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Old 12-09-2017, 11:12 PM   #11
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
With over 13 billion years of history, suggesting that the vast majority of universes diverge from ours only within the last couple thousand years would need some kind of very strong pseudoscientific justification.
You could also argue that in a universe with trillions of stars, why would a relatively insignificant event such as who won a war on some speck of dust of a planet create a new parallel universe?

Anyway, the pseudo-scientific justification is partially given on IW p21, with the Williams-Khor Hypothesis, about timelines being psychic constructs of the expectations of the travellers. That's why you can find more myth parallels from human myth than from Klingon myth, for example.

A different justification is that the divergences we can travel to are the ones closest in similarity to our own, so they're all based around stuff that happened relatively recently on Earth, and not due to some random stellar collision in another galaxy millions of years ago.
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Old 12-10-2017, 12:22 AM   #12
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
With over 13 billion years of history, suggesting that the vast majority of universes diverge from ours only within the last couple thousand years would need some kind of very strong pseudoscientific justification.
The vast majority of universes that they can reach that is. A countless number of worlds that are beyond their reach are of no consequence. The answer could have been just worlds with recent divergence points are usually "closer" than worlds with more remote divergence points. But based on the setup we've been shown it's more than that. There's some kind of collective gestalt that is attracting or even creating worlds based on historical periods that have a lot of public interest and works of popular fiction. Worlds where Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Frankenstein are real do not just turn up by coincidence.
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Old 12-10-2017, 01:06 AM   #13
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

That's mostly what I was trying to say. That most realities assuming infinite numbers would be completely human free.
That by canon, nearly all those discovered have humans means that they're working with far fewer than infinite numbers of universes.
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Old 12-10-2017, 01:20 AM   #14
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

I suppose what happens depends on how paranoid Infinity (or perhaps Centrum) is.

Careful: Off-world power aims to take control of world-hopping corporation.

Cautious: Off-world power where the world-hopping corporation plans to mount exploration missions, and eliminates them, to contain outbreak.

Wary: Off-world power stages disasters to reduce confidence in world-hopping technology. Also assassinates researchers in world-hopping technology to ensure limited breakout.

Paranoid: Off-world power plans to start a nuclear war to eliminate threat permanently.


Honestly, it's hard to see Infinity or Centrum to go over Wary, but if the world-hopping corporation is really advanced, then going all the way to Paranoid is reasonable.
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Old 12-10-2017, 03:29 PM   #15
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

It sounds like the corporation has only discovered uninhabited world lines, or else it has very intentionally chosen to ignore the inhabited ones.

If they only ever find uninhabited ones, Infinity will probably treat them as a skerry. They seem to be able to find worldlines that Infinity hasn't found yet, and that makes them a gold mine. Even if they aren't a standard skerry, I suspect that there is at least something weird going on.

If they intentionally ignore inhabited world lines, they're probably even less of a threat. Unless management or whatever else makes that change.

Either way, the key is to control and subvert their research and development program. I personally don't think I'd destroy it as much as I'd try and point it in different and more "Civilian" directions. And then pilfer their research of course.
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Old 12-10-2017, 03:39 PM   #16
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Maybe they're weird for not being weird. Their means of finding worlds is more random. Though it does mean that if and when they find an inhabited reality, regardless of type, species or TL, they'll be all over it.
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Old 12-10-2017, 07:00 PM   #17
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Why? What does inhabited timeline have over an uninhabited timeline except complication, disease, and heartache? Every uninhabited timeline offers new sources of diamonds and gold while inhabited timelines offer unruly natives.

A variation of the breakout scenario would be a corporation from a TL10 timeline that stumbles upon conveyor technology while doing FTL research in the Main Belt. I would suggest a conveyor technology that could not function on the Earth but was 10% of the cost of Infinity's conveyor technology. They would not even having to avoid inhabited timelines as they could harvest precious metals from any pre-TL9 timeline without risk of interference (TL7 and TL8 civilizations could detect them though).

It would be amusing to see Infinity's reaction if they discovered a corporation from an unknown parallel mining the Main Belt of Homeline's Sol System for precious metals. Would Infinity attempt to stop the corporation from exploiting Homeline's Main Belt or would it ignore its activities? Would Infinity attempt to find the home parallel of the corporation or would it leave well enough alone?
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Old 12-10-2017, 07:50 PM   #18
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
With over 13 billion years of history, suggesting that the vast majority of universes diverge from ours only within the last couple thousand years would need some kind of very strong pseudoscientific justification.
There is one. The quantum levels are defined by the current conditons of a worldline, rather than where they divereged. The United States of Lizardia is a good example; it has a totally different history, but happens to resemble Homeline in some key ways, so it's close.

The "equation" for determining the quanta of a given worldline is very complicated, and even Centrum, who've been working on this for much longer than Homeline, have yet to really understand it beyond the point of being able to estimate which way a worldline will shift if you make changes to it. The real spinoff of that is that an uninhabited Earth occasionally has something happen that makes it Q6 despite being largely different from Homeline.

One good guess for why worldlines tend to have recent divergences is, that's what Homeline (and Centrum) are good at finding.
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Old 12-10-2017, 08:07 PM   #19
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

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Why? What does inhabited timeline have over an uninhabited timeline except complication, disease, and heartache? Every uninhabited timeline offers new sources of diamonds and gold while inhabited timelines offer unruly natives.
Otherwise known as a labour force and infrastructure already there and waiting to make you a profit. Uninhabited or lightly inhabited land is a great prize for governments looking to expand and disgruntled minorities looking to get out from under the governments and neighbours who have been getting on their case. But for commercial opportunities you can't beat people. It's way easier for a corporation to not have to build houses, roads, utilities, recruit colonists, import heavy equipment but just trade with natives for their furs, gold, pearls, textiles...
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Old 12-11-2017, 01:57 AM   #20
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

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Why? What does inhabited timeline have over an uninhabited timeline except complication, disease, and heartache? Every uninhabited timeline offers new sources of diamonds and gold while inhabited timelines offer unruly natives.
And how profitable are diamonds and gold in the modern era, never mind the early-stages-of-postscarcity that is Infinity?

What people are willing to pay for is mostly new IP. The works of alternate Shakespeares and Beatles, entertainments we've never had before. Ideas. You know, the things humans make. That and advanced technologies, especially medical technologies. People will pay a lot for even ten more years of life. But the highly profitable and hot new companies of the world are not the ones that make physical products. And that isn't different in Infinity.

Someone has to tend the mines and the transportation networks, sure, just like someone has to maintain the sewers and pick up the garbage. But Infinity is styled as a profit-seeking corporation, and as such its interest in uninhabited timelines is very low because there's pitifully little profit or value to be had from them.

Now, people not organized as profit-seeking corporations, or from a society with radically different needs or values, might see things differently. And it's a fair question why the upper middle class of Infinity are more interested in another rehash of 80s hair bands from the Ted Kennedy Administration 80s than the real work their own neighbors are doing today. But I don't think it's a terribly problematic assumption, looking around at the real world. Lots of people would rather crawl into a distraction than talk to their neighbors. Changing that is not Infinity's job or nature, for good or ill.
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