New NESes, ideas, development, etc

Just a message for all those that DO NOT read the Alternate History Thread:

On September 9th, I will begin my first NES. It's based on a timeline (sort of) that das wrote, where Canute's Norse Empire never breaks up following his death. Read the nation descriptions on page 3 of the Alternate History Thread, or PM me for more details. I'm going to be using a modified NES2 ruleset. Of course, I'm not das, but I will do my honest best to accurately portray this, and make it fun.

Spots are filling up, so act now and you can still get a great power!

(I feel like a used car salesman.)
 
Raising this thread from the dead, as it still could be very useful - after all, NESers are still getting all sorts of NES ideas, but are posting them wherever convenient instead of posting them here, like I will do now.

The immediate reason for this necromancy is that I recall Symphony speaking about a modern day fresh start somewhere (but I can't find where - see, that's why we need to organize this brainstorming better!). That got me thinking. An interesting "MDFS" scenario I have had in mind would be a one with all central authority destroyed somehow (I have no idea as to how, to be honest), and greater national identity mysteriously disappearing (again, no real idea as to why). The point of this would be to have world-wide ethnic warfare. Soon after things break down, the first "states" begin to reemerge along the ethnic or quasiethnic (and/or geographic) lines. That way, all sorts of peculiar states could be created - for instance, Israelite could create a Chicago-centered Ashkenazic empire, a great Tartar state might rise on the Volga, the "Assyrians" (Assyrian Christians, ofcourse) will be able to take over northern Mesopotamia... Above all, however, it will be fairly random especially early on, as lots of tiny factions will struggle for local supremacy. Just about anyone will have a chance for greatness in the chaos, and another great thing about the setting is that the cliche ancient fresh start nations and the usual modern ones will probably be far outnumbered by somewhat more original ones. And ofcourse this will combine many, though not all, the appeals of the Fresh Start (first and foremost, nation-building and complete nonlinearity) and the Modern Day (modern weapons :p ) NES types. Yes, this is a VERY raw idea, but perhaps it could be developed into something.

Any suggestions?
 
My immediate thought when proposing that, actually was simply a nuclear war to wipe the slate clean. Gives you a lot of control, really; you can, through the vagaries of that, specifically eliminate or mold precisely what is destroyed and what is left. You can kill a whole lot of people and "reboot" or you can kill perhaps just enough that governments collapse into anarchy, and when civilization reorganizes there is all this handy pre-war technology laying around in these forgotten military bases.

Combined with an absolute minimum of three potential accidental nuclear wars and a handful of situations that went to the brink of nuclear war, you can also peg the technology level wherever you want when you start the calamity within about every 10 year period, or just manufacture an incident. The backstory isn't supremely crucial (in fact, it might be better just to conceal it outright; players can discover it as they go) as it would take 50 - 100 years for society to begin seriously reorganizing and recovering and by then most records will be destroyed and the survivors dead. This is, not surprisingly, aptly named the "Nuclear Option."

The other good option I think is the Jason-style "Evolution Option" where you let players create their nations and then run them through sequential BTs up to a modern time, destroying and creating at a whim to make a sort of imitation of history (which is generally brutal).

I have already been considering the second, though as time has gone on I've been debating putting it back in queue in order to explore the first (which would be much simpler to organize). I should probably make a poll, but I may as well ask: who'd be interested in that? (I know Cleric, and probably other people who played Gelion's Fallout NES)
 
Personelly I think the best modern age fresh start would be aliens teleporting small groups (or cities) onto a uninhabited "petri dish" planet. Why? dosen't matter :).

Doing jason's idea might be nice, but some sort of model rather than just mod's whim (or at least tell the great unwashed its all done by computers to prevent revolts :mischief: ).
 
Hell yea....I like both ideas.
 
Raising this thread from the dead, as it still could be very useful - after all, NESers are still getting all sorts of NES ideas, but are posting them wherever convenient instead of posting them here, like I will do now.
Woops. Maybe I should have posted before starting two threads on a NES that's going to start later in a third thread, if it isn't a fourth. :p
I think the Notice Board doesn't see enough use.
 
I rather dislike the nuclear option due to the nuclear winter and so forth... Though wiping the slate clean - one way or another - does have its appeal, I maintain that the ethnic chaos option has potential as well. Incidentally, I'd like to remind you that actual fresh starts don't really start with a clean slate neither. ;)
 
das said:
Incidentally, I'd like to remind you that actual fresh starts don't really start with a clean slate neither.
They do close enough. Presumably one is willing the nations out of uncivilized chaos. Doing that post-nuclear is no different, really.

Plus, as noted in the Sheep thread, one does not necessarily always have a Nuclear Winter (nor Summer). Again, this is a customizable thing. Enough bombs can be dropped such that governments are decapitated, population centers are exterminated, and services and agriculture generally collapse, leading to a breakdown of society (even a fairly limited war, should the right nations be destroyed [read: Western] will cause economic hardship and a new Great Depression that will cast the world into chaos; toss in a few stray bombs, voila)--but without turning the whole of the Earth into a radioactive wasteland. There'd be some fallout and places you really wouldn't want to go, and some glowing lakes, but you can just butterfly effect your way through that. (The nature of the postures of the USSR and USA--treating nuclear war as another military option instead of suicidal, with strikes and counterstrikes and force preservation and reserves only helps here, interestingly enough). It is not an automatically apocalyptic thing, just an incredibly nightmareish one.

And alternate idea that is less devastating to infrastructure but roughly as good for resetting global culture is a highly lethal and highly transmittable virus killing, oh, 75%+ of the human population. Same societal collapse, no ecological disaster, more infrastructure intact. But then they can just so easily pick up the pieces and records of the dead civilization that it's not quite as challenging (except from a military aspect... base hunting in FalloutNES was fun).
 
some Cosmic Event, Like a Near-miss solar flare, a nearbly supernova (close, but not dangiously close), or the shifting of the earth's magnetic feild, results in a ground fault of every human brain on Earth. for a breif, 2-3 day period, all Traces of higher intelgence vanishes from humankind, and we are reduced to mere animals (claver animals, but animals). no memory, no morals, byond survival.

then, the event passes, and the mental Breaker Resets. People all over the world wake up, often in odd situations. a Lot of people don't, haveing deid or been killed. Civilization has been Criticaly Injured, and even if it survvies, it will never be the same.
 
That makes no sense. If EMPs from nuclear weapons (which, one time, disabled everything across the whole Pacific Ocean), lightning strikes, particle accelerators, the solar flares we do get, CAT-scan machines, so forth, and the sheer volume of microwave radiation we pump into the atmosphere with our electronics don't affect the human brain to any discernable degree, then a supernova or solar flare won't either.

They'll just greivously deplete the ozone layer (if not frying it completely) and give everything a good dose of cancer and mutation if not simple radiation sickness and death.
 
TerrisH, Symphony dislikes black boxes of that sort. Symphony, not everyone else fusses over realism as much. There, argument defused before it started. ;)
 
TerrisH said:
Space is big after all. we've only seen a insignificat portion of it so far.
You mean only a few billion light-years in all directions?

And my philosophy is: let them eat realism. :p
 
no, I mena the Earth, and perhaphs the solar system. we do not have a detailed veiw of the Universe, just a broad overveiw. We got the unverses Cliff notes. they might be wrong, or they might be right. but untill we actuall sit down and observe the univers Detail by Detail, we will not know.
 
If that's the way someone wants to explain something, why bother with pseudo-science at all? Just say that the laws of reality might spontaneously change for no reason at all, and we've just never observed it, so suddenly magic is possible, or half the human race combusts into flames, or whatever it is you want. And if you're going that route, why even bother with that much?

If you're going to moderate and you have decided something, the only reason you need to justify your choices is "Because," not anything else. People either accept that and play, or don't. But when doing that, it's much simpler to either ground it within the realms of what's known, or not bothering at all. I feel more or less the same way on history as I do on technology in this regard; there's no reason to half-ass an explanation if it doesn't make sense; just don't provide one if that's the way it's going to be unless the situation mandates it.

"Peoples higher brain functions are disabled and they are rendered clever animals."
"Why?"
"Because."
"... OK."

Suspension of disbelief is infinitely easier when it either sounds plausible or the creator goes out of their way to not explain it at all and simply presents it as being the case. (The Tin-Man can walk because the Tin-Man can walk.)
 
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