Banestorm and IW

[JMason]

IIRC there was some mention of including the Quantum Level for Gabrook, Olokun, and Loren'dil in Banestorm. Was this cut? Also the Quantum Level for Yrth its self isn't given (but is available in IW).

Is this going to be the standard for the GURPS world books? No mention of IW cross overs except the little bit in the campaigns section?

Note that I'm not complaining, I just would like to know.

[tratclif]

Originally Posted by JMason

IIRC there was some mention of including the Quantum Level for Gabrook, Olokun, and Loren'dil in Banestorm. Was this cut? Also the Quantum Level for Yrth its self isn't given (but is available in IW).

IIRC, Phil Masters said that the playtest reviewers were strongly against letting parachronic meddlers wandering around Yrth, so the published manuscript limited Infinity intervention.

Originally Posted by JMason

Is this going to be the standard for the GURPS world books? No mention of IW cross overs except the little bit in the campaigns section?

I bet the answer is, "That depends on the world book." If you're setting up a world as a major point of contention for two or more of the parachronic factions, it would be a lot. Otherwise, if the world is mostly intended to stand on its own, a short paragraph on outtimers would be enough.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by tratclif

IIRC, Phil Masters said that the playtest reviewers were strongly against letting parachronic meddlers wandering around Yrth, so the published manuscript limited Infinity intervention.

Basically, yes, sort of. It wasn't so much the playtesters, as the general point of the exercise. Yrth is intended as a solid down-the-line genre fantasy world for GURPS; if you want to play guys-with-swords and wizards-with-wands under these rules with minimum work, you can pick up Banestorm and go.

Now, you can combine this with high-tech crosstime adventuring, and if that's your poison, please go ahead and have fun. But if we'd made it too straightforward, it would have become the default, and Yrth would have been crawling with crosstime wackiness. Which would shut out a lot of straightforward genre fantasy stuff, and twist the flavour of the setting.

So we left the option open, and gave the people who want to do that some hooks to work with - but we kept it unlikely and optional. If you think that the Infinite Worlds idea is goofy, or you're a low-tech fantasy purist, you can just skip a couple of pages in Banestorm and you'll be fine.

Meanwhile, Loren'dil, Gabrook, and Olokun were kept vague and obscure in Banestorm. Frankly, they're places for various nonhumans to have come from, a long time ago, and we didn't want to get distracted talking about them too much in a book about Yrth. They might get developed by someone else in the future, or they might be left as names in the history of Yrth; whatever.

Now, if Yrth is part of the Infinite Worlds multiverse, they must be too - but they're fairly wacky by IW standards, with lots of nonhuman sapients (who are mostly supposed to be fairly rare). If Infinity contacted them, they'd really have to become fairly major features of the game, and they'd need a lot more detail, which nobody was up for providing just yet. There was some talk, in early-draft times of various things, of saying that Infinity had located them, but in the end, the decision was to leave the lid on that can of worms. So the canonical position for now is that Infinity knows that they exist through its study of Yrth, and assumes that they're highly divergent alternate Earths, but hasn't made any sort of direct contact.

Anyone who wants to play out some kind of "I-Cops on Olokun" scenario is of course welcome to pick up the ball and run.

I bet the answer is, "That depends on the world book." If you're setting up a world as a major point of contention for two or more of the parachronic factions, it would be a lot. Otherwise, if the world is mostly intended to stand on its own, a short paragraph on outtimers would be enough.

What he said. Infinite Worlds is a framework for those who want to connect up a wide variety of GURPS settings, and a strong campaign concept in its own right. A world can be written up from the point of view of an IW game, or as a standalone setting which can also, optionally, be slotted into that structure.