New Reality Seeds

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Drifter

That would be useful in a group where the players are allowed multiple characters. You'd have the same character, but with differing histories, skills, ages, etc.

Your main character is a doctor. Your team goes to a world about 10 years earlier than Homeline, being hit with a zombie plague. You ferret out your younger self, probably barricaded in your medical school or at a shopping mall near it. You recruit yourself, with the same skills just not as good, and maybe having picked up some gun and survival skills.

Your expanded team then goes on a mission on a world where North Korea ignited a nuclear war a few years back. You find this world's you a medic for local warlord that used to be a drug cartel leader or a awol army major. More medical, gun and salvage skills.

But BOOM, your main character is shot by mutant bikers! No problem, you have two choices, young zombie killing you, or nearly as old, world's gone to heck you, to take over the story.

This could even be done with Homeline - the initial character is the Homeline version, who then tries to save versions of himself on other worlds (he would need to have High Inertia to be so common).

I would imagine that Infinity would try to restrict access to worlds very similar to Homeline, like not-that-long-ago echoes, or worlds where the divergence is that parachronics isn't discovered - i.e., our real world. Homeliners would want to go find earlier/divergent versions of themselves, or others (find a version of your lost love before she died - find an earlier version of your aging, troublesome star). Not only would that open up a huge can of worms with regards to ethics, but all very close worlds could potentially discover The Secret. And they might have Centrum agents around, prowling for information & people that could be used against Infinity/Homeline.

Note that this would apply to various GURPS campaign worlds where the change is either relatively recent (like I.S.T., Wild Cards, or Technomancer) or is secret (magic is real, but secret; vampires are real, but secret; psionics is real, but secret).

A 'multiple versions of the same person' game could thus take in Infinite Worlds as its starting point (and be on the run from Infinity, occasionally encountering Centrum), and then go to all sorts of other GURPS worlds. A Reign of Steel post-apocalyptic version of you. A superhero version of you from I.S.T. - and a joker version from Wild Cards. Vampire version from The Masquerade or a magik-user from The Ascension.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by fchase8

A 'multiple versions of the same person' game could thus take in Infinite Worlds ...

Characters who combine the disadvantages of Mistaken Identity and Weirdness Magnet may find themselves in such a game even if they didn't expect it.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Characters who combine the disadvantages of Mistaken Identity and Weirdness Magnet may find themselves in such a game even if they didn't expect it.

Haha - love it! Sounds like something that would happen at I.O.U..

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Drifter

That would be useful in a group where the players are allowed multiple characters. You'd have the same character, but with differing histories, skills, ages, etc.

Your main character is a doctor. Your team goes to a world about 10 years earlier than Homeline, being hit with a zombie plague. You ferret out your younger self, probably barricaded in your medical school or at a shopping mall near it. You recruit yourself, with the same skills just not as good, and maybe having picked up some gun and survival skills.

Your expanded team then goes on a mission on a world where North Korea ignited a nuclear war a few years back. You find this world's you a medic for local warlord that used to be a drug cartel leader or a awol army major. More medical, gun and salvage skills.

But BOOM, your main character is shot by mutant bikers! No problem, you have two choices, young zombie killing you, or nearly as old, world's gone to heck you, to take over the story.

I think it'd be fun to do an entire party made of the same person from different worlds.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Nice one.



Let me guess, First Citizen Sanders runs upper New England, worshiped almost as a god by his young, fanatical followers, ala Colonel Kurtz? Bonus with Anderson Cooper as the Dennis Hopper/Photojournalist character.

Hey, Sanders would have been anti-Austerity and would be reaping the political rewards of his foresight. He wouldn't need to play Kurtz, he'd want a better role. Washington maybe. Meanwhile, Anderson cooper as played by Dennis Hopper, that really is another universe.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Drifter

No, Ultra-King for Life Donald rules Atlantic City with an iron fist. His biker gang mercenaries help enslave the thousands of "guest workers" in his posh hotels, maintained like the Weimar Republic; opulent, overstuffed sofas in the foyers, actually infested with rats.

The Coen brothers meet Wes Anderson. Nice.

[PTTG]

I was trying to come up with a setting where a computational singularity occurs in the '90s and 2000s but it's frankly impossible to imagine consumer and industrial tech advancing faster than it did in any realistic way. Anything faster amounts to "lightning strikes computer, computer gains sentience."

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I was trying to come up with a setting where a computational singularity occurs in the '90s and 2000s but it's frankly impossible to imagine consumer and industrial tech advancing faster than it did in any realistic way. Anything faster amounts to "lightning strikes computer, computer gains sentience."

It's quite possible to envisage software being much more reliable and useful, while running on hardware of similar capabilities.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It's quite possible to envisage software being much more reliable and useful, while running on hardware of similar capabilities.

What sort of changes are you thinking of? I mean, the computer revolution was so fast, it's hard to image what kind of smallish change could drastically accelerate it.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by PTTG

What sort of changes are you thinking of? I mean, the computer revolution was so fast, it's hard to image what kind of smallish change could drastically accelerate it.

A society with better ways to write software, making it quicker and easier to produce software, without making it less reliable. No, I can't describe in detail how this would work - if I could, I'd be busy becoming incredibly rich. But its effects would be that the expectations people had for computers in the fifties and sixties could actually be fulfilled: strong AI and the resulting intelligent robots, computers that understand what you want and do it, and so on.