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Old 08-04-2018, 10:44 AM   #951
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Grimoire-4

Grimoire is the standard term given to worlds where there has always been magic, it has always been fairly open, maybe not how to perform magic per se but Wizard was always a recognized job and magic was seen as real and effective. But the thing that makes the Grimoire parallels weird is that their histories are so little changed.

Grimoire-4 is in most ways very much like Homeline in the early 1950's. The big exception is that magic is commonplace, has always been commonplace, and is fully integrated into society in most nations. Wizard is a respectable job, but not all mages go that way. Gene Kelly is known to be a Mage with several levels of Magery. He is even known to be a spellcaster, but he's made it clear he prefers dance and film work.

However, something is changing in this parallel. It is becoming LESS WEIRD!!!

Technology and culture are being to become less like Homeline. Events are going off in their own way and people are beginning to act like magic is a tool with its own unique properties. Something obvious to outsiders, but rarely to individuals in a Grimoire parallel.

What is making this Q4 parallel less weird? Is it natural or a Cabal plot? More importantly, can your PC score a date with Marilyn Monroe? Or James Dean, it's a matter of personal taste after all.
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Old 08-04-2018, 11:12 AM   #952
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Reminds me of the movie Cast A Deadly Spell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_a_Deadly_Spell
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Old 08-05-2018, 12:55 AM   #953
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This is NOT - repeat NOT - a Weird Parallel, but it is part of the theme ...

On Homeline, there is a scam pulled by individuals with conveyors and a total lack of morals. It is ... the Pornoverse Scam.

The individuals in question convince their mark that they have discovered a parallel world where the tropes of pornographic stories and movies are natural laws, where all women are attractive nymphomaniacs and all men are huge and everlasting. They have very convincing eyewitness testimony, and possibly "a native" to exhibit. The gullible degenerate of a mark falls for it, forks over huge amounts of money, and is dumped in an echo timeline where he is soon arrested for indecent behavior (if he's lucky).

Variants of this scam (mostly of Japanese origin) are practiced among all criminal groups with access to conveyors. There have been a few practicing this scam without conveyors, dumping their marks on a random street.

Some say this scam is weeding out an entire group of undesirables. Others say we're just deporting Homeline perverts to victimize people elsewhere and it should be stopped.

It doesn't help that there are a couple of groups of rich ... "eccentrics" who are actively funding project to locate the Pornoverse with illicit parachronic equipment, unleashing who-knows what sort of havoc by accident.

In the meantime, people with much money, little common sense, and severe sexual disorders are making small groups of criminals rich.
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Old 08-17-2018, 10:07 PM   #954
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Some worldlines have very weird physical laws, but are nonetheless inhabitable. Normally, it is impossible to arrive in these worldlines as they are either very distant on the Q scale or else off the scale entirely... But magic users in pursuit of truly cosmic power, supernatural disasters, true divinities flexing their muscles, and bizarre technological accidents can send travelers to these strange places. None of them have been formally discovered by homeline, but hey.

Text is not a physical world at all. It is, if anything is comparable, a book. Arriving there would "compress" a human into a character in the text, but their external perspective would remain somewhat. They would percieve the world as text, including the ability to look at the previous sentence, to skip ahead a few lines, or even to stop reading... yet the conclusion remains written all the same.

Small might simply be a very large universe. Homeliners that arrive would find themselves at sub-atomic scale. They can somehow perceive things like photons without the photons striking their eyes, and more alarming, the travelers themselves would take on a measure of quantum uncertainty; they would exist as a distribution of all their possible states at once.

Rhetoric-4 is a place where internet arguement is capable of changing the participant's opinions.

Timeless does not have linear time, but instead all points exist in a kind of cloud. Here, it is always possible to take back something that was said. Since things can come and go from this timeline, it seems like it would instantly fill everywhere with duplicates from the past or future, but it seems that it at least conserves matter and energy; whatever goes in comes back out, but only once.

Funhouse is full of duplicates of whomever visits it. The worldline is otherwise an empty but brightly-lit space. The duplicates are every alternate version of the visitor; the place can be considered a faceted gem that reflects the observer in every face.

In Extropy systems tend to become more ordred over time, but this does not mean that time is reversed.
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Old 08-18-2018, 07:23 AM   #955
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Haha, the rhetoric one might be the strangest of these.

Thread tax: Conspiracy 1

This worldline would have been named after a more specific conspiracy, but this one seems to have just about everything be a conspiracy. Society seems to resemble out own, but everyone is part of some secret conspiracy or another. The end result somehow resembles OTL externally, except everyone naturally ends up in a conspiracy or a few.

The interplay of the countless moving conspiracies ending up creating a normal-seeming society, just one where conspiracy theory is a core component of psychology.

Might not even have to keep the secret here, there's already a dozen or more conspiracies known that jump worldlines as part of their secret plots to make society look normal.
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Old 08-18-2018, 03:35 PM   #956
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Okay, it was pointed out I ghad put this in the wrong thread. So here we go ...

Starsky

This is a dangerous, Restricted world. The "Starsky" designation refers to the old TV show, Starsky and Hutch. The local year is 1978.

This appears to be a normal echo timeline. But the laws of probability are skewed. It can be described as a "TV Cop Show World".

Basicall, any dimensional traveler - any traveler - will, within 24 hours of arrival, be accused of a crime that he didn't commit and be the subject of a criminal investigation. There are no exceptions. And unless there's some unusual person involved - a nortoriously nonconformist police officer, a private investigator, an eccentric amateur investigator - the traveler is likely to be convicted of the crime, if not murdered. (And yes, there will be a car chase.)

Parachronic travelers to Starsky will be accompanied by a guide who has spent years developing a reputation as an eccentric amateur investigator, to insure their safety. (And yes the guide has a cool high-performance car.)

Researchers have a lot of fun investigating the distorted laws of probability of this reality. Unaccompanied travelers are advised to avoid all human contact on this world. (Or at least get a cool muscle car.)
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Old 08-18-2018, 04:05 PM   #957
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

And it's closely connected to another completely forgettable reality labeled Hutch.
One researcher is obsessed with finding a third in a skerry... Huggy Bear.
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Old 08-18-2018, 05:42 PM   #958
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There seems to be a Skerry called Plot. The name comes from the fact that story/narrative seems to be something like a physical law in this Skerry. If Outsiders come into one of these worlds, they entered a plot and they can't leave until the plot is resolved. This can be trouble in many ways. A) The plot is that of a multigenerational family epic. The plot requires centuries to be resolved. B) The plot is paradoxical, it might not actually be resolvable. C) The plot is a Soap Opera or Comic Book, there are no final resolutions. Or D) the plot can only be resolved with the death of the PCs or other unacceptable disaster (be cruelly creative).
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Old 08-26-2018, 12:58 AM   #959
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In the tenuously named Gotha-b-1, an easily transmissible neurodegenerative disease has stricken society. In Gurps terms, victims lose most of their IQ, gain Beastial, and get a number of quirks -- but they aren't violent and generally prefer to be left alone.

Victims are sad creatures whom are only a threat in the same conditions where a wild animal would be a threat -- when cornered, hungry, or sick. They do receive a substantial resistance to most other diseases, and a slow metabolism allowing them to survive on very little food.

Again unlike most Gotha worlds, "only" about 40% of the population is susceptible to the disease.

The disease struck in the early 1970s. The current year is 1997, and society is in turmoil around the globe... but it looks like a fairly smooth transition may be possible. That said, the victims of the disease remain a massive humanitarian tragedy that the world is not capable of facing; instead, the victims are considered the walking dead, and usually are left to turn feral, albeit mostly harmless.

Zombie hunters who turn up here aren't going to be welcomed, though.
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Old 08-26-2018, 06:41 AM   #960
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This world resembles another company's 1990's RPG setting. Vampires, Werewolves, Wraiths, Mages, Changelings, Hunters, Mummies, and Demons, are all present in this world and most folks are blase about it. Supernaturals don't bother with vast conspiracies, mainly because these are both ineffective and lame.

People do have opinions about the supernaturals, they're just mainly bored with them.

Vampires: Nose in the air reactionaries and goth wannabes if you ask me.

Werewolves: Self-righteous bullies the lot of them. It's good that they're Greens, but they don't know how to calm down.

Wraiths: Do they even know the words "Get over it?"

Mages: Bright kids who've discovered a wonderful toy and an amazing amount of moral certainty.

Changelings: Each is a sweetly dangerous goof in their own way.

Hunters: Buffy wouldn't act like these weirdos. Truly they are a cure worse than the disease.

Mummies: You lived in Ancient Egypt, how nice for you. Now get out of my face I live in the modern world.

Demons: Let me get this straight, you think I lack faith.


On the whole, supernaturals feel unappreciated.
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