This is another idea for a game I've had. I just recently came up with the idea, so there's much fleshing out necessary, but I figured I would explain my idea and hopefully everyones advice would help in the development.
The concept of Long Goodbye is time travelers trying to determine what destroys the Earth and, of course, try to prevent it from occuring.
Players begin at the last moment before the world is destroyed and, through cosmic rays, Divine Intervention, technology, etc... the players are going to relive the day until they either figure out what happened or they run out of time.
As soon as the game starts, the players witness the destruction of the Earth (it could be anything from nuclear war or giant locusts to alien invasion or an asteroid). After the world is destroyed, the roll 2d12.
Subtract one from the result and this is the hour they have been teleported to.
Roll of 2 = 1 am
Roll of 3 = 2 am
Roll of 4 = 3 am
...
Roll of 23 = 10 pm
Roll of 24 = 11 pm
At 12 am, the world is destroyed.
The players relive the entire day, but the hours are all out of order. They live a complete hour before the dice are rolled again and they are transported to the next hour.
They must collect clues, ask questions, kill major players or protect major players, trying to work their way to saving the planet.
For example, the players start out and they roll a 7. They are then living at 6am. They go from 6:00 to 6:59 at which point they roll again. Now they get a 23 and are living in 10 pm. They go from 10:00 to 10:59.
If an hour is rolled they already have lived through, the dice are rerolled. No hour can be lived twice.
This game is very intense for the GM, who will have to sit down and work out the details for every hour and use his notes so he knows what is occuring at specific points in time.
Everyone must also takes notes and keep track of everything they do, just for the sake of confusion.
For the hook is, once someone is confused to the point where an argument begins or discussions of how doing something in the past might ruin something in the future, the game ends and the players die. So the players must be very careful not to make any drastic changes to the time line.
They are there are observers, interrogators and information collectors.
After all the hours have been completed, they return to the last hour, the 23rd hour. They now have one hour to fix everything that needs fixing to save the world.
Ideally, this last hour should be filled with debate about who should die, what should blow up, what should be preserved and how to accomplish these tasks.
I pre-agree that this sounds complicated, but if organized properly, it could make for a very intense roleplaying experience.
Any advice or suggestions?
Ooh! What a neat idea!
(Welcome to the Forge; sorry, I haven't had the chance to say that before.)
I like this a lot.
Here's my suggestion. Make it a boxed game. Provide 'signal point' cards from which a gamemaster assembles the 'cause of death' for the Earth. (I imagine they'd have some kind of system limiting which can be strung together and how.) The players jump back and forth through that last day attempting to discern the signal points with role-playing. If they figure out which there are and in what order, in the last hour they role-play how they obstruct this conclusion.
That's the only way I can imagine keeping the game form being a 'huge amount of gamemaster work' for a game of 'twenty (three) questions.'
I really like 'the final countdown' (which is out of order), but I'd suggest using smaller dice as the game progresses because imagine trying to roll a 2 or a 13 to see which hour is 'second to last.' (How about a spinner divided up into wedges, if you spin a 'used hour' you play the next one over in the wedge.)
Fang Langford
p. s. That and I'm hung up on this 'for Family Game Night' boxed games like How to Host a Deserted Island (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4291).
Hey Gwen,
It's a very cool idea with, in my opinion, a lotta lotta dramatic potential. I like it a lot. And I'm very much struggling against a desire to somehow come on real strong and mesmerizing and get you to shape it according to my vision. But unlike His Overbearing Fangness I've got compunctions against turning the full force of my own design agenda on relative innocents straight out of the gate. So instead I'm going to ask some questions so I'm more clear about your vision, and sort of thereby you'd be bracing yourself a bit...for when I finally blast you with my personal design agenda:
1. Do you envision the player character group travelling from hour to hour en masse, having and sharing all scenes together, or at least starting all scenes together, with the possibility of becoming separated over the course of the hour and then rejoined for the beginning of the next scene?
2. Do you envision the GM needing to enforce rigid continuity, where if the group rolls hour 10 the player characters are all in the exact same positions they were at the end of hour 9 that the group played through two game sessions previous?
3. How would you handle player character death?
4. Do you envision primarily investigation during hours 1-23, with a climactic and dramatic doing of important things during hour 24? Or do you expect players to use an incremental process of saving the world, rearranging things, killing people, convincing people to change their actions, and destroying things, over the course of their reliving of hours 1-23? At one point you write that you expect the characters to "collect clues, ask questions, kill major players or protect major players." That seems pretty active and incremental to me. Later you write that they are "observers, interrogators and information collectors" and that the "last hour should be filled with debate about who should die, what should blow up, what should be preserved and how to accomplish these tasks." I don't think you can afford being equivocal on this. Saving the world is either incremental, via determined action over the course of the entire 24 hours, or it's not, with all decisive action being reserved until the last hour.
5. How much disagreement is enough to trigger the pre-emptive end of the game? For example: At the beginning of play, the characters witnessed the destruction of the Earth from street-level Times Square by a swarm of giant locusts consuming all the buildings. At the very end of hour 10, they saw the hatching of a winged creature, all covered in fluid, from an egg in an incubator, but were unable to take action before the end of the hour. When finally an hour previous to 10 is rolled and the characters find themselves in the position of taking a hammer to that egg, I say, "What if the thing we saw hatching wasn't the mother locust?" Is that enough disagreement to trigger the end of the game?
Paul
Quote1. Do you envision the player character group travelling from hour to hour en masse, having and sharing all scenes together, or at least starting all scenes together, with the possibility of becoming separated over the course of the hour and then rejoined for the beginning of the next scene?
Actually, I see the group splitting up a lot at the beginning as they search for the extreme basic idea of the Apocolypse.
Then towards the end, as they are more certain of the catalyst, the need to split up will dwindle and they will travel in groups.
Starting all scenes together will be based entirely around what the GM and the players decide is causing them to time travel, so it is entirely possible they could stay split up or rejoined.
Quote2. Do you envision the GM needing to enforce rigid continuity, where if the group rolls hour 10 the player characters are all in the exact same positions they were at the end of hour 9 that the group played through two game sessions previous?
Time travel is always a difficult element to work with when roleplaying, so I think the GM should be as strict as necessary to keep the game from falling apart.
Quote3. How would you handle player character death?
This is one thing I forgot to mention. If a character dies, the can continue to play ONLY if the hour rolled is BEFORE their death. For example, if someone were to die in hour 14, they can still play them game if in hour 1 - 13. Everything after hour 14 they are "dead" and unable to play.
This way hour 24 will be more stressful, perhaps having only one or two people left alive to accomplish the tasks.
Quote4. Do you envision primarily investigation during hours 1-23, with a climactic and dramatic doing of important things during hour 24? ... At one point you write that you expect the characters to "collect clues, ask questions, kill major players or protect major players." That seems pretty active and incremental to me. Later you write that they are "observers, interrogators and information collectors" and that the "last hour should be filled with debate about who should die, what should blow up, what should be preserved and how to accomplish these tasks."
Characters can kill, destroy, protect or collect clues at any point in the day. The only drawback here is that they risk an argument or confusion. Which is why most interaction should be PRIMARILY in hour 23, but not ONLY in hour 23.
Quote5. How much disagreement is enough to trigger the pre-emptive end of the game?
Examples of Confusion: Confusion is simply the point of the game where playing cannot progress because the GM cannot maintain the story line. If the players cause too much change in the past and severly alter the future that they were a part of, the GM can simply say they are unable to make the game work and it ends.
I realize that making it work is a matter of how creative and observant the GM is, but this rule is in place to keep the GMs brain from leaking out of his ear.
Examples of Argumentation: As soon as the players and/or GM get into a debate over time travel and "what happens first or last" the game ends. This is to prevent a huge argument, which is entirely possible in a game like this (unless you enjoy temporal arguments, in which case, argue away!)
Argumentation also includes the point in which players start quoting Steven Hawking or debating over whether Marty McFly would have been named Marty if he didn't time travel in the first place. This rule is in place to keep gameplay moving and keep it from becoming a long drawn out argument.
As for your own personal design, Paul, I would like to hear about it! So far all I have is a concept and these mechanics are sort of up-in-the-air, so if you have a more concrete idea, I wouldn't be opposed to hearing them and working together to get a finished product!
Hey Gwen,
I like your plan for handling character death. But it would suck to be the player of a character who died early into the game. What do you think of maybe allowing the character to continue on as a ghost, in some limited capacity, perhaps able to influence emotions and move objects?
My own idea for Long Goodbye (which is a fantastic name, by the way) would be for the GM to go around the room, rolling an hour for each character, which would allow for the framing entirely separate scenes throughout the timeline (or optionally for combined scenes if the same hour got rolled for more than one character). If someone rolled an hour they played already, I'd put them in a different location. I can see it being pretty cool if as a player I got framed into a gunfight scene in the lobby of a hotel, at the same time as a previously played scene with my character on the mezzanine. I'd also ditch the requirement that all 24 hours had to be played and frame everyone to the 24th hour the first time it got rolled. So players would sometimes entirely avoid finding themselves in the exact physical circumstances they were in at the end of some of the hours. You know the scene in The Poseidon Adventure where Gene Hackman jumps to the gas shutoff valve? Characters could do that kind of thing at the end of an hour, gambling they might not ever roll the next hour and end up demised. I think ditching the 24 hours requirement would also make the last hour that much more tense, since the players would be working with incomplete information when it came down to their final decisions.
Another thing I'd do personally was include reality TV style epilogues for each character if the game ends out of confusion or argumentation. Go around the room, with each player narrating, "It was Jim's fault...if he'd listened to me..." The GM could take the last epilogue, and do it from the perspective of a significant NPC who might comment from an informed or dramatic perspective, "I only wanted to see my wife one last time before the virus had eaten so much of my brain I wouldn't have recognized her."
Honestly though, I think you have it well thought out for yourself. I think your clarification of what constitutes confusion and argumentation should become part of your game document. I think you should pick a rules system and run it. Extreme Vengeance would be good if you want an action movie style. It really is a solid game underneath all the wretched attempts at humor. The Window, The Ladder, or EPICS would be good for something less actiony.
Paul
Quote from: GwenThis is one thing I forgot to mention. If a character dies, the can continue to play ONLY if the hour rolled is BEFORE their death. For example, if someone were to die in hour 14, they can still play them game if in hour 1 - 13. Everything after hour 14 they are "dead" and unable to play.
This way hour 24 will be more stressful, perhaps having only one or two people left alive to accomplish the tasks.
What about the following situation:
Game starts.
Characters go to hour 13
Characters go to hour 21
Characters go to hour 9
Characters go to hour 6, one of them dies.
Oops.. not only can the character only play hours 1-5 now, but he somehow mysteriously turned up in hours 9,13 and 21 even though he was dead.
It's a really good idea, but I can see a lot of problems with it. If you can sort those through, it could be a really interesting game.
I'm curious - how much was the series "24" an influence?
Brian.
QuoteWhat about the following situation:
Game starts.
Characters go to hour 13
Characters go to hour 21
Characters go to hour 9
Characters go to hour 6, one of them dies.
Oops.. not only can the character only play hours 1-5 now, but he somehow mysteriously turned up in hours 9,13 and 21 even though he was dead.
This is a great example of an Argument! If a situation like this would arrive, the players would have to sort this out for themselves and come to an agreement, otherwise there is a PARADOX and the game ends.
QuoteIt's a really good idea, but I can see a lot of problems with it. If you can sort those through, it could be a really interesting game.
There will always be a lot of problems with a time travel game, which is why I have opted for the confusion/argumentation rules opposed to pages and pages about temporal physics.
QuoteI'm curious - how much was the series "24" an influence?
I was thinking this question might get asked when I came up with the idea, but I can assure you "24" has influenced me 0%.
I was mainly influenced by Twelve Monkies, by Gilliam
Quote from: Gwen
This is a great example of an Argument! If a situation like this would arrive, the players would have to sort this out for themselves and come to an agreement, otherwise there is a PARADOX and the game ends.
So, essentially, it gives the players the chance to create the BS explanations that make it all make sense? That's very cool. So in the above case, I could just point out that the characters jumping around creates their own timeline, the termination of which means that they can only show up in times before their deaths in the future of their own timelin. But does not void the causality of the objective Earth timeline (as if it were, then just jumping back and forth would be a problem).
Hmm. I have an important question. Do the players jump back to exactly where they were at the end of an hour? This would make sense with the death thing (essentially, the character would be jumping to the later hours as well, but would just show up dead, and therfore not able to participate). I sense that this is not the case, however. From your descriptions, it would seem that the PCs show up in different places. If that's true, it would mean that they would litterally dissapear from the POV of someone watching them. For example, in hour 7 we're at a park. then later, we flash to hour 8, and we arrive in a barn. From the POV of someone watching us at the end of hour 7, we just dissapear.
Anyhow, if this is the case, then how does the GM know where to place the characters? What's the rationale for why they arrive at a particular place? Does the transporting agent have some small idea of the nature of the disaster? If they have full knowledge, then they'd just trransport right to the best spot to fix the problem. So the knowledge is imperfect. Do the PCs know what level of accuracy the transporting angency has?
I guess what I'm looking for is the background rationale for some of this. If the players simply arrive with no idea why they have leapt through time from the "end" to now, won't they spend the first couple of hours at least trying to determine the nature of what's going on? Or, will they get the idea from their proximity to certain events that they have been sent back to fix them.
I guess, from a design aspect, it would be much simpler, if the PCs were part of an organization that could detect "end of the world" problems, and which sent back agents regularly to fix such problems. As such, the PCs would know what was going on, and wouldn't have to worry about the figuring out phase. The reason this is good, is that otherwise, there is the problem of Gamist player vs. others. The Gamist players will probably use Author stance to say, "Oh, my character gets it," right after the first leap. The other players may want to look at things from their characters' POVs, and may take longer to respond. These ways of playing could really grate on players of the opposite sort. The Gamists would be all, "we're wasting time", wheras the Narrativists would be angry that the Gamists were so bent on winning by saving the world, and not concerned with the moral implications (some Narrativists might decide that the world is not worth saving, or that doing so might upset some universal balance or something).
So, is this a game about "Saving the World", or is it a game about characters given an opportunity to save the world if they wish? If the former, then I think the Time-Travel Agency is the best way to go. If the latter, then the mysterious travel option seems best. Interestingly, you can probably include both options so that players and GMs can choose whichever mode they like best.
Mike
I guess, from a design aspect, it would be much simpler, if the PCs were part of an organization that could detect "end of the world" problems, and which sent back agents regularly to fix such problems. As such, the PCs would know what was going on...
Blecch! Here's an alternative:
Ever find yourself at work, but you can't remember driving there? The route is so worn into your brain that you drove there on autopilot. How about the idea that a person's life of travel forward in time has natural eddies that circle him/her back by a few hours or days; it's just that the life is so worn into your brain that you generally autopilot through the experience. In this case though, the end of the world was so shocking that the reliving is characterized by awareness of what's to come.
Paul
Worked for Assimov. I never get your tastes, Paul. ;-)
Anyhow, I could accept a croc of some sort where the character just "knows" that he's there to save the world.
But mostly this is Paul's play preference coming out. He'd prefer a Narrativist version I'm sure. As such he's simply advocating the option I already enumerated for that rout more or less.
Mike
I feel like I should say something; I'm just not sure what.
We did a time-travel based world,
The Perpetual Barbecue, in
Multiverser: The Second Book of Worlds; this was more like Groundhog day, in that the player characters relive the day again and again (actually, in two alternating versions, through which they find the clues to why it's happening). That's very different from what you're trying to do, but it may be instructive.
The critical point, in my mind, is you need an event script, a point-by-point outline of what every non-player character is going to say and do, of everything that is going to happen. In essence, you need a story that is happening, so that at any given moment the referee knows what is happening and can reveal it to the players. At the same time, it has to have flexibility in it, so that you can incorporate changes made by the players.
There's a problem which surprisingly no one has noticed. If the players play hour 7 and later come back for hour 8, there's certainly some logic to starting them in hour 8 where they ended in hour 7; but given the random nature of the situation, it's just as likely that they'll play hour 8 and then later play hour 7. How are we going to know where they end hour 7 to start hour 8, if these are played in reverse order? Or do the players have to take into account where they were at the beginning of hour 8, and try to get there? Or is that all completely irrelevant, in which case where they start in hour 8 has nothing to do with where they ended hour 7, regardless of the sequence?
If you're going to tamper with time, you need, I think, to get into your head the difference between temporal order and sequential order. If the character is killed at noon, is it worse for him to have already appeared at six pm, or for him to subsequently appear at six am? Is it controlled by the order events happen in time, or in the order they happen in experience?
As much as I enjoy time travel, the concept here gives me nightmares. It isn't, as Cole thinks, that you can't change the past; it's that you can destroy it utterly if you're not careful, and if you try to do so intentionally your best hope is to fail. But then, I've spent a bit of time thinking about how to handle time travel;
my Temporal Anomalies site might be useful in helping get to the bottom of it.
--M. J. Young
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004C31F-B4E0-1D4E-90FB809EC5880000&pageNumber=1&catID=9
Quote from: Scientific American ArticleTHE NOTORIOUS MOTHER PARADOX (sometimes formulated using other familial relationships) arises when people or objects can travel backward in time and alter the past. A simplified version involves billiard balls. A billiard ball passes through a wormhole time machine. Upon emerging, it hits its earlier self, thereby preventing it from ever entering the wormhole.
RESOLUTION OF THE PARADOX proceeds from a simple realization: the billiard ball cannot do something that is inconsistent with logic or with the laws of physics. It cannot pass through the wormhole in such a way that will prevent it from passing through the wormhole. But nothing stops it from passing through the wormhole in an infinity of other ways.
Thought this might be helpful in some way :)
I took it that when the hour is up, a new hour is randomly picked from the 23, but the players stay in the same spot. Just the time changes.
This makes for a more consecutive journey, it may get all too much otherwise.
ie.
Players are a X, it is 18.59.
(3.00 is rolled)
Players are still at X, but it is now 3.00
This also allows for racing to get to a certain place, and so on.
Oh and once again, Hi forgites.
I just had to drop a line in here to say that I think this iz a really neat idea.
Sure, it has a lot of sticky points that need to be worked through, but lots of unique ideas have that problem. (To say nothing of how difficult time travel can be just in general.) The easy ideas are the ones that have been done already, right. :)
Good luck, and I hope to hear more about it in the future.
- Ziriel
OK, guess I have to stop lurking ;-)
First of all, please continue working on this, it sounds VERY interesting, I'd love to play it...
Why do you want to randomly determine which time will be next? Why not let the GM decide?
Quote from: thoth
Quote from: Scientific American ArticleTHE NOTORIOUS MOTHER PARADOX (sometimes formulated using other familial relationships) arises when people or objects can travel backward in time and alter the past. A simplified version involves billiard balls. A billiard ball passes through a wormhole time machine. Upon emerging, it hits its earlier self, thereby preventing it from ever entering the wormhole.
RESOLUTION OF THE PARADOX proceeds from a simple realization: the billiard ball cannot do something that is inconsistent with logic or with the laws of physics. It cannot pass through the wormhole in such a way that will prevent it from passing through the wormhole. But nothing stops it from passing through the wormhole in an infinity of other ways.
Which proves that scientists shouldn't attempt to do metaphysics. If you parse that down, it ultimately comes to "God would not let it happen." I'm a theologian, and I know better than that.
But I've dealt with this sort of nonsense on the
Temporal Anomalies site; not that I'm not glad to discuss them with anyone interested, but I don't think this is the right forum for them. Try the Dice Club forum at Gaming Outpost (someone just asked me a time travel question there this past week) or e-mail
TimeTravel@multiverser.com to pursue it.
That form of paradox resolution says that if an infinite number of suicidal geniuses all having functional time machines and access to nuclear weapons all independently carefully planned to undo their own existences by destroying the entire planet a hundred years before they were born, not one of them would succeed in killing a single one of his own ancestors. If that doesn't require divine intervention, I don't know what does.
It should also be noted that not only is the Fixed Time theory as espoused above by Scientific American riddled with metaphysical flaws, it is not accepted by large numbers of scientists. The Parallel Dimensions theory (which sports an entirely different collection of gaping faults) is also widely touted among the scientific community. At least they present experimental/empirical evidence in support of it, even if that support doesn't prove what they claim even if taken at full merit. The Fixed Time theorists basically present what they think is a logical argument for their position and conclude that it must therefore be right despite several unstated assumptions which cause the logic to be circular (in short, because you can't change the past, you can't change the past).
Sorry for the rant. There are no simple solutions to paradox; those who pretend there are generally make some dreadful mistakes about the nature of the solutions.
--M. J. Young
Ideas about various things:
Ever play Chrononauts(I think that's what it's called)?
This is DARN cool idea!
0)I'd use cards instead of dice. Just shuffle at the beginning and you have an hour order. It avoids the 'trying to roll that last hour problem.'
.5)As part of charachter creation players should pick where they are 24 hours ago. The GM would have to approve these.
1)The players start in a position to save the world(i.e. the end of the 24th hour), but they don't know what to do. Then the teleporting starts. You could say the agency picked them because the were the only people in the 'right place at the right time'. :) If the pllayers want they could even have a cutscene with the agency where the learn how the game works. (random hour teleports, avoid paradox, that sorta thing.ect)
2)I'd actually say players can't die, aside from blatent stupidity, which ends the world due to paradox. (Because we already know they were alive at the end, to witness it).
3)I'd actually put it on the players to maintain temporal coherence, sorta like this. When a new hour starts, do this:
1)If players have NOT played the previous hour, each player selects where they are.
2)If they HAVE played the previous hour, they are where they were at the end of the previous hour.
The could cause alot of fun racing around to get to where you should be, as it your not where you should be, it's a paradox.
Players need to arrange things so that they don't invalidate stuff they do in later hours. To take the egg example. They may find the egg in hour 12
but not get to do something to it until hour 5. They can't actually smash it, since they say it in hour 12, but they can, say drill as small hole and put poisen in in, or some such. (They just didn't see this hole later, or the player patch it.)
Basicly, detail the players have observed can't be changed, detail not yet observed is fair game.
I'm basicly viewing this is as the players bodies pass through time normally, but their mind kinda jumps around.
Also this gives the GM a chance to create 'clues' for the players, by refering to events that have 'happened', but not been played yet. Then the players can flesh these clues out. (Why am I holding a dentist drill and a rubber hose?)
(Was I the only one reminded of the Star Trek TNG finale, or am I the only
one geeky enough to admit it.)
As for coherence:I'd make each player write down a few sailent points about where they are at the beginning of each hour, then it's their job to be in that situation again.
This could be done as a Narrativist or Simist game. Either way would be fun, although the Sim version would be alot of work on the GM;
(Sorry for the core dump. I was gone from the Forge for a while do to having to write an article, so I didnt' get to do this for a while)
Quote from: M. J. Young
Which proves that scientists shouldn't attempt to do metaphysics. If you parse that down, it ultimately comes to "God would not let it happen." I'm a theologian, and I know better than that.
I don't see how you see it that way.
How I see it is, "it happens no matter what". If the future ball strikes the past ball, the past ball will eventually at some point in its own future become the future ball and strike the past ball. As i'm reading it, what happens between the points that the ball gets hit and the point it hits it past self is irrelevant.
I'm also wondering if it really is an attempt for physicists to become metaphsyicists.
I personally prefer the infinite dimensions idea. More fun!
Actually, most scientists do not believe that traveling backwards in time is possible. This is the most completely sound theory. And it's pretty much proved by Paradox.
Also, nobody from the future has come back. If they had, I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it.
Damion, if the players solve the "problem", then it will be a paradox that they saw the end of the Earth. So, do the players lose either way? Either they fail to save the Earth, and their vision comes to pass, or they save the Earth, thus creating a paradox (why would you try to save the Earth if you didn't know it was ending?). Kerflooie, there goes Earth.
As I see it, any travel to the past would cause paradox. You weren't there, and now you were. The point is that either you allow BS theries like alternate timelines, or Blammo, no Earth (and no game).
Mike
How did I lose track of this thread?
Worked for Asimov. I never get your tastes, Paul.
Can you name a single time travel RPG that doesn't feature some organization dedicated to protecting the timestream?
If you really want to understand my tastes relative to time travel, read Memories, by Mike McQuay.
Paul
Quote
Damion, if the players solve the "problem", then it will be a paradox that they saw the end of the Earth. So, do the players lose either way? Either they fail to save the Earth, and their vision comes to pass, or they save the Earth, thus creating a paradox (why would you try to save the Earth if you didn't know it was ending?). Kerflooie, there goes Earth.
As I see it, any travel to the past would cause paradox. You weren't there, and now you were. The point is that either you allow BS theries like alternate timelines, or Blammo, no Earth (and no game).
Good point. Although you could do it so the players see X, then the agency tells them that it's the end of the earth, (or they figure it out.) To continue the
locoust swarm example, a fleet of helicoptors could show up and destroy the locousts AFTER the scene they saw initially, or maybe the mother was poisened so they all drop dead soon after the inital scene. You could also say the agency can only change one event, the initial scene. I sort of imagine the way it would work if you made a TV show out of it. The initial scenen isn't wrong, per say, there is just more to it.
Yeah, you need something, somewhere so that the whole concept can work.
As for knowing, I'd say that somewhere the players have to gain mystic knowledge that what they are seeing is the end of the earth, if they don't do something about it.
There's always some outside agency, or someway for them to figure it out.
That's why I sorta favor a narrativist approach, the players can come up with an 'end' and then why they know about it. (One is a scientist or some such thing...depends on what goes wrong). Only one has to be able to predict it, the others are just 'right time/right place people)
Thoth, Mike--
- This is really hijacking the thread; we've gone a long way from trying to design a time travel game to discussing the metaphysics of time travel. I suggested other forums for this.
- It is also probably over the line in terms of the forum purpose here; we are no longer designing a game, but discussing a theory behind a theory which might give rise to a theory which provides the concept for the setting of a game--not really Indie Game Design stuff, I think.
- I've answered all these questions on the aforementioned Temporal Anomalies site; it's an Event Horizon Hot Spot, a Sci-fi Magazine Site of the Week, and included in the undergraduate metaphysics curricula of schools not otherwise associated with me. That doesn't make it right, but it does give credibility to it.
[/list:u]
But since it's being discussed here, I'll dare to abuse the forum by responding.
Quote from: thoth
Quote from: Quoting first what IWhich proves that scientists shouldn't attempt to do metaphysics. If you parse that down, it ultimately comes to "God would not let it happen." I'm a theologian, and I know better than that.
I don't see how you see it that way.
How I see it is, "it happens no matter what". If the future ball strikes the past ball, the past ball will eventually at some point in its own future become the future ball and strike the past ball. As i'm reading it, what happens between the points that the ball gets hit and the point it hits it past self is irrelevant.
This is the uncaused effect; it is the ultimate flaw in the fixed time theory, and they fail to see it.
If the ball collides with itself such that it is knocked into the hole, and then comes out of the hole to have that collision, why did it ever go into the hole? There is no way to trace this back to its beginning; it happens because it happens. The easiest way to trace it back is by a negative statement of the facts: if the ball does not emerge from the hole, it does not collide with itself; if it does not enter the hole, it does not emerge from it; if it does not collide with itself, it does not enter the hole. There is therefore no event in the chain that will cause the ball to enter the hole and collide with itself; it's sophistry, and collapses under its own weight.
But if that doesn't convince you, consider this: this is supposed to solve the grandfather paradox, that is, a person who travels back in time and kills his own grandfather before his father was conceived, so undoing his own birth. We have here one of the biggest time travel problems around. If I kill my grandfather, I will never be born; if I am never born, I cannot kill my grandfather. But if I don't kill my grandfather, I will be born--in which case I will kill my grandfather, and won't be.
What the fixed time theory states (but can't defend) is that somehow the man who travels back in time cannot kill his own grandfather; something will prevent that from happening. The gun will jam, the police will stop him, he'll make a mistake, it will turn out that it wasn't his grandfather--some small thing will prevent him.
Now, I've italicized something because that's where they disguise God; but in this guise, he's very hard to see. So bear with me now, and He'll start to appear.
I have already thought that one of the easiest ways to end my own existence would be to travel back to the past and kill my grandfather. You see, anyone who is suicidal gets to believe that they would have been better off never having been born. Once they are born, their life matters to others. But if they could erase their own birth, that would be the best suicide of all. It's painless; it's certain; and it erases all the years of pain that lead to the decision. Apart from the fact that anyone could think of it, the idea is out there--people who wouldn't otherwise have thought of it can read it somewhere.
It is in the nature of technology that it reaches the masses eventually. That is, today everyone has a car, most people have televisions and computers, many have video cameras, quite a few have private planes, there are telephones in every home--well, this is overstating it perhaps, but the fact is that in a couple generations that which is available only to the few becomes available to the masses. If time travel is possible, eventually it will be the case that anyone can do it. A large percentage of the population is suicidal at one time or other. Over the course of centuries, probably millions would attempt to do this, each traveling back in time to kill his own grandfather (or other reasonably near ancestor) so as to prevent his own birth. They will take guns, bombs, knives, weapons as yet undreamt. The near past might become a shooting gallery, for goodness sake. But here is the point: according to the fixed time theory, every one of those people will just "happen" to fail. That is, this one's gun jams, that one is picked up by the police, the other is hit by a car. And the more people just "happen" to fail, the more absurd this becomes. Eventually, you must admit that "something" is preventing them; and that something seems to be if not omniscient, at least quite intelligent enough to recognize that if Charlie blows up all of New Jersey with his nuclear bomb, it kills his grandfather and creates a paradox; and that something seems to be if not omnipotent at least quite potent enough to interfere in millions of assassination efforts.
People have often thought that God would not allow one thing or another; most of those things (other than World War Three) have happened--we've traveled to the moon, built the A-bomb, cured many diseases, altered cellular genetics, cloned a complex life form, assassinated a beloved leader, and much more. It is not wise to think that God would prevent something; He might, but don't count on it. Too many people who thought so were mistaken.
Quote from: Mike HolmesActually, most scientists do not believe that traveling backwards in time is possible. This is the most completely sound theory. And it's pretty much proved by Paradox.
It's actually back in the air now. Hawking is unconvinced. It revolves around a notion revived by Sagan in his efforts to write Contact; those blasted wormholes of his were a forgotten piece of Relativity until he dredged them up. It is entirely speculative at this point, but the theory claims that using a planetary sized quantity of strange matter one could create a wormhole, and then accelerate one end through space independent of the other, creating time dilation for one end but not the other, with the result that one end would experience more time than the other; it is then theorized that one end would exist in the past relative to the other, and anyone entering the future end would immediately exit in the past, anyone entering the past end would be carried to the future. Personally, my reaction was, "Time Dilation doesn't work that way;" but I'm not a physicist, and if Hawking isn't certain it doesn't work that way I'm not in a position to debate the matter.
The problem with proving something by paradox is that it only proves you don't understand what would happen. Some thought that the atomic bomb was impossible because if it were possible the universe would already have destroyed itself. It only meant that we did not at that point understand what was involved. Kant's paradox concerning the origin of the universe is instructive in this: either the time had a beginning or it has always been. If it has always been, then an infinite amount of time has passed to reach the present; but since an infinite amount of time could never pass, we cannot have reached the present. On the other hand, time is the medium in which change occurs; and if it began, there was no medium in existence before it began in which the change from the non-existence to the existence of time could occur. Clearly, time cannot have begun nor always been, because both are impossible. Just as clearly, time exists now, so one of those things must be true. It comes down that we do not understand the nature of time adequately to answer the question.
So the same is true of the problem of paradox relative to time travel. In order to create a paradox, you must first have a theory of what happens when you travel to the past. If you use the fixed time theory, then you conclude that nothing in the past can change--but this doesn't (in their view) prevent time travel, as it could be that your arrival in the past is already included in history before your departure in the future, all events being completely deterministically in place for all eternity. If you use the parallel dimensions theory, you're not in your own past; you're in another universe (either a parallel one which was just like yours until you arrived or a divergent one that split off upon your appearance). If you follow my theory, the past can be changed, but there are consequences, so great care must be taken.
Two points on the matter of whether the absence of travelers from the future proves time travel impossible:
1) the wormhole theory, the only one currently considered plausible, only allows travel between between the ends of the machine, as it were; you cannot go back to a time before the wormhole existed. Whether or not that will prove out, it is possible that whatever method for time travel might be devised has such a limit.
2) whatever your theory about time travel, it seems evident that the presence of a time traveler in the past is a hazard, and the known presence of such a person a considerably greater hazard. Time travelers would not appear too different from the rest of us (at least, not moreso than the one in Somewhere In Time) and would not advertise their presence. They could have been here without our knowledge. I believe that DS9 did an episode in which the time travelers were all running around in an original Star Trek episode, but none of the original parties were ever aware that there were time travelers in their midst. Why should they be?
However, I agree that the very concept of the game creates a paradox. If you've seen the world destroyed, and you succeed in saving it by traveling back in time, you lose your knowledge base when the world is not destroyed and so cannot save it. That's a critical problem with more time travel stories than I can count (Time Cop, anyone?). I think there may be a way around it, but at the moment I've written enough and I'll have to consider whether I'm right before I go too far with that thought.
--M. J. Young
Quote from: M. J. YoungThoth, Mike--
- This is really hijacking the thread; we've gone a long way from trying to design a time travel game to discussing the metaphysics of time travel. I suggested other forums for this.
- It is also probably over the line in terms of the forum purpose here; we are no longer designing a game, but discussing a theory behind a theory which might give rise to a theory which provides the concept for the setting of a game--not really Indie Game Design stuff, I think.
- I've answered all these questions on the aforementioned Temporal Anomalies site; it's an Event Horizon Hot Spot, a Sci-fi Magazine Site of the Week, and included in the undergraduate metaphysics curricula of schools not otherwise associated with me. That doesn't make it right, but it does give credibility to it.
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But since it's being discussed here, I'll dare to abuse the forum by responding.
Noting hijacking...then continuing with it? Anyways, I this'll kill my involvement in the hijacking, and maybe make me on-topic.
The reason I posted that link was to simply provide (hopefully) some inspiration about dealing with paradoxes, with one possible resolution in one possible paradox. So my reason was to assist in Indie Game design not start a mini metaphysics conflict.
Don't know why the hell I bothered responding the first time around, and have to apologize to the thread creator for being part of a detraction instead of just explaining why I posted the link in the first place. So Gwen, sorry for detracting but I hope the link I originally posted might be of some use in some small way :)
But, on to something more specific about the idea.
When characters are transporting through time, is their whole bodies or just their consciousness that transfers?
If it's their consciousness, I can see a character being unable enter an hour after the death of their body, because there's nothing for their consciousness to attach to.
If it's their whole bodies, then I can see it being ok for a characters to exist in an hour after one which the character died in.
The reason I see this is because I see to distinct order of time, the Character Order, and the Real Order. The Real Order is hour 2,3,4,5,etc in that strict order. The Character Order can be 5,23,11,etc in whatever order is rolled.
If it's only conscious that travels through time, then the body of person is strictly bound to the Real Order, and if it dies in Hour 10, it stays dead in Hours 11 through 24. And that can be dealt with by allowing a character's conscious to inhabit another's body. But it also presents a problem that the bodies might need to be close to each other? Or the whole concept of the character's having their own bodies can be ignored, letting them inhabit random bodies as they go through time :)
If it's the whole character, body included, that travels through time, then only the Character Order of time really matters. The character could be alive in Hours 23 and 11, die in 10, and there not really be a problem because it's all happening relative to the characters, and not the rest of the world. The reason being the character is actually fully transported to H23, then to H11, then to H10 where they die. It's as if the character doesn't even exist in Hours they have yet to visit. Or doesn't exist in a meaningful fashion.
Not sure if any of that helps. Hopefully it raises some useful questions.
A quick note: I agree wholeheartedly with damion about using cards instead of dice. It really would solve the having to roll a certain hour problem. In addition it could give the GM a chance to peek at the shuffle before it iz played and make some notes and plans. It would certainly help the GM organize the flow and keep things from becomeing to convoluted and full of paradox. It would be especially handy if you were planning to have the game run more than one session. That way the GM could plan ahead, and the group could always look back at the cards if they forgot which hours they had already hit. You could use a red suit, ace through queen, for the day and a black suit for the night. Or, you could make your own neat-o cards and include them with the game. (Extras are always fun.) Does this appeal to you at all?
MJ,
I've only argued theory to point out that the game can proceed as written. I guess my point is that any attempt to look to closely at time travel theory is going to be problematic. So the best idea is to go with the designer's notion, and just give the players a strong incentive to ignore it. Allow anything, so long as everyone seems comfortable with it.
As far as the "Fixed Time" theory, the biggest problem is that you are prevented from going back in time because, well, you weren't there, then. See, that's what eveyone misses in time travel theory. Everyone thinks that you have to kill someone to have an effect on events. Nevermind that you displace space with the mass of your body. Simply appearing in a place that you were not previously is a paradox. You don't need to go through all the convolutions that people do to get to Paradox. How could you travel to a place in time and space that you hadn't previously been?
The wormhole theory, even if correct (the more likely fact is that what we do not yet understand is what is wrong with the theory; there is more wrong with the math right now, than right), does not allow time travel as we envision it. Sure, one can go to extreme lengths to make time travel work if one wants to. But do we need that?
Like I've said, the closer you look, the more unlikely and difficult it all becomes. So just don't look very close. The idea of the game is not to discuss issues of time travel so much as to create an entertaining story about the subject, and provide a complex puzzle to solve. Which I think it will do just fine.
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesAs far as the "Fixed Time" theory, the biggest problem is that you are prevented from going back in time because, well, you weren't there, then.
Um, I disagree completely.
You guys have played "Continuum," right? Greatest time travel game ever written, in my opinion, and it uses Fixed Time Theory as fact.
How do you know you weren't there in the past. Maybe you were. In Fixed Time, everything is predestined anyway, so anything you do just fulfills what was "supposed" to happen (really, you just do what you do, since you have no other choice). As they say in Continuum, "Information is all."
Interestingly enough, Continuum's companion game, "Narcissist," uses an "infinite universes" theory
alongside the Fixed Time of Continuum, showing how both can be true, from different perspectives.
But this thread has been wildly co-opted from the original topic. Just to add somethign that might be helpful:
It might be possible to use Fixed Time and still run with Gwen's premise. For instance, perhaps the players are shown an image of the earth's destruction, because that's what will cause them to travel back in time and prevent the destruction. Circular causality, but in time travel games, that's often all you've got. Take this example:
Quote from: EXAMPLEI walk down the street. A future version of myself walks up and pushes me out of the way of oncoming traffic. I thank him, and travel back in time, pushing my earlier self out of the way. He thanks me and travels backwards in time.
Fun stuff :)