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Triplanetary comes to mind with that last one!

LOL You hear that Taalismn! You're lucky enough to keep your head!

AU: Duck-Foot really DOES become Emperor of the World/Already -IS- the Secret Emperor of the World...

Could be Doc! Could be! :::grey rabbit chewing on carrot says.:::

I'm afraid already...

I'm not going to worry about it! Things like that aren't going to affect me.



Who am I kidding! I"m scarred too!!!!!! :::Hiding behind the rock near Taalismn!::::

Government decisions are really made by randomly selecting games of chance at Las Vegas and betting on the outcome...Beware slot machines that display three mushroom clouds...

How do you know that half of the decisions made there in DC aren't already made in that way.

Trying to remember the name of a short story where a journalist stumbles upon a lunatic asylum that WAS a top-secret government think tank set up by the world governments to hammer out solutions to world problems....only the weight of responsibility drove the genuises mad...and so they started making decisions by simply doing all sorts of wierd things...like turtle races...since the world leaders would simply do anything the thinktank told them...The reporter frees the poor mad men, but is forced to become custodian of the survivors when it becomes apparent that as bad as the world situation is NOW, it gets only worse without the oracular guidance of the group..

That would be a very cool alternate universe from a GMs prespective!

Aliens visit Earth...the next day all the dogs are gone....

duck-foot wrote:

taalismn wrote:AU: Duck-Foot really DOES become Emperor of the World/Already -IS- the Secret Emperor of the World...

ah i knew i had loyal subjects

Yes, Oh Mighty One!
(crosses fingers behind back)

...OR...The course of human history is the result of a giant meta-game perpetuated by a secret organization of people who have discovered immortality...rather than turn on each other, they pass time by manipulating events with the help of advanced technologies they've developed....Recently, because of stagnating events, and the loss of several members who elected to off themselves out of sheer mindkilling ennui, the organization has elected to let in some 'fresh blood' to shake things up..
You...and your closest associates....have been offered Immortality, Eternal Youth, and a chance to play the Game of Games....(cue ominous music)

Those are good ones. There are people out there who swear we are dancing on that string already.

Once a year, for reasons unknown, by processes unknown, each person will be presented, for a 24-hour period, with a doppelganger image, like a ghost reflection, that presents them with both their innermost selves, and how others perceive them....For some people, this 'Hell's Mirror', is a welcome, if sobering, yearly assessment of their character...for others, it is a nightmare and cruel recurring blow to their psyche, one that they dread facing every year...To others, the chance to see others' innermost selves(supposedly) revealed is an invaluable psychiatric tool, evidence of past crimes, or the means to acquire leverage for revenge/blackmail/insight to weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Some people relish the chance to show their dirty laundry in public, while others hide in solitude when they know their annual time is coming up...others drink or drug themselves unconscious through the phenomenon, while others record it to look for patterns of progress or decline...

That is a world where a lot of people would likely as not to not have a mirror in their house. Pretty scary little idea Taalismn!

How about this for an alternate universe? Early on the technology comes extremely easy for the inhabitants of earth. The tech level reaches the space age about the time of the height of greek civilizations. During the time of Alexander the solar system is conquered and colonized.

Yeah, ok. If we wouldn't have had those darn dark ages we would be so much farther along than we presently are though. I waas thinking along an accelerated version of that theory.

The Yorian War from the Three Galaxies World Book: What if some of the magic users attempted to escape the genocide by Gating...into our world and time....in places like, say, Long Island(or Central Park!)...Maybe toss in a few Rhilithian soldiers and their Yorian opponents for some instant firefights with advanced weaponry breaking out....

That would be horrible to actually see. But it would be great for a GM to run that sort of world. Great one Taalismn!

The Yorian War is one of those passing-mentions that you want to know more of...Horrid premise drawn straight from our own WW2...but a noble purpose(selfless Rhilithians putting themselves in harm's way to rescure otehrs)...and a great payoff(the UWW grants them honorary status)...But it leaves me wanting to know more...How did they run the whole thing? Land advance agents to gatehr magic users and their dependents in locales for pickup, and hope the genocidals didn't catch on and drop a shell in their assembly areas? Drop troops in on concentration camps or relatively safe cities and hope people can get to the secured zones in time?


And with magic users...desperate enough...some of them may have tried other ways to escape...

I may try my hand atYorian War(and particularly the Rhilithian Gear's) equipment....It was a war for the right causes and deserves more coevrage...

Both of those were great! Thank you for posting them.

One day the seas all dry up....

This is a really silly one.

Every man, woman and child put on some sort of hair gel or hair oil.

I told you it was silly!

The Elvis Retrovirus---Changes everybody into an Elvi...The plague is traced back to a fanatical idol-worship group that wanted to make true the slogan: 'Elvis LIVES!' with a mutating influenza-like pathogen....

Wasn't there a movie abouit a group of Elvi robbing Las Vegas?

LIkely a number...who can tell them apart?

That is very true Taalismn! I know I don't!

Jack the Ripper is publicly revealed to be a high-rank member of the Royal Family...The demoralizing blow this does to British high society foments civil unrest and backlash against the aristocracy, plunging Britain into turmoil....Ripples are felt throughout aristocratic Europe and the farflung network of colonies(where some blue-bloods seek to secede and establish their own traditional societies apart from the demands for a socialist state taking place back home...).

I thought that Jack the Ripper was rumored to have been somebody of note in society at the time. That is the reason that the information of the case was sealed for at least the past century.


Alternately we take Babylon 5's story line and use "Sebastion" as and agent from a real super power in the 3Gs as their inquisitor.

But whenever something like that is supposedly sealed by the higher-ups, it's because they fear the ripples such revelations might make...well, what if the cover-ups failed....

Yeah, like the JFK one. Since those records were again sealed until what something like 2030. Although I'm no expert on this one. I have friends who are a lot more knowledgable on it.

...A pair of giant (at least 200 ft on a side) six-sided dice appear tumbling across the Sinai desert and roll to a halt before astonished observers...The giant dice are made of a material unknown to mankind....They have come up both sixes...

...Meanwhile, elsewhere, an enormous twenty-side die rolls disasterously across a major urban area, before coming to a stop....with its outcome a '2'...

And yet elsewhere a giant twelve sider has rolled across several cattle farms causing several stampedes. Finally landing on 7.

"Did we just get rolled FOR or AGAINST? And was it a critical HIT or a critical FUMBLE?"

There were no 20s or 1s rolled, so crits or fumbles!

The Sun is discovered to be a giant bug-light...for million mile-long space going mosquitos....

This universe is a snow globe in another universe on display for what passes for a store there.

Did you hear that Taalismn. I'm sure you can come up with something serious.

There is a good thread over on the Rifts section of the boards. Called "The Secret Wars of America! Sins of the Past"! AWESOME go and read it!

During the Reagan years with fears of an evil empire and communist expansion into Central America, Russia DOES fall as history reveals, but the insurgencies of the smaller, more economically agile, and arguably crazier, regimes only rise and burn hotter...As Russia collapses, the emergent Russian mafia sees the opportunity to make money and flush surplus armaments(with the government's blessing, as they're both increasingly corrupt and grateful for ANY income), funneling them through Cuba...Central America becomes the new Vietnam, and American efforts, already discredited internationally by Oliver North's Arms for Hostages dealings with the Contras, are ineffectual...Revolution spreads north and south, with terrorism threatening both the oil fields of Columbia and Venezuela, and Mexico...Refugees fleeing the open-field fighting overwhelm Mexico's already strained national economy and social services, and a run on the American border like nothing seen before begins...The 'Communist Road to Texas' becomes a real nightmare as American troops are deployed to prop up the Mexican government, Texan seaports are swamped by a Gulf of Mexico migration of 'boat people' from Central America, the American government's attempts to lean on a central authority in Russia prove only more infuriating as there is hardly ANY central control there...A second Cuban Blockade is drawn up...but the CIA fears it may be too late...there are rumors that a pirated Soviet nuke is already in insurgent hands, and somewhere in Mexico...

Two Parallel Earths...One in which slavery is not only universally legal, but a cornerstone of the economy...and it isn't the relatively pleasant or endurable form practiced by the Greeks...No, in this continiuum, if you have the affluence, you can have anybody enslaved on a legal excuse...People get disappeared off the streets and broken into slaves by professionals in factory-style operations serving the increasingly corrupt wealthy, who are protected by armies of thugs willing to do whatever is necessary(many because it's the ticket to their own place in the sun, others because it secures their own loved ones from being turned into somebody's sex-toy or pit-bull)....
Attached dimensionally to this realm is another Earth, ruled by societies that practice a nearly Calvinistic style of puritanical thought...genders are practically separate camps, vice crimes carry several physical punishment, and a rabidly-anti-slavery stance holds sway..

Both universes have roughly 20th century levels of technology....BOth stumbled across the other during early high energy physics experiments..While contact with other worlds was initially greeted with joy, now both worlds regard each other antagonistically...and simply closing the gates isn't possible...Now abolitionists are exporting revolution, and sneaking in hit-squads to slaughter the employees of slave factories and plantations, and freeing the slaves, while slavers cross the space/time border in the other direction, tempting the weak with the prospect of wealth from owning others, and snatching the supposedly 'unbreakable' citizens for the slave markets...Pre-American Civil War 'Bloody Kansas' on a planetary scale....

Excellent alternate universes. I think they are both well written. Great job Taalismn!

Sounds very cool so far! It looks like a very cool dimension to GM! I can't wait to read more.

The Korean War goes hot when a deranged MacArthur manages to acquire a nuclear weapon and use it to destroy a Chinese port/tarnsit hub funneling troops and supplies into the region...China retaliates by expanding southward into Indochina and igniting World War III between the WEstern Powers and China...

Hmmm...I can see the future rugby games...The Vinlander Giants versus the Apache Tuskers in the semi-finals...The Aztec Obsidian Blades versus the Asgard Ragnarok for the championship....

Blame this on seeing the '13th Warrior'

Neanderthals successfully hold their own against the Cro-Magnon and establish a metal-working culture in Europe, defending it from newcomers...millenia later, the civilized and quite powerful Neanderthals look across the Med at the trans-Saharran and Arabian peoples and cultures in competition for the region...

Very nice alternate universes Guys!. Great job. Looking forward to reading more of yours Duck-foot.


How about the carrier planes whose wings pivot leads to a variable fighter used by the US military in the late 80s.

The New England Air Museum here in WindsorLocks has a flying boat that has a tilt-wing for STOL and supposedly/hopefully VTOL operation...along those lines....

That is cool. Was that a scout plane?

Private venture it looks like....a simple experiment...don't know if the thing actually flew with a workable wing hinge....it was awaiting restoration, but maybe the next time I'm up there, I'll ask....
The collection also features a Brunelli CargoMaster, sans wings...a lot of odd ones are parked outsidem exposed to the elements, awaiting the needed funds for restoration and expansion of the facility....