For Want of a Nail, an Infinite Worlds/Alternate History lexicon

[jeregenest]

But your creating Fancy, thought it fit
To make your World of Nothing, but pure Wit.
Your Blazing-world, beyond the Stars mounts higher,
Enlightens all with a Celestial Fire.

—The Duke of Newcastle, upon the publication of his wife Margaret's The Blazing World (1666), arguably the first alternate reality story in the English language.

In this Lexicon the players will take on the role of an individual associated with the concept of alternate/parallel worlds in a cross-time milieu. The game will be played in 9 turns, each based on a range of breakpoints, moving backwards in time. The turns will consist of the following eras:

1. 1939 to today
   
2. 1850 to 1938
   
3. 1700 to 1849
   
4. 1300 to 1699
   
5. 500 to 1299
   
6. 100 BC to 499AD
   
7. 600 BC to 100 BC
   
8. 1200 BC to 600 BC
   
9. Pre-1200 BC
   

1. On the first turn, each player writes an entry for a world that diverges due to events in the covered time period. You come up with the name of the entry, and you write about the world. Each entry should cover, at a minimum, the following: A point of change from the history of our world that takes place in the covered era; a change which would alter history as it is known; and an examination of the ramifications of that change. At the end of the article, you sign your name, and make two citations to other entries in the encyclopedia. These citations will be phantoms -- their names exist, but their content will get filled in only on the appropriate turn. No era can have more entries than the number of players, either, so all citations made on the first turn have to start with breakpoint eras before the modern (i.e., subsequent turns).

2. On the second and subsequent turns, you continue to write entries for the era covered in that round. However, you need to make three citations. One must be a reference to an already-written entry, and two must be to unwritten entries. (On the last two rounds, you only need to cite one and zero phantom entries, respectively, because there won't be enough phantom entries, otherwise.) Please note that both new and already existing phantom entries (i.e. ones that had already been cited before) count toward the two you must cite.

It's an academic sin to cite yourself, you can never cite an entry you've written. (This forces the players to intertwingle their entries, so that everybody depends on everyone else's facts.) Incidentally, once you run out of empty slots, obviously you can only cite existing phantom slots.

3. Despite the fact that your peers are self-important, narrow-minded dunderheads, they are honest scholars. No matter how strained their interpretations are, their facts are accurate as research can make them. So if you cite an entry, you have to treat its factual content as true! (Though you can argue vociferously with the interpretation and introduce new facts that shade the interpretation.)

I think this covers the basics. Does it work for people? Any questions? I basically adapted standard lexicon rules and came up with some interesting looking eras. Everything is open for debate.

Comments

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

I'm down, I think. It's been a while.

So every entry must be a description of a world? That is, an entry like "the parachronic police" or "the great time war between all the parallel universes where Rome never fell and all the parallel universes where Hitler won" would be verboten, and to introduce those concepts into the game you'd instead create an entry for "Earth One Prime Alpha Unity Singular, Homeworld of the Parachronic Police" or "Terra Optimus, the Best of All Possible Romes"?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Or you'd make reference to the war or the polcie over a course of several entries. Basically such cross-time entities come out organically though multiple entries instead of just one.

[melissagay.livejournal.com]

When does it start?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

What works for you?

[foxtown.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I would like to talk to you about this tomorrow, assuming that you are amenable to that idea.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

The phrase "their facts are as accurate as historical research can make them" makes me giggle.

Yeah, I'm in. I turn into a pumpkin around June 20th, so my vote is to start ASAP, which within reason would be in about a week. I'm assuming this'll be two-a-week?

What's the recruitment policy, by the way? Closed circle? Closed with invitations?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I changed that sentence a little.

Two a week seems the best. And my lexicons are always open invite.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

I'm in. Keep us posted as to when it officially "starts."

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd like to take a shot at it. I like the way you've split the time periods there, too.

One thing I wouldn't mind discussing is length maximums for entries. Every lexicon I've seen has ended up ignoring these, and usually it's no big deal, but something tells me entries creating whole worlds might run towards the verbose. While I wouldn't want to be draconian about word limits, it might make staying in and keeping up more managable if we all made an effort to be concise.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I'm all for the soft length guidelines. 500 seems to be a nice number and have somehow situated as a norm. 1000 gives one the length to spread a full yarn, but keeping up with a lot of these tends to be wearying (New Empire Club did 1000, but it also had one entry a week). Any longer and reading all the entries can become a full-on chore.

[vaklam.livejournal.com]

I am so there!

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

I'm in.

[shadowmancer-x.livejournal.com]

Count me in.

How long are turns?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

We are doing turns on Tuesday adn Friday. here's the schedule (http://www.innocence.com/games/taci/FWoaN/Schedule).