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Old 07-09-2018, 03:17 PM   #1
SilvercatMoonpaw
 
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Default Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

So we have multiple threads for seeds of alternate timelines and weird parallels for use in playing in canon IW.

But what about different versions of the meta-setting? You know: one where Centrum are the Good Guys (one where there are definite Good and Bad Guys, for that matter), ones in which Infinity freely shares parachronic travel with worldlines it trusts (which may or may not lead to a parachronic war with someone because obviously), or one in which Homeline didn't invent the tech on its own but was gifted it by friendly interquantum aliens so it can join the Parachronic community and, oh, by the way, this now means you're considered a target by the Evil Empire 'kaywelcomebye!

UPDATE: If you simply want to create a different version of Infinity Unlimited you might be better off in the Alternate Crosstime Organizations thread


1) First Chrontact

Homeline develops and uses parachronics for the first time and finds out that there is an entire community of parachronic-using worlds sharing knowledge and resources. Homeline is the new kid on the block, vulnerable to every 2-bit con-artist and cape-sporting conqueror. Do they ally themselves with one of the larger, seemingly-benevolent powers? Do they try to go it alone by stealing advanced tech and playing sides off each other?
(Concept: The canon IW assumes Homeline is top dog, with only Centrum as a rival. This meta-setting inverts that.)

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Old 07-09-2018, 03:36 PM   #2
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

This is an awesome idea. It has some overlap with Alternate Crosstime Organizations, but I thinks its separate enough to be its own thing, because it lets you mess around with Homeline.


My first entry is not my own, but that of the GM who taught me how to play GURPS. Worlds of Fire was the name of my first campaign.

2) Worlds of Fire


The worlds form a network: each world is only connected to a few dozen others. They were quite varied.The setting featured high technology and high magic. The players were relatively low powered compared to some of the techno-magical our allies were capable of.

The good guys were an alliance of "The powers that be", including an assortment of deities and multi-world powers. The bad guys were the Blazen, an ultimately technological foe intent on collecting other universes to slow the heat death of their own. They had mind control technology that allowed them to gut a victims mind and use it for their own purpose. They could only mind control "Aggressive Minorities", and I think the tech they were using could only target humans. If they got enough they'd get together for a ritual and absorb the universe into their own.

The PC's were important because they could act subtly among the target worlds, unlike their patrons and sponsors. Disruption could easily strengthen the blazen's ability to invade minds. They also seemed to require some set-up to target a group: we once blocked them by making the target group the majority instead of a minority.
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Old 07-09-2018, 04:31 PM   #3
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

I have toyed with using networks of worlds where the portals of each world only connect to twelve other worlds (with each type of portal associated with each zodiacal constellation). Portals would only function during the appropriate zodiacal times, only when opened by the appropriate zodiacal rituals, and could only be sensed by people that shared their zodiacal signs. I have not fully developed it yet though.
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Old 03-28-2021, 11:57 AM   #4
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I have toyed with using networks of worlds where the portals of each world only connect to twelve other worlds (with each type of portal associated with each zodiacal constellation). Portals would only function during the appropriate zodiacal times, only when opened by the appropriate zodiacal rituals, and could only be sensed by people that shared their zodiacal signs. I have not fully developed it yet though.
It feels to me as if it would be neater if each timeline connected to 11 other worlds, so that that timeline itself would have a Zodiacal sign, just like those it connected to.

A possible neat gimmick would be to link the twelve signs to the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and through them to the cycle of fifths. This would open out the number of worlds, because the cycle of fifths isn't perfectly closed. You can go down a fifth, to F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, and G flat, or you can go up a fifth, to G, D, A, E, B, and F sharp---but F sharp and G flat aren't the same frequency. And similarly, when you go from F sharp to C sharp, that's not the same as D flat, and G sharp's not the same as A flat. So the whole thing could be open ended.
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Old 03-28-2021, 02:09 PM   #5
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

2500 States

In 1976 Earth-New York time, 50 United States capitals in 50 alternate earths opened a permanent portal to a fifty-first, "idealized" America, which almost immediately became a warzone. The current situation is half "peace between brothers", half cold war.

The alternate worlds all have some form of North American country and have a local post-1776 date. Aside from that, anything goes.
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Old 03-28-2021, 03:00 PM   #6
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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Originally Posted by zarawesome View Post
2500 States

In 1976 Earth-New York time, 50 United States capitals in 50 alternate earths opened a permanent portal to a fifty-first, "idealized" America, which almost immediately became a warzone. The current situation is half "peace between brothers", half cold war.

The alternate worlds all have some form of North American country and have a local post-1776 date. Aside from that, anything goes.
That's kind of clever! But it seems like a huge amount of work to come up with fifty different variants on the basic concept, or even fifty different names. And more so if this is an example where you aren't doing fantastic elements such as magic or superscience. Could you offer a few examples?
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Old 04-08-2021, 02:41 PM   #7
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I have toyed with using networks of worlds where the portals of each world only connect to twelve other worlds (with each type of portal associated with each zodiacal constellation). Portals would only function during the appropriate zodiacal times, only when opened by the appropriate zodiacal rituals, and could only be sensed by people that shared their zodiacal signs. I have not fully developed it yet though.
The very old Fringeworthy RPG had world portals connected in rings which were, in turn, connected together in a long linear chain.
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Old 04-10-2021, 02:30 PM   #8
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Recently I've been giving some thought to the difference between the Infinite Worlds Setting and superhero multiverses. Superhero settings do have parallel presents, as well as myth parallels when they crossover with settings with wildly different basic assumptions like X-Men and Star Trek. Additionally they accumulate multiple "possible futures" like Legion of Superheroes versus Kamandi or Kang the Conqueror versus the original Guardians of the Galaxy. And they have just unrelated universes like Dormammu's Dark Dimension, the Negative Zone or Gemworld. But what they almost never visit is an alternate past to their own At least not so far as they can tell. They will sometimes apparently create an alternate past, when for example their trip to 2014 results in Loki escapting and Thanos disappearing, but those pasts are almost never revisited.

The reason I've been thinking about it is because I recently got my own physical copy of Infinite Worlds and was thinking about how it could be incorporated into what is primarily a superhero universe. I was thinking of creating dopplegangers of worlds like Gallatin (Isolationist America), Gernsback, Lizardia, Taft-7 and Lenin-1, only with supers added. My assumption would be that even though mundane worlds exist, people from supers universes who world jump would be be biased toward other worlds with supers. It would reduce the amount of disruption they'd cause. Sometimes they'd end up in echoes of their own history but if they stirred things up, they'd be booted out by some "time protection patrol" dedicated to "protecting the timeline", possibly to prevent reality quakes.
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Old 07-02-2021, 02:04 PM   #9
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Recently I was trying to work out a version of time travel that preserved causality but spun off a finite number of timelines... and I would up with this set-up:


Time travel is only possible once every year, and it send you back in one year increments, to one of the moments when time travel is possible. There is only one timeline that distance back: everyone jumping back to it or ahead to it arrives in that timeline at the same time.

some results of this scheme:

  • It feels very much like alternate timelines rather than time travel, because once time travelers start messing with their own history, divergences kick in, and no new matching timelines are born.
  • The whole setting very much has a present "Now". You can go back and talk to your great grandfather, he's only really a diverged copy of your great grandfather. You can go back to the time of the dinosaurs, but you can't build an empire there for a hundred years without being noticed, because your peers are also experiencing those hundred years. You just went somewhere else, without really messing around with time.
  • You either have to have a "leading edge of time", a time where the first time traveler diverged everything, or you have to have this infinite history where time travel has always existed and the first time traveler happened an infinite amount of time in the future, and this implies this weird stable holding pattern in the flow of time and implies you either have access to infinite technology or that there are nations/things that guard the upper time lines.
  • The number of time lines and the number of chances to jump are directly proportional, which leads to either a huge multiverse or very few jump opportunities. 1 year was picked as a compromise.
Anyway, it was an interesting thought experiment, I'd thought I'd show it to you folks.
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Old 07-09-2018, 04:45 PM   #10
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

3) Para-Cosm-ics

Inspired by TORG*, in this version parachronic travel causes the conveyor an everything in it to "translate" to a version acceptable to the general "theme" of the new world. If the new world contains no humans then Homeliners become whatever the nearest local equivalent would be (it is unknown if travel to a world with nothing sapient is possible for humans). Strangely this often comes with just enough instinct and Cultural Familiarity to function reasonably well**. All technology changes to an equivalent that would be craftable by the highest TL society on that world with materials that society has access to***, though always retaining parachronic capability. If local physics wouldn't allow something to exist it translates to something that local physics would. What does remain unchanged is conscious knowledge: your knowledge of history doesn't change to match local, you still know how stuff at your home TL works and could build it if possible locally, etc.

I can see this version of IW having less large-scale exploiting going on: without being able to bring over starter equipment it's probably too expensive to mine free resources on a caveman world (you certainly can't film historical battles). Also Infinity will have to deal with the natives on closer, perhaps equal terms: unless you translate into some kind of low-TL area of a higher-TL world your team probably can't just machine-gun through a squad of knights. It would probably be a boon to research and spy games, particularly on worlds with beings humans could disguise themselves as. You can still steal knowledge after all.

EDIT: Forgot to address World Jumpers and magic: same deal, with even powers and spells changing to suit the "theme" (while still retaining parachronic functionality).


*Well, actually Equestria Girls, then modified by thinking about TORG.
**I.e. you don't have to relearn how to walk, and if you translate from Homeline to a world where the beings don't wear clothes you might notice you and others are naked, but it won't bother you.
***And yes, you can use this to detect hidden advanced civilizations.

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