- 08 Feb 2016 09:44
#14650189
Checking my privilege - yep, still good
What would happen if the Sahara became socialist? - For ten years, nothing, then we'd run out of sand.
As the title says, world building, and ooc stuff goes here.
What we have so far:
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.
What we have so far:
Frollein wrote: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.
Bulaba Jones wrote: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.
Checking my privilege - yep, still good
What would happen if the Sahara became socialist? - For ten years, nothing, then we'd run out of sand.