In the end I understand why they took Centrum. Nazis are such a blunt instrument. Nobody would believe, that they carefull infiltrate an alternaive Earth. No, like with Friedrich and Nostradamus, they would have the sublety of a Stuka.
GURPS Infinite Worlds Covers
- Thread starter rvbomally
- Start date
Hmm... I can't find anything say it was an early draft for Infinite Worlds.
What is says is that many of the worlds from Alternate Earths (and Alternate Earths 2) originated in
a different campaign that predated GURPS Time Travel by several years.
Further examples:
Delta: Aeolus (Alternate Earths 2)
Epsilon: Caliph (Alternate Earths 2)
Phi: Cornwallis (Alternate Earths 2)
Skallagrim
Banned
My Alexander-loving self sees Eta ("Post-disaster timeline which reached TL9 or 10 before collapsing about 100 years ago. Apparently diverged with Alexander the Great; his successors built the space stations and other artifacts still dotting this mostly empty world. Local present 2055.") and regrets not knowing more about it.
It avoided World War II, but got stuck in some conservative 1940s social attitudes. Local present given in the document @PachPachis linked to is 1965, which means that - relative to OTL - the difference in attitudes is somewhat less noticable. If it stays unchanging up to the OTL present, it'll get more and more dystopian, I suppose.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ite-worlds-covers.390560/page-9#post-13955535
Well, lucky you, because it's implied to be the future of Iskander-2 from GURPS Infinite Worlds: Lost Worlds.
The PoD is Alexander dying in his mid-60s, and so keeping his promise to his soldiers to return west. He spent the next 30 years consolidating his empire and when he does die his chosen successor keeps control rather than the empire splintering. His successors expanded the empire even further. Starting from 95 AD the Alexandrian Hegemony fights a series of wars with China, but while one side might win a province or some concession, they both become too big for total defeat. China and Alexandria colonize the Americas from different sides, and by 1273 they're TL9 (Bordering on nanotech). The apocalypse in Eta is implied to have resulted from a final war that unleashed some sort of grey goo.
In Infinite Worlds, the Patrol is trying to steal tech from neutral and buffer third world states, whose "crappy" technology is still far ahead of ours (China and the Hegemony are too tightly controlled, with any agents being asked to present ID almost immediately and ID being too hi-tech to fake). They also recruited an agent, a sentient combat robot who conscientiously objected and defected from the Hegemony, who suggests a robot uprising might have also caused the apocalypse.
EDIT: Hmm, might do a cover of this.
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In what sense? It isn't a utopia either? It's sort of normal. It's death rate is apparently the same as ours.
It's more colonialist, racist and sexist, and less democratic than our 60s. It's pros are no ww2 and higher tech. So there's room for interpretation I guess.
I consider dystopian places like Steel, or Lenin-2, where human civilization has come crashing down. Gernsback is about as racist or colonialist or sexist as our 1940s. It is not less democratic, since minorities were allowed to vote anyways.
Outside of terrible social mores, the setting doesn't seem to be any worse or better than other settings.
Merlin-1 has 2010s social mores but has stuff like Atomic Lichs running around, undead Josef Stalins being a warlord in the Caucuses, Argentina ruled by an immortal Eva Peron with a Nazi cabal of sorcerers, along with hostile sentient hive-mind penguin civilizations that were created in their 1950s. Are they dystopian?
It's less democratic due to technocracy being more influencial and the existence of the technocratic WSC. Merlin-1 contains dystopian societies, but other nations that are safe, magical and democratic are not dystopian.
Two of the Great Powers of Gernsback, on their equivalent of the League of Nations Security Council equivalent, sound pretty democratic to me.
Two parties in lockstep trading off power every election cycle isn't super democratic. But it's all open to interpretation. If you think the good on Gernsback outweighs the bad, you can have that perspective.
I don't think the good outweighs the bad. I just don't think it's particularly dystopian. Reich-5 sounds more dystopian.
Do you consider Centrum to be dystopian in nature?
There are degrees of unpleasantless before "literal nazi victory".
Again not as much as Reich-5, but yeah. As presented they're committing a campaign of cultural eradication and supplantation of Anglo culture on their own people and outright conquest against other universes, not to mention the undemocratic nature of their society.
I think all Gurps TL have at least some element, which should make us feel uncomfortable.
Sure, they do a good job about avoiding utopias, and which is better or worse is subjective.
I think its like this with most AH. We want to see this worlds. We don´t want to life there.
Because in order to have reasons for players to enjoy a place in an RPG, there needs to be reasons for why places can't be utopias. Because those are boring.