Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [IW] Queries: Recent echoes, and some implications

CoyoteGestalt · 04-02-2010, 07:25 AM

I guess part of it is that I'm a little fuzzy on the exact difference between parallels and echoes, perhaps. My understanding is that an echo matches, as far as anyone can tell, Homeline history at some past point (or Centrum's, for their one known echo... I wonder if Shikaku-Mon has any echos?), whereas a parallel diverged at some point in past history (whether close (Buddy Holly took the bus) or far (Pangaea split up differently)). If something happens to change the course of events in a echo, presumably due to outside interference, my understanding is that it drifts into a new quantum, and becomes a parallel.
So, if an echo reaches the 1990s and parachronic technology is not invented, it's diverging - not founding a major multinational corporation is certainly a change in history - so has it just converted itself into a parallel spontaneously? I feel like it must have said something about this somewhere in the book, but I can't find it.
I did notice that the random echo generation table doesn't produce any dates after 1995, though.

04-02-2010, 07:25 AM	#4
CoyoteGestalt Join Date: Jan 2009	Re: [IW] Queries: Recent echoes, and some implications I guess part of it is that I'm a little fuzzy on the exact difference between parallels and echoes, perhaps. My understanding is that an echo matches, as far as anyone can tell, Homeline history at some past point (or Centrum's, for their one known echo... I wonder if Shikaku-Mon has any echos?), whereas a parallel diverged at some point in past history (whether close (Buddy Holly took the bus) or far (Pangaea split up differently)). If something happens to change the course of events in a echo, presumably due to outside interference, my understanding is that it drifts into a new quantum, and becomes a parallel. So, if an echo reaches the 1990s and parachronic technology is not invented, it's diverging - not founding a major multinational corporation is certainly a change in history - so has it just converted itself into a parallel spontaneously? I feel like it must have said something about this somewhere in the book, but I can't find it. I did notice that the random echo generation table doesn't produce any dates after 1995, though.