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This thread is intended to explore a drastic variation of the Chaos Earth setting, where one simple change is made:

There was no Coming of the Rifts.

The “great societies” of the turn of the century continue on without being flooded by mystical energies, bombarded by unnatural disasters, or invaded by supernatural monsters. If there are supernatural creatures at all, they're of the sort featured in Beyond the Supernatural.

What they do have are robots, power armor, and augmented humans (e.g., cyborgs, juicers, and crazies). Despite supposedly being a Golden Age, this setting seems to me like it would most likely feel more like a Cyberpunkish dystopia.

Basically just go with what we already know from the Golden Age. Mutant humanoids would be around in one form or another(Lonestar, Project Achilles, Tritonia/Shapercorp). Space expansion in the belt, on the moon, and at least Mars would be happening. I would see psychics becoming more understood, and common(Crazies, and the psychic tech/warriors from England). Plus that is more obvious like high tech weapons from GBs on, and lots of cyberpunk elements.

To me it would come out as something of a Shadowrun kinda setting with mutants replacing the awakened races, and all the political issues of their freedom, ownership, and so on. Increased population longevity would lead to a unique set of societal issues, as would very low cost energy and food growing methods.

I would say that since the rifts were set off by the nuclear exchange, that without the explosion of mystical energies, countries would have continued to nuke each other and you'd get a more After The Bomb setting.

How is that a simple change? Instead of CE's original concept with the trigger happening a minute after the witching hour the date would have to change OR the entire rules of magic would have to change. I'm thing in world difficulty of this change not just real world hand wavium.

There is no evidence in Rifts that it was a massive global nuclear exchange. So it was likely a limited regional exchange.

Changing the timing of the trigger event to happen an hour earlier or later would be a simple change, and would have been enough to prevent the Coming of the Rifts.

No it wouldn't. The time of day is only one part of the multiplier and 1 minute or 1 hour is the same and per the original concept idea of CE 1 minute would have still caused the leylines and rifts to explode releasing the monsters but not causing as much death.

Yes the Rifts were set off by a limited regional exchange, but they erupted across the world in a matter of minutes, which rendered any escalation mote. With the description of the Cold War like environment and seeming prevalence of nuclear weapons, and the fact the nations were willing to use them over a border skirmish, its not unthinkable that it would have led to world-wide nuclear war.

But if one does not send it down that route, then another option would be to have a cyberpunk-ish cold war setting, where the cyberpunk elements are more in the shadows as opposed to in the open, and the threat of nuclear annihilation hands over everyone head.

Are the nations really willing to use them? Do we have a who fired them? The U.S. and her allies as well most superpowers are unusually unwilling to use them. IMO it was likely the upstart SA superpowers used it on NEMA. If one nuke launches the rest are launched before the first one exits the atmosphere so your thought of the rifts negated the necessity of proliferation is pointless if it was an exchange... if we launch ours Russia and China would launch there's without waiting to see where ours were headed and then the whole planet go boom and then it is just a ball of radioactive dust with massive leylines

As for the cyberpunk theme with monsters and magic... too close to Shadow Run

Strike the “…and magic” part: the whole point of this exercise is that without the coming of the Rifts, supernatural elements such as magic and psionics remain non-factors.

OK; try this variation of the original concept: set it one year before the coming of the Rifts. The change is that some sort of time travel (or a psychic precog, which amounts to the same thing for this purpose) has managed to tip off the leadership of NEMA that a great catastrophe is coming — and the source of the warning has enough credibility that NEMA takes it seriously. So now you have a NEMA campaign to avert the coming of the Rifts. If successful, it results in a world where the Golden Age of Man continues on.

The problem with that is they already exist. Psionics were being enhanced by the U.S., Germany and England prior to Chaos Earth and Magic also exists but it would be at BtS levels.

If you want pure cyberpunk then it is an entirely different game system. Or a modified one close enough to another game setting that you may well just play that game setting. Your trying to put an engine from one car into a different kind of car. The PB system isnt that great that you should be trying to put Cyberpunk 2020 or Cybergeneration clothes on it. There is no compelling preexisting storyline to play in. Are you suggesting you want to write a new series or just looking for this genre to play in? BTW after the bomb would be Rifts if the Abomb exchange occurred but didn't start the PPE chain reaction.