Alternate Reality

Alternate history is:
40% 'Cold War Escalates'
40% 'Nazis Win'
15% 'Steampawnk'

I am running a game that involves players traveling to and working with parallel worlds. I want origional ideas for alternate realities, PREFERABLY 'realistic' ones (not what-if-the-Mayans-had-dinosaurs) and PREFRABLY taking place in the remaining 5% (a universe where the Axis win is basically obligatory).

Feel free to post your own ideas or ideas from works you've seen/read/played.

You might want to check out the alternatehistory.com forums and wiki. Lots of interesting points of divergence there, although "Rome never fell" ones are somewhat annoyingly common. Still, there are many that go with more novel concepts. My favorites are the agricultural timelines. Like Lands of Red and Gold, where a slight mutation in the native yams of the Murray River region led to Australian natives learning the concept of plant cultivation. By the time European explorers land in Australia it's filled with Iron Age civilizations, and that causes all sorts of butterflies. Economic influences from native Australian crops, cultural ones from their religion and philosophies, even a few plagues that spread because unlike in the Americas the larger population density allowed unique diseases to breed in the Australian environment. It's a neat concept.

One where Spain, Portugal and England are still empires where the sun never sets... Only they now literally own the world. Nowhere but Antarctica is not Spain, Portugal, or England. Ever since Australia ceased being a penal colony for England, the Three Forces have agreed to establish Antarctica as a worldwide penal colony. Also: currently, all three monarchs are bickering old ladies.

One where the Umayyad Caliphate managed to conquer all of Europe.

One where the Japan Boom of the 80's resulted in their being far and away the #1 world power.

One where some genius colombian kid who in our universe died an infant from a fever went on to be El Libertador, the greatest of generals, who united the whole continent of America under one flag.

One without the steam engine

One without gunpowder

One without agriculture

etc.

> Rome never fell
That should have been in the origional graph

I've always liked the idea of a hyper aggressive America.
>America conquers Canada in the War of 1812
>Expands west, outright annexes Mexico at the end of the Mexican American War (justified as balancing the slave and free states due to the unbalance caused by annexing Canada)
>Annexes Cuba outright at the end of the Spanish American war
>Invades Colombia for control of Panama to build the Panama canal instead of just sparking a civil war
>Joins WW1 in 1914, demands all former German colonies as part of the peace terms
>As the British Empire collapses the US begins to absorb important colonial possessions such as the Suez Canal
>As of the present America controls almost all of North America and has a large colonial empire, and outright annexes countries it defeats in wars (so after the first Gulf War the US would have invaded and outright annexed Iraq)

>CiV.1899.space_age_colonialism.png

Seriously, just pick up GURPS Infinite Worlds and roll yourself a setting. It takes about 30 seconds and you can have any given setting rolled out of it.

England manged to take the entirety of France before the birth of Jeanne d'Arc. The combined monarchy is one of the biggest players in Europe for centuries... and starts to go to shit in the centuries after when it butts heads with the HRE, the Imperial Crown of Aragon, Poland, and Kalmar's Empire. The breaking point of the dual monarchy was the war against Scotland and Aragon, surrounding the Kingdom and using the lingering resentment of continental nobles to break it apart.

England once again is a realm separate from the French, and it slowly goes to shit after the breakup. "France" doesn't exist as a unified realm, instead separated into the Kingdoms of Brittany, Aquitaine, Burgundy, and the Republic of Paris. The English attempt to start up a colonial Empire in the New World, but they're so far late into the game and so far behind the Scots, Scandanavians, and Iberians that they bankrupt their entire nation in the endeavor. The English "join" into a union with the Scots to save their nation from bankruptcy and the United Kingdom of Great Britain is born.

And then some Germans start shouting "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit!" really really loudly...

An-Lushan rebellion never takes place, China stay expansionist and never becomes regressively isolationist. They end up the dominant colonial power, with maybe Indonesia and India becoming major powers alongside it due to proximity.

Skip ahead to maybe the 1800s in a world where Europe took on Eastern culture instead of the other way around, and North America was colonized by East Asians and has East Asian names. Possibly farther ahead technologically as well because China never went backwards like it did.

Temujin dies in his youth, and the Mongol Empire and its successor states (i.e. Yuan China, the Golden Horde, the Timurids) did not occur. Persia remains strong, the Black Death fails to transmit beyond India and Tibet, India remains fragmented city states.

The White Russians win the Russian Civil War. Dominated by the disparate Generals and personalities that led the White Russians, Russia either becomes a federation of various bickering fiefdoms led by Warlords, or a Fascist stratocracy.

The Franks are routed at Tours, Europe converts and then develops its own brand of Islam, with Christianity becoming a minority religion.

-Xu Fu and his colonists land in what is the modern Northwest Coast of the United States the 2nd century BC, transmitting metallurgy and warring-states era Chinese culture into North America.

-A Yuan Dynasty warship bearing Mongols and their horses is blown off course and finds its way to America. The European colonists must deal with equestrian Native American tribes and Khanates that have spent centuries on horseback.

The Black Plague devastates Eurasia. In what would be the 1800s, the first Mesoamerican explorers land on a continent of crumbling relics and hunter-gatherer tribes.

Throwing out a few Harry Turtledove ones:
-Britain and France intervene in the Civil War in support of the Confederate States of America's independence. As a result, the US sides with the Central Powers and the CS with the entente in the first world war.
-Muhammad becomes a Christian saint, and Eurasia is polarized between Byzantium and Persia
-The Spanish Armada successfully lands in Great Britain and occupies it.

Nestorian Christianity takes off in China, more so than its historical acceptance and then fading when the Buddhists rally but instead has a Chinese Constantine and the Far East is a Syriac bastion.

Vinland survives until it is eventually isolated through a mix of the black death and the end of the Viking raiders. The skraelings of North America learn of metallurgy; by the arrival of the first English and French explorers, an Iroquois Confederacy clad in Iron dominates much of the each coast.

The babylonian captivity becomes permanent; the Roman Catholic Church becomes perpetually based in Avignon. Schisms and the Reformation happen earlier.

The caliphate of cordoba persists to the present day, as does a very Muslim spain.

Stop jerking yourself so hard ameri-fag.
> America beating Canada in 1812
OP specified only 'realistic' ideas.

>Only one of Charlemagne's grandsons survive a late recurrence of Justinian's Plague, keeping the Frankish Empire together long enough for laws to change and ensure it can't be hacked up by multiple heirs
>The Vikings never have a strong presence in Europe due to the more united and powerful Franks, instead focus more on Vinland, which eventually becomes separated and merges with the local tribes
>England is annexed into the Frankish Empire
>The Mongolian Invasion hits during the Hundred Years Civil War, managing to establish a permanent Germanic Khanate over time in central Europe
>Mongols install Nestorian Christianity in their courts, and other Christian Heresies resurface in the wake of the collapsing influence of the Catholic Church
>The Moors defeat the Reconquista and begin voyaging to the New World to find a way around the Ottoman's deathgrip on the spice trade
>The Yuan conquer Japan, but a large exodus (including the Imperial Court) flees by boat, eventually finding the coast of South America and establishing another Empire along the entire Pacific coast of the Americas
>A plague after first contact reduced native populations considerably, but recovers stronger than ever under Japanese Hegemony
>Vinland, Frankia (fighting for more land/wealth), the Ottomans, the Moors, the Japanese and their Mayan and Incan Allies basically tear the Americas apart for centuries
>In the Grim Darkness of the Alternate 18th Century, there is Only War...
Pic unrelated

America never joins WWII. The war drags on for way longer then it should and ends with treaties rather then outright surrender. Everywhere is shit except for the US where it's all out of a Norman Rockwell painting. On the other hand anti-US sentiments are critically high, especially since the US is looking to swoop in after the war to snag some colonies.

Britain carries out operation paperclip and snags some that Nazi super-science.

>Bolivarian Latin America Setting

My dick is now diamonds, por Dios!

>George III doesn't fuck it up with the colonies, they remain loyal until the 1920s when the colonies become the tail that starts wagging the proverbial dog economically.
>Colonial industry allows England to handily win WWI but post-war America spins off into own nation still nominally under the crown much the way Canada and Australia are.
>Because WWI doesn't put Europe down the meat grinder WWII doesn't happen, the Bolsheviks never overthrow the Czar, and because there's no Nazis to get mixed up with Imperial Japan never gets into a war with America and takes over China without the western world caring too much.
>France expands its relationship with Japan where it had been originally cut off by WWII, pulling a western nation into that conflict. A lot of SEA is balled up in french/japanese colonies.
>Mao Zedong becomes an anti-Japanese terrorist rather than leading a red revolution
>The middle east rises as a secular powerhouse based on oil
>Africa continues to be shit

tl;dr: If George didn't lose the colonies the world would probably still be filled with monarchies and would be a lot cooler.

Fuck all this research and history shit just do 'Nazis win WWII' like everyone else and stop being such a special snowflake.

>America beating Canada
How could we lose to a country that didn't exist?

>>Colonial industry allows England to handily win WWI
Unlikely. A massive part of the reason the US was so industrialized was because of its post-revolution expansion. Even ignoring the Louisiana purchase, the British effectively limited the colonial expansion to the 13 primary colonies after King Phillip's War in which the midwest was technically under British rule but colonial migration into the region was heavily limited. The US becoming a superpower under British control is like Australia or Canada being a superpower.

Americans will use literally any logic to 'prove' that win that war

"Russia" never exists, not as it would be recognized. The Russian lands are never organized into an Empire through Muscovy. The largest current Russian state is the Novgorod Republic, the current largest member of the Hanseatic Confederation. It is also seen as the northern and easternmost "border" of "Europe proper," counter to the Muslim Ruthens of the southern Volga and Tatars of Kazan.

The Ottoman Caliphate stay after WWI and is still just existing but well sickly?

Ataturk was never born then or something?

...

Such is too bleak a world worth mentioning. Ataturk was a boss.

Explain?

A universe where men's formal hats never went I of fashion, and also the Catholic church was stopped at the Baltics in its attempts to convert all of Europe.

Connection between those two points of divergence optional.

>Africa has deteriorated much in the 21st century. In most regions, it lives no better than it did 200 years ago. Africa's troubles started in the mid 1990's when a breakdown in South African racial reforms led to a bloody race war. By 1998, the white minority in South Africa was either fled (Mostly to South America) or dead. With the whites all gone, the black coalition that had purged the country immediately broke up into battling factions, and South Africa rapidly disintegrated into a mire of tiny, squabbling tribal states. When the TD plague came along, Africa was hit harder than any other part of the world, with fatality rates exceeding 75% in most areas. Over most of the continent civilization was effectively abandoned, as people reverted to tribal society. Technically national governments still exist, but in most places they're little more than a political fiction. Few metropolitan areas remain, but they are filthy, dangerous places ruled by whatever local tyrant can grab the reins of power.

If I had to guess, Boers won the Boer War and decolonization was somehow less of a clusterfuck.

I recognise those maps, you cyberpunk you.

Huh, here I thought I was the only one who read Cyberworld.

>reborn FRCA

this is my shit

FRCA?

So, what do you prefer in alternate histories?

>Nations suddenly becoming aggressively expansionist to fill up place on the maps
Or
>Nations suddenly breaking apart or never uniting so that minor provinces become their own countries

>the whole continent of America

It makes me irrationally angry when people don't differentiate between North and South America.

All the central american countries used to be one country called the Federal Republic of Central America, but it collapsed in 1839.

>especially since the US is looking to swoop in after the war to snag some colonies.

I dunno man, that goes far and away against literally everything the US has ever done politically outside of the North American Continent. While the US has gotten involved in many nations, barring the Spanish-American War (and even that's debatable) the US has never been interested in colonial possessions, and has multiple times outright rejected the concept of them (as it reeked of European colonialism, which they themselves were once victims of). American occupations and interventions have always had a "pull out" objective - they were never planning on permanently staying except to MAYBE establish a safe harbor for warships to refuel. Places like Guam, Samoa, and Puerto Rico were simply territories that just never really left.

The Philippines were kind of the exception that proves this rule, and even then what to do with the Philippines was always extremely contentious and the war was very unpopular at home.

Just my two cents.

>Texas is located in "South Central"
>Coahuila is located in "New Tejas"

That is just poor planning.

I can see the CSA fucking around in Africa though.

Also Brazil getting into the colonization game by snatching up Angola.

>I can see the CSA fucking around in Africa though.

Actually, given what we know of the CSA and their political ideals, as well as the culture that permeated the Confederate States at the time of the Civil War, that's surprisingly unlikely.

The CSA, contrary to popular belief, understood that the concept of slavery (as it existed at that time) had an expiration date. It was becoming too difficult (though not impossible) to "justify" morally, and it was beginning to become unprofitable due to the expansion of harvesting technology and processing methods. The problem was, though, that they didn't have a solution that kept white, wealthy landowners in power and still subjugated black Americans to that demographic, and preserved the Southern Aristocracy in the process (Hence why they rebelled, for fear that Northern interests would accelerate the breakup of slavery and therefore threaten their way of life before they could "get to the life boat" so to speak).

The CSA Constitution, while legitimizing explicitly the concept of slavery in their system, outright restricts the purchase of slaves from non-Confederate territories (so no African or Caribbean slaves, just home-grown ones). Even if they kept up with slavery, they wouldn't be interested in Africa because they don't need Africans anymore, and, as a predominantly agrarian economy, wouldn't have much to trade with them in exchange for what they'd want. They'd be much more likely to do business with industrialized nations, trading their cotton and food produce in exchange for manufactured goods that most African nations wouldn't be able to produce at an exportable level.

So, oddly enough, they'd probably want nothing to do with Africa, as they'd have little if anything to offer them.

I didn't mean in a slavery kind of way, but the traditional "raw resources to fuel domestic industry/sometimes settle colonists there" flavor of african colonialism.

I mean hell post ACW one of the biggest pro equality voices was Robert E Lee.
And many of the educated in the South indeed knew that slavery had an expiration date, an it was coming.

it makes me irrationally angry when people call the USA "America" but you don't see me complaining do you

Such as if they actually invaded lower Quebec than trying to get around and through the great lakes. Where is your Canada now, fucker?

The big problem is that the South has little industry to make use of the natural resources, and even less incentive to send colonists overseas. They'd be better off trying to buy Caribbean islands from European powers or annexing Hati or something. They'd be slow to develop industry, slower than any European power at the time, because they can make so much more through agricultural work, so even if they wanted to join in on the big African clusterfuck they'd be very, very late to the game.

The Kingdom of Vinland exists as an actual country, mostly consisting of Newfoundland, eastern Quebec, and Greenland.

This only works if for one reason or another, America is at the brink of collapse at the "now" time.

He wanted an explanation of the Africa in the map, not modern Africa.

Angrier or less angry than "the whole continent of Eurasia"?

>dat map

D E N M A R K S T R O N K
E
N
M
A
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S
T
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You mean Afroeurasia?

>This entire thread
Either bunch of overdone cliches or just history wank

Please give a good one, then.

At home, where I live, and don't fly the American flag

This is a dope idea OP can get behind.
Thanks m8

Veeky Forums got some alternate realities/maps with some explanations on how they happen you can check out.

Pic is a kek.

Different user already gave a perfect solution here: That generator is really good, smothly creating words that aren't wankfest nor boring cliches. And most importantly - doing so in mass-production quantities

Ugh, worlds. Fuck you, auto-correct

I thought you didn't want boring cliches or wankfests, why are you recommending them in high dosage?

Could slavery have adapted?
Early steam and manufacturing requires a lot of grunt work, that doesn't need education or anything, could slaves transition from "mostly pickers" to mill-workers and engine-stokers?

The british mill system was enormously profitable, but I suppose moving towards having their own mills might risk pissing off britain who they used to sell to, but brits were looking elsewhere for cotton anyway. Or were mills mainly a northern thing, and if so why? I know a fair bit about british mills, less so american ones

I've seen a few things about military ventures a few decades pre-ACW, mainly Caribbean islands but also with Mexico considered (Lee turned down one offer to be leader of such an expedition), if those had gone ahead the Confederacy would at least have been bigger and likely richer (though it might have faced insurrections)

Okay hear me out:

What if the Dinosaurs...

Had Mayans?

Used them as slave labour to build their dinosaur pyramids.

The fuck one has to do with another, you dumb cunt? You are rolling a world from a scratch and analysing what comes from it. The hell random chance has to do with cliches, you moron?
This is what I've just rolled after digging out the rulebook for IE
>Change around 2400 BC
>Geopolitical change
>Current TL is very late TL6, meaning few days before WW1
>Dominant culture is Indic
>And as empire
>Organised as dictatorship

So we've got Assyrian Empire that never formed, but managed to raze to the ground most of the city-states it historically conquered. This fucked up Mesopotamia region big time and left everything west of it without stronger civs to copycat from in early period.
Meanwhile, you've got the standard history of everything east from Mesopotam. Since nobody rolled in (Alexander didn't happen) to help out Chandragupta Maurya, the conquest had to be done with own forces, pushing the whole region into constant war for much, much longer period, but in the same time slowing it down, so the consolidation of power was much greater over time. You end up with Ashoka's empire a century later, BUT twice as strong and without the classic issue of brahminst scheming behind his backs to remove Buddism from dominant spot. You end up with entire subcontinent under firm rule.
Since Buddhism never got real support, it barely spread, so it never get to China and never influenced it to RL extent, not to mention Korea and Japan.

Fast-forward till "present" and you have modern-day subcontinent that is an unified state for past two millenias, never really raided from outside (shitload of things never happend or happend much later in the west) that is world only super-power. Whatever you add to it, is your choice

Wank? Maybe. Intentional? Nope, just a bunch of rolls that I've fluffed out on a fly right here, right now.

That seems plausible enough

Sounds pretty rad

Slavery as it existed was doomed by industrialization and moral pressure. Even in the time leading up to the Confederates throwing their fit, it was looked as a "necessary evil" of sorts, even in the South.

Military ventures against the European Colonial Powers in the Caribbean is exceptionally laughable unless they have someone aiding them. At best the CSA could conquer Hati. Mexico is a gamble that the South shouldn't risk taking, especially after the shitshow that was the Republic of Sonora.

Oh they'd have people that would try. This abomination was already in the minds of some Confederates. But it would fail so terribly that you have a better chance of invading Russia in the damn winter while fighting France, Germany, AND the USA at the same time.

And you do not see how fucking awful that looks? Holy shit what.

Let's think about elements you can add to it:
Weaker Buddhism means entire SE Asia remained under strong influence of Hinduism, leaving the entire region much closer to India
You can easily play all the break-ups and reforming of the subcontinent, it doesn't really matter. Hell, maybe the current empire was created quite recently, that's why it's militaristic dictatorship now?
Nobody to colonise shitload of places, leaving them desolated, maybe even undiscovered
Since Islam has a small chance of happening in this setting, you can assume nobody ever tried to conquer and convert the subcontinent with fire and sword, so modern-day Pakistan is very firmly Indic and with much stronger ties to the same culture circles
Since Hellenism never happend, you have MUCH greater diversity in the Mediterraneans and near Middle East, as there were no real forces to homogenise different historical countries/empires
You can easily assume Europe is lagging behind about five centuries, because it started later, so it won't magically catch-up
Who knows, maybe few countries in Africa and Americas that were historically wiped out by Europeans or seriously hapered are still there and still quite potent?
Maybe Americas aren't even discovered at all?

>And you do not see how fucking awful that looks?
Oh, right, the roll didn't happen to be Eurocentric, that's so awful, right?

Get a grip, moron. You are creating alternative history with divergence point in fucking early Bronze Age.
And please enlighten us all what's so "fucking awful" about it. Especially since I can roll now 20 fucking different settings on a fly and then run wild with them instead of "inventing" something that will be always biased this way or another.
That's why random generators are better for this shit than any created world. Because they are random. Darwin rings you a bell? And his greatest impact on science, as in "things tend to happen just because" instead of predestination bullshit and other stuff like that.

Yes, that's the one I was thinking of - obviously the whole damn thing is such a pipe dream that you'd have to be as high as balls on old-style medicine to think you could get it all

But limited action - a few decades before the ACW - seems fairly feasible, if you limit it to the islands that are actively rebelling and Haiti.
A fair few spanish territories seems viable as well, given the weakling spain had become.
Mexico, at least all of it, probably would be too much though

Hell, even the Sonora Republic was popular in the US, even if the actual execution was laughable.


The one thing I don't particularly understand is why slavery is automatically considered doomed by industrialisation - early industry requires a lot of people doing shitty jobs (like I said, I know more about britbong industrialisation, and slavery wasn't really a thing on the mainland) - it's a thing I see repeated over and over (though quite often the planters preferring to sell cotton and sit on their wealth rather than spend it building is mentioned, which makes sense, even if it was dumb in hindsight), but I've never seen "industrialisation = no slavery" explained particularly well (annoyingly the bits of US history we did was post-ACW, as the war itself would have been too big a topic for the portion of the qualification allotted to the "america" unit)

LISTEN to this shit you're coming up with. Uber-balkanized Europe FIVE CENTURIES behind the rest of the world? New World not discovered -at all?- To say nothing of your underestimating the impact of a far, far more influential Egypt and what the Phonecians, the BIGGEST problem with all this is actually in the fact that you're neglecting South-East Asia entirely. If Hinduism is as strong and influential as you're making it out to be, the ocean routes of the silk road would reinforce the original Hindu connection that South-East Asia had with central Asia while DRASTICALLY increasing the importance of Egypt in those trade routes.

Egypt and whatever main civilization that springs up in Arabia would be in direct conflict with the region you're describing for several reasons, most importantly the control of trade. You roll that up and fail to see the bigger picture.

I'd also add his complete lack of understanding of Darwin, and the hilarious
>modern-day subcontinent that is an unified state for past two millenias [sic], never really raided from outside

Both of you keep arguing over this, I'm getting a lot of useful shit out of this and it all sounds cool as fuck.

>PoD in the damn bronze age
>Supersized Indian Dictatorship Empire pitted against Mega Egypt about to start a World War
>China lacks a connection to south Asia through Buddhism, diverges on its own path
Keep it up

Different user, but you are full of shit. My own roll:
>Point of divergence between 125-100 BC
>Divergence related with politics
>Currently mid-TL7, meaning 50s
>Western culture as dominant
>Multipolar world, with 8 (!!!) dominant western powers
>Oligarchy rule

Let's see... something tried and easy. Sulla played it harder, turning the republic into much more oligarchic in nature, but since senators were pleased, nobody complained. Rome managed to pull it trought for much longer or was just stronger internally.
Now you have offshots of original "Roman Republic" all over the world, controlling wast regions and playing the ball between themselves, but mostly kicking different "barbarians" around the planet.

Oh gee, it's another "Rome survived" world. Soooo boring... new roll!
>Point of divergence around 1600 BC
>Divergence related with high culture
>Currently very early TL6, so 1880s
>Chinese culture is dominant
>Again, multipolar, with 3 dominant Chinese powers
>Under representative democracy
This is piss-easy. Shang dynasty put emphasis on education from the start, so Chinese bureaucracy started roughtly one millenium earlier.
Vietnam, Korea and few other places were not only put under firm Chinese rule, but much faster than late Zhou dynasty.
In short, entire Chinese civilisation was running few centuries ahead with internal reforms leading to formation of the empire.
Now you have China proper, their African Rebel Offshot created after Not!Zheng He voyages and fully sinicised Japan. All of the three, since putting so great emphasis on meritocracy, are democratic societies, that might still have emperors, but they are figureheads similar to RL parliamentar monarchies.

Should I keep rolling?

>Khmer Empire owning Philipines and Malay Peninsula

Return Malay Clay
You are worst Mon


Anyways, my alt-history thing involves a a country called the Confederated Republics of the Rio Bravo, which, at it's height, is the otl states of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, both Baja Californias, pretty much all of the Caribbean islands, and south Florida. And maybe Arkansas but honestly fuck Arkansas

It's more of a Northern Mexico wank then a Texas wank, what with all the Spanish and race mixing and socialism

>Being so butthurt
Not the original user, but you are so fucking salty it's hilarious.
Why would ANYONE but Europeans bother with discovering Americas? There is entire fucking EMPTY Pacific Ocean between Asia and Americas. Going for Alaska, because it's close? Gee, that's what vikings did with their discovery of Labrador - a piece of frozen rock that was even worse than their homeland Norway.
And what trade you want to control, if the trade nodes are completely different you moron? Literally 2/3 of the world is different and you expect from it to have historical silk road, just because.
This is autism level that is beyond impossible

What's with all the really early Points of Divergence?

>Trade routes
With who you want to trade? Europe is balkanised shitfest of tribals in ancient times, Egypt is the "end line" of trade and Carthage or even Phoenicia never happend.
What ocean routes? Are you aware that nobody in Asia bothered to use sea routes before Portugese rolled in?
And so on and forth. This is hilarious how awfully you are hard-wired for RL outcome no matter the circumstances.

>Are you aware that nobody in Asia bothered to use sea routes before Portugese rolled in?
Why do you fill this imageboard with such lies? Someone is sounding fairly Eurocentric making claims like that.

It just a roll. The table gives you 4 stages: first one got range from 3400 BC to 1100 AD. The lower the very first roll, the sooner the divergence happend, as 2nd row is from 0 to 750 years added, 3rd is from 0 to 125 and 4th is from 0 to 20.
Meaning the first row, thus first dice, is the most important one.
But you can still easily roll a modern or semi-modern divergence if first two rolls be high, so your range will be between 1500 to 1800 AD

Chinese - land
Indians - short routes around the India itself
Malays - short routes around the islands
Sumatrians - short routes around the islands
And you (or the other user) are talking about GLOBAL routes. There is a huge difference in sailing from say Bengal to Banda Aceh and from Canton to London.

>Why would ANYONE but Europeans bother with discovering Americas?
You mean like the Polynesians? Fuck, what's to stop the Norse from setting up shop there eventually? If Europe is as balkanized as you claim then they'd easily be able to become one of the most dominant powers in the northern regions.

Ah, okay.

I just think that trying to gauge what might happen from really early divergence is a fool's errand, unless you want to specify certain things, and if you want that why roll?

My bad, poorly worded. By "no sea routes" I meant "no truly long-range sea routes". Mostly because of technical limitations. It was just easier to pull short-range trade rather than going the entire way yourself. Sure, more profit, but if you could be local trader and haul the goods twice per year for decent profit OR world-traveller that could pull a route once per 6-8 years, what's more profitable in terms of security?

Memphis to Shanghai. Egyptians are going to want that sweet, sweet Chinese silk.

>Sure, more profit, but if you could be local trader and haul the goods twice per year for decent profit OR world-traveller that could pull a route once per 6-8 years, what's more profitable in terms of security?
You would make a TERRIBLE DM.

>Guys no, don't go on this long quest full of adventure and mystery, stay at home and make stable money!

>Europe Fuck Yeah
Don't want to break it for you, but Norse DID land in America.
Nothing came from it. Ever.
To do such endevour you need to have a REASON to do so. They've sailed and discovered northern outskirts of modern-day Canada. Nothing interesting for agrarian civ.
Columbus was going to fucking Indian and everyone knew he's an idiot given existing data, but the dude was fucking stubborn, so they've finally handled him those three shitty ships to get rid of that annoying fucker. Almost no risk involved, minimal costs and if he finds something - neat bonus. Now think about it - you don't even assume there is something on the other side of this HUUUUGE sea. Why bother going there? Especially since you can just go south, where there is at least some land.

Seriously, I love all those idiots who can't comprehend discovery of Americas isn't something that just can randomly happen. You need a serious, solid reason why to go for such trek. And if you already know there is nothing but water for more than a month of sailing, then good luck convincing anyone without any promise of huge benefits.

The hell one has to do with another?
Plus nice to know you need to have travelling pack of adventures to play tabletop RPG.

The first five points are somewhat feasable.
But taking over the Britsih Empire would ruin Supermerica with endless colonial wars.

So... basically nothing changes? Because the Silk Road ends in Egypt, like it did IRL, but Egyptians can easily go to India and Indians can easily go to south China? Or you can just haul it via land.
In short - still nobody eager to discover anything new, because you don't have any reason to sail west.

But good point about Egyptians and silk, that could be interesting.

You don't understand human motives, you don't see the potential for an age of exploration. You're stagnant. You don't see the players taking the first boat they see and going "fuck yeah let's make some MAD MONEY selling shit in Egypt!"

>One without agriculture
That one is pretty simple. The last 15,000 years would just look exactly the same as the 2.5 million years that preceded it.

>You don't understand human motives
Oh the irony.

People didn't started sailing around the world for the kick of it. It was all about hard cash profit from trade, you idiot.
And if players want to pull such trek, who am I to stop them? But that's players. Not the world around them. If you assume the entire world circles around players and their action, then you sir are a god-awful GM.

To be fair, everyone, even Columbus, knew what was on the other side of the world (he just thought it was closer), they just thought it was uninterupted ocean between them.
If it had been nothing but ocean you could make a case for it being pretty profitable - you make a big enough ship for the journey and you're not getting ripped off at every port you stop at or by every merchant between istanbul and india - it'd be just one long journey, no middle men

>It was all about hard cash profit from trade, you idiot.
EXACTLY!

You could make a decent living staying on your ass at home, or you could make a legend for yourself, become richer than half the people you paid taxes to combined, by taking a gamble. You could kick the dick of that smug Egyptian who claimed Ganesha wasn't graceful.

The thing is, with "slavery" we always think of Southern cattle-slavery.
We tend to forget that in Rome slaves could have high-society jobs, like teaching etc. and were usually only mistreated when they were the lowest of the low.
Or that muslim slaves had rights, or could even have slaves themself or led armies.

>You could kick the dick of that smug Egyptian who claimed Ganesha wasn't graceful.
I needed that laugh.

You two keep this up I am sure as fuck going to use this setting somewhere.

Everyone says "they laughed at Columbus!"
Well, they laughed at him because he was wrong and had his head up in his own ass.
And he was kind of a monster.
It's funny how history got utterly distorted.

They don't say that so much here.
Though if they do it's for the wrong reasons - he thought the world was small, not flat.

But yeah, his dickishness is seriously downplayed

Let's play, Guess That Setting!
As a much needed hint, I will say that I included separatist movements and regions that are largely autonomous as their own countries.

Because it's a generator, that's why. No, really. Plus given how dice and probabilities work, it's most likely to end up with "medium" rolls, so divergence happens usually somewhere between 1000 BC and 500 AD.
Plus I'm using the table for HUMAN divergence. If you want, you can just roll a world from a scratch, but chances are - it will be so-called "empty world". No fun in those if trying to do alt-history setting. Here, some other rolls:

First
>Divergence in 725
>Economic
>Late TL6, so right before WW1 tech
>Dominant Orthodox culture
>Empire
>Oligarchy
So we've got a world with Russo-Mongolian Empire spanning from Oder to Missisipi.
World really went fucked up when Ummayad offensive in France kept on pushing much stronger into the land, but then collapsing even harder. Since both "cradle" of western European medieval civ went to shit and caliphates balkanised to be repelled soon after, you have change of economic patterns (balkanisation, duh), which left west fucked up MUCH harder than IRL. Like never having great empire under Charlemagne.

Second
>Divergence around 3300 BC
>Disaster world
>TL5, so 1550s
>Survival from previous era, Norse culture dominant
>Empire with rivals
>Feudal
Kind of boring, because this could happen IRL. See, in 33rd centure BC, we did have a climate change - the one that turned Sahara into desert. Ramp it up and Fertile Crescent is fucked up completely, so civilisation goes to shit before it even starts.
Everything else comes from the description, you have late-medieval, early Renaissance tech and the Norse are dominant. Since climate is slightly different, why not make Labrador hospitable, so their discovery of it actually DID change history

>TBC