Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That depends on whether one wants it to be a close parallel or not. Properly weird parallels probably need that creepy level of similarity rather than just across the board difference.
For theme, one could have non-chess discoveries and inventions made by famous chess players as "hobbies".

I meant Kasparov from Homeline. Is it a crazy physical law, or would people be really confused. "He was so great at chess! How was I supposed to guess that he was an idiot!"

[Flyndaran]

Oh. I didn't think of that. That is interesting either way.
Visitors having to hide either their level of intelligence or chess skill would make for a funny scene or two.
But your idea could make this world useful depending on which aspect, intelligence or chess skill, forces the other.
Have a recruit that's great but just not that smart? Crash course in chess then a trip to the parallel.
Though it would be weird if the first visitors came back "dense", because they sucked at chess.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The world is a stage set and the people know it. The Angels and Devils are competing improsarios striving to put on a good show. Humanity is the cast. The PCs, by their nature, don't know the script.

Beware the hook!

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

The world is a stage set and the people know it. The Angels and Devils are competing improsarios striving to put on a good show. Humanity is the cast. The PCs, by their nature, don't know the script.

Beware the hook!

Even if the vast majority of people don't know, it could still be interested. The angels and demons trying to convince people to follow *their* plot lines would be interesting. And then certain crosstime organizations might want to introduce new plots...

[Apollonian]

Reversion

This parallel was originally something Infinity would catalog as a myth parallel - it's full of super spies, mad geniuses with volcano bases, rugged everyman heroes running up against ancient sorcerers, that kind of thing. You could easily run Feng Shui in it, or have James Bond team up with Michael Knight to take down Lo Pan. Local date is the Cold War '70s or '80s, depending on when the PCs get involved.

Infinity probably slapped it with a caution label; Centrum might just ignore it if possible; and the Cabal finds it quite a comfortable place to work, as it's low mana, ordinary tech (with mad genius exceptions), and plentiful secrets and resources to harvest. Reich-5, if they get to it, are probably defeated by a scrappy band of unlikely heroes.

All that changes for outtimers when a mad genius develops the Reversion Bomb and decides to use it to enforce world peace. Their first demand is that Israel and the Palestinians both vacate Jerusalem and hand it over to the United Nations, or the whole city will be "reverted to its natural state as it was in the Stone Age!" Unsurprisingly, neither party is willing to comply, and the mad genius detonates the bomb. As promised, a circle of land about a mile in radius centered on Temple Mount is transformed in a flash of blue light to, well, pre-civilization scenery. A few confused wild beasts are also present.

The fallout from the Reversion Bomb is considerable, as rival superspies had been "cooperating" to take down the supervillain. Though they failed, they did come away with enough information for both the Warsaw Pact and NATO to develop their own copycat versions of the Bomb, which quickly began replacing the nuclear arsenal as both cheaper and cleaner than nukes. It's also inspired considerable research into time travel, so far with little success other than a few more "reversions" - Nevada now has a few dinosaurs roaming it thanks to one of those.

Of course, the real problem is that it's not time travel. The Reversion Bomb swaps a chunk of real estate for an equivalent chunk in another timeline. Somehow the bomb's targeting mechanism picks a timeline that more-or-less matches the desired date, which can't be later than 10,000 BP or earlier than sometime in the Cambrian. (So far.) Infinity and/or Centrum, if they're aware of the timeline, are having fits. Why didn't they spot the mad genius sooner? Was said genius an outtimer? How can they keep a lid on this? What about the parallels that are contributing real estate?

Thankfully, everyone local believes that this is some kind of strange de-aging effect (or... something...) and only a few loons have proposed any kind of cross-time mechanic. So far. Also, because both sides now have a "clean" alternative to nukes, the Cold War is really getting tense. So, fun times for your operatives to drop in and try to suppress this technology, or at least carry out a few careful assassinations/abductions/recruitments. Or for your PCs to deal with said operatives.

[YankeeGamer]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Reversion
...snip.... Or for your PCs to deal with said operatives.

Or for them to test a new version, just as new nuclear weapons are tested--and get something else...
Water where land was is a minor possibility. A blasted, radioactive wasteland...a plague ravaged civilization...The Nevada Quantum Tunneling facility...The New Mexico Planetary Defense Base...
Another timeline playing with something like this could cause a massive--or not so massive--exchange.

Very high priority for Infinity: Do the cross-time areas come from the same quantum?

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

I'd think that the boys at Infinity would go all-out in sabotaging Reversion-bomb tech ASAP.

After all, what happens if they swap land with a timeline that had an ultra-tech civilization in 10,000 BCE? Or one with a civilization of telepathic Aztec velociraptors? Or a Hell parallel - of actual demons-and-damned-souls Hell? Big-time Secret blowing!

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

I'd think that the boys at Infinity would go all-out in sabotaging Reversion-bomb tech ASAP.

After all, what happens if they swap land with a timeline that had an ultra-tech civilization in 10,000 BCE? Or one with a civilization of telepathic Aztec velociraptors? Or a Hell parallel - of actual demons-and-damned-souls Hell? Big-time Secret blowing!

Sabotaging it would be rather difficult at this point, with the cat being so far out of the bag. They aren't gods, after all.

[dcarson]

The timeline that Jerusalem landed in should be interesting in a couple of generations.

[awesomenessofme1]

Anyone interested in that idea should read "Stormbomb-1" from Pyramid #3/63: Infinite Worlds II. It starts from a very similar premise of bombs that create banestorms to transport cities to different worldlines.