I've stolen a bit of this from my Time Wars: Invasion setting, and its a first draft, but I happily invite comments, and additions, and other divergent Americas (or Canadas)...and thanks for the name Columbia, Misty, for the last world.




Ten Faces of America


Sometimes in playing a multi-dimensional game, you want a simple world easy to use, but not boring.  This article gives you ten different Americas.  All of them are relatively simple, and similar, but have just enough differenences to be intriguing.



The N.A.C., or the North American Confederation, is a loosely federalized collection of states that covers the whole continent of its name. It was born in the late 1800’s from the combination of the USA, Canada (except for Quebec which later joined), and Mexico. Much of the governmental power resides with the states, and being a governor is far to be preferred over a senator. Each state has their own culture, which allows a lot of experimentation. Some states like Massachusetts forbid alcohol, while Georgia is famous for its peach brandy. And people move accordingly which means that there is a good amount of social harmony as peach brandy enthusiasts head for Georgia, and teetotalers head for Massachusetts.
It has a very dynamic economy, and Protestantism and Roman Catholicism vie from primacy with duelling books, and parades, and evangelism, and good works. Most of the hospitals in the NAC are built by one of the denominations (there are several ones such as Lithuanian Revivalists, and the Church of the Bible that rank with the Presbyterians and Methodists) or by the RCC.

The Monarchy of Vespucianna covers the continental United States, and while it does have a king and queen, princes, and some dukes, their actual duties are very limited. They preside over the openings of large factories, and give speeches on holidays, and serve as living icons to represent the nation. It is a very well-paid and easy job.
Most of the dukes and princes in their off-time go about having children, and tending their estates, and a surprisingly large number (until you think about it) of Olympic champions come from their ranks. In fact, its somewhat of an unstated code that a prince should consider other Olympic champions as mates, not required mind you, but suggested. This helps keep the genome strong, and has resulted in some very talented children. A number of second sons who go by a different name have made their fortunes the hard way, by skill and pluck. And some of those ‘second sons’ were actually first born. One can forego the privileges of the title if one wishes, and about twenty percent in any given generation do. This is regarded as healthy.
So the monarchy has close ties with the wealthy establishment since many of the establishment are relatives.

The Confederacy of States is the result of the much amended document of Confederation which preceded the Constitution in my home timeline. Here the Constitution never passed, instead reformers focused on the Confederation and amendments. The end result was much the same, with a more shop-worn and flexible document, and less absolutist readings of rights.
The government is quite limited in its powers, except for in matters of war where the Emergency Amendments kick in, and then it gathers a slew of more powers to it.
There are few large-scale projects…no Hoover Dam, no interstate highways, no Apollo Project. On the other hand, there are privately funded O’Neill asteroid space stations in orbit of the Earth, and the toll road system is robotically controlled so that even as you wind down country roads, you’re doing it at the maximum safe speed of a nearly perfect autopilot.

The last dimension is one that I am mostly familiar with. The President John Walker is different, and the parties are the Reds and the Blues, but the nation is the United States of America, and up until the end of Ronald Reagan’s two terms of office as a Red Party candidate, the presidencies are alike. Since then George Cooper, and then Henry Martin, and now John Walker. All men who while they could have been better, and some were dogged by personal and political scandals as presidents did better than most.

Note: You can of course, just make it the USA of a vanishingly different timeline, and have Democrats, Republicans, and George W. Bush as President. But then, you’re likely to have your interpretation of the leadership groups and people, and to your dismay, you’re likely to find someone in your gaming group rather strenuously disagrees with you. Let me underline this for those born with the assurance that they are natural aristocrats of the truth, and that disagreeing with them is evidence of mendacity and/or outright mental disability. There are people of good will, with sound reasons, and well-thought out objections, who disagree with you.

So let me advise you to follow the path of Tom Clancy and Dale Brown, both multiple best-selling authors, and name your presidents something innocuous. Its less important to do so with the parties, and with some of the lower ranked people. You might be fine with Dems and Reps, but if politics gets argued at your table, sometimes in raised tones of voice, you might be better off coming up with even less obvious names than Reds and Blues.

As a side note, I named my Presidents in the last dimension good basic English names. You could change that. Make them Charleston Court, Archibald Lewiseur, and Valentine Demoreux…but it would be a different world. So would the world of presidents Arthur Jorgenson, Peter Rasmundsen, and Kevin Hollander. Each implies slightly different things about the nation, not necessarily better or worse in my view, but definitely different.


The Sequoyah League is a prosperous nation situated in what in other timelines is termed Mexico, United States of America, and Canada.  It maintains an isolationist foreign policy, helped by the fact that Albert Einstein discovered the Grand Unified Theory of Electro-gravity rather than e=mcsquared which led in other worlds to the atomic bomb.
Its military is small, and very professional.  The Wall of Panama which covers the base of the Northern Continent keeps out illegal immigrants, and the Eastern and Western Ocean Fleets maintain an exclusionary zone of two hundred miles from the coasts for any foreign warship.  Indeed, all ships are searched at gigantic floating harbors in the deep ocean before they are allowed near land.
Interstate highways do not exist, since the use of anti-gravity repellers on the bottom of what are termed ‘land sleds’ is the common mode of transportation.  The legal requirement of any landowner is to allow passage by land sleds on certain parts of their property, but each land owner is allowed to charge a sliding fee.  This fee is deducted by laser interrogation as a communication device from every land sled that crosses the property.  If one is desirous of collecting fees, one lowers the fee, and makes sure to have a property which is in a nexus of transport routes.  Soon hundreds of land sleds use the short strip on your property, and you are gathering money hand over fist.  If you wish privacy, merely rack up the price on the sliding scale, as high as it will go, and few sleds will ever visit you.
This society does not have public highways, or schools, or post offices.  In fact, most people don’t even know the name of the president of the country who serves a one year term.  It is a very Libertarian world.
One other difference is that incorporating a business, rather than starting a proprietorship which is very cheap, requires an act of the Tribal Council of Councils.  There are less than a hundred corporations in the League.  This has the effect of reducing concentrations of wealth and power while aiding the small businessman, and lowering the dynamic nature of the economy.  Economic growth rates hover around four percent with little change for the last fifty years.  Recessions and booms are both concepts that do not apply in this world, with its gold standard, and minimal governmental interference.
Most people are partially Cherokee and Nez Perce and Irish and English by blood lines.  Smaller ethnic groups are the Spanish Seminole, and the Cajun, and the Russian Inuit, and the Arapahoe.
The Immigration of Outlanders occurred in a most law-abiding fashion.  Although there were difficulties, still on the whole, the Irish and the English avoided stealing land, and bought property.  They introduced the concepts of land ownership, and both sides benefited greatly.  The First Nations proved to be excellent statesmen, and for a long while, even after they were outnumbered most of the political leaders came from those with the heritage of the First Nations.
In 1805, the Sequoyah League was founded.  At first, it was a League because of the differing political entities inside it.  The Five Nations, the Cherokee, the New Amsterdam Metropolis, and so forth, but soon, it was seen that a common way had the most benefits, and most communities begin to move toward each other in what is termed the Homogenization Period of 1812 to 1833.
The dominant religion is Protestant Christianity although considerable numbers are also Baptist, Catholic, and followers of the Great Spirit.  The magic bias is moderate, allowing healing and blessings with an Alliance deity in charge of the group of deities that guide this dimension.
The environmental movement got an early start here, and in fact, one of the more turbulent periods was the Hoe-Men (Irish farmers and Arapahoe) versus the Sioux over the Sioux habit of burning the Great Plains to keep them plains instead of forest.
Taxes are minimal with a poll tax providing half of the government’s income.  The argument is that if you want to vote, then you ought to pay to support your positions.  Its entirely voluntary, and about half the people vote.
Weapons are legal for carrying, hunting, and self-defense, but most disputes are settled by wrestling.  Being on a wrestling team is practically a requirement to get a policeman’s job since shooting a suspect is frowned upon.
Most people don’t handle strong liquor that well, and so the dominant alcoholic tradition is for drinkers to sip their diluted beers and wines.  Still alcohol can be a serious problem, and taxes on it are high.  If bloody violence does break out, there is a good chance hard liquor is found as well.
Cities are considerably smaller with the largest being two million…New Amsterdam Metropol, and New Orleans being the second largest.  Juneau is third, and Taxichipl City (a port on the Caribbean) is fourth with Monterrey fifth.  People have smaller homes, and larger plots of land.  A thousand square foot house on fifty acres of land is a middle class property.  This is partially cultural.  Partially, its due to the greater skill they have in independent power generation, and storage (the ‘gravity battery’ can store energy for ten thousand years), and to telecommuting.
The League is generally envied, and frequently disliked by other, less successful political leaders, but people line up at its embassies every day to get a coveted “Right of Entry” card.  The League’s position is that it ignores other nations, and keeps them at an arms’ length.


The Confederation of America came from the South winning the Civil War, due to superior generalship, and capturing Abraham Lincoln, and indeed Washington, early in the war before Grant and Sherman embittered things.
The resulting Affairs of Compromise papers forced the losing North to buy all the slaves’ freedom, a most daunting task, and strongly limited the powers of the federal government.
It was only the personal intervention by several of the Southern generals which saved Lincoln from an impeachment, and then a jail term.  Like Nixon in the ‘prime timeline‘, he went on to write a number of books after his leaving office, and largely recovered much of his reputation.
Robert E. Lee became president after him, despite being desirous of avoiding this.  He served only one term, and then pleading health issues retired from public life, and wrote the world-famed collection of essays Letters to a Young Nation which are required reading in schools everywhere.
Without the burden of Reconstruction, and with the aristocratic culture of South in charge of the Nation instead of humiliated and destroyed, a more small-town, and elitist vision of America was created.  The merging of the states into the Nation still occurred, despite the War of Northern Aggression as some term it, although others more politely call it The Great Affray, but the ideals of a farm nation ruled rather than the morals of an industrializing society.
The railroads did not receive the benefits of free land, and tax breaks which they achieved in other timelines, and then used those to beat the farmers about the heads until bloody.  Here, railroads were built on a more skeptical basis, where there was demonstrated need, instead of overly speculative and financed by governmental aims.
This, plus the scent of aristocratic honor, and the independence that a small farm brought to a man led to a society with less of a problem with corruption.  Eventually, also the ethos of the aristocrat filled America, but with the idea of ‘every man an aristocrat’.
This was a message of dignity, and of given and earned honor, and of self-improvement.  Your average farmer was expected to have read the Bible and Plato through…in the original Greek at least where he could (the Bible having parts that were originally in Greek, and other parts in other languages such as Latin and Aramaic).  The cultural elite kept sniffing that the farmer should know Latin and Greek, but that was too much labor for most, although a decent percentage did eventually manage it.
Each man was expected to know geography, logic, foreign languages, and be able to fix tools, guide younger men, and of course, theology and Christian behavior and thought.
There was a difference between the Fervid and the High.  Both were quite well educated, but the Fervid demanded a personal experience of sin and salvation before God, while the High might or might not.  Sometimes, people got into their churches simply because grandmother had been kindly, and wealthy.
It became a more grounded, and yet more theoretical culture to the point where it was generally acknowledged that the world’s best thinkers, and its best common man both came from America.

Federation of States had its first inkling when Ben Franklin got his wish to name the turkey the American national bird, and to use the German language as the primary language.  So, in WW1, aka The Great War, we fought on the Germans’ side.

This led to Kaiser Wilhelm hanging on to the victory, and defeating his rivals Britain and France.  This leads to a period of instability worldwide as British naval forces are battered down, and its empire begins to be taken away from it piecemeal. Japan, Germany, and the United States all benefit from an enlarged empire.

Vladimir Ilyich and a certain Georgian are minor historical footnotes in the files of the Tzar’s security forces.  Both are executed as revolutionaries.  This suppression of scum enables the weak, but well-meaning Romanov’s the time to conduct genuine liberalization.

While there are rocky moments, as there is little more dangerous for a dictatorship or monarchy to handle than the transition to a republic, the assistance next door of the German Kaiser who still seeks to uphold the pre-Great War aristocratic system, although simplified to avoid interlocking treaties (this is called the Simple System.)  helps greatly.

In fact, now that Britain or Perfidious Albion, is done stirring up trouble on the Continent, so as to balance both sides against each other for its own benefit, the European continent enters a period of extraordinary, and growing stability centered on Germany.
Things turn toward a German-U.S. alliance with Germany handling Europe, and providing assistance and bases around the world while the economically growing power, the U.S. takes on more world police roles.

This provokes a major political battle in the U.S.. There is a very strong tendency in the U.S. to forego empire, and embrace isolationism.

In one timeline, the Homelanders won, and the U.S. gradually withdrew.  Its naval bases were underfunded, and its expansion ceased.  This necessitated the German-Russian alliance which ended up with the Germo-Russo Empire which dominated most of the world, and ended up sweeping America into its grasp as a subsidiary state.  In some timelines, this occurred peacefully, or mostly so, and in others it required war.

But in this timeline, the Homelanders lost.  They were a combination of “We hate America, its not good for the world.” and “We love America, the world is not good enough for it.”  This was the Left and the Right opposition to the new center governing coalition formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  There was also considerable, on both ends of the spectrum, racism which took various forms including fears about overpopulation.

But in this timeline, the Homelanders lost decisively, and became equated with the worst possible elements of humanity.  This was to a degree unfair, but this internal political exile is how America deals with views it finds totally unacceptable.  It exaggerates their evil to epic proportions.  Instead of naming them selfish cowards, it terms them ‘racist ignoramuses’.

But it worked.

So now with Homelanders reviled along with the Copperheads of earlier days, and the Know-Nothings as well, the path was open for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help build the American Empire which was explicitly designed as the younger sibling of the German Empire.

With imperialism thus bolstered, it gradually began to succeed on its own terms.  Tribes of bandits became nations of citizens, and the illiterate became well versed in Western high culture.

The children of the Sixties, convinced that peace and prosperity were the natural course of the universe, instead of an oddity, began to rebel against their parents.  But the rebellion was more calm than in the primary timeline.  The German culture was more intellectual,  and the imperialism more confident, and so the forces of order had better tools, and greater vigor than the children of chaos.

The world government was formed in the late seventies, and most power worldwide was provided by nuclear power plants (which were regarded as safe because of good German engineering, and because there was no legacy of using them as weapons to taint them with horrific associations.)

The Moon Landing occurred in 1969, as well.  But this was only the first step in the March into Space which had Mars colonized by 1992 with the Marsbase.

One minor difference was that the German culture of drinking swept the world.  An open enjoyment of beer, mixed with a very conservative intake of watered beer, well-mixed with lots of good humored jesting and conversation made for a far more congenial to each other, and to the wallet, and to the head the next morning than the Anglo-Saxon tradition of getting dead drunk and slicing up your neighbor with a steak knife.

The Union and the Confederacy were born in the wake of Lee’s brilliant victory at Gettysburg.  By then, the Dividing War was mostly over.  England had come in on the side of the South, forced by the ‘Cotton Weapon’, and while France aided the North it had been too little due to English naval activity sinking French shipping.

In the end, it was all rather inevitable, and later historians would wonder why anyone had bothered to contest the issue when the outcome seemed so clear.

But to his dying day, Lee wished he had lost that day to the Union.  For, with English troops, and cannons, and ships had come English influence, and then control.  Both European powers, struggling against each other, were more than willing to use Americans as proxies for their fight.  And so they demanded fight from their client states.

At first, both sides in America complied, but gradually it became apparent that the Confederate soldier was not fighting for his home, but for London.  The Union soldier, always having less morale than the Southerners was already deserting in record numbers.

The Second War, fought five years after the first, more fizzled out than went out with a bang.

And this was the state of things in the North and the South.  A certain something had gone out of the air, and it was replaced with a command from Paris or London.  This plus the hordes of dead were felt to have drained the life from the country.  In this world, no Gilded Age exuberance.  Instead, just a long, weary slog if one was enthused, or as more often the case, not enthused and then one tried to make the best of it, and enjoy the trip.

Texas became an independent country, and stayed that way.  The same for California which became a Mexican dominated kingdom.

From then on, things went as they did, until the Pacific War against Japan which has renewed interest in a Reunification and an expulsion of foreign influences.  The 1960’s were a big decade for the attempt to throw out the English and the French.
And as the decades go by, the tensions let up occasionally, but it seems clear that unless something changes, there will be war, a Second American Revolution to free the Americas from Europe.

Yukonia, People’s Republic of Kalifornia, Nevadan Imperium, Council of Yankees, and Highlander Clans, and the Sun Coast Republic are the disparate elements which split apart (or were formed thereafter) in the Great Disunification of 1862.  They are collectively known as the Six Nations, although the Clans aren’t really a nation-state. Instead of having a Civil War, all sides agreed, sometimes irritably that the Constitution read as states having the right to secede.

Since then, some unions have modified this, although the Highlander Clan Territories hold it most fervently.  These clans hold much of Middle America east of the Mississippi River.  This includes the Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys.  But there are literally dozens of small clan-doms in this territory.

It’s a violent, and freedom obsessed domain where insulting a man by calling him a liar is met with gun and sword in formal or informal duel.  And each man is careful of his dignity and his ‘rights’.

Its rich country, and the limited government helps things prosper, but the sudden violence and the small size of the markets keeps a cap on growth.  In bad years, Highlanders hire out as mercenaries.

“One Highlander is worth two Yankees, or three Sunnies, or ten Kalifornians.”  is the general rule of thumb for those buying the aid of mercenaries.  This reflects the fact that Kalifornian conscript armies are notably pitiable in combat, being more inclined to stand around looking dumb than dig, and more willing to run than to fight.

Yukonia runs from North California all the way into the Yukon Territory and up into Alaska and across the Bering Strait to a small part of Siberia.  It is a hard, but rich land.  However, nepotism, and heavy-handed regulations (which the rich companies get around by bribing relevant officials leaving the poor one man shops to bear the burden alone) make it so that its hard to get anything serious started.  And this is a land that requires serious commitment to deal with its treacheries and dangers.

The end result is that a mix of often broke wildcatters compete with large corporations using slave labor (prison population--very strict laws yield many prisoners) without concern for the workers.  However, the wildcatters do frequently win since the large corps are lazy, stupid, and greedy both inside and outside the corps.

This means that being a corper is a synonym for being untrustworthy.  Your typical corper is interested in one person…himself.  So not only do corporations betray their contracts, but they also find themselves plagued by disloyalty.

Disinterested political analysis suggests that the corporations are either going to go under, or some sort of grand political conflagration akin to the French Revolution is going to drag everyone under.  Its up in the air as to which way it goes…toward freedom and integrity, or toward more corruption and demise.

So far the government is focusing on injunctions to “Be Honest.” and on “Projects of National Interest” to whip up enthusiasm.

The Sun Coast Republic are the lot that kept slavery.  Eventually the economics of it moved against them, and they banished slavery in 1895.  Florida, Texas, and the southern parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana form this nation, as does Cuba, the Virgin Islands, Bermuda, and so on.

This is one of the richer states.  It is of note that Louisiana was possibly the richest state in the Nation pre-Civil War. In this timeline, it was never destroyed, and it retained its wealth.

The dominant economic system is what is known as ‘crony capitalism’.  That is, you’re allowed to participate in the buying and trading if you are a member of an old family.  This is reinforced by stringent requirements to get trading licenses.

In order to start a trading house, as companies are called, you have to put up assurances of more than a million dollars.  In effect, a rich parent stakes his child the beginning money, or so it seems.  But, the law is worded such that said parent is not actually on the hook if a loss happens, but if some stranger were to stake someone, they would be on the hook.

This keeps out venture capitalists, and bankers loaning bright guys money, and along with a few other tricks along the same line to the same effect means that the same Fifty Families have ruled, and will rule.  Meanwhile, the elites in charge of the society who descend from the planters talk about how free-market their society is, and about how if you can’t get ahead it’s a sign of inferior genetics or bad character.

Still the Sun Coast Republic is fairly well-to-do.

The Council of Yankees is a quasi-small government system.  Its in a continual struggle between the large cities, and the small towns, between the financiers and the farmers.  Both sides use the control of the Small Councils which govern local affairs and the Large Council which is for the nation as weapons to beat the other side down.  Sometimes, it gets downright perverse, where everyone gets hurt as long as the ‘enemy’ is hurt worse.

Usually, things are more restrained than that though.  Usually, its just a matter of getting advantages.  The farmers want easy credit and easy bankruptcy, and the financiers want bankruptcy viewed as the equivalent of committing armed robbery, and if a financial institution has to go bankrupt then its supposed to be a ‘national crisis’ which engenders a taxpayer bail-out.

The Nevadan Imperium is explicitly founded for the “protection of the right of the individual man to see relief from oppressive political structures.”  There is no ‘right to keep and bear arms.’  There is a duty to prove proficiency with a weapon at  yearly Grand County Shooting Matches.  If you can’t hit a target, you can’t vote.  Not that there is much to vote about.

The system is designed to be largely inflexible.  Nearly any major change in the law requires a four-fifths majority in the Rancher’s Meet.

Thus many important projects don’t get done.  And the other way of getting things done--having semi-independent bureaucracies do the job is also not legal.  This leaves private associations to handle things which do many things rather well.

Add in the fact that corporations are illegal here, and you simply come to the point that large-scale projects are simply impossible.

This suit’s the Rancher class just fine, both the small and large ranchers, and even the Cowboy class which has a decent chance of becoming a Rancher finds this suitable.  And since women and the Unhorsed don’t get a vote, the system runs fairly smoothly.

The Imperium, in public cultivates an image of a hard, and harsh system, but in actuality, it works out to one of the more pleasant, if you’re seen to be trying hard.  If you’re not trying hard, they’ll let you die.

The People’s Republic of Kalifornia should be wealthy.  Its got great weather, nice ports, and valuable minerals.  And it had a good start economically.  But then the farmer’s revolt against Central Railroad’s legally enforced monopoly turned away from free markets, and toward Communism.

The rest, as they say, is history.  The Revolution turned harsh with railroad executives getting hung, and then railroad workers, and then pretty much anyone who looked sideways at the Committee for the Creation of Utopia.

The ‘Republic’ is built in classic totalitarian fashion.  A tripod of power holds up the Central Committee.  The Army, which is mostly draftees, who are largely illiterate holds most of the guns.  But, it has political officers loyal to the Party who make sure all words and attitudes are proper.  And there are Security Force spies in the ranks with the right to execute officers at will.

The Army naturally hates the Security Force, and gladly goes out on a rampage whenever given permission and slaughters Sfers who got too above themselves.  The Party also has political officers in the SF.

And the Party has the least physical power in the way of guns, but the most members, and the most legal right to exercise power.

Kalifornia often hires out its Army units as merc units to raise some currency since it is very poor.

Prison camps mine gold in what can be described as ‘absolutely inhumane conditions.’

The Nevadan Imperium and Kalifornia are in a state of undeclared war.


Columbia diverges after Calvin Coolidge’s presidency.  Herbert Hoover did not get into office as president.  Instead, a dark horse candidate, in a wildly contested political convention got in.  “Stew” Landover became president.

He pushed forward the same general goals as Coolidge.  And when the Crash of ‘29 hit, he responded by cutting expenditures, and cutting taxes, and hanging on while people murmured about impeachment.

By ‘30, the Depression was mostly over, and by ‘31 it was obvious to all but the most diehard that he had been right to avoid increasing taxes to 90% and engaging in a lot of government expenditures.

The thirties continued in an economic boom, and with this benefit, and some diplomacy, the Weimar Republic fought off the wolves that surrounded it.  In the original timeline, the economic stresses of the Depression had played a major role in bringing about World War Two.  Now, it was hardly an issue.

Russia was soon under the control of the patient and cautious Uncle Joe Stalin.  A monster true, but not given to rash moves.

The great turn against businessmen and capitalists did not happen in this timeline.  Instead, they ascended along with preachers to the heights of respect.  Also, with the limited government, corruption was minimized, and governmental workers got a reputation as poor but honest and hard-working.

Without the other stresses, Mao did not take over China.  Instead, Columban Republic forces began to press in on the USSR.  So when Stalin died, Khruschev began the process of liberalization that got out of hand for Gorbachev, and the USSR faded away.

By the year 2000, almost all of the planet was in the grip of the Democratic Peace.  There were border incidents, and raids, but the death toll worldwide from war was only fifty thousand people.  Which to them was a tragedy, but for the whole of humanity was a very light suffering.

Pretty cool :)

Thanks, Day.

PT