New Reality Seeds

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

The current year is 1774, with black-sailed ships and scarlet-skinned horned and tailed demonspawn a not-unknown sight in the harbors of the world. Trade in alchemy and magical animal parts has made the Salemites rich. There's also a thriving industry in Massachusetts catering to would-be demon-hunters.

But the increasing tensions with the Mother Country have caused questions to pop up - in case of cutting ties with the British Crown, will Salem side with the Colonies or the Crown? And what does that mean for the side they pick?

One issue you may not realize is that depending on exactly where the effect centers, a 13 mile radius around Salem includes at least most of Boston Harbor, and possibly some of the city as well. This is going to disrupt the trajectory of American separatism well before it gets close to the historic Revolutionary period, if for no other reason because somewhere else is going to be the colonies most important port (Boston is historically sometimes 2nd to Philadelphia during this period, but Salem is about 6th, so losing both of them...) Note that Gloucester Harbor and Ipswich Bay also are at least partly in that radius too.

[PTTG]

Your evacuation of earth will probably rely on skyhooks, which would essentially be tethers (made of ordinary structural materials rather than insane supermaterials like graphene tape or nanotubes) that both orbit and spin, allowing the "hook" portion to meet with and collect air-breathing craft.

You'd basically fly a modified jetliner to the right altitude and location, and the hook descends, docks with the vehicle, and pulls you into orbit. In orbit, you transfer to some other vehicle, and the skyhook drops off the aircraft on the next go-round.

This means that the ground-to-orbit transfer can be about the cost of the jet flight.

Better hope that you have a couch you can land on when you get up there, though...

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by TGLS

If they can't leave, how can they leave?

Humans can't leave, animals can't leave, human/demon hybrids CAN leave. As they are not natural creatures. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by PTTG

(SNIP)

You'd basically fly a modified jetliner to the right altitude and location, and the hook descends, docks with the vehicle, and pulls you into orbit. In orbit, you transfer to some other vehicle, and the skyhook drops off the aircraft on the next go-round.

This means that the ground-to-orbit transfer can be about the cost of the jet flight.

(SNIP)

Well, a Mach 6 jet flight, anyway....

[Astromancer]

The Order of the Golden Dawn was generally seen as a joke until they successfully contacted the Olympian Gods. Homeline and Cabal researchers both note that due to changes in London's city planning, in this Q4 world (Olympia-1) the ritual took place in a building built on the ruins of an ancient temple.

The gods returned to the world included but weren't limited to, Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hestia, Athena, Artemis, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Dionysius, Iris, Herakles, Hecate, Pan, Selene, Helios, and Hebe. The Archbishop of Canterbury wasn't pleased.

The present-day world, 1965, seventy years after the return of the Olympians, is changed. mana is High and magic commonplace. The Gods rule separate sections of the world. Those who don't worship the Olympians are persecuted per se, they simply pay moderately steep taxes and face certain restrictions in what government offices they can hold. It has been very effective in eating into the congregations of other Faiths. Zeus, Athena, and Hestia may be aristocrats, but they favor democracy as a form of human governance. They're less good on civil liberties.

The Tech Level is only now moving to TL7 (many people who became scientists or engineers in most worlds became Mages, Philosophers, or Priests in this world).

Both Homeline and the Cabal are worried about this world. Many late 19th century attitudes mixed with the less savory views of Classical Antiquity are still strong in this world. More troublesome, theories of multiple worlds are commonplace on this world.

Homeline is afraid the Gods may enter into the War for reality itself. The Cabal fears the Gods as rivals. And neither Reich-5 nor Centrum knows what is brewing.

High power PCs are trying both to discover how far along these people are toward intertemporal travel and to foul them up if they can. Beware Helios sees everything, and the other gods aren't much less aware.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Order of the Golden Dawn was generally seen as a joke until they successfully contacted the Olympian Gods. Homeline and Cabal researchers both note that due to changes in London's city planning, in this Q4 world (Olympia-1) the ritual took place in a building built on the ruins of an ancient temple.

The gods returned to the world included but weren't limited to, Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hestia, Athena, Artemis, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Dionysius, Iris, Herakles, Hecate, Pan, Selene, Helios, and Hebe. The Archbishop of Canterbury wasn't pleased.

The present-day world, 1965, seventy years after the return of the Olympians, is changed. mana is High and magic commonplace. The Gods rule separate sections of the world. Those who don't worship the Olympians are persecuted per se, they simply pay moderately steep taxes and face certain restrictions in what government offices they can hold. It has been very effective in eating into the congregations of other Faiths. Zeus, Athena, and Hestia may be aristocrats, but they favor democracy as a form of human governance. They're less good on civil liberties.

The Tech Level is only now moving to TL7 (many people who became scientists or engineers in most worlds became Mages, Philosophers, or Priests in this world).

Both Homeline and the Cabal are worried about this world. Many late 19th century attitudes mixed with the less savory views of Classical Antiquity are still strong in this world. More troublesome, theories of multiple worlds are commonplace on this world.

Homeline is afraid the Gods may enter into the War for reality itself. The Cabal fears the Gods as rivals. And neither Reich-5 nor Centrum knows what is brewing.

High power PCs are trying both to discover how far along these people are toward intertemporal travel and to foul them up if they can. Beware Helios sees everything, and the other gods aren't much less aware.

The one problem I have is Tech Levels in GUPRS tend to break down really fast when magic and/or superscience is added to the mix.

In fact, GURPS Fantasy introduced the idea of Equivalent TL (ETL) to deal with the issue of magic being so common (in the form of spells or magic items) that it effects the TL to the point where it may be on par with TL10 in one place but struggling to reach TL5 in others.

"Look at a number of commonly used spells, assign them to approximate TL equivalents, and see if these cluster around one or two TLs as usually defined; if so, use a rough equivalent TL in that range. If that doesn’t work, the TL concept may not fit the setting. (...) Settings with magically based TL ratings are effectively alternative histories, where the point of departure is the invention of reliable magic." (GURPS Fantasy 66)

Take Etheria, for example, where limited manned interplanetary exists. This is normally TL9 but the world is actual TL(5+1)^ (etheric spacecraft, TL5^) or 3 to 4 TLs below what would be "normal".

Then there is Britannica-5 which has antimatter bombs which would be normally TL10 but the world is TL5^ or 5 TLs below what the production of antimatter would suggest.

I should mention that magic has its own form of science (Thaumatology) so mages would fill the same function as scientists or engineers in our world. The magical science of alchemy was the domain of Philosophers in our world and technology like clocks and analog computers (to show the position of the planets) came out of Priests.

So their mundane TL may be just reaching 7 but what is their ETL?

[AlexanderHowl]

In Tartarus-1, the Primordial entities of Greek legend managed to overthrow the weakened deities of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, killed the gods, and took the goddesses as their concubines around 535 AD. They destroyed the Christian church before they took possession of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Afterwards, they divided their possessions as equally as possible, and accepted the worship of the terrified humans who lived beneath their authority.

One thousand years later, the Primordial entities still rule Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, but they do not interfere much in the affairs of outsiders. The life of their human subjects are actually fairly good, the Primordial entities are benevolent and distant tyrants, and they usually only interfere when a human attempts to grab too much power. Ironically, the regions ruled by the Primordial entities have become a refuge for abused goddesses, as the Primordial entities will accept any goddess as their concubine.

A Q7 world, it does not possess mana but, instead, spiritual magic. Centrum and Homeline are somewhat terrified by the Primordial entites, as they have shown that they can reach beyond their timeline, and both governments forbid any travel to the timeline. The Cabal has attempted to infiltrate the regions ruled by the Primordial entities, but their agents usually end up being returned with creative 'gifts', such as a contagious plague that transformed anyone with Magery into sapient pools of algae.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by maximara

The one problem I have is Tech Levels in GUPRS tend to break down really fast when magic and/or superscience is added to the mix.

In fact, GURPS Fantasy introduced the idea of Equivalent TL (ETL) to deal with the issue of magic being so common (in the form of spells or magic items) that it affects the TL to the point where it may be on par with TL10 in one place but struggling to reach TL5 in others.

[snip]

So their mundane TL may be just reaching 7 but what is their ETL?

As written the "ETL" was meant to be seven. Still, even if Sorcerers were rare in Greek myth there were there. The Greeks also had Spirit Mediums/Shamans that dealt with the dead and had little or no public respect/status. In areas favored by the gods, forensic analysis of crime, medicine, agriculture, or the arts, the ETL is 10. Otherwise, if the area of endeavor is profitable, but not favored by the gods, the ETL is 8 for the rich and on the border between 6 and 7 for everybody else.

Magic and the favor of the gods tends to make the rich and powerful disdainful of technology. So technology is slowing down.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Three Q4 parallels are linked to each other. They may have been three parallel worlds where the same strange alchemical/physics experiment was performed in 1927, or they might be that parallel split into three parallels.

Aftershock-1 is locked in an Ice Age, world temperatures have dropped by 7 degrees Celsius.

Aftershock=2 is suffering from raised temperatures. Also, a seven degree Celsius shift just upward.

Aftershock=3 is suffering from a massive drought. More than 95% of this planet's land surface is desert.

Individuals with Psi powers (moderately common among those born after 1927) can freely shift back and forth between the three worlds. The come out at the same point on the world they intend to go to as they are on the world they left. I.E. if I leave Picadilly circus London on Aftershock-1 to go to Aftershock-3, I'll show up in Piccadilly Circus in that world's London.

The Local year is 1995 the Tech Level is just bearly TL7 in isolated technology enclaves. Elsewhere it is TL5 or lower if the community is poor and isolated. The major empires and nations have collapsed, think of the set-up in the old movie Things to Come. The middle section with the Boss in the ruins of London (yes they called it Everytown, it was London) covers most of the world. The technology enclaves want to be Wings Over the World. They aren't there yet, but they are working on it.

[PTTG]

On a worldline, the inhabitants are psionic beings, of which a small portion possess the ability to percieve, and even fewer to manipulate, the physical world.