Campaign created Tuesday, July 18, 2006 01:57:33 PM by Mastermind

Colonial Adventure during the Age of Enlightenment. Initially the campaign starts in 1715 two years after the Treaty of Utrecht. Before Last of the Mohicans, there were....the players!

"We can call the eighteenth century the age of the enlightenment bcause it was both a culmination and a new beginning. Fresh currents of thought were wearing down institutionalized traditions. New ideas and new approaches to old institutions were setting the stage for great revolutions to come"
--Diderot

The Intellectual Setting

From the 17th century the philosophes inherited the rationalism of Descartes. but the impulse of natural science alchemized into the Enlightenment. Newton had discovered a fundamental cosmic law which was susceptible to mathematical proof and applicable to the minutest object as well as to the universe as a whole. Maupertuis and Voltaire made Newton common property by 1750. John Locke had denied innate ideas and derived all knowledge, opinions and behavior from sense experience. Condillac carried this to its conclusion by insisting that even perception was transformed sensation.

So the traditional anthropocentric view of the universe lay in ruins and with it the anthropomorphic conception of God. Hence Montesquieu, Voltaire, the encyclopedists and physiocrats created the synthesis of social science which was based on past progress. All of this was done in an atmosphere of religious, political and economic controversy. Biblical criticism came from Hugo Grotius. Political economists, shocked by the difference between prosperous Holland and backward Spain, first posited precious metals as the source of wealth, then commerce, and then agricultural production (as developed by the physiocrats).

In all this controversy, social science was beginning to yield evidence--the critical and historical method of Pierre Bayle. Exotic travel literature had its effect as well. It supported the positivist, experimental mentality of the 18th century. It brought the aura of the "noble savage" into prominence. There was a moral sense in natural man. Rousseau and the encyclopedists succumbed to this idea. But that was not the case with Montesquieu and Voltaire. By 1750 the social sciences had already become inductive, historical, anthropological, comparative, and critical.

The Historical Setting

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the French and the English were engaged in a war (War of Spanish Succession/Queen Anne's War) that did not end until 1712. With the peace outlined in the Treaty of Utrecht, both sides saw a shifting of their possessions and trading rights in North America. One result of this shift was that much territory formerly claimed by the French now came under British control. Another was that the invaluable relationship with the Iroquois, as well as trading rights with other nations west of the French-held territory along the St. Lawrence, would now be open to the British.

Furthermore, as well as ending the reign of the Spanish Hapsburg monarchs and Spanish hold on European territories, the treaty gave Great Britain a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish (supply) slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British traders and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America. And, all the privateers in the Carribean who had fought on both sides during the war suddenly found their Letters of Marque null and void paving the way for the Golden Age of Piracy.

Game Information
Heroic template, 55/50, Normal Maxima. char start at 10.
No superpowers or psionics or native ritual magic, but low-level or modified superskills from Pulp Hero/DkChm allowed with GMs approval. As a caveat, I am getting some inspiration from Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which pushes the reality with extreme numerology, cyptography and natural philosophy.

You can start you character anywhere from Fort Prince of Wales on the Hudson Bay to the Spanish Main. My job will be to have the PCs cross paths (if ever).

The goal is also to have a generational game where the inital PCs's children/grandchildren will one day adventure.

Player applications are closed for now, I may accept one more players in the future. Please PM me your idea(s) if you are interested if/when a spot opens up.

1642	English Civil War Begins; Montreal Founded
1648	Treaty of Westphalia ends Thirty Years' War.
1649	Charles I executed
1653	Oliver Cromwell dissolves parliament and takes the title of "Lord Protector" to rule as a dictator
1654	English chemist Robert Boyle helps found the Philosophical College (which later became the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge);Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat develop the theory of probability.
1658	Cromwell dies
1660	Restoration of Monarchy under Charles II
1664	England seizes New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renames it New York
1665-66	Great Plague of London ('65); Robert Hooke idnetifies cells; Great Fire of London ('66)
1670	Hudson's Bay Company founded (May 2)
1675-76	King Phillip's (Sachem) War in New England
1687	Sir Isaac Newton publishes "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica"
1689	"Glorious Revolution" (first Jacobite Uprising) begins; King William's War between the British and the French in North America begins;Toleration Act grants freedom of worship to dissenters in England
1690	jul 01 - King William defeats James II at river Boyne; aug - A fleet of thirty-four ships leave Boston city to attack Quebec.
1691	jul 12 - Jacobites defeated at Battle of Aughrim; aug 25 - Siege of Limerick [u.sep 24]; oct 03 - Truce allowing the signing of the Treaty of Limerick, which guaranteed Catholic rights of worship and free passage of Jacobite soldiers to France; dec -First of the penal laws passed, Catholics excluded from parliament and public office by means of oath of supremacy.
1692	Salem Witch Trials
1697	King William's' War ends with Treaty of Ryswick
1698-99	Darien Scheme starts (Nov 1698. abandoned by July 1699)
1700	jun - Massachusetts passes a law ordering all Roman Catholic priests to leave the colony within three months. New York then passes a similar law; The Anglo population in the English colonies in America reaches c250,000; Boston, at c7000, is the largest city, New York: c5000.
1701	jul - The French establish a settlement at Detroit.
1702	may - |WAR of the SPANISH SUCCESSION| England declares war on France after the death of the King of Spain, Charles II, to stop the union of France and Spain. |WAR of the SPANISH SUCCESSION| Queen Anne's War between the British and the French, their Native American allies, and the Spanish in North America begins;England's first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant is founded.
1704	apr - The first enduring newspaper in America, The Boston News-Letter, is published. A newspaper in Boston prints advertising. Deerfield, Massachusetts destroyed by French and Indian Allies
1707	The Act of Union joins Scotland, England, and Wales into the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
1710	Port Royal captured by the British in Arcadia
1711	British forces, together with the American colonies, attempt to attack Quebec, but are discouraged when a storm in the St. Lawrence sinks nine of their ships;|NORTH CAROLINA| The Tuscarora Indian War between Native Americans and settlers following the massacre of settlers there.
1713	War of Spanish Succession/Queen Anne's War ends with Treaty of Utrecht; Britain gains Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay region, and the Caribbean island of St. Kitts
1714	aug - Geroge, the German Elector of Hanover becomes King George I, of Britain; tea is introduced for the first time into the American Colonies;Henry Mill receives patent in England for a typewriter.
1715	On June 27, 1715, William Stuart, Thanadelthur and 150 Cree leave Fort York with the various intentions of re-establishing peace between the Cree and the Chipewyan, bringing back some northern Native people to Fort York, announcing the construction of a fort at Churchill River, and looking for minerals (the campaign LMcD's begins)
July 31, 1715	a great hurricane strikes the coast of La Florida, sundering the Great Treasure Fleet bound for Spain, and the Cabo Bojador.