Help Me ReWrite Post-1910 History

[WayneLigon]

The premise of the upcoming Urban Arcana game I want to do is (so far) thus: The world goes through periodic 'surges' or 'tides' of Shadow, where the walls between us and other worlds grow thin and greater amounts of magic are available. Thus you get the classic 'Yeah, we used to think such things were real, but no longer' downtimes. One of these has been going on since about 1300 AD.

All that changes on June 30, 1910 when the Tunguska event occurs. Magic rises once more, the walls come down and things from Shadow once more walk the Earth.

I want a slightly more 'knowledgable' public than in the normal Urban Arcana game, almost at the level of the early Anita Blake books. Magic is known and most people at least acknowledge it exists. It exists side-by-side with technology. You can go into biology textbooks and find the 'Greater Appalacian Troll' and the 'Red-Backed European Basilisk'.

In addition to other changes, there is one I know I want: in 1918, a group of radical Native American shamans tried to roll back time in the Americas to approximately 1100 AD, destroying the incursions of the Europeans. They took on too huge a task and botched it. A roughly oval section of North America stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains went back in time to 1870 (This might change slightly as I do more research). And stayed there. Nothing invented past the year 1870 works there, and nothing invented past the year 1870 can ever be invented within that region. The border can fluctuate by a half-mile or so. Travel up the Mississippi has to be done via steam paddlewheel, since that's the only thing that works on some stretches of the river. St. Louis is right on the border of the time-lost area, and some parts of it are in 1870 while other parts are modern.

Some ideas occur to me.

No real development of suburbs. Cities are smaller and taller. Some actually have barricades.

The West Coast is cut off from the rest of the US by the Dead Zone; the only way across it is via steam train (I think the Attichinson, Topeka and Santa Fe). Air traffic cannot cross the Dead Zone, since airplanes were not invented by that time; they have to route around to Canada and Mexico. The effect extends to the edge of the atmosphere, so suborbitals, sattillites, etc, can still pass over the area and look into it.

The Interstate system would have to pass through parts of Canada and Mexico as well; or maybe we took back a chunk of Mexico?

Without the oil fields of Texas, where would we be? Maybe fewer people own cars and more use public transport? Did we just explore Alaska sooner? Did we use Earth Elementals to go bring up the really deep oil that would normally be too expensive to get to? Do we have a magical means of simply synthesizing it?

Any other ideas? I don't want to change things TOO much but enough to give it an exotic feel.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Gee, how about time-travelers come back and bribe the art school board so that Hitler is an art student and maybe he doesn't rise to power?

Approximately half the country is pre-20th permanently and thats not TOO MUCH change?

 

[derelictjay]

For starters you gonna keep WWI and WWII, I'd at least keep WWI. And in WWI, this even you got would cause US to pull out of Europe, probably ending that war in a stalemate, possibly altering Europe as we know it (but a stalemate would probably never have let Hitler come to power so its not that bad, thereby preventing WWII). As to stateside, no depression and no roaring twenties (altering a good timeline in US history). Also I don't think the US would be able to muster up enough power to be a force in the world. Soviet Union would be the real superpower in this world (I also see them embracing magic better than the US), as the Cold War would never happen, US would sit and watch as communism would devour countries in an exspanding front. As a struggling United States tries to figure out how to deal with is "dead-zone".

As to events at home. You would still have railroads crossing the dead-zone, but they would be trains with boilermakers. Food supplies would be drastically reduced. New York state would be the most populous state (gaining the "hollywood" that California would have), because the west coast states would be backwater, until flight becomes more easily available at going around the "dead-area". Microsoft and Silicon Valley would still be on the west coast because they would be after technology advances (Bill Gates with real magic at his finger tips, shudder). The populations of the midwest would be next to zero, as people couldn't live without modern conviences, so populations would be highest East coast.

These are some ideas, sorry about ramblings.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Interstate system would not be built, most roads either dirt or plank outside cities.

Airships and zeplins would rule the sky.

Land, there were a lot of damn contruction in the US in the 20 and 30s, I don't see this as being done, the Colordo River would run to the ocean and there would be swamp land. You may want to see if you can find an old US geo map from that time.

 

[Stormborn]

Well, the big whole in the middle of the world is certainly a problem. Is this going to be a center piece of the campaign, or just background? Regardless it will radically alter the timeline, it has too. First, what happens to all the people that would be born in that region? We loose presidents, generals, invintors, etc. in the passing years. America probablly doesn't enter WWI and maybe not WW2, both of which would be fought on radical different terms with the advent of magic (Oh, do go find Arrowsmith from DC comics, I think its in TPB form now, its about a WWI fought with magic)

A couple of things to remember are the prominent figures around at the time of the "big event" like Edison and Tesla who would have figured out how magic works. Edison was somethign of an occultist anyway. Edison's Shocking Grasp and Tesla's Faithful Watchdog
How is the West Coast going to feel about being cut of from the east? They may just succeed, and this time there wont be a whole lot that can be done about it, since I imagine moving troops across the Dead Zone will be just about impossible.
Speaking of succession, there are going to be pleanty of people in the south who still remember the Civil War and might take advantage of the chaos that the indian uprising would create, not to mention magic, to cause their own troubles.
Realistically, the big issue is going to be food production. The breadbasket of america is not going to be able to take advantage of technoligcal improvements that are going to be neccesary to feed the US, not to mention a significant part of the world, in the next century.
On the other hand, if magic works and 20th cnetury science doesn't, magetech might. In comes Tesla and Edison with Eberron-esque lightning rails and elemental powered airships, Westinghouse Contructs provide slave labor, and in a few years you have a region that isn't technologically backwards at all, but is more advanced because of the need to use magic in lots of different applications.


I love the Tunguska trigger for magic and changing the world from that point. But that in itself is going to radically alter history. You might save yourself some trouble and make the "Dead Zone" much smaller, say maybe just a state or two where the native americans have used magic to keep the rest of the people out and establish their own nation 9a la Shadowrun). That would have less economic and social impact on the nation and world, and maybe give you the "exotic" feel you are looking for.

 

[morbiczer]

Minor nitpick

Not that it matters much, but I think that the Tunguska incident happened in 1908, not in 1910.

 

[Henry]

I don't see that much of a problem getting from west to east - the trains just need two forms of propulsion! A modern engine for the majority of the journey, and then take one or even two steam rail engines to haul the train across time-static territory. Same thing with paddleboats - use modern engines to get up to a point, then they shut off when you get to that point and the steam boiler provides slower but still considerable engine power for the rest of the way.

What about anti-magic fields? What do they do to the technology-null areas? I can just see in my mind's eye a modern engine and propeller encased in a large anti-magic field, so that they can perform in the 1870 areas. After all, it's magic as to why the tech doesn't work, right?

Expect these to be some issues that players raise when playing in your setting - SOMEBODY's bound to try and think of a way to get rich quick off of this.

 

[WayneLigon]

You might save yourself some trouble and make the "Dead Zone" much smaller, say maybe just a state or two where the native americans have used magic to keep the rest of the people out and establish their own nation 9a la Shadowrun). That would have less economic and social impact on the nation and world, and maybe give you the "exotic" feel you are looking for.

Yeah, that's starting to sound like a better idea. I realized I'm too used to thinking of that whole region as 'flyover country' that you could drop into a black hole and not notice for a couple weeks. I'd thought about the food problem, but was thinking the massive fertility of the San Fernando Valley would offset that. But without an interstate trucking network, that won't work and it would take ships laden with produce too long to go by Panama Canal.

 

[WayneLigon]

Not that it matters much, but I think that the Tunguska incident happened in 1908, not in 1910.

I have no idea why I made that mistake. Bleah. 1908, yes.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

If the cost to enchant a hover-train is less than the cost to have a train with two engines, you can expect the hover-train to have prominence.

Give technology a "ten year" penalty. Efforts in magic study have drained tech applications. The web is still in its infancy. Cell phones are big and have a limited range. Computers aren't very powerful. Everyone's still playing 2nd edition. etcetera.

I realized I'm too used to thinking of that whole region as 'flyover country' that you could drop into a black hole and not notice for a couple weeks.

Yeah, you might want to re-think that. There's a lot of industry and farming that happen in those states. It may not be flashy, but there is a @#$% of a lot of work that gets done. Unless you just want to increase cost-of-living and material goods prices.