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Old 10-28-2015, 05:42 PM   #51
Flyndaran
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
'Probably' for the 'crazy', 'not necessarily' and/or 'preferably not' for the 'railroading', though in that case the events in the campaign become somewhat impermanent.
As in changing not just game world past, but Players'/PCs' gaming past too?
That's a bit too dream-like for my tastes?
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Old 10-28-2015, 05:44 PM   #52
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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There are ways for an ambitious GM. For example you could start with the characters fighting off assassins hired to kill them and then investigating to find a clue that leads back to that business in Lisbon, the one the players know nothing about until they finish playing the flashback you're about to carry them through. Then the GM decides who holds the grudge after the players give someone reason.
That may come off as "fridge horror" in that it plays fun, but later players may feel manipulated along a predetermined path ala railroading.
But if you pull it off, my hat's off to you.
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Old 10-28-2015, 09:59 PM   #53
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

I'd just tell them ahead of time that they are as free to choose their actions as ever. The only difference is they won't need to make survival rolls because while they can lose, they clearly survived.
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Old 10-29-2015, 06:27 PM   #54
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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That may come off as "fridge horror" in that it plays fun, but later players may feel manipulated along a predetermined path ala railroading.
But if you pull it off, my hat's off to you.
I thought about some of these issues for a campaign idea based on Zelazny's Roadmarks.

My first rule was that nobody can ever visit the same instant of time, twice. They can see themselves leaving, or arriving, but they can never be in the same place at the same time as a past or future self.

The second rule comes straight from the book. Time is malleable, and sufficient effort can result in changes in the past. However, that results in a timeline split and the creation of an alternate reality, which manifests on the road as a new route that branches off the old one, at the POD.

The new route has its own exits, which lead to significant areas/events in that time. As one continues up the new time-road, the exits lead to places that depart more and more significantly from the original road.

The third rule, also from the book, is that routes only remain viable for as long as they continue to see traffic. If the new route siphons time traffic away from the old route, the highway up that timeline begins to decay -- the stack interchange becomes a well-marked multi-lane exit, and then a smaller, single-lane exit, and then a poorly-marked exit to what looks like an access road, and then an unmarked dirt-track from the new "main" highway to a gravel road, and then it's just gone -- lost to time.

It would have required a lot of GM "time-management," and a willingness to drop in stuff at random which then gets used later as ideas and opportunities arise.

It looked like a lot of work, but a fun challenge. Unfortunately, my players didn't go for it.
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Old 10-29-2015, 07:40 PM   #55
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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...
My first rule was that nobody can ever visit the same instant of time, twice. They can see themselves leaving, or arriving, but they can never be in the same place at the same time as a past or future self.
...
What happens if you go back to before such a pre-visited time, and simply exist until that moment?
Do you get tossed out violently, gently, etc.?
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Old 10-29-2015, 08:44 PM   #56
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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I thought about some of these issues for a campaign idea based on Zelazny's Roadmarks.

My first rule was that nobody can ever visit the same instant of time, twice. They can see themselves leaving, or arriving, but they can never be in the same place at the same time as a past or future self.
Unless the turnoffs were quite close, It would be difficult to visit the same instant of time. You would have to wait for the previous turnoff to catch up with the same time frame and time it carefully unless you were immortal.
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Old 11-02-2015, 04:01 PM   #57
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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What happens if you go back to before such a pre-visited time, and simply exist until that moment?
Do you get tossed out violently, gently, etc.?
I'm not even sure. I didn't think it through, quite that much. As I said, it was an abortive campaign idea, and that part didn't come from Zelazny. At one point, in the book, one of the characters meets an "earlier"(?) version of herself, but I wanted to make things a bit more manageable.

Mostly, I figured the PCs would have little interest in doing such a thing, anyway, since they'd be busy.

I'd have probably gone with a slight readjustment of the time-road. The previous iteration of the individual's presence at that time gets erased -- and anything that happened as a consequence gets altered, in some way.

Like I said, a lot of "time-management" would've been required.
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Old 11-02-2015, 04:02 PM   #58
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Default Re: The REAL fundamentals: part of fantasy setting design that I never even thought a

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Unless the turnoffs were quite close, It would be difficult to visit the same instant of time. You would have to wait for the previous turnoff to catch up with the same time frame and time it carefully unless you were immortal.
Yeah, the exact time the "exit" dumps someone out into the real world is never quite the same. The exits "drift" a bit.

The main thing I worried about was meeting one's self while on the road. The exit drift made it a lot easier to manage things, in the various worlds, themselves. I figured the exits only took travelers to significant places at significant times, in that world's history.

So, an exit would take a traveler into Rome in 44 AD, but if you wanted to visit Britannia, you'd have to make your way there, "cross country," since the road had no exit to that place, at that time.
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