Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

4) Dungeons and Parachronics

Other worlds can be accessed by going "underground" though special transitional realms that often look like caverns or man-made structures. These "dungeons" periodically spawn hostile pseudo-material animals, sophonts, and mindless hazards, which have to be cleared out to allow traffic through. Somehow these challenges are always around equal to the group doing the clearing (so no just blowing up the pseudo-Medieval orcs with a grenade). Fortunately the remains of the challenges can often be turned into something valuable.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

5) Alien Earths

Parachronics gets super-messed-up by a certain closeness to planetary gravity, so conveyors can only function in space. Fortunately they have a higher weight limit, meaning you can make yourself a world-jumping space-ship. This is basically a standard space-sci-fi series, only it finally makes sense why all the planets are Earth-like and all the aliens are funny-looking humans.

[ericthered]

6) Greater Homeline


This is a "Soft" set of changes to infinity:


Homeline has embraced Parachronic travel as a way of life. Bulk transportation of raw materials, including wheat, is economical, and several dozen worlds have infrastructure. Some are mining grounds, some agricultural, some just for dumping waste. This version of home line is exceptionally rich, particularly in raw resources and energy.



Parachronic travel is industrialized: one world, Freight, is almost entirely covered in water but has lots of shallow seas, and is used a break and bulk point. "Chronoports" handle large volumes of people back and forth. The patrol has conveyors attached to satellites for surveying new worlds and for communicating.



The worlds emphasized tend to be highly divergent high tech parallels, empty worlds with alien environments (or at least evolution), Hell worlds, and echoes. Magic, Psi, super-science, and places like rustic are somewhere between unknown and non-existent. Activity on them tends to be for espionage or exploitation.



The Infinity war is a good deal less hot. Centrum and Homeline have ways to talk to each other and occasionally work together, though they are both very suspicious of the other. They still compete to control some of the lower tech worlds, but especially to steal technology from other worlds.



The great powers of homeline have a bit of a stronger grasp on the patrol, and do claim some (but not all) areas outside of homeline. The Patrol is MUCH MUCH larger, but has a good deal more work to do.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

5) Alien Earths

I'm happy to see someone else come up with this as well.

I wrote an article for the online Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society ("Time Traveller," 2007) that was a cross-over between GURPS Infinite Worlds and GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars. Now I use the concept for my Traveller-inspired home brew campaign, Picaresque.

As you note, it makes sense of some fairly common science fiction tropes. It takes a not-inconsiderable amount of work, though, if you're bringing all your timelines up to a consistent present. Most "hey, look at the dinosaurs!" approaches don't ask what they would look like with 66 million additional years of non-catastrophic evolution.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

1) First Chrontact

Homeline develops and uses parachronics for the first time and finds out that there is an entire community of parachronic-using worlds sharing knowledge and resources. Homeline is the new kid on the block, vulnerable to every 2-bit con-artist and cape-sporting conqueror. Do they ally themselves with one of the larger, seemingly-benevolent powers? Do they try to go it alone by stealing advanced tech and playing sides off each other?
(Concept: The canon IW assumes Homeline is top dog, with only Centrum as a rival. This meta-setting inverts that.)

Interestingly if you compare GURPS Time Travel and GURPS Infinite Worlds you realize that they are talking about two different Homelines.

The key is Centrum Beta which was in 2010 in GURPS Time Travel but is 1895 in GURPS Infinite Worlds.

While other discrepancies between the 12 years for Homeline and other realities either not moving on at all or different amounts of time passing can be explained by time not passing at the same rate (and even that has issues) there is nothing to explain how Centrum Beta "lost" 15 years.

Centrum Beta is also peculiar as there is no mention of a world war going on in GURPS Time Travel while there was such a war 1902-1912 on Centrum.

[Greg 1]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

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.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Greg 1

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?

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.