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Old 04-28-2023, 08:33 AM   #21
SilvercatMoonpaw
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I've never really thought of it as a case of them treating other civilizations as "not ready." Rather, it's a combination of the fact that a) overt time travel is likely to screw up the timeline - not just "Oh, I interfered with the way things were meant to be" (which kinda comes back to those haughty aliens) but rather the fact that comparatively subtle manipulations can cause time quakes, quantum shifts, and all other assorted bits of badness, so who knows what would happen if you show up at Thermopylae with a squadron of attack helicopters. Oh, and b) they don't want any more competition (Centrum, Reich-5, and the others are already making a mess of things, from Homeline's perspective, they don't need even more groups screwing up the quanta).

As already alluded to in the thread, there's also the Doylist explanation - the whole point of the Infinite Worlds setting is having characters playing in different timelines, and the Secret keeps those timelines as they are expected to be, rather than how they would be with known time-travelers roaming about. There's also the fact that time travel stories almost always involve some element of needing to keep one's nature as a time traveler secret (to avoid disrupting the timeline, to avoid getting thrown into a mental institution or burned as a witch, etc), so IW includes a built-in explanation for why you've got to do that even when it's alternate timelines rather than your own.
That makes sense, and it also kind of maybe explains why it can feel "off" to me: not all of the logic quite feels like it lines up jumping from time-travel to timeline-travel.

An easy solution -- if I needed to keep the setting the same -- would probably be to have an incident where timeline meddling shifted something in a way that was so horrifying to Homeline that non-interference is really about them being scared witless. I think of it as the difference between Star Trek's "we're being benevolent" and Animorphs "we meddled once, and let planet-conquering brain-slugs loose".

Though I should really be the last person to whine over following a genre convention "because genre convention".
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All that said, a setting where there are a massive number of time-traveling factions (possibly with varying degrees of maintaining some form of the Secret, akin to ST's Prime Directive) could certainly be interesting.
It certainly doesn't have to be official IW; I can easily make my own.
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Old 04-28-2023, 08:35 AM   #22
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

“In 2032, however, the collapse of the Austrian government touched off a gigantic scandal in the EU: Startling amounts of money flowed from various pharmaceutical and biotech companies to Social Democratic Party politicians in at least four countries. And the byzantine, convoluted money trail led – eventually – to Gothic-2.”

Could be a typo? Unless, hypothetically, somebody has a way of asking Kenneth Hite to clear it up?

Last edited by WholesomeMadScientist; 04-28-2023 at 08:43 AM.
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Old 04-28-2023, 08:45 AM   #23
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

Honestly I kind of assumed that the whole idea of putting in "future" dates in additions to settings was to be kind of a nudge to GMs as if to say, "Hey, you can work it in to your campaign if you wanna. This happens after our default start date, so you can bring it up as a recent event."
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Old 04-28-2023, 09:04 AM   #24
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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“In 2032, however, the collapse of the Austrian government touched off a gigantic scandal in the EU: Startling amounts of money flowed from various pharmaceutical and biotech companies to Social Democratic Party politicians in at least four countries. And the byzantine, convoluted money trail led – eventually – to Gothic-2.”

Could be a typo? Unless, hypothetically, somebody has a way of asking Kenneth Hite to clear it up?
If that were the only one, maybe. But it also refers to Taft-7 having a current date of 2035.
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Old 04-28-2023, 09:28 AM   #25
WholesomeMadScientist
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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If that were the only one, maybe. But it also refers to Taft-7 having a current date of 2035.
That doesn’t count, you can go to sci-fi myth parallels set way after 2027.

Also, Traveller - Intersetellar Wars pg. 236:

“The Infinite Wars
The Centrum (see p. B523 or GURPS Infinite Worlds) has undertaken its most ambitious plan yet: to influence the outcome of the Interstellar Wars in favor of the Vilani Imperium! In many ways, Vilani culture is similar to Centrum’s, and there is much to be gained by influencing so vast an empire. Infinity, naturally, favors the scrappy Terrans and opposes Centrum on principle. Both sides try to influence the outcome of the Interstellar Wars, without tipping their hand and revealing the Secret to the technologically advanced civilizations of this alternate. The heroes might be members of an I- SWAT team, or locals who discover the cross-temporal meddlers and their plans.“

Also, the parallel “Transhuman” mentioned in IW Lost Worlds pg. 16 has to be Transhuman Space.

Lands Out of Time pg. 38:

“Within the GURPS Infinite Worlds setting, the World of Banded Night has been somewhat snidely christened Burroughs-6. It is found in the Quantum-3 band, but there is considerable debate over whether or not it qualifies as an ‘Earth.’ Most researchers consider it to be part of a wholly alternate universe. A small minority classify it as a ‘Future Echo,’ saying it could be Earth a billion or more years in the future. Some projections of stellar positions seem to bear this out, but the data is inconclusive, and such a hypothesis raises far more questions than it answers.”

Last edited by WholesomeMadScientist; 04-28-2023 at 11:22 AM.
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Old 04-28-2023, 11:13 AM   #26
awesomenessofme1
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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Originally Posted by WholesomeMadScientist View Post
That doesn’t count, you can go to sci-fi myth parallels set way after 2027.
And it's just a coincidence that it references Homeline's present day as 2035 and there's also another world in that same year?
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Old 04-28-2023, 11:39 AM   #27
WholesomeMadScientist
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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And it's just a coincidence that it references Homeline's present day as 2035 and there's also another world in that same year?
Where besides Taft-4’s local present does it say 2035? Maybe I missed it?
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Old 04-28-2023, 12:38 PM   #28
awesomenessofme1
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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Where besides Taft-4’s local present does it say 2035? Maybe I missed it?
The 2032 event on Homeline is referred to as having been three years ago. ("...mired in the bureaucracy for three years)
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Old 04-28-2023, 01:04 PM   #29
WholesomeMadScientist
 
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

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Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1 View Post
The 2032 event on Homeline is referred to as having been three years ago. ("...mired in the bureaucracy for three years)
Still, the possibility, that 2022 or 2024 could’ve been what was actually meant.

Or Reich-5 is still figuring things out with the Chronobahn and developing what it has in the worlds it’s already meddling in and nothing important happened in that time?
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Old 06-12-2023, 11:16 PM   #30
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Default Re: The unacknowledged Infinite Worlds timeskip

Quote:
Originally Posted by WholesomeMadScientist View Post
“In 2032, however, the collapse of the Austrian government touched off a gigantic scandal in the EU: Startling amounts of money flowed from various pharmaceutical and biotech companies to Social Democratic Party politicians in at least four countries. And the byzantine, convoluted money trail led – eventually – to Gothic-2.”

Could be a typo? Unless, hypothetically, somebody has a way of asking Kenneth Hite to clear it up?
That is what I'm hoping-against-hope for. That it was meant to be 2022.


I noted in another thread here (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=188513) that the Reich-4 nuclear war seemingly occurred before Infinity contact, given the dates of contact for Reich-5.

But then discovered that Reich-1 was less than 10 years after divergence, despite all the 10+ years on Reich-5.

It was determined that there was some change-ups between GURPS Time Travel, GURPS Alternate Earths, and GURPS Infinite Worlds, resulting in the confused timelines.

And I (unilaterally) resolved it all by saying that Reich-5 was actually the first Reich timeline discovered, but has had its number pushed back whenever another Reich world is discovered (because Reich-5 is secret).


Of course, none of this resolves the unacknowledged Infinite Words timeskip.


The only thing that would do it definitely is:

An updated edition of GURPS Infinite Worlds

(hint, hint, hint...)
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