RAC:the game of Retroactive Continuity

[redwalker]

I am working on a game that is centered on Retroactive Continuity, as seen in many comic books and long-running time-travel stories.

The working title is "RetroActiveContinuity," or RAC for short.You can tell I'm a really florid, creative type with a working title like that, eh?

I'm still working out the rules.  It is intended to be an exercise in number-crunching and power-gaming.  I don't want to post about the rules:  when they're ready, I'll just release a PDF as a freeware game.

What I would like, however, is to discuss ret-con with other gamers/game designers.  Some of you may have looked at Continuum, which was time-travel centered, and had a lot of ret-con issues.  

I want to make sure that I have a good feel for how familiar gamers are with the concept of ret-con.  Maybe I'm not alone in never having read "Crisis on Infinite Earths," for example.  (That's a classic ret-con story, I am told.)  Maybe I'm the only one who's read Poul Anderson's "Guardians of Time."

If this isn't a good place to discuss retcon in general, could someone suggest a better one?

Thanks
Red

[Vaxalon]

Are you talking about the mistaken ret-con, where the players suddenly recall, "Hey, didn't Lord Bangebang die during a session last August?" and the DM says, "er, ah... that wasn't Lord Bangebang, that was a simulacrum, yeah, that's what it was..."

Or are you talking about the purposeful ret-con, where the DM jots down in his notebook that Lord Bangebang isn't actually dead, the PC's just killed a simulacrum, in order to allow him to write an adventure with Lord Bangebang?

[TonyLB]

Do you think there's a functional difference?  Or is the difference simply in how much credibility the GM manages in the retcon?

And particularly, do you think there's a difference between "We killed Lord Bangebang!  See, there's the body!  Oh wait!  We were mistaken!  He's up and about again?" and "We killed Lord Bangebang!  He fell down a cliff into a raging waterfall, and after all NOBODY could survive that (wink, wink).  Oh wait!  We were mistaken!  He's up and about again?"

[redwalker]

Are you talking about the mistaken ret-con, where the players suddenly recall, "Hey, didn't Lord Bangebang die during a session last August?" and the DM says, "er, ah... that wasn't Lord Bangebang, that was a simulacrum, yeah, that's what it was..."

Or are you talking about the purposeful ret-con, where the DM jots down in his notebook that Lord Bangebang isn't actually dead, the PC's just killed a simulacrum, in order to allow him to write an adventure with Lord Bangebang?

This ret-con is very, very purposeful, *but* it's not just the DM's purpose.

So the DM will be able to say, "Lord Bangebang is not really dead," and then one of the players will pipe up and say, "*I* am not left-handed!"  and another player will say, "Unknown to you all, I am actually the Queen of England, who has infiltrated the party to use it in my heroin-smuggling operation," and another player will say, "Due to childhood trauma, I get super-strength and berserking powers whenever anyone says the word that made Steve Martin go crazy in _Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid_."

Every participant, player or ref, gets to pull ret-con stunts.  The rules exist to limit the scope of the ret-con, otherwise the whole thing would be too easy and there would be no game.

The idea is a little bit like a soap opera RPG, where everyone has a dark secret and the plot twists.  However, it's not a soap opera and the most players are going to be dice-rolling power munchkins who want to Kill Things and Take Their Stuff.  (You could use the rules for a soap opera, but it would be wasted effort, because somebody has already written an RPG for soap-opera plot twists.  This one is aimed at the comic-book otakus and sci-fi fans.)

The DM and the players can all pull plot twists according to very limiting, crunchy rules, and the dice play a big role.

[redwalker]

Do you think there's a functional difference?  Or is the difference simply in how much credibility the GM manages in the retcon?

And particularly, do you think there's a difference between "We killed Lord Bangebang!  See, there's the body!  Oh wait!  We were mistaken!  He's up and about again?" and "We killed Lord Bangebang!  He fell down a cliff into a raging waterfall, and after all NOBODY could survive that (wink, wink).  Oh wait!  We were mistaken!  He's up and about again?"

There may not have been a difference before, but it I actually make this into a real game and sell it as a PDF, then there will be a difference in the game.

Obviously, ret-con exists to resolve glaring gaps in a collectively written story.  But ret-con is still glaring if it doesn't respect build-up, back-story, and story pacing.

The crunchy rules (still under developmen) quantify build-up, back-story, and story pacing.  The thing is going to be as algebra-heavy as Rolemaster.  However, it should be playable with only dice and paper (blank paper for players, charts for dice roll resolution) if you're good at math.  Otherwise, you can have a calculator at the table.

I'm developing the rules in software, and the initial release might include open-source cross-platform programs for the referee.  Possibly a Java program could run on any laptop and keep the math taken care of, so that the players wouldn't need to look at charts.

However, the rules are not nearly ready for playtesting, much less release.  I'm still trying to find a good forum with people who are familiar with ret-con in sci-fi and comic books.

I think a lot of television sci-fi has ret-con.  Star Trek, for example, is collaboratively written and the visions of different writers need to be reconciled.  So there are ret-con elements in the Star Trek canon.  And because it's a big canon, even if ret-con is not  a big part, it should be easy to find examples.

Star Trek offers one not-very-inspiring example.

I am not a big Trek fan, but I am told that the initial story (back in the 1970's) was that there had been a war on Earth involving the Khan character before the Federation was founded.  In the initial canon there was no mention of outside threats inspiring the Federation -- it just arose.  I am also told that in one of the movies, the future Trek crew went back in time to defend Earth from the Borg.  As a result of Borg threat, the Federation was formed.

That is an example of ret-con filling in the backstory rather than resolving a crisis in incompatible writing.  I would call that ret-con, but if anyone else thinks it shouldn't be called ret-con, please let me know.

I'm struggling toward an acceptable consensus on a loosely defined term.

[redwalker]

http://www.geocities.com/utherworld/retcon1.html

and

http://www.fact-index.com/r/re/retcon.html

look to be semi-decent resources, by the way.  Most of Google's suggestions look less promising than those two...