Time Traveller: the IWs have it

[thrash]

I've never been happy with the "Infinite Wars" cross-over campaign suggestion in Interstellar Wars (p. 236). Infinity and Centrum manipulate the Interstellar Wars behind the scenes? Boring -- and it doesn't address the problems of combining interstellar with interdimensional travel in a single campaign (Infinite Worlds, p. 72). I began looking for alternative approaches.

There's an oddity in the history of Terra's jump drive. A jump takes at least 151 hours, so any jump less than 1,090 AU is not, in fact, faster-than-light. From 2088 to 2096, the jump drive was used "only within Sol system, as a fast means of reaching the outer planets and the cometary cloud." (p. 22) Although it's possible that some jumps of more than 1,000 AU into the Oort cloud were attempted, it's also possible (due to the short time frame: 8 years) that the first, true faster-than-light jump was StarLeaper Zero's pre-cursor mission to set up a fuel depot at the jump point between Sol and Barnard.

What if it didn't work?

What if, instead of going FTL (which our current science says is essentially impossible, remember) StarLeaper Zero jumped to an alternate universe, with a different Earth? What if this effect were repeatable, with Jump-1 reaching to adjacent timelines, and Jump-2 able to reach different Quantum levels of the multiverse?

The result is a weird science hybrid of Traveller and Infinite Worlds. Ships still travel from world to world, but every "world" is some variant of Earth. There's no "parachronic secret" to preserve, and Traveller never had a "Prime Directive," so it's just a matter of setting up a starport and trading for whatever the natives have to offer. Tech level and cultural differences provide the comparative advantage that drives trade, even with identical initial resource bases. While there's not a lot of physical variation (though travellers with vaccsuits and spaceships can visit more extreme environments than crosstimers in conveyors), Infinite Worlds (pp. 82-96) provides the tools for a wealth of detailed social variation -- much more so than an average Traveller campaign.

Well, okay, so how is this "Interstellar Wars"? Our own Paul Drye created an Infinte Worlds setting where humans developed agriculture and writing during a brief warm period around 38,000 BP. His Sheol timeline went on to develop Ancients-like ultratechnology -- but the returning ice age could just as easily have driven a proto-Vilani culture into conservative retrenchment, as they struggled to survive. If they hunted the large animals around them to extinction before learning to domesticate them, there's even some basis for Vilani bioscience to still be retarded.

So the Vilani are an alternate timeline on Quantum 8, while Terra Prime is located on Quantum 5. The two meet, sometime around 2112, and clash immediately. The Intertemporal Wars have begun.

This is not a new concept: I've played with versions of "Time Traveller" for years, and others have suggested similar ideas on the TML, CotI, etc. So far as I know, though, no one has tried to marry the two IW's this way.

I've got a JTAS article more or less ready to go, but any feedback or comments are certainly welcome.

[SuperGamera]

If you wanted to go in more of a Traveller direction, replace the Quantum layers with a 2-dimensional "Quantum Plane". With that, you could have more of the CT hex map feel, and allow for interplanar trade routes and choke points.

[sir_pudding]

This seems like it is more applicable to GURPS in general. Perhaps you should publish the article in Pyramid, and move this thread to GURPS.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by SuperGamera

If you wanted to go in more of a Traveller direction, replace the Quantum layers with a 2-dimensional "Quantum Plane". With that, you could have more of the CT hex map feel, and allow for interplanar trade routes and choke points.

Pretty much what I did. I also varied the density of accessible timelines by Quantum, so that it naturally becomes difficult to go farther than Quanta 0-12.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

This seems like it is more applicable to GURPS in general. Perhaps you should publish the article in Pyramid, and move this thread to GURPS.

I think more Interstellar Wars players are likely to have Infinite Worlds than the reverse -- and the essentials of Infinite Worlds are in the Basic Set. Besides, it's a Traveller campaign idea. You could do an "Infinite Wars" campaign in the setting, with Infinity and Centrum and all, but that's not the focus of the article.

[Shrale]

Well traveller is pretty vanilla so guess this would add some taste to it depending how far back you went in Earth's timeline.

Pretty bizarre actually.

You could add something possible x-over with Indiana Jones, with Dietrich getting support from Sword Worlders instead of a religious theme.

Or like Trek did with the nazis - just nix the Stukas taking on the TL10 starship :)

[sn0wball]

This sounds pretty interesting. There are some aspects I don´t get yet.

The parachronic drive involved IS a Traveller jump drive, right ? Thus it only operates outside the 100D radius, for example ? Otherwise you wouldn´t need any space craft.

What about aliens ? Are there other forms of parachronic travel ? Are there only Alternate Earths or also other planets ? Are the Vilani ruling a vast parachronic empire ? Are there any alternate Vlands ? Is Vland just an alternate timeline or is it another astrophysical location, too ? Is astrophysical travel possible, too ? What about Pirates? Parachronic torpedoes ? (only kidding ...)

Ok, you get the idea. The more questions come to my mind, the more your idea sparks my imagination. I like it.

So, is it a Traveller universe with timelines instead of planets or is it different timelines of Traveller universes accessible by parachronic travel ? Both ways have their own charm.

[SuperGamera]

Truly reactionless drives might complicate the situation, as they allow feasible STL travel. Would each star system have their own set of Quantums? I believe the Infinite Worlds book touches on this.

Could this setting work with contragravity and reaction thrusters, and no reactionless drives?

[sn0wball]

Originally Posted by SuperGamera

Truly reactionless drives might complicate the situation, as they allow feasible STL travel.

Well, the questions is why would anyone use STL to reach other worlds if it is so much easier to reach parallel worlds which are guaranteed to be similiar to your own ?

[thrash]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

The parachronic drive involved IS a Traveller jump drive, right ? Thus it only operates outside the 100D radius, for example ?

Correct.

What about aliens ?

Not so much, unless they evolved on Earth. I did point to the United States of Lizardia (p. B527) as one possibility.

Are there other forms of parachronic travel ?

I think it's more fun that way. In particular, Traveller has always had psionic teleportation, so world-jumping isn't too much of a stretch.

Are the Vilani ruling a vast parachronic empire ? Are there any alternate Vlands ? Is Vland just an alternate timeline or is it another astrophysical location, too ?

In this setting, "Vland" is the Vilani name for "Earth." The Vilani rule their parachronic Imperium, but I'm going with the original "more than 70 worlds" from the Imperium wargame rather than anything more "vast." For one thing, you can't really see from one timeline to another, so exploration is a lot more trial-and-error, and therefore slower; the different quantum levels also split things up. For another, most of the "Vlands" were habitable and inhabited already, so they hit the limits on population control a lot quicker. Lastly, if I'm going to muck about with things anyway, why not level the playing field a bit?

So, is it a Traveller universe with timelines instead of planets or is it different timelines of Traveller universes accessible by parachronic travel ?

The former. I agree with SJ: time travel and easy interstellar travel don't mix well in the same campaign.

Originally Posted by SuperGamera

Truly reactionless drives might complicate the situation, as they allow feasible STL travel. Would each star system have their own set of Quantums? I believe the Infinite Worlds book touches on this.

I probably won't go into it (for lack of wordcount), but yes: the sublight colonies sent out by the Terrans prior to discovering jump-drive still exist. If nothing else, they provide the same last-ditch sanctuary that they do in the original Interstellar Wars timeline. If you take a jump-ship by STL to another star system, though, you can try to use the drive there to explore alternate timelines.

What happens then is up to the GM. Since the existing timelines are extremely biased towards the last 10,000 years of human history, it's possible that there aren't any accessible alternates near any of the interstellar colonies -- or they are all empty versions of the same colony world, which really wouldn't help any. Maybe you could walk through the possibilities until you find where the Vilani have done the same (i.e., colonized their version of Prometheus by STL), but it would take a loooong time.

Could this setting work with contragravity and reaction thrusters, and no reactionless drives?

I'm leaving it up to the GM whether alternate timelines can have different physical laws or not. If they can, some of the first things to go are the superscience aspects of Traveller: contragravity and reactionless thrusters (if jump drives don't work, however, no one comes back to tell about it). I suggest (briefly) that if this is common, most ships will have airframe hulls and some kind of reaction thrusters.

[Shaper]

Presumably the nearer to the original point of departure, the more coherence the timeline has. Less resistance in the channels which allow the temporal navigation is likely.

This does not necessarily mean the worlds are not radically different. Even a single insight or application can cause a dramatic shift. The cuban missile crisis could have easily turned out very differently, other key events may have similar effects.

The results of a single quantum test could have significant impacts, other physics perceptions as well. A radical departure would likely have occoured had cold-fusion been replicable. Whether it was not could be variable physics, lack of effective documentation, success of a presentation, or innacurate science. Each of these nodes is likely to appear at that branching point.

Other high level nexus activity can be political. The decision of a single judge could have swayed the last US presidential election. Cultural impacts of various close supreme court decisions. Media editor decisions. Journalist stories which are potentially revalatory that are released or quashed. Key events in key individuals lives, people that met or failed to meet due to external circumstances and so on.

A budget decision by Darpa or Nasa can have long term implications, but it may have come down to a very close call behind close doors. The decision on where to site the fusion reactor (Japan or France). The authorization of the three gorges dam project, and its follow up. Committee decisions to specialize city functions in China. Research on telapathine analogs going forward or being repressed.

Mundane things like a correct landing vector being chosen by an airplane pilot can have huge long term consequences. A brilliant scientist making the choice between MIT or the University of Washington, can have huge implications in terms of interconnectivity and long term direction. A decision to attend a conference on particle physics or the untimely advent of the flu, either in that persons life or in epidemic form. An infinite number of small permutations or a single key event can easily change the shape of history. A single voice can shape a culture.

The list goes on and on.

Numerous examples of high level nexus situations can be found or speculated about in recent history. With the cumulative effect being potentially staggering over the course of a significantly longer timespan. The confluence of key nodes throughout the greater course of history can have staggering effects.

The drive system, to be useful for the game, must be able to move through fairly wide swaths of timeline variance. Whether this is driven through key nexus point activity (potential fast conduits) or a more subtle path of least resistance or more diverse routing mechanisms will have a large impact on the campaign and its implications.

The possibility of entering realms with alternate physics runs the risk of a one way path, where the ship is able to enter a space but local physics variances prohibit the return along the same path. While this is an unlikely event due to the rules of event confluence it would be the equivelant of a catastrophic misjump in normal j-space, at least from the PCs perspective.

The multiple worlds issue has interesting implications, as a single decision may have significant ramifications on the state of a relatively small empire. An obvious example would be a nexus point which came down to a decision to charter a colony/fund an expedition. Variances at the early stage of interstellar travel could have profound long term effects. This is especially true when multiple candidate worlds initially appear to be in close contention as prospects as good colonies. STL travel would magnify the effects of these decisions.

There is definitely the potential for a deep campaign in this regard. The level of awareness of the recipient culture is significant as well. Local reactions may range from alarm, excitement to mass panic. Consider the implications of the traveller ships being essentially UFO's, to other cultures which took a slightly different turn. The crashing of a ship in another timeline would allow reverse engineering, this too has implications.

Cultures that each had this ability would undoubtedly attempt to influence the fate of others that had the requisite technology. This could manifest as a deep trading relationship that advanced both cultures or as a long running war against the demons from the other dimensions. The matrix can grow quite convoluted in these terms.

Interesting.