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Old 04-04-2021, 12:46 AM   #121
Greg 1
 
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
So we have multiple threads for seeds of alternate timelines and weird parallels for use in playing in canon IW.

But what about different versions of the meta-setting?
A multiverse of Infinite Worlds is just waiting to be mashed up with other popular RPG genres.

The biggest one I'd like to see is a mashup with dungeon crawling. The PCs hop from universe to universe, hackin' exotic foes and collecting treasure.

Other examples would include:

Multiverse + Call of Cthulhu. Mythos entities are not bound to one universe. Rather, their domain encompasses all universes and their plots are inter-dimensional.

Multiverse + WWII. The Nazis are fighting to conquer not one universe, but all of them. War rages across the multiverses.

Multiverse + Pirates. Traveling to new universes requires passing through the Etheric Void, a strange realm where the rules of reality change as you grow closer to different universes. For those brave enough to sail the void as buccaneers, there's adventure and booty to be had.

Multiverse + Cyberpunk. The multiverse is ruled by vast, dimension-spanning corporations. PC types can be mercs for hire in a bustling inter-dimensional economy, or can be rebels fighting back against the corps.

Multiverse + Free Trading. The PCs crew a tramp trade-ship that jumps from reality to reality, buying and selling.
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Old 04-04-2021, 02:53 AM   #122
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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I would want at least a couple Americas that were never colonized from Europe. Maybe a variant of Ezcalli with North America independent to some degree, and definitely a union of Native American neo-states.
Without some kind of protect such Americas would be effectively crippled to insignificance by Western diseases specially if smallpox from one of these other Americas gets loose.
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Old 04-04-2021, 09:49 AM   #123
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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The biggest one I'd like to see is a mashup with dungeon crawling. The PCs hop from universe to universe, hackin' exotic foes and collecting treasure.
Time Bandits. The interesting question is framing: how do the bandits get from universe to universe? Is it a map to existing portals, as in the movie, or something else?

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Multiverse + Free Trading. The PCs crew a tramp trade-ship that jumps from reality to reality, buying and selling.
Time Traveller. Already mentioned up-thread, starting in post #9.
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Old 04-04-2021, 02:25 PM   #124
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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Without some kind of protect such Americas would be effectively crippled to insignificance by Western diseases specially if smallpox from one of these other Americas gets loose.
The danger of cross-dimensional infectious diseases is already rather understated in any campaign.
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Old 04-04-2021, 02:51 PM   #125
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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The danger of cross-dimensional infectious diseases is already rather understated in any campaign.
In a campaign where this is an in-context fact rather than a genre convention, it could point to a long pattern of cross-dimensional contacts in the past. Since the vectors would likely be individuals or small groups, the outbreaks would normally have been less than catastrophic and allow immunities to develop over time. Most timelines have fairly restricted in-world transportation, so diseases would be leveled across alternate versions of the same continent while not necessarily being shared between continents.
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Old 04-04-2021, 04:00 PM   #126
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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In a campaign where this is an in-context fact rather than a genre convention, it could point to a long pattern of cross-dimensional contacts in the past. Since the vectors would likely be individuals or small groups, the outbreaks would normally have been less than catastrophic and allow immunities to develop over time. Most timelines have fairly restricted in-world transportation, so diseases would be leveled across alternate versions of the same continent while not necessarily being shared between continents.
I think itīs a the other way, even fairly low tech societies, had diseases travelling via silk road, ocean going ships from continent to continent, just look at the plague, which hir the old Rome under Justinian, only to come back in medieval times. As long as enough people are there so that the deisease can spread out and still finding new victims there is no natural dying out of the disease. the so called new world also had some nasty things that moved with ease through europe, even if it was not such a killer than smallpox. and in low tech societies people only can pray but otherwise donīt do much whit every mass being a spreader event. Only if there is magical healing the game is changed.
Vaccination and the active development of antybodies and vaccines is a fairtly late TL 8 technique.

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The danger of cross-dimensional infectious diseases is already rather understated in any campaign.
Donīt we have in the Infinite worlds book the gotha worlds, with the hind that all this worlds were linked in earlier times by crosstime travel ?
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Old 04-05-2021, 05:52 AM   #127
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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Vaccination and the active development of antybodies and vaccines is a fairtly late TL 8 technique.
TL 8 for vaccines? Try TL 5. Heck, Edward Jenner was going on about the idea in the late 1790s and there was a large vaccination for smallpox in 1807.

Even in a magic thinking society (even if magic doesn't really exist) something akin to primitive vaccination could occur via The Law of Association:

People who get cowpox don't get smallpox, ergo if one it exposed to cowpox "correctly" they won't get smallpox
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Old 04-05-2021, 07:17 AM   #128
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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I would want at least a couple Americas that were never colonized from Europe. Maybe a variant of Ezcalli with North America independent to some degree, and definitely a union of Native American neo-states.
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Without some kind of protect such Americas would be effectively crippled to insignificance by Western diseases specially if smallpox from one of these other Americas gets loose.
I think solving that problem is prerequisite for non-colonized timelines. Ezcalli specifically calls a columbian exchange in roman times as its divergece point, so "Ezcalli Variants" will feature native americans with resistance to old world diseases.

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TL 8 for vaccines? Try TL 5. Heck, Edward Jenner was going on about the idea in the late 1790s and there was a large vaccination for smallpox in 1807.
in TL5, small pox is the only disease that can be vaccinated against, and that has been the case for well over 100 years. At the beginning of TL6 researchers begin making vaccines for other diseases: a cholera vaccine is developed in 1879 (the first "Lab Vaccine"), and one Louis Pastuer starts work on vaccines for Anthrax and Rabies. Throughout TL6 vaccines will slowly be worked out for more and more diseases, one by one.

So I'd say Vaccination is a TL6 technology, but its not mature until TL7. Of course, TL8 continues to refine the techniques.
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Old 04-05-2021, 03:18 PM   #129
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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in TL5, small pox is the only disease that can be vaccinated against, and that has been the case for well over 100 years. At the beginning of TL6 researchers begin making vaccines for other diseases: a cholera vaccine is developed in 1879 (the first "Lab Vaccine"), and one Louis Pastuer starts work on vaccines for Anthrax and Rabies. Throughout TL6 vaccines will slowly be worked out for more and more diseases, one by one.

So I'd say Vaccination is a TL6 technology, but its not mature until TL7. Of course, TL8 continues to refine the techniques.
Yes but the small pox vaccine used not smallpox for the vaccine but a similar virus that helped develop a immunity, the beautiful milkmaid from old tales, is so good looking, because the cow pox she had hadnīt left the ugly mess that small pox do, and made her immune to small pox of course.

The TL 6 way of vaccination was searching a virus / bacteria that triggered a immune reaction but was otherwise mostly harmless, it mostly luck and trial and error to find a useful sample. Or take hopefully dead material from a infected and bring it into contact with the person you want to become immune.

Since Pasteur and later in TL 7 the creation of vaccines by creating dead or weakened samples was the edge of technology.

Now in TL 8 maybe late TL 8 we understand genes well enough to manipulate them directly and create such a vaccine by purpose and not luck. Monoclonal antibodies help also, but are still cutting edge. Same goes for the method Biontech uses.


Another topic about diseases and worldhopping could be that many diseases donīt trigger immediately symptoms, a person which cught something nasty during visiting another world, could infect a large group until itīs to late, just think about a crossover of HIV and the plague. The search for patient zero and a trip to the world where he got it makes a exellent plot hook.

Last edited by Willy; 04-05-2021 at 03:21 PM. Reason: spelling error, added example
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Old 04-08-2021, 01:00 PM   #130
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Default Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

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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.
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It feels to me as if it would be neater if each timeline connected to 11 other worlds, so that that timeline itself would have a Zodiacal sign, just like those it connected to.

The geometry on that is the sort of nagging problem that attacks me when I'm alone with paper and a pencil. Making each world a "Sink" for others during its zodiacal sign does some weird things, and working out possible graphs for a given number of connections is not trivial for all numbers of connections, and unfortunately, the systems are easiest for an odd number of divisions.



I suppose if you give up having exactly one connection at all times except for your incoming block it gets a good deal easier. I'm wondering if you can do something with just giving up the opposite of your sign.


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A possible neat gimmick would be to link the twelve signs to the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and through them to the cycle of fifths. This would open out the number of worlds, because the cycle of fifths isn't perfectly closed. You can go down a fifth, to F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, and G flat, or you can go up a fifth, to G, D, A, E, B, and F sharp---but F sharp and G flat aren't the same frequency. And similarly, when you go from F sharp to C sharp, that's not the same as D flat, and G sharp's not the same as A flat. So the whole thing could be open ended.

That's one way to set it up. This creates a sort of linear braid that gets traveled up and down. When you at the opposite of your current zodiac sign, do you travel up or down? I suppose that could be a second "Dead" time.
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