[Time Travel] Idea: party short-ranged amnesiac time-travellers

[Darekun]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But you'll soon find that if double jumps are allowed (i.e. jumping from 5'04" into 5'01", and from there to, say, 3'00"), a can of worms opens. Anyone still following this?

I'm reminded of how one middle-endian mainframe got designed…

While it is perfectly logical* to think it would open a can of worms, that's the same logic that replaces DelayedRippleEffect with alternate universes. The whole logic of DelayedRippleEffect is that there is only one time line, and at the end of the movie there is only one causal chain. (And it kind of imports SanDimasTime by reference.) Within the logic of DelayedRippleEffect, I think the last change(as measured in SanDimasTime) wipes out all others. If that means traveler at risk, then as the page says, looks like it's going to be a RaceAgainstTheClock to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong(or at least, someone needs to retrace someone else's steps).



* Well, within the context of cinematic time travel. You know what I mean.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Darekun

While it is perfectly logical* to think it would open a can of worms, that's the same logic that replaces DelayedRippleEffect with alternate universes.

Well, not exactly. The way Delayed Ripples work in this universe is that they force an Isolated (suited) character (or one with Temporal Inertia, if it matters) to spontaneously 'move' from the Original timeline to the Altered one (without moving forward or backward in time).

Originally Posted by Darekun

The whole logic of DelayedRippleEffect is that there is only one time line, and at the end of the movie there is only one causal chain. (And it kind of imports SanDimasTime by reference.)

Not necessarily one timeline (see above).

Originally Posted by Darekun

Within the logic of DelayedRippleEffect, I think the last change(as measured in SanDimasTime) wipes out all others.

Sort of yes, but not quite. If character jumps from +0 to -5, changes something, returns to +0, lives on to +1 for the changes to catch up, jumps to -7, returns to +1, waits to +2, then the changes of -5 and -7 are combined (s/he can't jump twice to -5 anyway).

At this point, while irrelevant for the module, it seems that I should demand that a suit should remain sealed all the time in the past and, upon returning to the 'future'/'present' (the initial departure point) until all his Ripples catch up with him.

Originally Posted by Darekun

If that means traveler at risk, then as the page says, looks like it's going to be a RaceAgainstTheClock to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong(or at least, someone needs to retrace someone else's steps).

Assuming the suits stay sealed, traveler will not be at risk (unless the altered timeline is deadly to him once it catches up, such as if actions in the past result in there being a fire in the future/present where the traveler is when the ripple catches up). The world, however, is at risk - from the PoV of the traveler anyway.

[vicky_molokh]

Ookay, I'm almost ready to run*. All I need is a floorplan of a submarine with enough weird-science/divergent-TL weirdness to make place for at least some non-one-dimensional manoeuvring and for a couple of internal airlocks (i.e. when there's an airlock separating some sections from the others; I guess something like a weird-sci lab, the reactor, the time-shield generator room, and the time-travel calculation center are good fits for that). Anyone got anything to kickstart the floor-drawing?

* == I will reveal some secret bits after I GM it, since one or both players might be reading this.