Infinite Worlds question

[Arust]

Slightly off topc, I apologize.

What spell is used to jump Quanta, and what spell is used for jumping between worlds?

The nearest I can find is Plane Shift (VH).

If that is the spell, how could you bring additional people in your party? Treat it as an area effect, and bring another person per yard?

Thanks in advance.

[UncreativeNameMaker]

Originally Posted by Kaell

This answer almost works. I don't think it actually works, but I might be able to buy into it enough to just stop thinking about it. See, there would be an infinite number that developed it at the same time

If IW actually followed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, then yes an infinite number of worlds should have developed world-hoping tech simultaneously. There would also be an infinite number of worlds where the only difference is that a single subatomic particle somewhere in the universe is in a diffrent position. You could switch places with a counterpart from another universe every second of your life and never notice. Such a multiverse wouldn't be much fun to play in.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Kaell

In Infinite Worlds, are there supposed to be an infinite number of worlds in each Q level? Or is the "infinite" referring to there being an infinite number of Q levels, but each only have a finite number of worlds, so there is a finite number we can reach from any given Q home level?

If it's an infinite number in each Q level with everything conceivable in them, then shouldn't there be an infinite number of Infinity Patrols originating from different worlds, and an infinite number of world-jumpers all over everywhere?

I just don't understand why this one world in Q5 is the only one to have this technology. Why aren't there dozens, or millions, or infinitely many?

I'm having trouble figuring out how this all works.


EDIT: Also, what determines which Q you can go to? What if I use a Centrum Q8 conveyor on myself from Q5 when we meet in Q7? Can I go to Q9 now? Or will just the conveyor go, and I'll simply vanish. What about if I give him a bar of gold from Q5, will that vanish when he tries to go home?

I think if you stop taking the word 'infinite' literally you'll be better off.

The campaign is called Infinite Words because the company it's built around calls itself Infinity. An exaggeration by all examination. But it sure helped the company's IPO and subsequent stock values.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Arust

Slightly off topc, I apologize.

What spell is used to jump Quanta, and what spell is used for jumping between worlds?

The nearest I can find is Plane Shift (VH).

If that is the spell, how could you bring additional people in your party? Treat it as an area effect, and bring another person per yard?

Thanks in advance.

See "Create Gate" M.85.

[Arust]

Excellent. Were it a snake it would be gobbling me up.

Thanks again.

[Cassandra]

There aren't an infinite number of worlds in the Infinite Worlds setting. That solves all the issues with "how?", "why?" and "huh?". I love the fact that the setting is open enough for me to come up with explanations and change then if something new is found out about the nature of the Quantums.

Alright now, this might a bit off topic, but I gotta ask one thing that's puzzled me about Infinite Worlds. Normal conveyors and projectors can only shift timelines, not locations, right? The place you jump from is the same exact location in the timeline where you arrive to?

If this is explicitely mentioned in the IW book, I must have missed it. It is frequently implied, though. But if this is true, do the locations in two different timelines have to be at the exact same place? I mean, if you jump from London, do you always arrive at London, or where London would be if the timeline had a London? What about worlds with completely different geography, like Yrth?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Cassandra

There aren't an infinite number of worlds in the Infinite Worlds setting.

Not accessible, no.

And the whole "quantum" thing was specifically created as a plot mechanism for the IW setting - where it's quite useful. But Plane shift spells have probably been rattling around GURPS for longer than that, and have no particular need to respect the boring reductive (pseudo-)science of quantum levels. So they don't. Except when they do anyway, maybe. Kludging technological and magical planar travel together wasn't part of the original IW concept, and has probably never been tackled systematically.

I'd probably make quantum levels something of a fixed feature of the multiverse from all points of view in an IW game, and hence slap penalties on Plane Shift when it's used for multi-quantum jumps because it has to cover a greater pseudo-distance. Then I'd create exceptions to that rule, just to annoy the IW techies. But note that, for example, Yrth is a "dimensional sargasso" that generates very similar problems for both magical and technological planar departures, so evidently they sometimes have something in common.

Originally Posted by Cassandra

Alright now, this might a bit off topic, but I gotta ask one thing that's puzzled me about Infinite Worlds. Normal conveyors and projectors can only shift timelines, not locations, right? The place you jump from is the same exact location in the timeline where you arrive to?

If this is explicitely mentioned in the IW book, I must have missed it. It is frequently implied, though. But if this is true, do the locations in two different timelines have to be at the exact same place? I mean, if you jump from London, do you always arrive at London, or where London would be if the timeline had a London?

You're right, I think; it's strongly implied but no one ever got around to stating it explicitly anywhere. Bit sloppy, that. But anyway, it's a plot necessity; otherwise, planar travel also functions as instantaneous global teleportation (and can probably be fudged into perpetual motion in about three seconds).

This leads to various moderately amusing necessities for Infinity. If a world lacks local stations, you have to jump into secluded woodlands and such and hope for the best; then, once you're there, you have to try very hard to acquire properties on spots corresponding to home projector stages, and to heck with the confused property vendors and neighbours. (Across a hundred timelines, there are warehouses in certain port cities with strange reputations.) And Infinity's best reason for hating authoritarian communism is that the cops can be as nosy as they like and you can't usually buy private property for a bag full of gold and no questions for another bag full.

Originally Posted by Cassandra

What about worlds with completely different geography, like Yrth?

Somewhere there corresponds to somewhere here. Mapping out the relative geography is an interesting exercise.

Oh, and a world where the correspondence points slip round the globe by a few degrees of longitude could be another way to drive the researchers nuts.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

If a world lacks local stations, you have to jump into secluded woodlands and such and hope for the best;

Or use a zeppelin-conveyor and jump somewhere over the open ocean.
And use hubs on each quantum for projector-assisted travel, and use the zeppelins to go to the actual destination.

[transmetahuman]

Originally Posted by Cassandra

Alright now, this might a bit off topic, but I gotta ask one thing that's puzzled me about Infinite Worlds. Normal conveyors and projectors can only shift timelines, not locations, right? The place you jump from is the same exact location in the timeline where you arrive to?

If this is explicitely mentioned in the IW book, I must have missed it. It is frequently implied, though. But if this is true, do the locations in two different timelines have to be at the exact same place? I mean, if you jump from London, do you always arrive at London, or where London would be if the timeline had a London? What about worlds with completely different geography, like Yrth?

I'm surprised no one has brought up the old time-travel bugaboo - in universes which Earth isn't the center of, jumping to a timeline with a different current date means Earth shouldn't even be in the corresponding location. It's umpty x-illion miles away! But just like with regular time travel, it's one of those bits of logic that makes playing less fun, so we all just keep quiet about it... Or is it addressed in IW? I've never read the book, only the old GURPS Time Travel.

The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that a crosstime jump doesn't take you to the corresponding spacial coordinates, it takes you to the point of maximum correspondence of all those mathematical factors that make up quanta (except the ones you're changing purposely to identify the destination) - which just happen to mean the most-similar physical location from an Earth-centric point of view.

It does beg the question of what happens to the ships of a space- or star-faring civilization that also has crosstime travel, though.

[ravenfish]

I'm no expert, but I think you folks are thinking a bit too hard about this- infinity is really, really big- you can hide an infinity of things there, and none of them need touch.
To jump on the Analogy Bandwagon, there is a non-zero chance of life developing on any of the infinite planets in the universe, but it doesn't follow that there is any nextdoor.

Note that the Infinite Worlds have only been around for a finite time, apparently, so each Travelling world will have only colonized a finite number of worlds. You can put an infinite number of points on a line, put ten points for every one there to start, and none of them need share the same location. Infinity, my friends, is big.