Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 04-08-2021, 02:41 PM   #131
zarawesome
 
Join Date: Mar 2020
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I have toyed with using networks of worlds where the portals of each world only connect to twelve other worlds (with each type of portal associated with each zodiacal constellation). Portals would only function during the appropriate zodiacal times, only when opened by the appropriate zodiacal rituals, and could only be sensed by people that shared their zodiacal signs. I have not fully developed it yet though.
The very old Fringeworthy RPG had world portals connected in rings which were, in turn, connected together in a long linear chain.
zarawesome is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-10-2021, 02:30 PM   #132
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Recently I've been giving some thought to the difference between the Infinite Worlds Setting and superhero multiverses. Superhero settings do have parallel presents, as well as myth parallels when they crossover with settings with wildly different basic assumptions like X-Men and Star Trek. Additionally they accumulate multiple "possible futures" like Legion of Superheroes versus Kamandi or Kang the Conqueror versus the original Guardians of the Galaxy. And they have just unrelated universes like Dormammu's Dark Dimension, the Negative Zone or Gemworld. But what they almost never visit is an alternate past to their own At least not so far as they can tell. They will sometimes apparently create an alternate past, when for example their trip to 2014 results in Loki escapting and Thanos disappearing, but those pasts are almost never revisited.

The reason I've been thinking about it is because I recently got my own physical copy of Infinite Worlds and was thinking about how it could be incorporated into what is primarily a superhero universe. I was thinking of creating dopplegangers of worlds like Gallatin (Isolationist America), Gernsback, Lizardia, Taft-7 and Lenin-1, only with supers added. My assumption would be that even though mundane worlds exist, people from supers universes who world jump would be be biased toward other worlds with supers. It would reduce the amount of disruption they'd cause. Sometimes they'd end up in echoes of their own history but if they stirred things up, they'd be booted out by some "time protection patrol" dedicated to "protecting the timeline", possibly to prevent reality quakes.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-02-2021, 02:04 PM   #133
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Recently I was trying to work out a version of time travel that preserved causality but spun off a finite number of timelines... and I would up with this set-up:


Time travel is only possible once every year, and it send you back in one year increments, to one of the moments when time travel is possible. There is only one timeline that distance back: everyone jumping back to it or ahead to it arrives in that timeline at the same time.

some results of this scheme:

  • It feels very much like alternate timelines rather than time travel, because once time travelers start messing with their own history, divergences kick in, and no new matching timelines are born.
  • The whole setting very much has a present "Now". You can go back and talk to your great grandfather, he's only really a diverged copy of your great grandfather. You can go back to the time of the dinosaurs, but you can't build an empire there for a hundred years without being noticed, because your peers are also experiencing those hundred years. You just went somewhere else, without really messing around with time.
  • You either have to have a "leading edge of time", a time where the first time traveler diverged everything, or you have to have this infinite history where time travel has always existed and the first time traveler happened an infinite amount of time in the future, and this implies this weird stable holding pattern in the flow of time and implies you either have access to infinite technology or that there are nations/things that guard the upper time lines.
  • The number of time lines and the number of chances to jump are directly proportional, which leads to either a huge multiverse or very few jump opportunities. 1 year was picked as a compromise.
Anyway, it was an interesting thought experiment, I'd thought I'd show it to you folks.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-25-2023, 05:59 PM   #134
TGLS
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
But for Infinite Worlds any time you bring up Homeline politics, you end up highlighting the issue that Infinity and its independence and monopoly simply makes no sense.
OK, so it makes no sense that a mere corporation could have complete independence and a monopoly on crossworld travel. I think there's some well reasoned points there. But what if Infinity wasn't just a mere corporation, but one that resembles the East India Company of old?

The Honourable Infinite Earth Company

Nobody paid much attention when Paul Van Zandt left behind a tenure track professorship to "Explore opportunities in International Trade" thirty-five years ago. Everyone started paying attention thirty years ago when he was sprung from Rikers by an infantry company who materialized within the walls.

In this alternate of Infinite Worlds, Van Zandt coupled crossworld trading with hard nosed ruthlessness and took over territory on several worlds back in the "heroic days" of interworld travel. Van Zandt had begun researching indicating the necessity of Homeline to access other quanta around the same time he was arrested on tax evasion charges (the Judge was not impressed when he claimed to be a foreign envoy). The rescue by his outtime forces was an enormous PR debacle, something never quite undone.

After months of backchannel negotiation, "Infinity Unlimited" and the United States came to an agreement regularizing relations between the two groups, which mostly amounted to compensation for the guards injured in the attack and the regulation of interworld trade. Some other states had already made agreements with Infinity by then, but in the early days these trading posts had an edge of danger to them. Infinity often worried the hosts would attempt to steal the conveyors, and usually just rushed the cargo unloading.

Van Zandt had bigger plans. There were already lots of worlds discovered on Quantum 5. Adding in more Quanta promised even more wealth. His original ask was considered laughable. Cede land to Infinity? Infinity would have sole use of parachronics? Nonsense. People stopped laughing when they realized what the alternative was at best getting cut off from Infinity's trade system, and at worst war with a force that could appear anywhere and was impossible to attack. It's no real wonder that the nations of Homeline accepted the offer to share in the wealth in exchange for retroactively legalizing all the dubious activities of Van Zandt.

Infinity under UN oversight has nowhere near the abuses of the old Infinity. The secrecy Infinity reserved for advanced worlds is now applied everywhere as a practice, and military adventures are heavily frowned upon. Both policies are reactions to Van Zandt's naked imperialism to some degree or another. Pacifistic research and trade has proven quite popular back on Homeline. On the other hand, many feel the "devil's bargain" struck with Van Zandt is a travesty, letting what they consider a war criminal not only walk free, but keep his conquests and continue to profit off continued exploitation. Groups like the Miracle Workers often try to downplay their relation to Van Zandt, fearing perceptions that they exist to burnish the image of a ruthless dictator.
TGLS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-25-2023, 09:30 PM   #135
dcarson
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

I like that. And there are factions that can argue that he really was a envoy because while he might have started in the US he had gone to another polity and gotten accredited by them. The fact that he'd broken US law in the process doesn't matter if he isn't a US citizen anymore. So factions over a wide range.
dcarson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2023, 01:46 AM   #136
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by dcarson View Post
I like that. And there are factions that can argue that he really was a envoy because while he might have started in the US he had gone to another polity and gotten accredited by them. The fact that he'd broken US law in the process doesn't matter if he isn't a US citizen anymore. So factions over a wide range.
Actually you don't get to not pay taxes just because you are not a citizen, you just don't have to pay them on purely foreign transactions. But then most places citizens don't either. Also breaking one of your citizens out of somebody else's jail is an act of war [regardless] of whether you think their imprisonment is justified, though in this case I'd expect the US to label it a "terrorist act" instead. Either way at that point I don't think a negotiated settlement is on the table anymore.

The fundamental problem with making Van Zandt count for anything is that as soon as some major government manages to obtain a working conveyer, no private enterprise does, they're just swamped. And the couple dozen really major governments of the world have a [lot] of resources to devote to stealing a conveyer, or bribing whoever makes them (if he's getting even minor state level rich van Zandt isn't building them all personally) or kidnapping van Zandt to a hidden location and torturing him until he reveals the key insights. The problem with the IW setting isn't that van Zandt can become fairly rich from interworld trade, it's that that interworld trade is presented as [so] profitable it's reshaping the homeline economy, and generating huge enough surpluses for Infinity to play state actor with transnational police operations, without those governments having stepped in. It presents Infinity on two different scales. And no, the East India company(s) isn't an example, they were not even close to owned by one person, or independent of the home governments, by the point they were power brokers. United Fruit is slightly closer in that its influence mostly flowed [into] the US government policy rather than the other way more typical for the Indies companies or Hudson Bay, but nobody can claim it wasn't riddled with (proto)CIA influences.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd

Last edited by malloyd; 04-26-2023 at 01:50 AM.
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2023, 06:43 AM   #137
TGLS
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Actually you don't get to not pay taxes just because you are not a citizen, you just don't have to pay them on purely foreign transactions. But then most places citizens don't either.
Admittedly the logic of the charges was more like Al Capone than anything else. You have this guy who appears and disappears from the country at will, spends luxuriously whenever he's seen in country, and his sole asset is a Delaware corporation that has orderly papers but little activity.

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Also breaking one of your citizens out of somebody else's jail is an act of war [regardless] of whether you think their imprisonment is justified, though in this case I'd expect the US to label it a "terrorist act" instead. Either way at that point I don't think a negotiated settlement is on the table anymore.
Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch that things could blow over that quickly. I probably overestimated how quickly the US would make a deal even with other countries cutting deals with Infinity. Though I needed something that would make people take Van Zandt seriously without revealing anything about his technology. I considered having him show up with an elf or a dragon in a cage, but then decided that would center things on fantasy too much, along with making him look like an ogre. Maybe having him show up with the crossworld duplicates of several heads of state could do.

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
The fundamental problem with making Van Zandt count for anything is that as soon as some major government manages to obtain a working conveyer, no private enterprise does, they're just swamped. And the couple dozen really major governments of the world have a [lot] of resources to devote to stealing a conveyer, or bribing whoever makes them (if he's getting even minor state level rich van Zandt isn't building them all personally) or kidnapping van Zandt to a hidden location and torturing him until he reveals the key insights.
Well, I didn't spell it out but the ideas I had against these points completely, but they summarize to:
1) The conveyors are built (or at least assembled) off-world, possibly drawing in components from multiple worlds. (Probably different post-agreement).
2) Van Zandt quit returning to Homeline before an agreement was reached.
3) Building a "fast" conveyor is doable, allowing conveyors to leave worlds shortly after arriving in the event of a problematic situation. This could probably be achieved by having two pulsed power systems that are charged at the origin simultaneously.

Though in either case stealing a conveyor is probably the easy one here, and a state just ripping up the agreement after there's conveyors sitting in exclaves situated inside their territory probably needs a better counter-argument (even if it's literally Van Zandt saying, "I have nuclear bombs and conveyors").

In any case this is probably not a very stable situation, and probably gives Centrum headaches just thinking about it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
The problem with the IW setting isn't that van Zandt can become fairly rich from interworld trade, it's that that interworld trade is presented as [so] profitable it's reshaping the homeline economy, and generating huge enough surpluses for Infinity to play state actor with transnational police operations, without those governments having stepped in. It presents Infinity on two different scales.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
And no, the East India company(s) isn't an example, they were not even close to owned by one person, or independent of the home governments, by the point they were power brokers.
Admittedly the main things I took from the EIC was basically Dupleix's/Clive's strategy of small numbers of foreign troops and local auxiliaries can win conflicts in a crisis (to justify how Zandt is acting like a government early on), and "corporations with private armies". The actual situation probably resembles Carthage or the Early Roman Empire more than anything else, with an equivalency of:
-> Spain is Hannibal's private property
-> Egypt is Augustus's private property
-> [Territory Offworld] is Zandt's private property
TGLS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2023, 07:30 AM   #138
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
In any case this is probably not a very stable situation, and probably gives Centrum headaches just thinking about it.
And, well, Infinity as an evil terrorist organization run by a tech supervillain threatening nuclear devastation doesn't give you much of the IW campaign frame either.

You can extort a free trade agreement under threat of war as long as you have genuine military superiority, but expect your victims to be doing everything they can to subvert the deal and end the superiority. And it's obvious to anybody with an ounce of foresight that as soon as that happens any Infinity collaborators are going to jail or the graveyard no matter what the law said officially, which isn't going to encourage people to do business with them, let alone sign up.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2023, 01:18 PM   #139
Micah Davis
 
Join Date: Apr 2020
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

I mean, I always assumed that Van Zandt’s disclosure to the UN was either, “I’m from a much bigger, badder Outtime organization and y’all can seethe and cope or become insanely rich your choice” but I think the alternative explanation might be that Van Zandt himself is a sort of super-jumper who gives his timeline Parachronic conveyor capability when he’s on it but it isn’t replicable.
Micah Davis is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2023, 02:13 PM   #140
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
You can extort a free trade agreement under threat of war as long as you have genuine military superiority, but expect your victims to be doing everything they can to subvert the deal and end the superiority. And it's obvious to anybody with an ounce of foresight that as soon as that happens any Infinity collaborators are going to jail or the graveyard no matter what the law said officially, which isn't going to encourage people to do business with them, let alone sign up.

At some point its better to present yourself as being foreign and signing some treaties. I can see Infinity drawing personnel primarily from the non-projector worlds. I'm pretty sure at least one of the alternates will have a favorable political climate for this.



I'm sort of curious what happens if Van Zandt has really good political connections, like having a US president as a father in law or being an ivy league graduate with friends at all the big media outlets.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is online now   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
infinite worlds, infinte worlds

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 10:19 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.