An alternate history “what if” written as if the creator of the tread and those reading it are from an ATL where event “X” unfolded differently from the way it did in OTL that poses the question, what if history had gone as it in fact did. For example, a “what if” from a time line where someone walked in on Lee Harvey Oswald as he took his 1st shot @ JFK, which hit as per OTL would be- DBWI: Oswald Gets Off A Second Shot And Kills JFK?

Thread participants are expected to act in-character, as if coming from the ATL world. Thus, there is alternate history not just in the events being described, but in the perspective and assumptions behind them and in the supposed comparisons to “real” history. The sense of the thread is revealing the ATL world by discussing how the A-ATL (that is, OTL) might look.

Constructive responses to a DBWI question are those that present and discuss consequences and developments to event “X” which are creative, yet reasonable, logical and plausible, but not necessarily accurate. Please note that it is considered bad form to predict OTL accurately. Likewise, forecasting extreme socio-economic, cultural and political shifts or improbable ramifications that cannot be reasonably expected to occur as a result of event “X” is also frowned upon.

In general, a DBWI discussion works best when … * it focuses on an event that did in fact occur in OTL; * it focuses on a specific and well known OTL event; * it contains a narrowly crafted “what if”; * those posting don't stray to far into the future after the POD of the WI; * people put some thought and creativity into their responses; * people keep their responses realistic and plausible.

The phrase “DBWI” is sometimes used in a wider way to mean any sort of role-playing, including “Future Blind What If” to mean role-playing in a future setting. A contemporary use is expressed in Redem's celebrated The Many Nations of North America, aka “How did you live the war?”

Much less commonly used is “Triple Blind What If” which has various definitions - one is e.g. TBWI: What if the South had won the Civil War (rather than being defeated in 1861?) to introduce two new layers of role-playing.

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy is very fond of DBWIs, but his DBWI threads have a strange tendency to attract inexperienced members who fail to understand the concept, making him storm off in a huff.

Straha was infamous for hijacking DBWIs, and turning every DBWI-ATL into some post-nuclear exchange dystopia. Such is generally considered bad form.

thecreeper was responsible for a number of DBWIs that have either (i) degenerated into Ameriwank, and/or (ii) involved n00bs selectively discarding the details established in previous posts.

Recently, people have seen DBWI used in other contexts and affixed it to a normal WI because they don't understand its meaning. ASBBWI has also appeared as a superfluous label for a WI in the ASB forum. MrP was last seen screaming and calling for his shotgun, only to break down in tears when Torqumada reminded him that Britons cannot have guns.

Codae coined the terms “DB Discussion” (e.g. DB Discussion: Was King Louis XXIV good, or bad?) and “DB Chat” (e.g. DB Chat: Your thoughts on the Canadian presidential elections) to denote ATL threads from the Chat and Discussion forums, respectively.

Types of What If - Types of ideas for alternate history scenarios.

AH.com's AH Writing Slang