Fictional countries

[Gallowglass]

Afriboria is my creation:

http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/afriboria.htm

http://www.tsoa.be/html/titelblad_uk_afriboria.html

Rudi

Wow 

That's seriously impressive. 

I've been working on a Balkan-esque state called Sebrovia (I think the name stuck in my head after reading an article in Wargames Illustrated). I wanted to be able to use it for Gothic horror, Pulp and for Great War, WW2 and maybe even moderns

I haven't figured out where to "put" it yet, geographically speaking. I like having a German/ Austro-Hungarian influence in games á la Zenda/ Ruritania etc, but I thought it might be interesting to have a fair bit of Italian involvement as well. It's obviously going to have bits and pieces ripped off from Rumania, the former Yugoslavia as well.

It's beginning to take on a life of its own actually - I haven't put this much into a "setting" since playing/running AD&D regularly years ago. Good fun, though.

[BaronVonJ]

Fictional countries are my favorite. It's much easier when running games to have them take place somewhere made up. If I'm running a early 19th century game in my favorite country Unkerlant, and someone points out a discrepancy in Napoleon tactics, I remind them that isn't Napoleonic Europe, but a isolated country in Eastern Europe.
For VSF, Zimdar: http://essjam.home.comcast.net/~essjam/
For 18th/19th Century, Unkerlant: http://baronvonj.blogspot.com/search/label/Unkerlant
(which I'll be starting the campaign for soon)
I always liked the alternate Europe of the comic Arrowsmith: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowsmith_%28comics%29
Then, I've been running a medieval mapless campaign for a place simply known as "the Kingdom" http://baronvonj.blogspot.com/search/label/Campaign
-J

[Geudens]

Afriboria is my creation:
http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/afriboria.htm
http://www.tsoa.be/html/titelblad_uk_afriboria.html
Rudi

Wow 
That's seriously impressive. 
I've been working on a Balkan-esque state called Sebrovia (I think the name stuck in my head after reading an article in Wargames Illustrated).

The trick I use is a very "general" map (as you can see on my site).  Apart from very general features (mountains, coastline, jungle, main cities), I can then still lay out the terrain for my scenarios as I want.  Too much detail and this freedom of design is gone...

Rudi

[Doomhippie]

Well, a cousin of mine and me invented basically a whole new world. Only it wasn't really new as it was more a parody of the real world, mixing different times from between 1900-1950 or so. So rather than the United Kingdom we had something called King-George-Land. Guess what Kilt County stood for. An exotic state called Chewbacca (yes, just like him), famous for tabacco (especially chewing tabacco), an Austrian-like monarchy called Dunderreich with the capital Dunderstruck (which was named after the ACDC song Thunderstruck) and all kinds of different other countries (most of them not quite politically correct). I've talked about the weirder pseudo-Russian names in some post (can't remember which one...). Basically we designed that world to play all our favourite wargaming fantasies on. In the course of that we became more and more obsessed with the coming up of some kind of history and cultural backgrounds. My cousin really went over the top when he drew a very detailed citymap of his favourite capital about 2X2 meters big. And when he added streetlamps in glow-in-the-dark colors I was about to have hom locked away. Still I wouldn't want to miss that.

[Arlequín]

I quite like the ideas coming out here. The advantage of it all is that you can run 'your world' across several periods in some cases, the earlier periods providing context and history for the later ones.

The real world can be a touch restrictive and most conflicts either don't give you everything you want or are on too grand a scale for your needs.

I quite like Rudi's approach of using a general map. Each game you play then fills a bit of it in and your country is fleshed out as you play.

[Poiter50]

Rudi, I had glimpsed your site before but hadn't bookmarked it. The site of a very fertile imagination, congrats!!

Afriboria is my creation:

http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/afriboria.htm

http://www.tsoa.be/html/titelblad_uk_afriboria.html

Rudi

[Gluteus Maximus]

.... an Austrian-like monarchy called Dunderreich with the capital Dunderstruck (which was named after the ACDC song Thunderstruck)

Yaaaaaay! Love it 

The "Society of Daisy YahooGroup is big on fictional countries and has loads of great inspiration for creating your own:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SOCDAISY/

[commissarmoody]

What is this "society of Daisy you speak of?

[Gluteus Maximus]

What is this "society of Daisy you speak of?

It's a Yahoo Group that specializes in humorous, fictional games, involving "chocolate box" armies set in imaginary countries with plenty of bad puns 

Mostly 18thC, but the ideas are valid for any era, if you like some silliness in your gaming. There are several members who have their own 19thC set-ups.

[twrchtrwyth]

.... an Austrian-like monarchy called Dunderreich with the capital Dunderstruck (which was named after the ACDC song Thunderstruck)

Yaaaaaay! Love it 

The "Society of Daisy YahooGroup is big on fictional countries and has loads of great inspiration for creating your own:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SOCDAISY/

So your a friend of Daisy? Does that mean the same as being a friend of Dorothy?

[Arlequín]

.... an Austrian-like monarchy called Dunderreich with the capital Dunderstruck (which was named after the ACDC song Thunderstruck)

Yaaaaaay! Love it 

The "Society of Daisy YahooGroup is big on fictional countries and has loads of great inspiration for creating your own:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SOCDAISY/

So your a friend of Daisy? Does that mean the same as being a friend of Dorothy?

Hmmm.... so asks the guy with the 'tin man' avatar ... oh sorry, it's a cyber man 

Mind you 'Brideshead Revisited' was influential in my interest in WW2 

Interesting Fact No. 5004 -

In the early 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service was investigating homosexuality in the Chicago area. Agents discovered that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy." Unaware of the historical meaning of the term, the NIS believed that a woman named Dorothy was at the center of a massive ring of homosexual military personnel. The NIS launched an enormous hunt for Dorothy, hoping to find her and convince her to reveal the names of gay servicemembers.

[Doomhippie]

Well, of course there are also the FOC (Friends of Carlotta)... 

[Arlequín]

Well, of course there are also the FOC (Friends of Carlotta)... 

mhmm reduced to name-dropping obscure techno bands huh? 

[V]

Gallowglass,

Im offended you didnt remember our special forces mission deep inside Khazistan - The Toilet of the Middle East.

I have several fictional nations... All featuring in a moderns campaign at my club.

http://www.newbridgegaming.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=985

[Red Ed]

I've been toying with the idea myself for a Spanish Civil War type scenario that would allow me to add more unusual troops and vehicles. It is a pretty common artifice in 1930's books and films... 'Duck Soup' springs immediately to mind for some reason, but 'Prisoner of Zenda' is another.

Well there is Andorra up there in the Pyrenees.  Or, you could always do an alt history thing where the Basques and/or Catalonia declare independence from the central government in Madrid.  Come to think of it didn't something like that happen in Asturias shortly before it was overrun by the Nationalists? What if they had done it early on...

Duck Soup, yes! The Marx Brothers' (and possibly civilization's) highest achievement! The film even leaves coded instructions on what minis to collect for gaming:

Groucho: Now that you're Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we ought to have?
Chico: Well, I tell you what I think, I think we should have a standing army.
Groucho: Why should we have a standing army?
Chico: Because then we save money on chairs.

Would this be your standing army?



Now where can we get the figures?

I quite liked the war sequence where each shot of Groucho shows him in a totally different uniform than the one before 

Rufus T Firefly - a sartorially notable model of leadership.



"And remember, while you're out there risking life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are."

Along with "Freedonia" and "Slyvannia" from Duck Soup, another made up country from the world of film is "The Grand Duchy of Fenwick" in The Mouse that Roared.

Personally though, my favorite name for a made up country comes from Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo where the dramatic action takes place in the fictional country of "Costaguana" ("The Bird-sh*t Coast" for those who slept through Spanish 101).

Ed