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Old 10-15-2017, 01:38 PM   #541
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Try this idea, this parallel seems normal but the people know there was a massive reality quake. The parallel looks just like Earth (ours not Homeline's) in the year 1998. The difference is that everybody knows it could be different.

The population generally remembers one of five preQUAKE realities.

A) A space opera world with Earth sending starships to nearby solar systems, lots of Psionics, robots, and other high tech.

B) A post-apocalyptic world after 19th century plagues. Think After London or a steampunk twist on Things to Come.

C) A Sword and Sorcery world very Krull and Conan

D) An alchemetic revolutionary world with TL 4+4 clockpunk world wars. Think of the flying island in Gulliver's Travels for the style of Tech.

and E) A 1984 style hell world.

Various people seek to return reality back to the REAL REALITY! Others would kill to prevent them.
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Old 10-15-2017, 02:56 PM   #542
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Sounds like the setting of The Madness Dossier but with multiple fronts and only human factions.
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Old 10-15-2017, 10:10 PM   #543
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Try this idea, this parallel seems normal but the people know there was a massive reality quake. The parallel looks just like Earth (ours not Homeline's) in the year 1998. The difference is that everybody knows it could be different.

The population generally remembers one of five preQUAKE realities.

A) A space opera world with Earth sending starships to nearby solar systems, lots of Psionics, robots, and other high tech.

B) A post-apocalyptic world after 19th century plagues. Think After London or a steampunk twist on Things to Come.

C) A Sword and Sorcery world very Krull and Conan

D) An alchemetic revolutionary world with TL 4+4 clockpunk world wars. Think of the flying island in Gulliver's Travels for the style of Tech.

and E) A 1984 style hell world.

Various people seek to return reality back to the REAL REALITY! Others would kill to prevent them.


Would anyone want to return to B) or E)? Maybe a few people who were in charge, but most of the people from those realities, and everyone from the others, wouldn't want to.

Also might not be that many who would want to return to C).
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Old 10-15-2017, 11:38 PM   #544
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

A different near-human dominant species rules Titan. Basically, they're Homo Sapiens, but they never die of old age, and they never stop physically growing. (In fact, people do mature at the same rate, but around 25 or so, a psionomagical effect occurs, scaling them up linearly. The immortality seems separate, and seems to stop aging at around 40 to 50.)

Additionally, it seems there is some kind of minor psionic effect enabling them to function even when they're over a hundred feet tall, though such a true titan would nonetheless need to eat a great deal. Note that such a titan would be about 600 years old, which is exceedingly rare -- only a few individuals of such stature are alive at any one time.

Titans rule, although it is not their personal strength which enables their political power; quite the opposite.

Last edited by PTTG; 10-15-2017 at 11:43 PM.
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Old 10-21-2017, 12:31 PM   #545
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Would anyone want to return to B) or E)? Maybe a few people who were in charge, but most of the people from those realities, and everyone from the others, wouldn't want to.

Also might not be that many who would want to return to C).
Okay, lets put B) and C) together. Conan and Krull meet Steampunk! Serpent men invade from another reality bringing plagues and an increase in Mana levels. However, they are sideswiped by Earth's microbes (like Wells' Martians) and fail to conquer and exterminate humanity. Both evil sorcerer kings and surviving snake people (Both groups seem stuck in third shift maintenance jobs) want to return to their reality. The little tech enclaves were generally ruled by Streampunk wizards.

Now we need a new C) and E). For E) ditch Orwell for Rousseau. E) is now a peaceful rural utopia with high moral standards and few civil liberties, which is what Rousseau believed should be forced on humanity. Some people love this haven of quiet and discipline, others (most people) thank the gods for their escape!

The new C) is a world where China had the industrial revolution and Europe was crushed for a few centuries under the Mongols. The Chinese actually had a very good world in many respects, if you weren't European. As in our world's history, the dominate group was racist, and unlike the West, had no tradition of seeing the virtues of other civilizations. In C) Europeans are at the bottom of an unchallenged and unchallengeable racial hierarchy. Many Chinese feel that the new reality they are in is backwards and evil. It must be overthrown. Mind you, which world people come from is random, so many Chinese people resist any idea of going back and hope it is impossible.

Are these better.
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Old 10-21-2017, 06:11 PM   #546
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Okay, lets put B) and C) together. Conan and Krull meet Steampunk! Serpent men invade from another reality bringing plagues and an increase in Mana levels. However, they are sideswiped by Earth's microbes (like Wells' Martians) and fail to conquer and exterminate humanity. Both evil sorcerer kings and surviving snake people (Both groups seem stuck in third shift maintenance jobs) want to return to their reality. The little tech enclaves were generally ruled by Streampunk wizards.

Now we need a new C) and E). For E) ditch Orwell for Rousseau. E) is now a peaceful rural utopia with high moral standards and few civil liberties, which is what Rousseau believed should be forced on humanity. Some people love this haven of quiet and discipline, others (most people) thank the gods for their escape!

The new C) is a world where China had the industrial revolution and Europe was crushed for a few centuries under the Mongols. The Chinese actually had a very good world in many respects, if you weren't European. As in our world's history, the dominate group was racist, and unlike the West, had no tradition of seeing the virtues of other civilizations. In C) Europeans are at the bottom of an unchallenged and unchallengeable racial hierarchy. Many Chinese feel that the new reality they are in is backwards and evil. It must be overthrown. Mind you, which world people come from is random, so many Chinese people resist any idea of going back and hope it is impossible.

Are these better.
Yeah - each world needs to be attractive enough to enough people to have a large number of people who want to go back to it. But they also need to be bad enough that not everyone from it want to go back to it. A magical world that isn't just brute savagery, a 'benevolent dictatorship', and 'hierarchy upside-down' fit.
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Old 10-21-2017, 07:45 PM   #547
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

The other timeline itself doesn't have to be worse for people not to wish to return. It just has to be worse for them personally.
If my homeline was one in which disease had been conquered but left handed people were ostracized or outright killed I would appreciate just about any other timeline.
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Old 10-22-2017, 04:32 PM   #548
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The other timeline itself doesn't have to be worse for people not to wish to return. It just has to be worse for them personally.
If my homeline was one in which disease had been conquered but left handed people were ostracized or outright killed I would appreciate just about any other timeline.
Yeah, but "worse for them personally" would likely include their loved ones.

For instance, I'm right-handed, but I have family who are left-handed, and wouldn't want the disease-free, leftie-free world (as would any baseball fan).

And wanting a 'better for me, worse for others' world would require a level of not caring about others in general.


A key might be that you know how you fared in your 'old reality', but not anyone else you know in this reality. And vice-versa.

Maybe the people you love in this world don't exist in your old world. But maybe the people you loved in your old world don't exist in this world.
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Old 10-22-2017, 05:26 PM   #549
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

I did think of that last point before going to bed last night. I would do some pretty nasty things to force reality back to this one for my life mate. In a way, reality quakes are worse than death, because your loved ones were unmade never having existed.

Imagine someone that seems kind and good but works with serpent men to bring back their hell world, because his loved one only exists in that reality.
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Old 10-23-2017, 12:22 AM   #550
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

Oh man, I like that. So much fiction boils down to "one man against the world to save his family." What if the world has a point?

As a bit of a non-sequitur, here's some near-parallels. They're nice boring places for PCs to end up in, for the most part.

- Microwave ovens are constantly in operation, and cook very slowly. Refrigerators, in contrast, rapidly cool food down in seconds.

- Otherwise identical to Homeline in 1974, with the exception that the names of various nations are shuffled. The two global hegemons are Mongolia (USA in homeline) and East Timor (The USSR). Everyone's kind of curious why the United States of America is a theocratic enclave in Rome, but there you go.

- Everyone who was right-handed is left-handed in this history, and vice-versa.

- In all languages, direction words are reversed; "up" means down, "down" means up, etc.

- Eating is a private and slightly disgusting thing for most, while voiding waste is a communal activity.

- Facial hair is long and luxurious on all adult humans.

- Social occasions, dancing, and easy listening call for the old standbys. Most people wouldn't dream of listening to music that hasn't stood the test of time -- at least a century, really. Only classy events and great pomp are cause for new music like hip-hop, rock, avant-garde spoken-word beat poems, EDM, punk, noisecore, and ironic mashup albums. That said, there is a strong underground community of 17-century harp fans, particularly among disaffected youth.

OH, here's a legit weird parallel:
1513 C.E.: A standard echo until someone started selling guns for cheap about 10 years ago. It seems that if you've got some money and want a gun, it doesn't take all that long for an ordinary-seeming person to appear and offer you a small catalog. In Europe, the Pope OK'd the practice after being offered a lovely pair of gold-plated AK-47s. However, most guns on offer are machine pistols; loud, dangerous, impressive, and they eat ammo like crazy...

Oh, why yes, gold, gems, and treasures are QUITE well accepted. Slaves and land? No, but go ahead and convert those to more liquid assets and we'll be in touch...
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