[GroupDesign] - Advanced Archivism

[Sydney Freedberg]

We could just take a different route with the Precog Logos. I think the simplest way of doing so would be to say that the power gives you only short-term sight into the future. Duck now, sniper behind you. Step left, falling bricks. Fire into the closet, hidden thug. And so on.

Definitely simpler: It could be used easily in any game, including one with the Time Travel/Schrodinger's War rules "turned off" (i.e. a version of Archivists who don't travel in time can still have this form of Precog).

But if you have Time Travel/Schrodinger's War rules in effect -- which is probably going to be the "Recommended Option" -- then people are going to go back and screw with scenes they were just in anyway, without needing a Precog Logos to know what to do because they were already there; so we'll have to figure out how to deal with the complex version at some point.

[Andrew Morris]

But if you have Time Travel/Schrodinger's War rules in effect -- which is probably going to be the "Recommended Option" -- then people are going to go back and screw with scenes they were just in anyway, without needing a Precog Logos to know what to do because they were already there; so we'll have to figure out how to deal with the complex version at some point.

Or we can just say that can't happen. Maybe you can only visit a particular time once. The first implication of that would be that you could never visit a time period where you were alive. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's easier and...well...disembodied creatures bouncing about through space and time doesn't really make any kind of scientific "sense" either, so I don't see it as a problem.

[Sydney Freedberg]

...people are going to go back and screw with scenes they were just in anyway....

Or we can just say that can't happen. Maybe you can only visit a particular time once. The first implication of that would be that you could never visit a time period where you were alive. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's easier...

Yeah, it's safer & easier, and it may be what most gaming groups resort to for sanity's sake -- but, darn it, if we want to write a time travel game, we should at least try to work out mechanics for the extreme mindf*ck conditions, even if no one ever actually dares to use them.

[Andrew Morris]

Well, maybe "paradox-protected time travel" is a core element, while "paradox-possible time travel" is a custom option.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Well, maybe "paradox-protected time travel" is a core element, while "paradox-possible time travel" is a custom option.

That's probably the best solution. Of course we still have to write all these variants someday....

you could never visit a time period where you were alive.

You know, even that won't do it: Other members of your "party" can visit the era & events of your lifetime without your Archivist-self along. There'd have to be some kind of "wake" thrown backwards into time by the process of ascension to Archivism that makes everything in your life off-limits to time travel -- if only because Paradox Protection operates very strongly to preserve the origins of beings who transcend time!

[contracycle]

You know, even that won't do it: Other members of your "party" can visit the era & events of your lifetime without your Archivist-self along. There'd have to be some kind of "wake" thrown backwards into time by the process of ascension to Archivism that makes everything in your life off-limits to time travel -- if only because Paradox Protection operates very strongly to preserve the origins of beings who transcend time!

As it happens, there kinda is one already.

"...maybe backward time travel is possible, but only up to the moment that time travel is invented. We haven't invented it yet, so they can't come to us. They can come to as far back as whatever it would be, say A.D. 2300, but not further back in time." -Carl Sagan, NOVA interview

Article in which this was cited is here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/wonderquest/2001-06-20-time-travel.htm

For our purposes, the long and the short of it is that if this theory works, we could build today a machine that would be a terminal at one end of a line stretching into the indefinite future.  And from any point in that future, we could return to the moment at which the first machine was built, but no further.

Ronald Mallett, whom I saw propounding his plans to build such a time machine by using lasers to "swirl" space, remarked that it may well be the case that when the first time-machine is switched on, there might be quite a lot of email from the future waiting for the inventor.

Although it would be quite sad if the first time machine went belly-up due to spam overload.

[Andrew Morris]

Well, having a max-into-the-past cutoff date is another option, but I'd still push more for the only-one-instance-of-a-personality-in-any-particular-time-period idea. The former doesn't stop the problem of players going through a scene, then going back and doing it over and over and over...

Another option is to just go firmly into the "elastic timestream" camp. History is fixed and unchangeable. Sort of. Basically, all the major events -- wars, foundation of countries, famous deaths, etc. -- are inviolate. The elasticity effect can be as weak or as strong as we like, and that could actually be one of the elements that players discover during play -- "Hmm...we've done everything we can to make sure Steve never marries Susan, but they always end up getting hitched. Must be a timstream-significant event. We might as well give up on that plan and try something else."

[Doug Ruff]

IMHO, this is where one of our earlier concepts comes in useful - the act of observation helps to "cement" reality

Although it is possible to muck about with past events, it's difficult - and the more people that have witnessed the event, the harder it is to change it.
For example, Archivists may be able to prevent a murder at an out-of-town petrol station, but they would find it nigh-on impossible to stop the assassination of JFK.

This is why it's hard to possess famous people - lots of people pay attention to them, so their actions are well documented.

Also, it helps to reduce the "rewind" factor - where the Archivists and Nemesis keep trying to revisit the same battle, in order to win it this time - it just gets progressively harder to change what happened.

I think that this could be incorporated into the mechanics somehow, as a penalty to perform any action that contradicts a well-witnessed event.

And, to bang on about an old topic, it also gives a reaon why Archivists may wish to possess a person "passively" - the sheer act of observing an event (or ensuring that you Host observes it) will help to "cement" it into the Real Version of What Happened.

[Sydney Freedberg]

This is all good, but we're stepping into Mix Your Own Metaplot territory here with all this discussion of the nature of time and how to change history. (Of course, Mix Your Own Metaplot got into the nature of Archivists for a bit, but it appears to have gotten back on course). Could we take all time-travel discussion over there, untangle the threads, and refocus this one on such issues as (1) What Kewl Powerz do Archivists have besides Time Travel and (2) What is the nature of the Host-Archivist relationship, with all the possibilities for gradations of control and intentional or unintentional self-revelation that we were exploring?

N.B.: I'm not Tobias; I don't even play him on TV; and I'm no longer Acting (Left) Foot, so I gleefully admit my lack of authority to moderate this thread. But I can wheedle & whine....

[Doug Ruff]

Good point Sydney - and I wholeheartedly agree with moving discussion of the Time-Travel power to the other thread.

After all, you need to know what you're using the power on...

[Sydney Freedberg]

Over in Mix Your Own Metaplot,

I think it's possible that both "Fade vs. Burn" and "Freedom vs. Happiness" can apply at both the individual scale and the macro scale. (One problem is that Fade vs. Burn is expressed in negative terms and Freedom vs. Happiness in positive terms, but that's fixable). In fact, you can construct a four-way dilemma as a Cartesian plane and see the entire game as about avoiding the extremes and making Hard Choices to achieve Balance somewhere in the middle.

Lacking graphics capability, I'll do this textually:

Axis 1: Fade vs. Burn

Fade > Burn - Individual: Archivist fades out and drowns in mortal nature.
Fade > Burn - Macro: The Great Library itself fades out of existence, taking all the accumulated wisdom of the Archivists with it.

Burn > Fade - Individual: The Host burns out, dying or losing all humanity.
Burn > Fade - Macro: Civilization burns out, becoming extinct or soullessly materialistic (the Minority Report consumerist dystopia, or perhaps a negative form of Clarke's Childhood's End, where a psychic massmind ascends and leaves mortal humanity an empty husk).

Fade & Burn Balanced - Individual: The Host and Archivist both retain their humanity yet possess Transcendent knowledge and power.
Fade & Burn Balanced - Macro: Civilization evolves to a transhuman state without losing that which makes us human.

Axis 2: Freedom vs. Happiness

Freedom > Happiness - Individual: The Host chooses to screw up his/her life.
Freedom > Happiness - Macro: The Wild Wild West -- or runamuck capitalism destroying the environment.

Happiness > Freedom - Individual: The Host is a happy, passive puppet.
Happiness > Freedom - Macro: Huxley's Brave New World.

Freedom & Happiness balanced - Individual: The Host chooses to do the right thing.

Freedom & Happiness balanced - Macro: Civilization achieves both democracy and equality, both freedom and peace.

N.B. When I say "happiness" here, I'm really talking about what philosophers would call "utility" -- as in "utilitarianism," the greatest good of the greatest number -- I think -- but since I don't quite grasp the term, and most people wouldn't either, I'm gonna steer clear of it.

I'm reposting this here to focus on the individual-level aspects of this array of concepts in the appropriate thread. My specific question about this framework (besides "does it suck?" -- feel free to reject or modify it) is, how do we handle the Host's Free Will / Freedom vs. Happiness / Utility? And, though I know we're not into mechanics just yet, does this need a mechanical representation equivalent to Fade vs. Burn -- or, in positive terms, Humanity vs. Transcendence?

Hey: Maybe instead of putting Fade & Burn in purely negative terms, we can have it also possible for the Host to gain Transcendence from the Archivist's actions -- leading ultimately to revelation of the Archivist's presence.

[contracycle]

Hey: Maybe instead of putting Fade & Burn in purely negative terms, we can have it also possible for the Host to gain Transcendence from the Archivist's actions -- leading ultimately to revelation of the Archivist's presence.

Or perhaps, a new archivist.  It might be amusing to lock the archivists into a closed causal loop.  Lets say the intervention of an archivist in a host can set of a chain reaction that results in the host becoming an arhcivist - or perhaps, also risking failure to become an archivist (faulty transcendance as it were) resulting in an enemy or monster or similar.

Then, who created the first archivist?  Well who cares cos it might have been the last archivist travelling back in time...

[Tobias]

Can't blame Sydney for wanting to moderate this thread - he spawned it, after all. :)

But the comment on getting back to Archivist abilities, mechanics, and levels of posession is very valid.

I was torn between closing off this thread and the mix your own metaplot thread, because they were bleeding into each other too heavily. But i won't, provided people that keep posting here read the mix your own metaplot thread (up to the timestamp on my post here), so they can see where the post Sydney crossposted came from.

Doug's suggestions on 'cementing' reality and famous people, and the rewind factor (remember that name, Doug, it's a good tag for a mechanic number, IMHO) is good, but I guess belongs more in the Mix your own metaplot thread from this point on.

On Posession/Symbiosis:

I think there should be only 1 type of posession. However, an archivist is free to just sit in the host and 'observe' while posessing, of course. His problem at this time is plain Fade - the longer you sit there, Host-Timewise, the more Fade you will accumulate.

On powers:

- Undisputedly control all physical systems of the Host
- introduce 'ideas' on several levels of consciousness
- converse with Host / straight Mind-to-mind conversation (scary!)
- pain immunity for host (dangerous stuff too!)
- With skill: biofeedback tricks
- With skill: skill transfer from Archivist to Host (and back)
- With skill: telepathy with other humans
- Optional: assist other humans in the became-Archivist transition

Time travel seems to have become a default, which I don't mind.

Difficulties for the Archivist while in the host:
- Host consciousness/skills/values
- Host choice/effectiveness
- predicting effectivity of goal achievement by Host actions.

Some more thought that I came across:
- I'd hate for this to be yet another skills'n'traits-list-game.
- What happens to the archivist if the host dies (I presume injury can be ignored to some point)?

[Kirk Mitchell]

Hey guys. I'm not a part of the project, and I haven't been able to work my way through all of the threads yet in any detail (planning to soon), but this particular topic caught my eye (specifically the time travel bit). If anyone has seen The Butterfly Effect, maybe some sort of option that allows you to go back through your life and screw with events, changing your entire future. You could potentially retain all of your past memories and powers (and you don't have a body) and at some point you must become an archivist but other than that your entire situation has changed. It would be a good idea to have such an effect limited in "range" so that it only effects the archivist and those closely involved with him or her. This could create some fun situations for the players.

(for those unfamiliar with The Butterfly Effect, it is about a guy who discovers that he can go back in time and "repossess" his own body as a child during significant events of his life. Every time he makes a change that he thinks will be for the better he only screws it up more, either for himself or other people. after every change the memory part of his brain is overloaded with memories and he gets a nosebleed)

Kirk

[Tobias]

Sounds pretty cool, dumirik. Gotta see if the local video/DVD rental place's got it.

No reason why a GM couldn't run a variant of "Schrodinger's War" where a prelude to Archivism is the Butterfly stage (although it would be more chrysalis-appropriate for the archivist to be the butterfly, I guess).