Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I loved that cartoon growing up and think this setting would make for some fun gaming.

Serious game or comedic? Or somewhere in-between? It's really an unexplored territory.

That said, Cro-Magnons were modern rather than archaic homo sapiens.

I'm always getting those mixed up. I do know the period I picked is allegedly after the Neanderthal's extinction.

[Flyndaran]

Certainly comedic for a properly Captain Caveman game.
But with how fragile our ancestors were in real history against just normal animals and threats, more or even fully serious games could work, I think.

Reading your mix up reminded me of the show Sliders where they called the main enemy that as if they were something more different to us than Neanderthals.

For some reason so many works of fiction treat Cro-Magnons as completely different species rather than just the first batch of European homo sapiens.

[PTTG]

In this contemporary echo, telekinetic powers are almost universal, albeit normally at low levels. Essentially, the human template has TK 10, with some going above and below, but never higher than that person's IQ. This worldline has moderate intertia, with similar cultural entities that are differently named.

[PTTG]

In Metaecho, the current physical date is 1995. However, there is a complication. Two days ago, all human beings abruptly "remembered" 20 years of future history. Arguably, the worldine just physically reverted backwards. Anyone younger than 20 ceased to exist, and people who died at some point in that window exist and remember their experiences up to that point.

One person with future foresight is subtle. Everyone on the planet suddenly getting the opportunity to revise future history is rather more difficult. There are political complications immediately, of course; everyone remembers that, in their subjective yesterday, Obama was President; however, he is at that moment a year below the minimum age, and Bill Clinton is sitting in office. Some individuals, particularly those that enjoyed their youths more than their older age, insist that people should accept the physical moment as the "real present," whereas people who were especially happy in 2015 rather than their younger years tend to argue that the collective remembered experiences should not be ignored.

Parents of children who were unborn grieve, while those who loved ones lost in the intervening years rejoice. Some hope that we are still flowing down the same river of time that will encounter those people yet to be born. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that is the case.

The stock market, in the immediate moments after the stunned silence that accompanied the global recollection, went so chaotically haywire that it immediately shut down. People are already discussing ways of rapidly jumping up to the late TL-8 technologies they remember -- even as others are breaking off the rust of years since they last had to deal with VHS and telephone modems. The timeline has already proved to be diverging, though it's a matter of, uh, time to see by how much.

[Flyndaran]

So many divorces as people remember infidelity or just love fading from the future 20 years.
How about those who were in life long relationships in the future but now while adults their partners are still kids?

[PTTG]

Think about the people convicted of crimes...

Even in the simplest case, where the crime and conviction both took place before '95 and the suspect was in prison at the time of the event, yet remembers serving their entire sentence and being released: Is that time served? No material evidence exists to prove that is the case, though everyone agrees that the next 20 years already happened.

More troubling, what about a crime committed in '94, but only discovered, investigated, and tried in '96 or later? Can someone be imprisoned simply because everyone "remembers" that he will be convicted?

Or even worse, what if the crime was alleged to occur in '99? It's easy to say it doesn't count... unless you yourself were the murder victim who missed out on six years of alternate history!

[Flyndaran]

People who suffered through grueling rehab over years only to be put right back where they were. Suicide rates would skyrocket.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Think about the people convicted of crimes...

Even in the simplest case, where the crime and conviction both took place before '95 and the suspect was in prison at the time of the event, yet remembers serving their entire sentence and being released: Is that time served? No material evidence exists to prove that is the case, though everyone agrees that the next 20 years already happened.

More troubling, what about a crime committed in '94, but only discovered, investigated, and tried in '96 or later? Can someone be imprisoned simply because everyone "remembers" that he will be convicted?

Or even worse, what if the crime was alleged to occur in '99? It's easy to say it doesn't count... unless you yourself were the murder victim who missed out on six years of alternate history!

Here's an explosive one. The person released 19 years into the future after thrity years in jail on charges they learned were trumped up. Since they and all sorts of people around them know they were proved innocent and that the real criminal is the person who sent them to jail on evidence they knew to be false this would lead to massive conflict.

Another issue would be the behavior of people who knew who murdered them. Extra complications when the murderer successfully framed someone else.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

People who suffered through grueling rehab over years only to be put right back where they were. Suicide rates would skyrocket.

What about people who spent two decades dying of a degenerative disease?

[Flyndaran]

Probably PTSD from the horror of knowing that hell is starting up again.