GURPS Infinite Worlds Covers

[Prometheus_2300]

Well... I am calling this as being the most controversial map so far created. I present to you... Centrum Beta, an echo of Centrum's timeline before the war.

Centrum's history is at times at odds with what would be plausible, and somewhere between OTL USA luck, and Drakas authorial fiat protection. However there are a few things known. It also doesn't help that 6 centuries of history is crammed into a few paragraphs.

One, the Anglo-French Union was the one uncontested superpower of the globe. Two, a larger Mongol threat forced the Anglo-French (aka Angevin Kingdom) to look elsewhere to expand, and innovate in terms of military doctrine to survive. Three, phenomenal tech progress caused likely by an earlier scientific Revolution. So as a result I came to these themes behind Centrum Beta

Anglo-French Empire (Or Angevin Empire) has the luck of the United States. This one is just based on history that the Angevins simply never faced a threat that they couldn't either outfox, or outmanuever or crush. In Spain they likely fomented dissent and assumed the Crown of Andalusia, pushing out the Muslims.

Mongol Invictus Apparently the Mongol Empire plowed straight through Central Europe and was on the borders of the Angevin Empire before they turned around. I'm thinking that unlike in OTL, Kublai Khan, and one of his relatives kept India afloat for a while longer than OTL. The Chinese Empire under the Ming/Yuan Dynasty, embarked on Zheng He adventures alongside military campaigns. India subdued Persia, and along side the Ayyubids were the chief empires of Islam. The Western Mongol Empire crumbled and was easy pickings for whoever fought them, allowing the AF Kingdom to become the AF Union with a set up similar to the Commonwealth of Nations of the 1920s, and an active monarchy.

No Gods, Only Man Religion is not mentioned in the Centrum section except as being just tradition. Either some form of Atheism starts in the 13th century, likely around a center of learning like Urbino or Paris. One thought I had was that the Angevins and the Vatican had an investiture crisis, and in the end the Angevins just siezed the churches (somehow). Combined with an early scientific revolution this would get Centrum to hit the industrial age in the 15th century rather than the 19th. Given how contentious Italy was in OTL, I think the crisis had more to do with proto-capitalist Angevin companies, fighting Venice and Genoa, and the Vatican getting involved because of their prodding. The AF Kingdom wasn't going to let religion be brought into a trade war.

TerraNova genocide? While it would go against what modern Centrum stands for, the Angevins weren't exactly sad or even try to stop that the Native American populations were being slaughtered by disease. In fact since they industrialized at around the same time as American contact I suspect, they even developed the IFV as a means of crossing the great plains. This also illustrates that Centrum has had a low population for a very long time (Mongol Success, North American epidemics, Black Death). With the Angevin Empire being the most advanced power, they had a settler rush to get people out of Europe, and practice "freelance Imperialism" in the "Western Continents" or assimilation zones in Africa.

Asiatic Enemies As much I am sure the AFU would like to believe they were in command of the world in 1902, they probably weren't totally. What little details exist show that bioweapons were unleashed in response to China and India, and that "a few dozen" AFU cities were hit with nukes. I think what happened is this... The Angevins were a century or more ahead of everyone in tech, they had nearly 5 continents under their control, and actively assimilating large populations or engaging in "freelance imperialism". Thanks to freelance Imperialism that the AF Union followed, corporations and companies were the tip of the AF spear so to speak, and operated with impunity where they could. The Opium Wars or event like those happen all the time, and unless the nation and the AF Union work out a commerce accord, those wars continue to happen, until either the nation breaks or the corporations just assimilate until it becomes a part of the Union proper.

China under Kublai Khan, and Ming Imperial policy, sees China becomes the leading power besides the AF Union. While the AF Union was expanding in the Americas, China got Indonesia and East Africa. Unfortunately China just wasn't advanced enough. How would ironclads fight battleships? How would Battleships fight submersibles? How would Carrier groups stop a nuke in Beijing? The crisis that likely caused the 1902 crisis was a terrorist strike backed by China, utterly furious over AF companies running roughshod over their territory and people. They stole some nukes from an AF convoy, negotiated with Poland for rocket design, slip a few nukes in trading ships leaving Calcutta for AF ports, ICBM the rest...

Corner an enemy and they will do something desperate. Nuclear Weapons were used by the Angevins to make artificial Saharan lakes and other projects, someone stole them. China and India conspired and used one of the few vectors that the Anglo-French wouldn't see coming... Space. My theory is that since the Anglo-French were just so far ahead tech wise, had the Americas, Europe and most of Africa resources, with a low population, they didn't see much point in going to space. Easier to just lay a few more dozen transatlantic cables, what could a satellite do that a high altitude plane couldn't? A missile strike by Chinese and Indian ICBMs were completely unexpected. Got the AF traders to run from Chinese spheres of influence, they didn't think they had nukes much less willing to use them in war. The immediate aftermath was that shattering London and 41 other metropoles broke the Anglo-French Union, into a thousand squabbling pieces. Bioweapons were unleashed by some noble in Italy, that wound up mutating and killing billions. The only reason that Australia survived was that their navy got pulled away early, and never returned. That's how the "Centrum Military Conglomerate" becomes "Centrum"

Overall, the Anglo-French Union were the only power on the globe at least from their view, the Celestial Kingdom, Chaghatai and others were all non-voting members in the Union, before 1902 the Union had UN levels of membership, with a level of integration among voting members far exceeding the EU. Although the AFU had a military, it's private military groups made up a good portion of the armed forces on the planet. The population of the planet is hovering just over 1.2 billion people, with the AFU being 2nd. This is why Centrum is so weirded out by Homeline, they are bizarrely over-populated in their view. Whereas by Homeline standards Centrum Beta is underpopulated for 1895, but even more so when you realize they are TL7 not TL5 like 1895 Homeline.

 

[rvbomally]

Anyone going to try Gernsback? That's a fun worldline!

Eventually.

Anyway, back to Dixie, because I need to finish it. Here's Dixie-5. The source material tells us that this diverged with Early's Raid, led to British involvement in the Civil War on the Confederacy's behalf (after emancipation, oddly enough), has transformed the CSA into an impoverished British puppet and the United States into a "fanatical garrison state" between British Canada and the CSA. The Soviet Union (which I renamed to make it clear that this isn't the same as ours) also exists, and is aligned with the Union. This one brings up interesting possibilities. I think it's clear that the British are still the top dogs, and the primary Cold War opposition to the Soviets. They likely forced emancipation on the Confederacy as a condition for intervention, and later extorted more from the Confederates, leading to them becoming a puppet. Perhaps the British, not trusting the Confederates to handle their black population, supported a variant of the Liberia plan and settled freed American slaves in West Africa? This alt-Liberia would certainly be interesting, and that's what I've chosen to do here: Liberia is an independent British ally that is made up primarily of freed Confederate slaves...who promptly enslaved the locals using what they learned from the Confederates, before having this banned by the British in the 1920s.

As for the Union, I decided not to make them communist just because they're aligned with the Soviets. I see this relationship being one of convenience, but I can imagine the Union being leftier than the OTL United States as a way of distinguishing itself from the British. It's still highly nationalistic and "anti-imperialist," which just means it hates the British and their allies. The same can be said for the Chinese, which had a more effective Boxer Rebellion and managed to create a strongly anti-Western republic, and the Union of India, which is the product of a major Indian revolt that placed an initially pro-British government that later turned anti-British thanks to radial nationalists being voted in during the first elections. That was a major blow to British foreign relations and has informed their later colonial policy, which is crackdowns. The Soviets themselves are under a "National Bolshevik" ideology, which is basically the lovechild of Nazism and Stalinism. Nice folks, the Soviets.

What of the rest of the world? I'm going to diverge from my usual style and go out on a limb here: there have been no world wars, and the closest we get are some regional war in the Balkans and foreign intervention during the Russian Civil War. This explains continued British dominance to an extent: it never had to spend the blood and treasure ours did. Much of Europe is relatively stable, with France and the German Empire in Britain's camp. Austria may have collapsed, but I can see a coalition of European powers putting that Humpty Dumpty back together again (to a degree). I've gone for a weird mix of pre-WWI, pre-WWII and Cold War themes, with the world firmly divided between communism and capitalism, but with the capitalist side being the great powers of Europe, not the United States. This matches the tech description, which evidently has the Entente sphere flying around in jet aircraft, while the Soviets are stuck in the Edwardian era. The United States, however, is highly advanced, with smartguns, blinding lasers, and unmanned combat vehicles. Perhaps some of these technological wonders are being exported to the Soviets and keep the balance of power in check. I suspect both sides have nukes.

 

[rvbomally]

Finally finishing up the Dixies. Dixie-6 has the Confederacy winning early, but Texas and California secede later and compete for the Indian West. That's all we really know. I've chosen to depict the American conflict as separate from other conflicts, with alliances shifting between the four states constantly. The UK has minimal involvement, content to keep the Americans divided. I've decided to do a German-screw to contrast with the German-wank of Dixie-1 and Dixie-5. Here, Germany manages to alienate Austria and France during its formation, but the French and Austrians unite afterward against the German threat. The British join up later, and thanks to Wilhelm II's incompetent chancellors post-Bismarck, manage to anger Russia later. The German War in the 1890s destroyed the German Empire, allowing France and Austria to ascend relatively. Of course, the continent has been divided between East and West afterward, as the reactionary Austrians and Russians do not like the liberal British and French. Also, I chose to add a strong Brazil and Argentina facing off in South America.

 

[Prometheus_2300]

Well here is Britannica-1, and oddly the only 21st century Britannica as well. From Steve Jackson's description, the Colonies fractured after independence which allowed the British Empire to simply dominate in North America, and effectively everywhere else. They defeated Napoleon, won in Crimea, Fought Germany twice, and have been the world's superpower since the 1850s as far as I can tell. I was interested in Britannica-1 because it is the only post-colonial Britannica in the lot. Unlike my previous maps I am just going to write a paragraph about each region.

In North America, the British reign supreme. The Dominion of North America stretches from the sleepy fishing town of La Paz all the way to the Newfoundland coast. Following the "Claims War of 1785" the UK took advantage of the former colonies infighting and simply annexed the region that was the Northwest Expanse. From the 1790s to 1810s there were many attempts to grab more of North America but it was only after Napoleon's defeat that the Louisiana Cession saw the territory added to the empire. Texas is theoretically an independent nation as a protectorate but a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. California was sold to the UK to pay off a series of debts accrued by Mexico. The "Seaboard Colonies" are a series of nations well known as a collection of tax havens, lax regulation or radicalism. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is actually a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and regarded as the most normal of the former colonies. New York has emerged as a financial center and tax haven, it's a question how much wealth bound for Inland Revenue is in some house in the Hamptons. The United Federation of North America encompasses New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, and their 1784 Constitution holds the record for the longest in force in the world. The Virginian Commonwealth has in recent years (since the collapse of the agriculture market in the 1920s) as a tourist stop, the derbies in the Western section of the state attract even royal audiences. The old "Antebellum" charm of Arlington captures worldwide audiences following a writers series of alternate history novels about "The Federal Republic of Columbia". The Kingdom of Carolina is an anomaly as it's reverted to a monarchy following a declaration of the Governor in the 1860s. They hold the ignoble distinction of holding onto slavery until the 1910s. The Colony of New Lindisfarne, established in 1850 features the autonomous zone of the Seminoles, but a tropical destination for many in the Bahamas. Mexico has had a very troubled history, as it was a French puppet for 40 years in the 19th century.

South America followed much of OTL's history except that Bolivar was able to hold together the Latin American countries, at least some of them.... Well only Colombia and Venezuela. British interests were only attracted to the continent when in 1964 Gran Colombia fell to Bolshevist guerrillas, backed by Colombian farmers. Besides a minor war with Argentina in 1979, the UK has had little interest in South America.

Africa, was sliced apart by both France and the UK, and is still home to several European Colonies. However where the French have had nothing but disaster, the British have had success. The East African Federation, is to varying degrees a neo-colonial state, as British commercial interests dominate the region, but large scale infrastructure, education and investment in local business firms has made the region developed, and an important member of the Commonwealth. However one could say the British were lucky as Congo Bolshevist guerrillas attempted to disrupt the Federation but only really galvanized the Federation's population against communism. The Dominion of South Africa, never fell under the sway of the National Party (outside of a 3 year stint in the 1910s). There are still racial problems but following Acts of Parliament in 1897 the "Diamond Act" (also known as Rhodes pissed off the Colonial Office Act) which saw the creation of the modern Dominon of South Africa and decades of careful management, tensions are not as high. The Congolese Bolshevist Union is a remnant of the old Bolshevist War, but is emblematic of the problems of Bolshevism: corruption, mismanagement, believes its own propaganda and dictatorial.

The Middle East is home to several Muslim kingdoms, and backed by British Arms and the occasional military base. There is a reason the British Admiralty has a carrier group in the Arabian Gulf, and a mistrust of BP (responsible for the Mossadegh debacle of 1959, and the criminal mismanagement of the Colony of Lagos & Ibadan). India was at one point a Dominion but during the war with the Soviet Union (1958-1963), the subcontinent fell out of British hands. A special conference in 1961 quickly set the borders that currently exist, and it's a miracle war hasn't broken out yet.

East Asia is one area where outside of the Hong Kong, the Foreign Office has little to no influence. The Republic of China, still despises the terms that Eden forced them to sign in 1948 for arms (which gave a 50 year extension on Hong Kong), and the United Kingdom's lack of any meaningful support against the Bolshevists on the Asian front (1958-1963). The Empire of Japan is even less receptive to the British, as a minor war in the 1940s led to a national disgrace for Japan, and continued British domination of Oil prices in the world. Oddly Japan at the Hiroshima Nuclear Institute is developing new types of nuclear power generation and Energy Storage. However Japan's Empire is still very much trapped in the 1940s, and no nation is willing to challenge their current territories, save China. Korea was the site of a horribly long proxy war between Japan and China in the 1960s, which resulted in Japan losing it's colony and only ingress to the Asian mainland.

Europe, is still the home of the Colonial Powers. France has been a somewhat ally of Britain, and supported Greek Independence when Constantinople fell. Germany retains Danzig and Silesia, although they lost Konigsberg to the Soviets in the Post War conference of 1941. The most recent news in Europe is the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, and the establishment of the capitalist Russian Republic. A new age of British Dominance is upon the world. With an absolutely insane level of stable colonies, a navy that keeps the seas safe (save the North Pacific), and above and beyond the largest economy on the planet, Pax Brittanica is upon this world, soon a British Cosmonaut will land upon Mars.

However oddly Infinity's probes have not found any Centrum operatives, and it took Infinity to figure out why. Buried in an academic database at Cambridge is a scientific journal article, that is the theoretical basis for parachronics. Infinity and Centrum both have no idea if Britannica-1 has or has not developed parachronics at all.

Yeah, although Britannica-1 is a Brit-wank, it does have its dark spots. Imperial Japan still exists, and racial struggles are still very much present in Africa and India. Europe's military Alliance is failing, because many European nations see the threat is the UK more than any other. The Commonwealth of Nations, and the Imperial Parliament is dysfunctional at the best of times. It may be Pax Britannica... but if OTL is anything to go by the 2000s are not going to be kind to Britain. In the end, it's a post-colonial Brit-wank, where you can find the romantic angles if you look, but there is a bit of darkness that would the extrapolation of some British Colonial policy even if it did function perfectly.

 

[rvbomally]

Continuing down the dystopian wing of GURPS: Infinite Worlds, here's Lenin-1. It's fairly detailed in Infinite Worlds, so I won't go into too much detail here, but the PoD is basically Wallace being left on FDR's ticket, and him becoming president after FDR kicks the bucket. Wallace proceeds to then let the Soviets take pretty much all of Europe. And Japan. The premise is that there was no Cold War, because Wallace basically handed Stalin the entire planet on a silver platter. I don't really buy that, but hey, I don't buy Hitler managing to take over the world, either, and I've covered that.

What I like about Lenin-1 is that the author did not present the communist world as a united front. All of that talk of socialist brotherhood goes out the door when geopolitics gets involved. Naturally, China and the Soviet Union hate each other, but Lenin-1 also throws in some twists by having an independent India, which declared its independence from both blocs after it detonated its first nuclear weapon. I've interpreted that as India taking control of parts of the OTL Non-Aligned Movement, but with a communist twist. Then, there's the much less plausible Republic of Great Britain, which became a socialist republic in 1974. SJG doesn't detail how that happened, but I'm guessing it was by a relatively bloodless revolution. What I am disappointed by is the continued existence of the United States as a capitalist power. Come on, guys, if you're gonna give the commies this much, give them the entire world! At any rate, I've been a bit more generous to the Americans than what was perhaps implied in the Lenin-1 entry, as I've given them some portions of the world on their side. I just can't see this rolling over attitude lasting the entire length of the OTL Cold War, particularly as interventions against communists in Cuba and Guatemala are mentioned.

 

[Keperry]

Cross-posting from the Map Thread at rvbomally's suggestion, here's the Siva-5 world from the Lost Worlds supplement. The premise is an Indian-dominated world and the PoD is the Han Empire accidentally contacting the Indo-Greek Bactrian kingdom in 138 BC, leading to a Chinese-Bactrian alliance and by extension the preservation and flourishing of Indo-Greek culture (while at the same time redirecting all the steppe nomads away from Central Asia and into Europe). Europe and eventually China languish but the Indian nations (plus Japan) thrive and extend their reach across the world both politically and culturally. In the 18th century the militant populist Bhaktiya sect of Hinduism arises in Indonesia and a Bhaktiyan state based in Bali tries and fails to conquer the whole Indian Ocean, but the egalitarian ideas they spread plus the upheaval of the war spark 19th century revolutions, first in northern India for independence from the Kushan Empire and then in the Kushan Empire itself, establishing the democracy of Taxila in the former and the oligarchic Kushan Consortium in the latter. Upheaval throughout the 1800s culminates in another Balinese war at the end of the century, with Taxila leading the successful charge against Bali and subsequently riding a postwar boom to become the world's premier power, sparking ideological conflict across the world...

All that broad outline is in the book, most of the details apart from the major powers are mine; please forgive my terrible, terrible attempts at Indian-sounding names. The book says that this world has advanced biotech but doesn't go into any further detail; apart from that the tech level is basically equivalent to the same time (1947) in OTL.

 

[rvbomally]

I'm finally back! Here's Lenin-2A. What's that? Yes, this isn't the actual Lenin-2 in GURPS Infinite Worlds. Rather, it is my own offshoot[1], where the Autumn Wars do not happen, and the world "happily" marches along to eventual environmental disaster. Hey, rising sea levels are easier to deal with without nuclear war to top it off. Why did I make this decision? Because frankly, I find the pre-apocalypse Lenin-2 more interesting than the post-apocalypse variant[2]. This approach also requires me to make up less crap, since all Infinite Worlds tells us is that the Chinese remnants along the coast are doing the best. I may make an actual Lenin-2, post-apocalypse and all, but that is low on my priority list. It's more likely that someone would make a Lenin-2 based on this map,[3] which is more or less unchanged from what I picture Lenin-2's 2000 is like. Well, except for the fucked up climate, but the nuclear war screws that up even more in Lenin-2 proper.

On to the map itself. The USSA is fairly straightforward: Christian communists. So, basically Stalin meets Jack Chick, going by the TL's dystopian theme. The source material mentions the Christian Communist Congressional Party[4], and I've extrapolated that to an entire American Christian socialist alliance. In Europe, we have a conflict between Mitteleuropa and the Paris-Leningrad Pact. Yep, it's the old Central Powers-Entente rivalry, only this time with more communists! International brotherhood of socialists my ass. SJG agrees, mentioning that during the Autumn Wars, the reds spent just as much effort fighting each other as they did fighting the capitalist Chinese. China is definitely the richest country, its "booming economy, which as always relied very little on overseas trade," remaining strong even as the British and Japanese fell during the Summer Wars of the 1950s. China has a considerable military force, including a strong navy that can challenge the Western barbarians. They can even back the French government-in-exile in Madagascar, something I made up to demonstrate Chinese power and to keep the entire world from being painted red. As an aside, I picture the Russian Soviet here being far more centralized and Russian in identity than the old USSR. Too bad for Borat and his pals, they get their culture destroyed on top of being used as slave labor for the Soviets' agricultural and space programs, getting meager rations, not getting their families sent to a Siberian gulag, and lungs filled with toxic and radioactive dust for the trouble. Welcome to the worker's paradise, comrade.

One of the most readily apparent traits of this world is the weird basemap. Yeah, I raised the sea levels, added Atlantropa, and screwed with the Great Lakes[5]. SJG describes Lenin-2's governments (except China, funnily enough) screwing over the environment much as the Homeline USSR did. Since these communist governments have control of most of the world, they ended up screwing the entire world. So, worse global warming, in addition to really dumb projects like draining the Great Lakes and Atlantropa. The Mediterranean is quickly drying up, replacing fishing areas with toxic dust, and the sea itself is clogged full of pollutants. The Sahara is expanding, despite that new sea in Chad. It's a doomed world, even without the specter of nuclear war.

[1] Hey, SJG did it with Centrum Beta. Two can play at that game.
[2] I have a similar opinion on Fallout. If Bethesda gives us a Fallout spinoff RTS set during the Resource Wars, I can die a happy man.
[3] Hint hint.
[4] Subtle, SJG.
[5] Well, I didn't. The sea level rise is from @Zauberfloete, and the Great Lakes from @Kaiser K.

 

[rvbomally]

Here's Lenin-3. I actually had this one finished for years, and only recently upgraded the map to match my modern style and to add the Moon colonies. It's an interesting if rather implausible timeline, where Mussolini stays socialist and then manages to become leader of Italy anyway. I suspect the PoD is that Mussolini does not oppose the Italian socialists' desire to maintain neutrality, and does not fight in WWI. He then leads the Italian socialists to victory in revolution in the 1920s, possibly supported by the Soviets. SJG does say that he intervenes on behalf of the Catalan workers in the Spanish Civil War and does not help the Soviets during WWII, so if they did support him, then he's not very grateful. I have Spain coming under the control of a syndicalist "Third Republic" that stays neutral along with Italy. Mexico being socialist was SJG's idea; not really sure what's going on there. I picture the Soviets being less successful during WWII, not entering the German Reich proper, while the Western Allies manage to take it, restore the Weimar Republic (albeit under a much-improve constitution), and break off bits of Germany so they never become powerful enough to start another war. SJG mentions the US-UK alliance becoming more technocratic with its "Manhattan Initiatives;" beyond expanding the US-UK alliance, I didn't really do much with that. No Atlantropa or stupid shit like that. I added Russia and India into the Grand Alliance, and I suspect both of them are doing better than their OTL counterparts. Same with China and Brazil, who are leading their "middle of the road" Third World Order. After the collapse of the USSR, there isn't much of a Cold War left, but to say that Italy and the West are buddies would be inaccurate.

 

[PachPachis]

Nice map, rvbomally! I've actually made one of my own I'd like to contribute.
Iiiit’s Gernsback, everyone’s favorite superscience colonial lovefest (Local year 2007)! Note that the descriptions may come off as more negative than how the setting was portrayed in the sourcebook. I don’t care how flying my car is, racism is racism.

The PoD is Nikolai Tesla marrying Anne Morgan, the daughter of J.P. Morgan, in 1893, meaning his inventions get all the funding they need. By 1902, Tesla had prototyped a global wireless radio system. During world war 1, he even devised a way to transmit electricity wirelessly. These new technologies kept Wiemar Germany just stable enough to keep Hitler out of power, and the League of Nations became gradually less completely f*cking useless. Tesla founded an important League regulatory body known as the World Science Council. The League stood up to both Japan and Italy, staving them away from Ethiopia and China, respectively. France fell under a socialist government, but one willing to play ball with the rest of the Great Powers.

Only Stalin’s Comintern stood outside the friendly, smothering umbrella of the League by 1940. As relations worsened, Stalin began a Soviet nuclear program. But in 1951, a scientist leaked this information to the League, and the WSC demanded the USSR stand down. Moscow refused, and so began this timeline’s deadliest conflict, the Soviet War. The Western Allies fought the Soviets in Europe, while Japan swept into CPC-controlled north China. In 1953, as the atom bombs neared completion, the Ukraine rose in revolt against the Soviet Union, welcoming in League armies. In a rage, Stalin ordered the nuking of Kiev. His scientists were horrified he would nuke his own country, and the “Scientists’ Coup” caused pitched fighting in Moscow itself. Stalin would die in that confused battle, and the Soviet War drew to a close.

Afterwards, the League strengthened its position and Japan hung on to its gains in China, while Russia was divided up. Colonialism was now here to stay. The German Reich eventually drew up a better constitution and became the German Republic, second only to the United States and Britain in world affairs. The sourcebook says Italy is fascist, but I imagine the regime's kept its head down in order to survive after the Ethiopia scare.

Revolts are frequent in the middle east and India, and it’s no wonder. Without experiencing the horrors of Nazism, this world still buys into a great deal of psudoscientifc crap about the inferiority of this and that race, or womens’ place in the home. Basically, living here as a non-white male would suck donkey balls, if it weren’t for all the cool tech dulling the pain somewhat. Even a lower-class Indian laborer’s car drives itself, after all.

 

[rvbomally]

This was a difficult one to make, but ultimately an enjoyable one. This is GURPS Terradyne. You might be wondering why this is in the middle of my Lenins series, and that's because this world is actually Lenin-4. Kinda. It's technically Lenin-4's future. SJG made Terradyne in the 1990s (evidenced by this retroactively hilarious tidbit, and the Soviet Union being "temporarily embarrassed"), and by the time Infinite Worlds came out, it showed its age. SJG did something I liked, which was turn the world into an alternate history. Lenin-4 is the result, only Lenin-4 is in the 2020s. I will make that one, but I wanted to make GURPS Terradyne first because it's far more interesting. I love this setting because of the 1990s sensibilities. China is on the rise, but Japan is also a great power. The Soviets are still around.

Terradyne is a hard science fiction setting, which features a conflict between the United Peoples of Earth (a UN replacement) and Terradyne, a megacorporation turned de facto interplanetary empire. The United Peoples of Earth are much more powerful than the UN, and work more similarly to the United States, but national governments still have a lot of control over local issues and even dissent over the Terradyne issue. I have indicated this on my key, which has China being on the most anti-Terradyne end, and the Japanese on the most pro-Terradyne end.

Now, for the changes and guesses I made. I mostly changed around borders in Africa and the Middle East, because SJG unhelpfully provided a map of OTL 1990 (complete with East Germany) with some sea level rise. I decided to use @Zauberfloete's 30 meter sea level rise map rather than fiddling around with what SJG provided, since that's a more realistic map, but I did screw around with the Netherlands because SJG makes the point that the Dutch kept the seas out. I kept Israel out of the UPOE as a conjecture based on their history with the 2027 bombing. I also conjectured that this eventually led to a Syrian civil war and a second Iran-Iraq War[1], which gave me an excuse to mess around with the borders there. The sourcebook also mentions regional wars in Eastern Africa, Central Asia, Central America and the Middle East, so it's not like I'm violating some enforced "no more war in the future" thing. A lot of the Martian settlements are conjecture, save for Uruk and Lowell. As are the continued existence of Tranquility Station and Zhukov Base, and that Japanese base. I made Brazil one of the more powerful Earth-based powers, creating a Lusophone/Hispanophone alliance system around them. I kept Yugoslavia together, and kept Namibia in South Africa, which is more to indicate it's an alternate history than it is to match the 1990s origin of the map. I also left some countries out of the UPOE, to indicate that this isn't some united humankind future.

[1] I thought this makes more sense from a 1990s perspective. More inter-Middle East conflicts, no 9/11, War on Terror, "Mission Accomplished," bombing weddings with drones and ISIS crap.

 

[rvbomally]

Lenin-4. This is the "prequel" to GURPS Terradyne (my cover here) that SJG added to Infinite Worlds, possibly to explain why the Soviet Union was still around there. Clever, I think. What did surprise me is that the current year was 2027, during the Golan Heights attack, and when both the UPOE and Terradyne were in their infancy. I'd think they'd set it in 2120, because that setting is much more interesting, and tell people to buy the Terradyne book. I guess that violated SJG's own rule about not having space settings in Infinite Worlds? I dunno, but it made me make two maps for the same timeline and this one's less interesting. Bleh.

The PoD is a worse 1970s recession forcing perestroika a decade early, and the US and USSR agreeing to cooperate to dominate Earth and space. It reminds me of Pournelle's CoDominium, actually. Unfortunately, we find out that the UPOE and Terradyne eclipse them, so I guess we don't get a Pournelle-verse. Or do we? I like to imagine that Infinity Patrol discovering Lenin-4 has altered its fate, and that Terradyne (Lenin-4 Beta?) is a chronoshifted timeline with no causal relationship with Lenin-4, akin to Centrum and Centrum Beta.

Other details. You'll notice the Moon bases. Yeah, Tranquility, the American base, was established in 2002. SJG assumed we'd be on the Moon in 2002, instead of dealing with terrorism. Optimistic folks, them. I added the Second Iran-Iraq War and other hints to the future of Terradyne. The North African Union is around, as is the UPOE, but the Golan Heights attack hasn't invalidated the UN yet, so they're still in their infancy. I decided to keep the Warsaw Pact around, but united Germany, because that is a sign of American-Soviet rapproachment if there ever was one. Of course, Germany becomes a great power again and threatens to pull the EC away from American and Soviet control. Whoops. Also, you may notice that China has a different color, but the same name. That's because the CCP is still in charge. They got thrown out sometime after 2027 in Terradyne, replaced with a socialist (democratic, I presume) government.

 

[rvbomally]

Here's Lenin-5, which is another rather boring one. The PoD is Bukharin, not Stalin, taking power, leading to a stronger Red Army that manages to throw back Operation Barbarossa, causing the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler in a coup. Modern Germany remains fascist and neutral, and the Sino-Soviet split is bad enough that Zhukov is considering rapproachment with the Americans. I don't really have much to say about this, since it is pretty straightforward. I decided to extend the parallelism that was evident in what SJG provides us. I assumed that the Pacific War still happened, since Mao is in charge, so Japan was defeated by the Americans and British. I kept Germany's sphere rather small, since I doubt the Western Allies would have tolerated them being supreme over the continent. I added an Israel that doesn't get involved in the Cold War, being backed by the Soviets and Americans, given the continued existence of an anti-Semitic German state and the bad PR that comes from opposing Israel in such an environment. I didn't want to get too crazy with things like still-fascist Japan or Italy, because I don't think that is what SJG was going for. I think they were going for "Cold War, but with a surviving fascist Germany," which I'm sure is a unique concept for them at the time, but is rather tired to people in the alternate history community now.

 

[rvbomally]

Another break from Lenin, which just has one last entry anyway. It's GURPS Cyberworld[1]. While this doesn't show up in Infinite Worlds, Infinite Worlds itself is explicit that all GURPS settings are in the Infinite Worlds. So, this counts.

It's a cyberpunk dystopia written in the 1990s, so it's weird. The United States is a dictatorship under the ProGov regime, China's CCP has been overthrown by the "Third Revolution" movement, and there's a Chilean-Argentine union. What I found most charming about Cyberworld is how poorly it has aged and has become a time capsule of sorts for 90s sensibilities. Germany has gone nationalist and is leading the nationalist bloc in United Europe. The Iberian Federation is leading the anti-nationalists and is challenging Germany for #1 in the UE. Canada breaks apart. The CIS becomes the replacement for the USSR, and is highly modern and globalist. The CAF is around because you have to have an ersatz-Soviet Union. Japan is a great power again (aligned with Russia), because of course Japan's decline is temporary. Fidel Castro died in 2002, and the Americans naturally responded by invading the place. Apartheid ended in a race war. Australia was wiped out by a possibly-artificial plague. A very unique timeline. Quite a few of the annotations are direct from the sourcebook, which I recommend to anybody interested in looking further on this.

[1] This is also the same geopolitical setup as GURPS CthulhuPunk. Distinct from CthulhuTech, which is published by another company.

 

[rvbomally]

Alright, here's Lenin-6, to finish the Lenins. In this world, Bakunin wins in the 1872 First International, and socialist anarchism remains dominant. By 1922, Bakuninite soviets have taken over, and are getting invaded by Britain, Japan, and are getting attacked by Marxist death squads led by Lenin, Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. That's all we know.

I was conservative in my interpretation of this one, and didn't do anything like add additional communist (or rather, socialist anarchist) states in random places. I stuck with keeping the premise front and center. Inspired a bit by Todyo1798's Blind Luck, I decided to give Germany a strong position on the continent. I also decided to avert WWI, replacing it instead with a string of different, more regional wars, the most notable being the Anglo-Ottoman War - over some nonsense in Egypt - and the Third Balkan War - a war between the German/Austrian alliance and Russia over Balkan nonsense, which didn't trigger the somewhat different alliance systems but did lead to the fall of the Austrian and Russian empires. I decided to split the loyalist Russians a bit, giving Alexei the British-backed piece, and Michael the German-backed piece. While the Germans haven't invaded Russia proper, keeping their troops in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and the territories they seized from Russia, they don't like the Bakuninites and weren't responsible for their rise. They just prefer to let their British and red rivals kill each other. Speaking of rivalry, the Great Game between Britain and Russia never ended, and the term has come to be used to refer to the Anglo-German rivalry. The British are concerned about German hegemony over the continent, and the French are in full revanchism mode, so Europe could find itself in another great power war. Fun stuff.

Also, I decided to go with the idea of a Meiji China that is on the rise with Japan, and will likely be its rival soon. Sorry, but I thought warlords were a bit overplayed in 1920s Chinas.