Change the Word/Butterfly Effect Game

TulipMama · Sep 9, 2020

Hello!

So this game is a simple world building prompt to flex your imagination Re: how changes to the status quo would ripple out.

You will take the prompt from the previous post and say how that change would alter the world at large. Feel free to wander far in how this change alters life as we know it, getting as detailed as you want.

Leave a prompt for the next participant. Give them a change and a time frame.

Example:

Modern day, but humans have always had a mild electric field, about as strong as a pair of AAA batteries.

1) Obvi, AAA batteries wouldn't exist anymore, why would you need them? Technology would adapt so that holding your TV remote was enough to power it.
2) Dating may be more about finding somebody with a complementary charge so that sparks literally fly when you kiss.
3) High acid foods are more common since it's widely believed to increase your electrical potential to the point you can find fancy vinegar at your local cafe.
4) Pets are basically non-existent for companionship, since we'd shock birds into arrhythmia by petting them, and dogs/cats are sensitive to electric fields so they avoid us instinctively.

Prompt:

Edo period Japan, but insects vary in size from standard flies to cow sized beetles.

Cobalt Jade · Sep 9, 2020

Edo period Japan, but insects vary in size from standard flies to cow sized beetles.

A subset of Japanese farmers began to breed and raise these giant beetles for their hard, colorful carapaces, which were used to make samurai armor. Using such armor enabled the unification of Japan under the Emporer far earlier. Japan also began trade with the Western world earlier as well for these carapaces which were used in the making of jewelry, furniture, and other items.

1950s America. Television was declared a tool of communism and banned.

TulipMama · Sep 14, 2020

1950s America. Television was declared a tool of communism and banned.

1) The radio took off, once again, as the primary means of absorbing information and entertainment across the continental United States. Conspiracy theorists believe the government was pressured by 'Big-Radio' into this sweeping move.
2) Canada, Mexico and South America, not being attractive enough markets to warrant the shipping costs, were largely forced to follow suite. Over the next decade, Mexican inventors re-developed the technology and became the hub for visual technology to cater to the America's.
3) Laws banning televised broadcasts were put in place, leading to an underground movement that, ironically, forced the youth of America to learn Russian to enjoy the televised entertainment using black-market Mexican TVs.
4) Moscow becomes the 'Hollywood' of the era, and Toronto Canada becomes the 'Bhaliwood'
5) The influx of the visual arts economy props the USSR up for the next decade, cementing them as a world power with wider reaching social standing dictated by the stories they fed the wider world as entertainment.

Near future (2080-2100 or so), a genetically altered fish breeds into the wild population and effectively makes all fish deathly poisonous to humans.

milotry · Sep 23, 2020

Near future (2080-2100 or so), a genetically altered fish breeds into the wild population and effectively makes all fish deathly poisonous to humans.

This'll be jolly!

1) Millions upon millions of people are dead within a matter of days. By the time the world catches on to what's happening (that fish are the cause, and that it's every single fish), complete and total chaos has descended, particularly in countries with fish rich diets, whose populations have been decimated. Thankfully, the poisonous nature of the fish has not spread to the water.
2) Sanitation can't keep up with the rising death toll - there are hundreds of thousands of homes and restaurants filled with unmoved corpses, creating an unprecedented health hazard. People are told to stay indoors (whoops, this sounds familiar).
3) Once it's understood that fish are toxic, everyone naturally stops eating them. However, in locations where fish were a staple food, this causes huge upheaval and in poorer areas, starvation for anyone who was lucky enough to survive the intial round of deaths.
4) The fishing industry evaporates overnight, destroying livelihoods and creating an epidemic of unemployment in coastal regions. Governments cannot cope. There is mass rioting.
5) The scientists responsible for producing the genetically altered fish are identified, their government is blamed, and political tensions - already strained in the aftermath of World War 3 - rise to a boiling point once again.
6) TL;DR, the world falls apart.

Prompt: Ancient Greece, but pegasi are real and as common as regular horses.

Mattpwriter · Jan 20, 2021

Ancient Greece, but pegasi are real and as common as regular horses.

1: Due to the dual usefulness of traveling land and air, regular horses were never domesticated.
2: As a result, the concept of the "Rough Ridin' Horseman" never formed, and the western genre was never created to accommodate it.
3: As a result of that, the concept of shootouts never formed, and the action movie genre was never created.

Adolf Hitler never became a military leader, but instead became the archeologist who found Atlantis.

Change the Word/Butterfly Effect Game

TulipMama

Cobalt Jade

TulipMama

milotry

swamp dweller

Mattpwriter