Alternate History Campaigns and RPGs?

[GuyBoy]

He had been drinking the night before; of course he had been drinking, like any self-respecting Norman seigneur would have done for the new year approaching.
Guillaume de Tourelles was lord of the eponymous holding, with its wooden motte and bailey stronghold and three villages, held from Duke Richard II, Lord of Normandy these last two years. And the Viking blood of Rollo and his followers flowed strong in all these Norman lords, with only some veneer of Frankish civilisation coating the sea-reaver within Guillaume’s soul.
The veneer did extend to wine over beer, and it was the sour taste of grape, not barley, that flavoured Guillaume’s mouth as he woke to the sound of screams and the scent of smoke.
Rushing to the hole in the wooden wall of his bower, Guillaume pulled aside the linen drape. Cold January air assailed his body, but he paid it no heed. The small chapel of Tourelles was ablaze and strange forms of horror capered in the smoke, or pursued fleeing peasants.

His chapel, his peasants, his demesne.
Snarling, Guillaume spun, his eyes falling on his mail shirt, coif, helmet, and, most of all his sword, a gift from Duke Richard himself.
“Deus vest,” he mouthed.

Something like the above.....perhaps repeated, with variation, in the palaces of Baghdad, the fjords of Norway, the cloisters of Cluny and the steppe mirs of the Rus as the fated day of 1st January 1000 dawns.

 

[GuyBoy]

I’m musing here, but a collapsing civilisation in the year 1000 would offer some interesting “points of light” opportunities for an RPG.
Abu al-Quasim, arguably the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, was active in the Islamic world, and could definitely play a Gandalf role.
As could Hugh, Abbot of Cluny
Basil II was Byzantine Emperor
Henry IV was HRE
Aethelraed Unraed was King of England, and could be a perfect vector for evil forces.
As could Sylvester II who was Pope at a very corrupt time for the papacy, sometimes evocatively called the “rule of harlots.”
Richard II, Duke of Normandy was usually called “the Good”. There might not have been much truth to the name, but, hey, we need paladin-types. He was to be William the Conqueror’s grandfather in actual history, but that was some time in the future.

And, of course, the emerging warrior aristocracy allows for plenty of characters such as Guillaume from the above post. He’s made up btw, but Tourelles is real enough.

Pretty much any monsters could be used. Most, if not all, would be considered as some form of demon anyway.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I'm running a game set in 1984, and while it's so far stuck very close to history, it's starting to diverge. By the time we get into 1985, depending on what the PCs do, I think it's going to be very alt-history. That was part of the appeal of the campaign to me--beginning in a time and place my players were pretty familiar with IRL, and then showing how everything they're mixed up in changes things. Like Reagan still got reelected, but the Cold War might get a lot hotter.

 

[GuyBoy]

Cold War going hot is a popular, and scary, alternative history trope with immense RPG potential. I guess Twilight 2000 was an obvious example, even though it was futuristic at the time and is now retrospective alternate history.
At 58, I’m very much a Cold War kid. My mum was six months pregnant with me in the Cuban crisis, but I was a politics student by the time Able Archer brought us close-ish to a brink in 1983.
I remember as a 16 year old army cadet, going to West Germany on annual camp, and, more disturbingly, being given targets with “Ivan” written on them for rifle practice. Tough times.

As a history teacher, I’ve often taught the Cold War as an exam topic. It is certainly weird to be able to teach, as history, what you lived as a boy/ young man. I guess that’s a common experience of history teachers throughout, well, history.

Good luck with your campaign.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Cold War going hot is a popular, and scary, alternative history trope with immense RPG potential. I guess Twilight 2000 was an obvious example, even though it was futuristic at the time and is now retrospective alternate history.
At 58, I’m very much a Cold War kid. My mum was six months pregnant with me in the Cuban crisis, but I was a politics student by the time Able Archer brought us close-ish to a brink in 1983.
I remember as a 16 year old army cadet, going to West Germany on annual camp, and, more disturbingly, being given targets with “Ivan” written on them for rifle practice. Tough times.

As a history teacher, I’ve often taught the Cold War as an exam topic. It is certainly weird to be able to teach, as history, what you lived as a boy/ young man. I guess that’s a common experience of history teachers throughout, well, history.

Good luck with your campaign.

Thanks! And having grown up during the 80s myself, with recurring nightmares of mushroom clouds at the time, I can't resist mining those fears. One challenge so far has been trying to signal that a hot war is a possibility without actually foregrounding it. I'm hoping for an eventual mix of "Sure, I guess things are escalating a bit" to a sudden "Holy-naughty word-everyone's-about-to-launch!" moment, since that sense that it could all happen anytime, without warning, seemed like the real horror back then.

 

[pemerton]

I guess Prince Valiant counts as alternative history. We use maps of Britain and Europe to work out where the PCs are and where they're going. Currently they are on Cyprus, having travelled across Europe to Constantinople.

 

[Aldarc]

One of my non-negotiable dealbreakers for any TTRPG or game is if the Confederacy survives post-1865. So any alternate history TTRPG that even has a whiff of this is getting an automatic pass from me.

I have run an alternate history one-shot set in early 1840's Vienna. The existence of magic kind of automatically IMHO puts this in the alternate history category. This also overlaps a bit with the urban fantasy thread, as it was about a supernatural investigation society in the Austrian Empire. I used Dresden Files Accelerated to run it. If I were to go back to the campaign setting, I would be curious about running it with Vaesen, Cortex Prime, Monster of the Week, or Urban Modern Fantasy (aka Urban Fantasy version of Dungeon World). I would probably keep the campaign mostly system neutral so I could re-use it between groups depending on the system they would prefer.

 

[pemerton]

One of my non-negotiable dealbreakers for any TTRPG or game is if the Confederacy survives post-1865. So any alternate history TTRPG that even has a whiff of this is getting an automatic pass from me.

I understand where you're coming from.

If it's not an impertinent question - and if it is, feel free to ignore it - would you feel the same about a setting in which World War 2 unfolds differently?

I don't know if I've ever seen such a game, but can imagine different ways of handling it. (Of course this possibility is a staple of board-/wargames.)

 

[Aldarc]

I understand where you're coming from.

If it's not an impertinent question - and if it is, feel free to ignore it - would you feel the same about a setting in which World War 2 unfolds differently?

I don't know if I've ever seen such a game, but can imagine different ways of handling it. (Of course this possibility is a staple of board-/wargames.)

I definitely would not touch that trap with a 10 ft. pole, and I doubt the Germans and Austrians I game with would be that comfortable with such scenarios either.

 

[GuyBoy]

For me, Confederate survival/victory scenarios and Nazi victory scenarios are both no go areas.
Plenty can be done with Alternate History that doesn’t involve any of the implications of these two.