A Better World
January 28, 2025 3:24 AM   Subscribe

A Better World - Alternate History Simulation. Choose events to modify in the timeline of history, and see how the timeline changes.
posted by Wolfdog (49 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
No option for “wolves aren’t domesticated.”
posted by Captaintripps at 3:37 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]


Not so much a simulation, more a list of daydreams - which is also a nice thing to have.
posted by Phanx at 3:59 AM on January 28 [7 favorites]


I did it! I made a better world!

(I admit that "Al Qaida destroys the Kremlin" was not an outcome I foresaw, but the 1,653 karma points are nice.)
posted by DarlingBri at 4:15 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]


It’s a little silly. Getting rid of Genghis Khan would not have led to China vonquoring India. Northern China was already under the rule of the Jin dynasty, and the Southern Soong were in no position to challenge them. The preservation of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad would have been a nice bonus, though.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:30 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]


I think I got 44,000 karma on the last run. But for a long while the timeline ended with the Spanish Flu...

There's more to it than it appears: you can keep changing things, sometimes get stuck in a pretty horrible world. You don't get the same options each run.

Maybe a little too much "X conquers all of Africa" and the like. I did appreciate the multiple versions of the Boston Tea Party.
posted by zompist at 4:33 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]


I just killed all of humanity just by encouraging Alexander the Great to focus on trade instead of conquest.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:50 AM on January 28 [6 favorites]


There’s a card game called Chrononauts with a similar idea.
posted by Ishbadiddle at 4:52 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]


looking for an option where "the trump rally shooter bothered to do some target practice beforehand"
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:01 AM on January 28 [6 favorites]


It’s fun, but, yeah, pretty silly in what consequences are presented for whatever change you made, few of which made much logical sense at all. And I seemed to get a lot of retroactive consequences. After I made a change, things would now appear in the past that I could not change, yet were labeled as [changed].

In any case, I seemed to always end up with Al-Qaeda destroying Notre-Dame de Paris.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:14 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]


At first glance it seemed like a cool tool to introduce students to be critical of teleological thinking in history - i.e. that there could only ever be one outcome, and that the past has been a linear march toward progress. But instead it just sorta replaces one preordained timeline with another - if I was a coder, my tweak would be to have each change lead to a new set of possible outcomes the player could choose, rinse and repeat.
posted by coffeecat at 5:35 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]


I got a multi planet communist Buddhist empire that transcended in 1972.
posted by lucidium at 5:55 AM on January 28 [4 favorites]


i arranged events so that my last one is “Al Qaida destroys the Karl Marx towers of the workers' city of Manhattan” on 9/11. seems kind of like we’re just doing madlibs for history here
posted by dis_integration at 6:11 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]


Okay, I have redeemed myself - I just made one change that resulted in Ebola, AIDS, and Covid being eradicated in the 1950s, before they even existed; and then ten years later everyone had social security for life.

I'm stopping RIGHT THERE.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:26 AM on January 28 [9 favorites]


"I didn't break the planet, okay? It was like this when I found it" - Denis Leary
posted by Molesome at 6:51 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]


Fun daydreams indeed. I've been organizing an American spring in late 18th century Europe, then inventing a world where great thinkers wrote cookbooks, apparently.
posted by doctornemo at 7:10 AM on January 28


And on the 7th Minute, He rested …
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:29 AM on January 28


One change in a relatively minor country and I get:
1914: "Africa integrates the United States of Liberty"
1990: "South Africa hosts the 1st international peace summit"
And in doing so, reversed some early terrible karma for a plus-3,900 or so. Calling it a win, but playing again...
posted by martin q blank at 7:37 AM on January 28


Once people go and find the Stargate on Mars, it's hard to avoid the Enemies coming to wipe out humanity - and the same is true in this game.
posted by entity447b at 7:43 AM on January 28


Oops accidentally hanged Darwin
posted by phooky at 7:48 AM on January 28 [3 favorites]


Greetings, Fat Gherkin!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:56 AM on January 28


Also, woohoo, I killed all humans by 1918!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:01 AM on January 28


My new party trick is getting civilization to put a satellite in orbit before the invention of the steam engine.

I'd bet there are even weirder technology orderings possible in the game...
posted by Pemdas at 8:01 AM on January 28


It didn't include what will happen if RFK Jr. becomes secretary of HHS.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:05 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]


I won! "The Black Plague wipes out the entire human population [END OF MANKIND]"
posted by kmkrebs at 8:13 AM on January 28 [5 favorites]


I've gotten spaceflight in 1903 so I feel pretty good about that.
posted by adamrice at 8:17 AM on January 28


We invented the Stargate, established an Earth 2 in another galaxy and it got destroyed by aliens.

Obviously, it's action-movie time ...
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:35 AM on January 28


Surely if you had communismed better you'd have been friends with the alienses
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:40 AM on January 28


No surprise, but some of these consequences conflict with each other. Now I've got

1206: Genghis Khan conquers the world
1271: Marco Polo discovers Asia

Like, dude, I think Asia has already discovered you.
posted by adamrice at 8:42 AM on January 28 [6 favorites]


He discovered Asia the way Christopher Columbus "discovered" America.
posted by Mitheral at 9:51 AM on January 28


I managed to avoid the European colonization of Africa and yet still ended up with negative karma which seems like some weird judging.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:53 AM on January 28


I stopped playing after encouraging the growth of the ARPAnet in 1965 led to an (unsuccessful) AI rebellion in 1992. The game's a fun conceit and of course it can't be realistic, no-one can know the causal structure of all of human history, but that took out my suspension of disbelief.

I guess there's no reason the authors couldn't have something interesting to say about ancient history or the industrial revolution (for example), while evidently knowing less than I do about the development of computers, but allowing for that just seems like wilful Gell-Mann amnesia.

Looking at the other comments here, it does seem to be basically Mad Libs for history, as dis_integration put it.
posted by Slogby at 9:59 AM on January 28


> Surely if you had communismed better you'd have been friends with the alienses

The answer is to build a giant mecha robot, and let a pop singer throw a concert in it.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:23 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]


Al Qaeda destroyed the American Kremlin, which might prove inspiring over the next decade.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:27 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]


Ha, I killed all humans with the black plague by 1347! Beat THAT, fellow misanthropes!
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:34 AM on January 28


specifically, beat that by exactly 10 years.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:35 AM on January 28


On another run, I invented rock music in 1610, and the Leonardo da Vinci satellite was launched in 1612
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:41 AM on January 28


one early change and I get rock music by 1610, computer science by 1870, gene therapy for cancer by 1970, an AIDS vaccine by 1990 and a Mars landing by 1999. stopped the Black Plague and Spanish flu in their tracks, to boot.

NOW I'll call it a day.
posted by martin q blank at 10:58 AM on January 28


OK now could we get the real-world version in production ASAP kthx
posted by Hardcore Poser at 11:04 AM on January 28


In my timeline so far, Genghis Khan has conquered the west, the US became a progressive socialist government in 1861 in the wake of the Boston Sausage Party, leading to Al Qaida destroying the Karl Marx towers of the workers' city of Manhattan in 2001, but we've been running SETI since 1879.
posted by rp at 12:05 PM on January 28


Stopped the Black Plague and now the world population is 10 billion. Way to make Soylent Green a reality.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 12:06 PM on January 28


Wow. Atomization of Enemies on Mars and destruction of the Stargate came before universal social security. It really is believable
posted by rp at 12:37 PM on January 28


So basically this is the text based online version of Chrononauts, a card game which I love. There's also an Early American History and a Star Trek version out.

Me and my board game friends have often discussed an ancient history/ European medieval history version of Chrononauts, but we could never agree on a timeline for such a home game.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:54 PM on January 28


This seemed to me a very intentionally goofy game and I love its silliness.

I mean:

1966: Earth-Moon War

is amazing.
posted by mysticreferee at 5:20 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]


Pshaw! All Earth needs is “One ship, six bombs.” What's the Moon going to do, throw rice?
posted by Mitheral at 5:45 PM on January 28


Social Security for all by 1987.
All it took was nipping the slave trade in the bud.
Nice.
posted by girandole at 6:12 PM on January 28


I was doing really well until I assassinated a 3rd bad guy, and suddenly everything was in red and The Boston Sausage Party was created. (Also the U.S. would be speaking French, as I drowned Columbus.)
posted by Glinn at 6:38 PM on January 28


After some poking I got a prompt that let me tinker with the origins of agriculture in -11000 BCE. This led to some wild results, including...

70: Crusades of the Bread of Jesus and destruction of Jerusalem [CREATED]

1517: Protestantism refutes the idea of ​​a peasant God [CHANGED]

posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 8:08 PM on January 28


If only we could avert the Finno-Korean hyperwar.
posted by lucidium at 5:25 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]


Okay, so I managed to end mankind with a plague. Then the next time we made it 1948, when World War 3 broke out, and the thermonuclear war ended up destroying mankind, again.
posted by litera scripta manet at 5:09 PM on January 31


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