Veeky Forums makes a WW1 fantasy setting

It's point of divergence is roughly 1900 years before the games setting, and it removes major elements of what made the west what it was (Christianity and the fall of Rome), and that's before adding fantastic elements in.

It's going to be so far removed from anything people would readily be capable of even conceptualizing, that you're free to just make up whatever you want.

I wouldn't even call it "alt history" at this point. It's just fantasy with some historic elements crammed in it. Even if Rome doesn't fall, it's not going to be anything like ancient Rome, because cultures continue to shift and grow. The op pic is cool, but it's a bit like seeing a British solider complete with red coat and tri-corn hat driving a tank, except thousands of years out of date instead of hundreds.

If you want recognizable historic empires and costumes, you're better off setting it thousands of years earlier and giving some reason for tech to have miraculously advanced.

Its stretching as hard as possible, but you can count them

>Holy roman?
Leave

Can I count fascist Italy?

It's about as far a stretch asDefinitely.

So you just want a roman empire in a WW1 setting with industry, guns and magic?
Not very sure how fun it is and how it diverge much other than some minor window dressing in the average WW1 Victorian setting with magic.

Without the succession crises and intrigue that occurred between the various Christian Kingdoms and Muslim caliphates and their preservation, you lose most of the reason WWI happened in the first place. How do the Americans or French have a revolution of there's no king to overthrow?

If the enemies are vampires with sharp or terrible dressing, it might be a lot of fun.

>Civil war happens in what would have been America

By this point the timeline has already diverged too much for the American Civil War to make sense. You can't just start with something as huge as the Roman empire still existing and then feed it back through everything that happened in the real world.

>>Christianity faded into obscurity
>>mid 1200's,
A.D., and then broke off into their own A.D.
A.D.
>>Civil war happens in what would have been America, with the south winning.

So basically this is every brain dead alternate history cliche mixed together with a big heaping helping of douchebaggery and a metric fuckton of historical illiteracy?

And you want to know if it "works"?

lol I think the general assumption is that it works, and he just wanted us to fill in the gaps.

>and he just wanted us to fill in the gaps

The only gap that needs to be filled in is between the OP's ears.

Gunpowder is a result of fiddling with alchemy. A happy accident and the legions have muskets. Invent hay - yes, hay was invented - and more horses & cattle can be kept through the winter further north meaning more animal power and manure is available. Throw a better horse collar and stirrups into the mix and things really begin to take off.

Among the many other grossly idiotic suggestions the OP made, a setting where Rome never "fell" and Christianity remaining a cult using the A.D. dating system is both retarded and insulting.

Not him, but personally I think the best thing to do in such a case is to pick a single point of divergence and think how everything works out from there. That's already difficult enough, and it gets harder the further back you go. Something like "What if [non-retarded politician] was elected instead of Angela Merkel?" is easy, something like "What if Carthage won the Punic Wars?" hard. Combining the two (somehow)... yeah......

If OP really wants a "Great War" involving the Romans, I think the best he can do is something like this:
>Romans somehow figure out steam power over a millennium ahead of time
>Chinese somehow figure out gunpowder centuries ahead of time
>Persian Empire is in a cozy spot right in between them and both innovations spread across Eurasia
>Rome and China rapidly advance, Persia is feeling a bit intimidated
>Persia starts lashing out due to [insert political contrivances here], you get early WW1

The big historical point of divergence is simply getting certain big breakthrough inventions early, the rest of history proceeds somewhat unchanged (other than what the point of divergence changes). In terms of politics, the situation is a lot like our real WW1 with Persia fulfilling the role of Germany, and Rome and China acting as France and Russia. If you want to be really on the nose, you can have Rome slipping back to a more Republican system.

This Great War would be a lot different though. It's more likely that it'd be fought with muskets rather than rifles, and there'd be no tanks, but it could still eventually result in trench warfare with sometimes a few "breakthrough" cavalry charges.

I'm generally of the same opinion.

Assuming you wanted to get a point where a WW1 analogue happens and soldiers equipped with stuff like the OP's pic. How would you do it?

The only thing I can think of is a historian/engineer/time traveler heads back and gets the favor of the reigning extempore and starts working on an advanced tech base. Alla Lord Conrand's time machine but in ancient Rome. Have to be a goddamn savant, or have access to ridiculous amounts of technical/metallurgical manuals.

Then you could have something like WW1, maybe a couple centuries down the road as some fracture point splits the empire.

Fuck Romans let's bring back Greco-Buddhist Bactria

>Rome slipping back to a more Republican system.
If tech advances I could see it. Once fire arms (and printing?) become wide spread, it's harder to maintain the sort of authoritarian rule of Rome. especially since the tech would make expanding the empire happen faster and easier.

>This Great War would be a lot different though. It's more likely that it'd be fought with muskets rather than rifles, and there'd be no tanks, but it could still eventually result in trench warfare with sometimes a few "breakthrough" cavalry charges.
I could definitely see this being a very ww1-esque war. With all the empires being able to fields and equip armies outstripping their logistic abilities.

>Once fire arms (and printing?) become wide spread, it's harder to maintain the sort of authoritarian rule of Rome. especially since the tech would make expanding the empire happen faster and easier.
True, unlike China because the entire Chinese writing system was designed to be as convoluted as possible so the peasants wouldn't learn to read. The Chinese didn't need to write in code, because their entire language was code. Explaining why one empire goes full republican and the other does not.

We'd need to flesh out the Persians a lot more, considering they're the "Germans". Politically the situation is understandable (two powers around them growing ever stronger with the fires of industry, they need to strike now or accept their place as a second tier power) but what would their society look like? And is this with or without the rise of Islam?

> the entire Chinese writing system was designed to be as convoluted as possible so the peasants wouldn't learn to read.

Is it?
I thought their written language is designed as evolution of symbolism language where the words imitate the context in a form.
Nothing about code and you seem to projecting.

OP here. God I love Veeky Forums, for all it's gold and skub. This is a good thread.

I think what would be best is if due to a biological weapon deployed by the Germans, far more females than males are being born and they are also sterile so there is no future for them as mothers. As a result, they are marched off for war as more meat for the grinder. As World War I drags on into the 30s, more and more women are deployed into combat. The tactics have changed little, so over the top trench rushes are still common, with dozens of women charging into enemy machine gun fire, crying out in pain as the bullets strike their soft hips and bellies, ripping them open, dropping their corpses to splatter in the mud as they try to drag themselves along, whimpering helplessly in agony as the vicious scythe of lead cuts them down more and more, their thighs jiggling as bullets continue to hit them even after they are dead. Those that survive are captured, and after they have been thoroughly enjoyed by the Kaiser's troops, they are forced to kneel in the enemy camp, quivering in fear, their eyes shining with terror, little puffs of breath spreading from their mouths on the cold morning, having not slept at all. One by one they are shot, thinking of their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, and how they did this for them, and how they will never see any of their family again, as they died pointlessly in this long brutal endless war.

Then it's their turn, and their life ends with a single crack of a Luger.

>Assuming you wanted to get a point where a WW1 analogue happens and soldiers equipped with stuff like the OP's pic. How would you do it?
It's a fantasy Great War with romans carrying around MGs, and any kind of previous history can go fuck itself, the world didn't exist for more than 5 minutes before PCs pop in.

Exactly what I intended with this post.

Fuck mate, I said a WW1 fantasy setting. As is magic and shit, not guro fantasies.

Other than the jiggling thighs this is shit that happened to men during that war, and you're only offended by it because it's about women this time.

I'd suggest you read Sophia MacDougall's Romanitas series.
Also, if you want WW1 Roman pics, why post a Legionaire in WW2 Fallschrimjaeger smock carrying a FG42 assault rifle?

>Also, if you want WW1 Roman pics, why post a Legionaire in WW2 Fallschrimjaeger smock carrying a FG42 assault rifle?

Thank you. I was waiting for someone to point that out.

It was the only pic I could find :\

This. Given that slavery in the Roman Republic and Empire was very different from the slavery of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, how would that relate to a Not-American Civil War in the same timeline?

>>Christianity faded into obscurity before it could become popular. So no christian kingdoms rose, no crusades happened, and of course the pope doesn't even exist
its garbage, start again

There have been plenty of Sci-fi / Alt-history stories that began with that very premise user. Some were pretty good, OP's fails because A: He's using a timeline where pretty much everything happens just as it did without Christianity 'fading into obscurity before it could become popular'.
B: He's ignoring the fact that the main reason the Roman Empire fell was because it became too vast to govern effectively with the beauracratic system and more importantly communications ability of its time.
C: For the Roman Empire not to fall would also require some serious re-working of history to negate the mass-migrations of tribes from the East, I suppose that he could start with a Danube Wall, but that would likely bankrupt the state long before completion.
And finally D: putting aside the concept that magic is a working thing in his premise, (after all the Romans were Pagans and really did believe in magical mumbo-jumbo), how would modern or even semi-modern technology and industry filter through a Roman mindset?

>C: For the Roman Empire not to fall would also require some serious re-working of history to negate the mass-migrations of tribes from the East, I suppose that he could start with a Danube Wall, but that would likely bankrupt the state long before completion.
What if they make the Germanics pay for it?

Better yet, what if they take a lot of Germanics in, and have them build a wall to keep other Germanics out?

Shit like that was what caused Arminus to chimp out in the first place...

You are designing everything backwards.

First you decide a particular theme, atmosphere, vibe, mouthfeel, about the setting you want. Think up the driving concepts, interesting designs, cool ideas, then work it into a coherent whole thats in line with the central theme. THEN you make up minor errata like history, equipment and stuff.

The players dont give a shit when the point of divergence was or who won all the buttfuck medieval wars.

You want a norse empire? Sure you have a norse empire, you can think up all sorts of fun designs, cultural quirks, insignias and stuff how their culture would have changed if they lived up to WW1 times. The players dont need to know how Harald Hardrada revitalized the North Sea Empire or how the Vinland colony didnt die off.

Oh wait, you wanted magic shoved in the whole thing.. because?

This.

>Harald Hardrada revitalized the North Sea Empire
On the one hand this is really cool.
On the other hand it would result in English sounding utterly disgusting.

Nah

groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ

>Aenglish
That's what I said: disgusting. Add to that the fact that Scandinavians sound like lobotomized Germans

this is a blue board, you autistic sexual accident.

That's completely irrelevant. Also there are constant stories about fucked up edgy RPGs and what not on this board.

>That entire post
Hey Virt, how long have you been on?

>So Veeky Forums, any blanks that need to be filled in?
you could start off by making a basis for the setting that isn't retarded

>Other than the jiggling thighs this is shit that happened to men during that war, and you're only offended by it because it's about women this time.
yeah i as well remember all the brutal rape of male soldiers and their execution right after from ww1
oh wait none of that happened

This. All Veeky Forums settings are basically "lmao what if this + this + this happened" and never contain any actual original content.

There is nothing wrong with that, mashups are an easy way for inspiration and its very hard to make something completely new, but there is just nothing to work with here. No cool themes or conceps, just some alt-history wank with magic forced in for no reason.

The whole fantasy-WW1 think just reeks too. Without having the exact socio-political and technological levels you dont have trench warfare, dreadnoughts, biplanes and the light. Without trench warfare you dont have WW1.

When I wanted an alt-history WW1 to play with I literally just randomly chose 6 nations, declared them the winners of history so far and built everything from there, exploring the setting completely from the POV of them players.No exositions, no loredumps, just using some allohistorical allusions. The biggest actual change was Art Noveau staying and prospering because thats some alien tier shit.

The Greeks had some basic steam engines. If Roman soldiers had captured Archimedes, instead of killing him, he could have been forced to improve them.

>just some alt-history wank with magic forced in for no reason.
this is definitely the best way to describe it, as its a bunch of random meme-tier what-ifs that don't fit together at all
>what if the roman enmpire survived?
>what if vikings colonized america?
>what if the south won the civil war?
none of these follow from each other at all

Yeah but, there is literally nothing wrong with basing a setting on something like that. "what if the vikings colonized america" Just go for it, make it cool, think up a nice story with TWEESTS, make an interesting place to play games in. You can always backfill things later about alt-history facts. Players have much less trouble suspending their disbelief if the game is actually fun and coherent. They dont want a rambling history lesson. Simply disembarking off a ship in Nýr Jórvík and seeing the statue of Freya does more for worldbuilding than a pdf full of explanations. History is actually full of random shit that could have went either way, kings dying in battle, fatal mistakes crumbling empires, DM stand-ins like Alexander singlehandedly shaping history all odds and the likes. Sometimes history is downright implausible. Chain literally thousands of these events together and you can literally get anything. Like that little jewish heresy growing that big.
>what if the south won the civil war?

People usally dont dare to diverge far enough. I always like to go full alt.

What if Deseret won the civil war?

>Yeah but, there is literally nothing wrong with basing a setting on something like that.
yeah there is
its stupid and nonsensical
you could do something with any one of those, sure, but with an intact roman empire there's no "norse empire", at least not at all in the way it was, and if the vikings colonize america there's no fucking civil war the way it was
you can't just jam random events together
>what if nobunaga survived and became emperor of japan and then conquered all of africa? lets make a ww2 setting
it makes no fuckin sense

>you can't just jam random events together

You totally can. It only has to be a fun setting to play in. Historical allusions to real life events are just a shorthand filling in exposition to players what to expect. You can have a war between zulus and aborigines fighting over norway, in the moment players see machineguns and trenches they know its alt-WW1 and know what tropes and general tone to expect.

>You totally can.
you totally can't, not if you expect people to treat it as anything except a silly joke.
>You can have a war between zulus and aborigines fighting over norway, in the moment players see machineguns and trenches they know its alt-WW1 and know what tropes and general tone to expect.
no, i have no idea what general tone to expect, except a joke. if it isn't a joke setting and i'm not supposed to play a joke character then you fucked up

You are a joke user. History is not a determinstic chain of events leading to ironclad results.

>i have no idea what general tone to expect

Between that and being that furious over historical errata, you might be genuinely autistic. Also, youre on Veeky Forums a board that concerns itself traditional games and settings for them. If you want to go argue about how the nazis could have won WW2 Veeky Forums is for you

>History is not a determinstic chain of events leading to ironclad results.
no, its not. its a chain of events influenced by the events in the chain that came before it.

also, it's called suspension of disbelief, faggot, and it has limits. you seriously telling me you could, with a straight fucking face, run a serious, grim tone ww1 setting about aborigines and zulus fighting over norway?

You could. You could also make them aliens. Who use magic. Or demons. Or japanese. Its the setting of a game, you can do literally anything as long its fun.

>no, its not. its a chain of events influenced by the events in the chain that came before it.

And the players dont give a shit about those events only the result. You literally dont have to explain anything except the broadest strokes. But I've always found the ones most petty and anal about history know the least about it.

>goes into a thread about making a setting
>says the setting literally doesn't matter as long as its fun
why the fuck did you even come here, retard?

And now you slid down straight to whining. No more responses.

good, fuck off idiot

>But I've always found the ones most petty and anal about history know the least about it.

This.