Balkans were for Austria. Especially Poland could be the "France of the East" in terms of Vichy/Résistance dynamics. With German territory so close to the Caucasus oil fields, Germany exploits Bolshevik oil through the Karpaten-Öl company, providing the pipelines and oil pumps. Politics between Germany and Russia somewhat emulate the German-French reconciliation after WWII. Each country is the other's ticket out of economic devastation: Germany has the tech, Russia the resources. It's a marriage of convenience, made palatable for the population with a sauce of Völkerfreundschaft bullshit. It’s a strained, tentative alliance/peace agreement between them. There is a lot of resentment in Soviet Russia towards the Germans, expressing itself in several proxy wars, for example in China and America. Russia may be providing secret support to resistance movements in the German-annexed territories in Eastern Europe.

Britain - Britain is still in the process of rebuilding and managing its far-flung Empire. In this world, King Edward did not abdicate after marrying Mrs. Simpson. He remained King and formed a political alliance with Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. The fascists have not officially seized power yet, but they are controlling the British government in all but name. Some factions of the British ruling elite have already been purged (including an obscure figure called 'Winston Churchill', who is now running a power station in Battersea). Ireland is still part of Britain. Casement's landing had the full backing of the Germans extended the WWI lines there. Then the British kicked the Germans out, slaughtered everyone that resisted them, and reorganized everything as they felt fit, thereby reminding everyone that they are the most evil bastards on the planet. Britain isn't as powerful as it was before the war but it wasn't as devastated as Germany (as Britain itself was largely untouched by the fighting). While it hasn’t officially lost its colonies, independence movements are on the rise. Britain tries to appease these populations by granting them more autonomy and dominion status (namely India), but they are only buying time. Britain can’t devote as much time, energy and weapons to its rebellious colonies as they’d like to, since they are tied down in a long, drawn out conflict in North America.

France - France loses Alsace-Lorraine and its central African colonies to Germany. But it’s not occupied and the 3rd republic is busy rebuilding and hating Germany. Paris went through a brief Second Commune period following the German withdrawal from the city that had to be put down by the advancing Allies.

Russia - Bolshevik Russia/the Soviet Union is a nation far more dedicated to international communism than its original self. Stalin briefly came to power from 1928-1934, but was overthrown in a coup d'etat by the Red Army because of the political fallout of the failure of the collectivisation of agriculture (the Holodomor), and Trotsky was invited back from Mexico to become the Soviet leader. The Great Purge never happened, the NEP was restored, and the Soviet Union is gradually evolving into pragmatic state capitalism, vaguely resembling modern Communist China. While Germany demanded a lot of territory from Russia during the Great War (Brest-Litovsk), they did not demand much in the way of money from the Bolsheviks. This prevented Bolshevik Russia from being too broke to realize their grand construction projects throughout Moscow and Leningrad (Palace of the Soviets, etc). Moscow is a modern proletarian metropolis and a showcase city of Russia, rivaling many other great cities.

Austria - Austria would keep the whole of Tyrol. It would nevertheless lose the Balkans entirely and reform itself to grant Hungary more autonomy, thereby basically pushing through the United States of Greater Austria plans that Franz-Ferdinand had intended before his assassination (without the Balkans).

Italy - Italy did join the war on Germany's and Austria's side. Austria thought the Balkans were too much trouble to keep anyway, so it was they who promised Istria and Dalmatia to Italy instead of Britain. With Libya on the other side of the Med and their newly won Balkan prize, they are now in over their heads. Mussolini led a Fascist coup d'etat and "Mirror Universe" Italy is largely like it was in the original timeline: it invaded Abyssinia, intervened in Spain, and with their already-existing Balkan territories in Istria and Dalmatia, Italy was able to invade Albania and Montenegro at an early stage. Italy may be providing support to the "Blues" in America, and possibly to nationalist movements in the weakened French colonies in Africa.

Spain - The Spanish Civil War has recently ended with Fascist/Nationalist victory, backed by Fascist Portugal and Fascist Italy (and maybe some support from Germany, or did Germany stay neutral?). France, Britain, and Russia were unable to provide adequate support to the Reds/Republicans. One of the last casualties of the war was a British essayist named Eric Blair. Southern and southwestern Europe is now firmly locked in an alliance between Europe's three fascist powers, who may be eyeing Britain and France's slipping grip on their respective African colonies, which would make ripe targets for the fascists.

The Balkans - The Balkan states never stopped fighting, and the resistance to Italian domination continues. Although Austria was on the "winning side" of the Great War, it was unable to take Serbia or any other Balkan territories. The Balkans are still paranoid about the Ottoman Empire, or what’s left of it. Greece has been able to throw out the Ottomans from the Balkans and regained Constantinople.

Scandinavia - Aside from Finland being an independent nation now, Scandinavia is still just peaches and bløtkake.

North America

Spoiler: show

America - America never became actively involved in the Great War, and its Roaring Twenties was substantially less influential than in the original timeline. Instead of left-wing movements and uprisings in Germany in the original timeline, some Communist activity took place in America throughout the 1920s. After the stock market crash in 1929 and the resulting Depression and the suppression of the Bonus Army in 1932, a group of American businessmen and military leaders led a coup in 1933 called the Business Plot that was successful in seizing the South and California (otherwise known as the Blues), creating a power vacuum which allowed a resurgent Communist movement to overrun areas of the American Midwest from Montana to Oklahoma (the Reds). The American government (the Whites) itself has been thoroughly weakened to the point where it only exercises a shaky control, at best, of southeastern Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast, under heavy influence (with some seeing it as an occupation) by the Allied powers and Japan. With the Blues being backed by the Fascist powers in Europe and possibly Germany, the Reds by Russia, and the Whites by Japan and the Allies, large swaths of America are either bitterly contested battlefronts or lawless zones governed by no one.

Canada - The effects of the Second American Civil War have spilled into Canada, with Communist rebels controlling most of Western Canada. British power is largely concentrated firmly in the "Canadian Shield" region of Eastern Canada, and a stretch of territory along the Trans-Canadian Highway region to Vancouver, such as the cities of Winnipeg and Calgary.

The Middle East

Spoiler: show

The Ottomans - The Ottomans have lost the Balkans, and the Greeks retook Thrace and Constantinople. The Empire did not become a secular republic, but it was able to retain its holdings from Asia Minor to Arabia with the importance of Arabian oil. The Ottoman Empire is not quite the sick man it once was (and has undergone some minor reforms?). Ottoman relations with Germany are still good.

Arabia - With the discovery of oil in Arabia in the 1930s, oil development has revitalized the Ottoman economy and society, and Arabia was placed back in the Ottoman fold.

Asia

Spoiler: show

Russian Asia - Tannu Tuva exists as a Bolshevik puppet state. Mongolia is under the thumb of the Bolsheviks as well. The Russians are believed to be supporting the Chinese Communists who maintain an underground presence in Nationalist China, but control parts of Western China and Northwestern Manchuria. The Bolsheviks signed away Sakhalin to the Japanese at the end of the Great War.

China - The Chinese Civil War is still ongoing but the Nationalists control almost the whole country. Nationalist China is in a firm alliance with Imperial Germany to check Japan and in return gets technological benefits. With help of Imperial Germany, China is making tremendous progress which is sending panic waves in Japan. Nationalist China now threatens British control in India. Nationalists and Communists are fighting it out in China, with much of eastern Nationalist China from Canton up to Manchuria being split between zones of influence led by regional Nationalists and pro-Nationalist warlords backed by foreign powers. Zones of influence are controlled in some degree by France around Indochina, Britain around Shanghai/Hong Kong, and Japan near Beijing and Manchuria. The Soviets of course support the Communists. Japan focuses on soft power expansion in China, as it never attacked and invaded China in this timeline. A Communist underground/resistance is focused in western China, Outer Mongolia (Mongolia being under the thumb of the Bolsheviks), and parts of Manchuria, with Communist cells located elsewhere in Nationalist China.

India - India is a dominion now due to Britain's "defeat" in the Great War, but is looking to get complete independence. At the very first shot of war they could switch sides. A joint British-Japanese fleet is stationed in India to support their interest in Arabia.

Japan - Japan never suffered any threat of losing access to industrial resources like it did during the 30s and 40s because the British and Russians would have been more than happy to trade with Japan, and the Japanese would have been able to exploit American resources in the Western states, too. In this universe, the Japanese government managed to keep a tighter leash on its military (since it was Army leaders who acted to seize Manchuria and drive Japanese territorial gains into China itself), and the Japanese simply opted for soft power in China, happily settling for exploiting China's resources and propping up a pro-Japanese government in China while it maintained control over the former German and American territories throughout the Pacific (including Hawaii). Japan is now the undisputed master of the Northern Pacific.

The Pacific - With the Americans out of the picture, control of the Pacific is between the British and the Japanese. Their alliance can't conceal the fact that the two sea empires are actually competitors, though, so the relations are strained and the peace is shaky. A war in the pacific may be on the horizon. All American territories (including the Philippines and Hawaii) in the Pacific have long-since been occupied and annexed by Japan.

Africa

Spoiler: show

Aside from the Germans taking some central African territories and the Congo, Egypt being a neutral country entirely free of British interference (aside from the British holding the Suez Canal), and some nationalist movements in the weakened French colonies, Africa hasn't changed much.

South America

Spoiler: show

No changes (yet)

[Frollein]

Looking at that map of North America, how do the "deep reds" (I'm going with the colors on your map) manage to secure their continent wide corridor? Must be a logistic and military nightmare, not that I know too much about military strategy...

The Ottomans - The Ottomans have lost the Balkans, and the Greeks retook Thrace and Constantinople. The Empire did not become a secular republic, but it was able to retain its holdings from Asia Minor to Arabia with the importance of Arabian oil. The Ottoman Empire is not quite the sick man it once was (and has undergone some minor reforms?). Ottoman relations with Germany are still good.

Let's say the Brits weren't as lucky there as they were here with the Arab Revolt, and the Second Constitutional Era was a success. Let's also say that von Wangenheim wasn't an arrogant prick in that universe and agreed to Enver Pasha's proposal of a German-Ottoman alliance. That would change the course of events sufficiently that the Ottoman Empire would not be carved up by France and Britain after WWI.

[The Sabbaticus]

I see no Kamchatka ruled by the Nipponese empire. Nor do I see the Dutch Trade Unions administering the Persian straits. This has the additional advantage of Dutch military craft keeping the Yemenese and Omanian (slave) raiders in check. In addition to scuttling any Arab attempts at building a maritime fleet.

[Potemkin]

Still struggling to keep Holland a relevant world power I see, Sabb. Face it though: Holland hasn't been a relevant player on the world stage since 1672. Give it up, Sabb.

[mikema63]

Why don't you go make your own alt-history game in it's own thread and leave ours alone?

[The Sabbaticus]

Still struggling to keep Holland a relevant world power I see, Sabb. Face it though: Holland hasn't been a relevant player on the world stage since 1672. Give it up, Sabb.

You misunderstand. I don't care about your British imperial pseudo-nostalgia as projected on my alternative history for The Netherlands. Instead I'm providing an easy solution for keeping the Islamic menace out of the story. Think about it, a world where Mecca is being torn apart by Shi'ite and Sunni militias. The conflict perfectly contained to the Arab peninsula. With the Dutch preventing the conflict to spread farther in the region.

[Frollein]

The problem with that scenario is that it comes out of nowhere, without a logical explanation. We have an altered history, you have a cracked-up one. I'll say it again: whatever scenario you envision for your country, if you are able to provide a believable, logical development, I'm perfectly willing to include it in the game. But just saying, hey wouldn't it be neat if the Netherlands were the masters of Persia? isn't enough.

[mikema63]

I fail to see the Islamic menace we would face in the 1930's. Especially since we seem to be leaning towards maintaining the ottoman empire.

[The Sabbaticus]

The problem with that scenario is that it comes out of nowhere, without a logical explanation. We have an altered history, you have a cracked-up one. I'll say it again: whatever scenario you envision for your country, if you are able to provide a believable, logical development, I'm perfectly willing to include it in the game. But just saying, hey wouldn't it be neat if the Netherlands were the masters of Persia? isn't enough.

That's because your tech system isn't up and running yet.

[Frollein]

We already have believable and logical scenarios for a lot of countries, see above. Provide one for the Netherlands, and we'll include it.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

The Netherlands is fine as it is. Sabb's just doing a boring job at trying to troll; ignore everything he says, and just report his posts if he posts one liners/etc because this isn't in Gorkiy anymore.

Looking at that map of North America, how do the "deep reds" (I'm going with the colors on your map) manage to secure their continent wide corridor? Must be a logistic and military nightmare, not that I know too much about military strategy....

Those areas of Canada and America were relatively sparsely populated compared to other regions, and definitely far on the rural side. I imagine Russia is shuttling tons of material through Alaska that the Reds are using against an inept, weakened American government, vast areas of lawless, ungoverned areas, and a British presence that has been weakened west of the Canadian shield.

[Lexington]

I have a barebones wiki set up:

http://45.79.132.53/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I'm going to spend some time making it look better. Also, right now creating an account there is available to anyone (although I can ban anyone too) - once I get the e-mail stuff set up I plan to restrict that to just approved accounts. Also, please make accounts that match your PoFo username.

I'm thinking we can structure the wiki just like any wiki - a page for the United States, for instance, plus pages for world history and stuff. We could also have character pages there.

[Cookie Monster]

Not much diesel steam-punk world building anymore?

And what happened to Cookie's post/contribution?

[The Sabbaticus]

It's all your fault. Don't even pretend otherwise.

[Frollein]

Diesel is on hold right now, as participants informed me that something they called "real life" was interfering with their ability to create the much improved world of Dieselpunk.

I shrugged and went to write a Planet of the Apes (tv series) fanfic. Currently I'm outlining chapter 13 of 36, so it'll be a while until I return to the noirish world of secret Tesla weapons and dastardly commie spies from Scotland.

[The Sabbaticus]

Sounds intriguing, but I always found the Planet of the Apes series to be rather mundane. The main gimmick appeared to be nothing more than 'apes' ruling over devolved humans. And the new movies did little to redress this gimmick, e.g. chimps being able to use machine guns with their big clumsy hands.



Or their miraculous bullet-spraying aim.

"I'm just waving my arms around and shooting my infinite ammo. And look at this horse, totally battle hardened and accustomed to fire, chaos and the close discharge of weapons."

[youtube]HJWnRCuYlfo[/youtube]

The Burton version was pretty tepid as well, but at least the chimpanzee general had something to offer.

[youtube]4US0Fjr4Rb8[/youtube]

[Frollein]

Sounds intriguing, but I always found the Planet of the Apes series to be rather mundane. The main gimmick appeared to be nothing more than 'apes' ruling over devolved humans.

In the series, the humans weren't devolved. Anyway, it's highly entertaining for me, which is why I'm doing it (and mine is the 0.02% of fanfic that is not porn).

And the new movies did little to redress this gimmick, e.g. chimps being able to use machine guns with their big clumsy hands.

Or ride horses with their ridiculously short legs. That's because they didn't even think of genetic manipulation playing a role in creating these "optimized" apes. I haven't seen these new movies - didn't they explain the smartass apes with a new Alzheimers medication? That doesn't explain why these new apes were able to speak; the drug may have made them smarter, but how did it change the location and shape of their voicebox? See, this happens when people don't think things through.