Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;822149Yes.

Those who doubt this should read the CSA's constitution, an absolutely fascinating document. They did everything they could to hardwire slavery into the very existence of the state.

The CSA was slave society, meaning there entire society revolved around slavery. It's hard to imagine in today's society how much the American South depended on slavery. The CSA actually attempted some form of limited emancipation, and literally could no do it, even in the most limited circumstances. Not even to save themselves.

edit: They'd rather lose the war and be forced to give up their slaves, then willing submit to emancipation.

WTF? Deadlands Confederacy didn't have slaves?

Wow. I must have missed that! My crew only played with the core book years ago and I never GM'd so the people I played with must have always just used real world history.

So...yeah, a slave-owning Confederacy works fine in Deadlands...

But the Civil War in our games was something in the far background, as our games were always in the Weird West.

I would actually forget all the stupid alt-history metaplot and run Deadlands in the a world where history played out pretty much as it did here, just with magic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;822535I would actually forget all the stupid alt-history metaplot and run Deadlands in the a world where history played out pretty much as it did here, just with magic.

Yeah, I think that's the majority view. Alt-history actively hurts the game.

Quote from: S'mon;822572Yeah, I think that's the majority view. Alt-history actively hurts the game.

I don't get why people are so convinced that actual history is going to somehow be boring.  I get infusing fantasy into history (that's what I do with Albion, for example), but feeling you have to put an alternate timeline on top of that just seems pointless, when real history is tremendously interesting and full of roleplay potential just as it was.

The main benefit to keeping Deadlands' alt-history is that the 1999 Marshal's Handbook details heaps and heaps of adventure locations, so if you stick close-ish to the alt-history they give you you can run a sandbox campaign straight from that.

Doesn't really seem to be an advantage significant enough to me to convince  me to jettison real history though.

I am considering making one major change, though, because it grits my teeth to try and play it otherwise.

The Confederacy is in the process of falling as well as being a slave-owning state: Given the Confederacy was founded for and by slave-owners for slavery (it's stated in the Constitution), I don't feel comfortable having them abolish it and am actually okay with having them "win" the War for Independence. The thing is, I'm also thinking in the setting that slavery is such a gigantic boon to the Reckoners that the South has been pretty well-ravaged by monsters working in the shadows and maybe something like a Black Death-esque plague (The Red Death?) which, combined with the economic instability of slavery, is causing it to fall apart and simulate the same rush out to the Old West which happened in the real world.

This obviously impacts things like Hell on Earth but I don't think I'll be getting to there anyway. I'm not sure how it would impact other areas of the game. Among other things, I think it'd be interesting to impact the Deadlands-verse that the Union and runaway slaves got a much much bigger slice of things in the real world while the Confederacy's attempts at expansionism had bigger hurdles.

Quote from: RPGPundit;822797I don't get why people are so convinced that actual history is going to somehow be boring.  I get infusing fantasy into history (that's what I do with Albion, for example), but feeling you have to put an alternate timeline on top of that just seems pointless, when real history is tremendously interesting and full of roleplay potential just as it was.

Honestly, given the way real life history turned out, I fully support Alt-History on behalf of those who weren't white males. Also, it adds the option of the Union/Confederacy Cold War competition.

Agent vs. Agent!

Spy vs. Spy!

Quote from: CTPhipps;913631Honestly, given the way real life history turned out, I fully support Alt-History on behalf of those who weren't white males.

Yes, this is why we would go for an Alt history.  

We added magic so we can add equality, but just as we looked at the ramifications and logical consequences of magic we have to do the same for equality.  For magic that means "what happens going forward" for equality the OP has chosen to ask "what happened in the past to make that happen"

Quote from: RPGPundit;822535I would actually forget all the stupid alt-history metaplot and run Deadlands in the a world where history played out pretty much as it did here, just with magic.

That's how I'd do it too and though I understand why they want with an alt-history, it's a pretty dumb one.

This is the game the tagline of which is "Spaghetti Western - With Meat."  I don't really think they were going for the "whoever the fuck is the most pretentious and prestigious historical society's Alt-History award".

That having been said, feeding on the fear of Slaves in the South gets the Reckoners two things...Jack and his retarded brother, Shit.

A Divided America, with a Cold War mentality that takes the fear we experience at the height of our real Cold War and extends it for 200 years over the entire globe as the stage is set for eventual Global Thermonuclear War that brings the Reckoning...just what the doctor ordered.

The rise of the dead after the Battle of Gettysburg caused both sides to stop overt hostilities to reassess how they could continue the war without the Risen Dead destroying any battlefield victory.  Now the South (and the Reckoners) had time.  So the Reckoners possess Jefferson Davis and get rid of slavery in order to buy the CSA the geopolitical clout and support that will allow it to stand in opposition to the USA and thus create the Cold War that will eventually lead to the Reckoning.

Stop clutching your pearls, put down your crystal balls divining what must have been in the designer's head (it usually goes something like "we need to make the South palatable...WhiteWash!!!11!!) and just read what's in the goddamn book.

Claims that there's no way the South could have survived without slavery, even with economical support from Britain and France are countered by the fact that the South with slavery could still not have survived without economical support from Britain and France...but making it with support from Britain and France is FAR more likely.

Quote from: CRKrueger;913709This is the game the tagline of which is "Spaghetti Western - With Meat."  I don't really think they were going for the "whoever the fuck is the most pretentious and prestigious historical society's Alt-History award".

That having been said, feeding on the fear of Slaves in the South gets the Reckoners two things...Jack and his retarded brother, Shit.

Honestly, speaking, I'm going to call bullshit on that. You've got the Confederacy and the Union as moral equals hating each other for reasons of the past war and land difficulties. However, both of these organizations are social justice minded equals with rights for men, women, blacks, and whites. This versus a seething mass of hatred and prejudice which was the case in real life without the constant culture of rape, torture, and violence which was the Confederacy.

FYI, I'm about as Southern as Boss Hog since my great aunt owns a goddamn former plantation and they still call it the War Between the States in my area. I'm speaking from experience when talking about my evil asshat ancestors rather than stuff I learned in a textbook.

QuoteA Divided America, with a Cold War mentality that takes the fear we experience at the height of our real Cold War and extends it for 200 years over the entire globe as the stage is set for eventual Global Thermonuclear War that brings the Reckoning...just what the doctor ordered.

The problem with that is it takes 200 years and I'm less than impressed with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse that way. The Earth, without the influence of Wild West Satan, almost blew itself up with nuclear weapons and you have infinitely more useful than uranium stuff glowing in its own backyard. Frankly, the alt-history timeline is impressive primarily in how they managed NOT to succeed for centuries.

QuoteThe rise of the dead after the Battle of Gettysburg caused both sides to stop overt hostilities to reassess how they could continue the war without the Risen Dead destroying any battlefield victory.  Now the South (and the Reckoners) had time.  So the Reckoners possess Jefferson Davis and get rid of slavery in order to buy the CSA the geopolitical clout and support that will allow it to stand in opposition to the USA and thus create the Cold War that will eventually lead to the Reckoning.

I've read the book, shockingly enough.

In fact, I actually like the idea of an Alt-Confederacy continuing onward as well as the Cold War decades earlier because I don't mind the idea of the world being well and truly fucked. As mentioned, I grew up in a place where the South Rising AgainTM was still an idea in my childhood and Thank God it's not passed into the generation after me.

The Confederacy is too good of a villain to use in a world which is completely overrun with vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness. I enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and think that a still-functioning Confederacy is a perfect "show, don't tell" sign that the Reckoners aren't a bunch of lightweights getting themselves shoved over by some humans with True Faith, Shamans, and gunslingers.

Quote from: Warthur;821850So how does the Civil War start if the South abolished slavery when the North did?

Because it wasn't about slavery. That was the excuse Lincoln used. Lincoln just wanted to rule a continent and said so in now-published, then-private letters. He would have supported slavery if it had kept the continent under his rule. It was a taxation and States' Rights issue. The North was using the South and forcing it to bear the brunt of taxes. In real life, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the South--to areas not under Northern rule. Slaves in the North were still considered property.

People forget only one in ten Southerners owned slaves. And slavery was naturally being driven out by automation. The North actually slowed the dissipation of slavery by keeping trade benefits from the South and milking the South for taxes, which prevented farm owners from having the capital to switch more quickly to cheaper and more efficient machinery.

Quote from: Tod13;913713Because it wasn't about slavery. That was the excuse Lincoln used. Lincoln just wanted to rule a continent and said so in now-published, then-private letters. He would have supported slavery if it had kept the continent under his rule. It was a taxation and States' Rights issue. The North was using the South and forcing it to bear the brunt of taxes. In real life, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the South--to areas not under Northern rule. Slaves in the North were still considered property.

People forget only one in ten Southerners owned slaves. And slavery was naturally being driven out by automation. The North actually slowed the dissipation of slavery by keeping trade benefits from the South and milking the South for taxes, which prevented farm owners from having the capital to switch more quickly to cheaper and more efficient machinery.

Friend, again, I'm Super-Southern and I've read the Constitution of the Confederacy. It was all about slavery and the people who would most argue it was about slavery when the Civil War began would be the Southern politicians who were starting the War.

Here's some lines from their Declaration of Independence:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

QuoteThe General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

QuoteThese ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

My ancestors rebelled because they wanted to be slave owners even if they didn't own slaves themselves.

Because they were big ass racists.

As for Lincoln's belief in Manifest Destiny, err, the Confederacy wanted to conquer South America and Central America. They even had a, no shit, supervillain society for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle

Which is something I think would make a good adaptation to the Deadlands universe.

On my end, I don't actually give a shit about the historical accuracy of the Deadlands universe per se. I'm entirely willing to completely go off script in my alt-history RPGs. Ancient Rome ruling the world to the Modern Day? Nazis having conquered the ENTIRE Earth with you as the plucky resistance? 2020 a cyberpunk dystopia with the majority of humanity living in massive slums?

Whatever makes a great game.

I also think Deadlands is some weird hybrid between the Wild West West and Call of Cthulhu.

Which is far from the strangest game I've ever played.

I'm just saying if you're going to put Confederates in my game, I'd like to shoot them in the face for the decades I grew up listening to their apologist's crap in my hometown. I'm not seeing the real benefit of just making them another type of American even as I *LOVE* the idea of "and then equality ensued." If you just need a Super-PowerTM rivalling the United States in the 19th century Wild West then have Mexico keep Texas due to Ghost Rock.