[Powers/IW] Advice for New Worlds enhancement for Jumper (World)

[Crystalline_Entity]

Does anyone have any advice on handling the New Worlds enhancement to Jumper (World)?

I can’t find rules beyond those in Basic so I’m after some guidance from the forums (or a pointer to what I've missed!). I like the idea of giving a world-jumper PC access to New Worlds to give them some agency over the worlds they visit, but I’ve got practical questions.

1. How do you work out how far away/quantum number for a new worldline? Looking at IW there doesn’t appear to be a pattern. Do you roll randomly? If they want something like regular access to high-tech gear or easy money, that costs points already, so I’m not sure what this should depend on.
   
2. How much control do you give the PC over new worldlines? And what level of detail is required for New Worlds? For example:
   • Can they say something vague like “I want to visit a world with dinosaurs” and get whatever world the GM wants as long as it has dinosaurs?
   • What about something very specific like “I want to visit a world exactly like this fictional one my character read about in a novel”
   • Or “A world identical to the current one except for my character’s counterpart has a twin sister”?
3. How do you decide what the penalty to the roll is? B64 says "always at -3 or worse (GM’s decision)" but what sort of things merit a worse penalty?

Any thoughts, or general advice on allowing New Worlds, would be appreciated, thanks!

[ericthered]

So the key to understand about infinite worlds is that it doesn't answer many of the deep cosmological questions about the setting. That's a feature, not a bug; the GM is responsible for figuring out some of this stuff based off of what's in the book.



The GM picks the Quantum level for a new world. There are a few guidelines: echoes are in Q6, and magic tends to be closer to Q3 than Q7 (exceptions to that do exist though).


In infinite worlds, I would not actually give the players access to any world they want. "My world, but with a twin sister" is a crazy level of wishing. If you give a player access to that, you're opening a can of worms where the player has the god-like power to create any world they want.


I lean towards deciding if the world exists or not, and then sending the player there. So you want some rules for what world exist or not. Some notes of interest:

• Echoes are a big thing in IW, though I wouldn't make all dates are available. I'd look into some sort of roll to put the player within a few years of the date they want in modern years, stretching that out to decades as you go deeper into the past.
• Alternates are also a big thing. I'd make near ones perhaps a little more common than echoes. I'm torn on if I'd make it so they can find things like "but my family is different" or "I was never born" easy, or if they need to specify bigger issues. The trick is be be consistent: either way will work. I wouldn't set up a dozen different alternates in lock-step with homeline though: I'd vary the years, and make almost all of the alternate PC's younger than them, and reserve control of the changes that were made
• Myth parrellels are also fairly common. Aurthur, One Thousand and one Nights, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, and other really popular stories seem to be less well represented. You can choose if less well known stories show up or not, and feel free to tweak them from the original.
• Describing a world with a few basic attributes and then trying to go there sounds like a good excuse to break out the new world penalty. Its up to you to decide how much vaugeness will be rewarded or punished: is "I want Dinosaurs" good because it gives a lot of potential successes for -3 and you don't know if you're going to get a creatceous echo or roman legions on triceratops? or is it bad because you're not actually specifying a world? that's a GM decision. Just be consistent.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

I can’t find rules beyond those in Basic . . .

There aren't any in Pyramid volumes 1, 3 or 4, or in any of the 3e PDFs I have.

1. How do you work out how far away/quantum number for a new worldline? Looking at IW there doesn’t appear to be a pattern. Do you roll randomly?

For the default campaign frame based on Homeline, I'd roll 2d for the quantum. For my own Infinite Cabal campaign, magical world-jumping took no notice of quanta, which were an artefact of Homeline's and Centrum's defective theories.

1. • Can they say something vague like “I want to visit a world with dinosaurs” and get whatever world the GM wants as long as it has dinosaurs?
   • What about something very specific like “I want to visit a world exactly like this fictional one my character read about in a novel”
   • Or “A world identical to the current one except for my character’s counterpart has a twin sister”?
2. How do you decide what the penalty to the roll is? B64 says "always at -3 or worse (GM’s decision)" but what sort of things merit a worse penalty?

I think I'd use something like "an additional -1 per adjective used in the description," but not tell the players that was what I was doing.

[Crystalline_Entity]

Thanks very much both, I think I need to put a bit more thought into just what I want to achieve with this, there might be better ways to give players input into what worlds they can visit (Serendipity with Wishing, or Patron, for example).

Thanks for your help!

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

Thanks very much both, I think I need to put a bit more thought into just what I want to achieve with this, there might be better ways to give players input into what worlds they can visit (Serendipity with Wishing, or Patron, for example).

Or you know, just ask them where they might like to go when setting up the campaign and include the suggestions you liked too. You don't need a game mechanic to get player input, and it can be a positively bad idea to have one if it needs to allow a lot of flexibility and you have the sort of players who'll scream "the rules [say] we can..." and try to override the GM.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Or you know, just ask them where they might like to go when setting up the campaign and include the suggestions you liked too. You don't need a game mechanic to get player input, and it can be a positively bad idea to have one if it needs to allow a lot of flexibility and you have the sort of players who'll scream "the rules [say] we can..." and try to override the GM.

Exactly.

Making up a world takes time. So make up as many at least a little before hand. A list the players want is good because it tells you they'll be happy to play in them. A list of ones you want to run so you'll be happy. When they look for a new one "randomly" pick. I say it with quotes because you won't have all of them ready at once and maybe you just bought Nordland and it looks interesting. OK, they "randomly" get a viking derived world. Just don't abuse it by always making it worlds you want and never the ones they want.