[GroupDesign] Schrodinger's war: Nailing HTT and GL

[Doug Ruff]

Andrew,

Same page, different book, I suspect.

Where we differ is that I do not have the "tunnels" in my cosmology - I've never subscribed to the concept that there are limited access points for the Archivist to enter the carrot.

And to explain why, I'm going to have to invoke some scary physics:

The classic 4-dimensional theory of Space-Time is outdated. More recent theories, notably "string theory" sugeest the existence of many other dimensions. However, some of these dimensions are "collapsed" (imagine a piece of string with both ends tied together) and effectively inaccessable.

OK, BadWrong Physics alert - I am not an expert on this, so I'm probably committing awful crimes against physics with my next statement.

My theory is that the Great Library exists in one or more the "collapsed" dimensions. These dimensions are effectively "perpendicular" to the ones that normal people can obsetve and act upon.

Because the Great Library doesn't exist in the 4 "regular" dimensions, it isn't subject to the usual rules (which means we can make some up). Specifically, from the Great Library it is possible to access any point in Host Space-Time. In other words, the whole carrot.

However, it is not possible to access "earlier" states of the carrot. In other words, one of the Archivist dimensions is Archivist-time, and there is no travelling backwards in this dimension.

Still with me? OK, here's the next bit. Archivists have acquired the secret of removing part, or all of themselves to the Archivist dimensions. When an Archivist posseses a Host, they extend some (but not all) of their Presence from the Archivist dimensions into the Host dimensions. This means that Archivists always maintain a link to Archivist-Time. If this link was broken (perhaps through massive Fade or Burn) the Archivist wouldn't be an Archivist any more.

IMHO, this is entirely compatible with Sydney's example of play, seven posts ago. In that example, actions taken in the 12th century changed what happened in the future (the scratchings on the stone, revealing the amulet). This means that during the play, time passed in the Archivist dimensions. I would go as far as to say that game "rounds" (ie the order in which things happen, in the game) need to be measured in Archivist-Time for this game to be playable.

I hope this is making sense, it's really hard to convey this concept in words. Please tell me if this is any clearer and/or of value.



PS Sydney, There Is No Carrot, that's the secret...

[Michael Brazier]

But what you miss out on, then, is the possibility of sending PCs to different time periods, keeping them in touch telepathically, and having someone in, say, 1130 AD set up something crucial for 1993 -- or conversely having someone in 1993 notice a crucial detail which later turns out to have been caused by someone in 1130.

Oh.  Penalty of coming in late -- I didn't realize you would want that.

And the original problem you described, of an NPC Archivist bad guy changing history so your Host ceases existing in mid-mission?

(a) It's not easy: By Schrodinger's War principles, your existence in that Host means you're observing and therefore locking down all sorts of details about that Host's life -- making them much harder to change.

Makes sense.  But how do we express that in a mechanic?  More exactly, just how does the fact that Archivist Kilroy was somewhen nearby constrain a PC Archivist's options?

(b) It's not a problem: So the bad guys really get it together and erase your Host's grandparents. History instantly rewrites itself, your Host ceases to exist just as you're about to achieve your goal, and you're kicked back to the Great Library. Bad for your character -- good for you as a player -- you want adventure and challenges!

That raises another question, though.  "Your Host ceases to exist" is an extreme case of history-changing.  What if the change is subtler -- the Host now lives in the wrong city, or has a different job, or didn't have a certain important experience?  That is, how much of a change in the Host is enough to kick the Archivist out?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I offer you the Carrot of History - do you choose to wield it?

Can't we have a pointed stick this week?

Still with me? OK, here's the next bit. Archivists have acquired the secret of removing part, or all of themselves to the Archivist dimensions. When an Archivist posseses a Host, they extend some (but not all) of their Presence from the Archivist dimensions into the Host dimensions. This means that Archivists always maintain a link to Archivist-Time. If this link was broken (perhaps through massive Fade or Burn) the Archivist wouldn't be an Archivist any more.

Yes.  Well said, Mr. Ruff, for everything in that post.

[Sydney Freedberg]

There are, however a variable number of "tunnels" from the "now point" of the Archivist carrot into the Human carrot.....These tunnels tend to vanish and appear due to changes in the Human carrot.

Now presumably these tunnels open into areas of "quantum indeterminacy" -- i.e. areas where history is unobserved and Schrodinger's various cats are neither alive nor dead.

Then, strategically (as various people have said earlier), deliberate actions by Archivists in these "open" areas of history can undermine the certainty of what had been fixed, well-documented, major events, creating indeterminacy in those areas of time in turn and ultimately allowing the "capture" of those events.

[Andrew Morris]

That was pretty much what I was thinking, Sydney, but Doug seems opposed to the tunnels/windows, and I'd like to hear why, before we go too much further.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I suppose the key question is whether "windows" are real, fixed openings, or if they are simply "windows of opportunity": I.e. can Archivists only reach certain moments in human spacetime, or can they reach any moment, albeit in practice highly overdetermined & well-observed moments may be difficult to do anything to once you arrive.

Doug?

[Doug Ruff]

What Sydney said. The second half, anyway.

The idea goes back to this thread - I don't think I was the only one to suggest this, but it's the first example I could find:

Events such as the Kennedy Assassination are relatively "fixed" in Host-Time (actually, it's more like Host-Spacetime, but let's not go there right now...)

It's still possible to go there, but the events surrounding the assassination are so well documented, that it's virtually impossible to do anything useful there.

But by going six years down the "tunnel", the Archivists have more latitude to make changes - and these changes can undermine the events of the assassination, which introduces "cracks" in the solidity of the documented information, which make it possible later (that is, later in Archivist-Time) to go to the assassination and do something.

There has also been at least one excellent post about why it's pointless to attempt to stop the rise of Nazi Germany by killing Hitler; I can't find it (or them) right now, so if whoever said it could take a bow and re-post what they said, that would be great.

So the reason I'm opposed to the "windows" is that they are superfluous when we already have an excellent option (Elasticity) for limiting Archivist Actions in the HTT.

IIRC, another reason for having limited "windows" between Archivist and Host dimensions was to allow for Archivists to get trapped. This is an excellent Story idea, but I think we can accomodate it by allowing the Archivist "link" to be broken (for which see my last post in this thread.)

So I don't actively dislike the windows (or tunnels), but I'm not sure what we gain by adding them (ie a story reason), and I haven't found a way to explain them (ie a sim reason). But if someone can do that for me, I'll buy it. But it has to be good enough to justify restricting Archivist travel to wherever they want in the HTT (which could be seen as subtle "railroading".)

[Andrew Morris]

Okay, that's a good point, Doug. What, exactly, does the tunnel/crack/window concept add? Hmm... uhm... Huh, well I'll be damned. I can't think of anything major. Limiting the available windows of travel does two things, though. First, it prevents (hopefully) players from going off into overdetermined areas and becoming frustrated with the GM when nothing changes. They might even start to think they were being railroaded. Second, by creating "hot spots" you force the Archivists and the enemy into closer contact with each other, which should help boosting conflict (and that's a good thing). Both of those are pretty weak, and I don't mind saying so. On the other hand, what benefit is gained by letting players go to any point in host time?

As to a "reason" for either view...I think we are way outside of any of the three practical theories for time travel that are currently being discussed in reputable scientific circles. The model we've set up doesn't have anything about Kerr holes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, or cosmic strings, nor does the setting seem to fit with any of those. It seems more in line with good old fashioned science fantasy. I love time-travel theory, but this is a work of fiction -- let's figure out what we want to happen, and then come up with the justification for that being possible later.

[Doug Ruff]

On the other hand, what benefit is gained by letting players go to any point in host time?

It doesn't limit as much... but that isn't a great reason either.

As to a "reason" for either view...I think we are way outside of any of the three practical theories for time travel that are currently being discussed in reputable scientific circles. The model we've set up doesn't have anything about Kerr holes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, or cosmic strings, nor does the setting seem to fit with any of those. It seems more in line with good old fashioned science fantasy. I love time-travel theory, but this is a work of fiction -- let's figure out what we want to happen, and then come up with the justification for that being possible later.

Agreed.

I think a "Star Trek" standard of science applies here. It doesn't have to be correct, but it should be plausible and consistent (as long as this doesn't get in the way of Fun.)

So, what do we want to happen?

[Sydney Freedberg]

I personally lean towards Doug's idea, for a couple of entirely game-oriented reasons:

1) Strategy: It gives a strategically significant "landscape" to the human timestream. Poorly documented/observed events create areas of quantum indeterminacy, which in turn provide windows of opportunity to alter history, which in turn allows you to create uncertainty and thus opportunity in what were previously well-defined events, which ultimately allows you to work up to changing ("capturing") major events.

2) Flexibility: But while Doug's model is a limit on players' freedom of action, it is a flexible limit, whereas "there are these X periods you can travel to, period" is a fixed and rigid limit.* And different gaming groups can dial up the indeterminacy to make capturing Big Events quick & easy, or dial it down to make capturing one big event the climax of an entire campaign.

Frankly, I think a key Social Contract & customization issue for a game of Schrodinger's War is going to be, how easy is it to change Big Events? And we should accomodate both extremes of (1) "Two-Fisted History-Altering Action!" where kneeing Hitler in the groin at the right moment prevents the Holocaust and (2) "War in the Shadows" where a successful mission is one that shifts the possibilities just a little bit, in the It's a Wonderful Life model. I think the latter is the most interesting form of the game, myself, but not everyone will.

As for forcing PC Archivists into conflict with rival Archivist factions (who are not necessarily "bad guys"), I think Andrew Morris's concern is answered by Michael Brazier's question: Even if you're not forced to visit the same moments of history as your opponents, they will end up changing history around you and mucking up your mission -- so even if you're 500 years and two oceans apart, you know someone's messed with your plans and, dammit, you're gonna go kick his incorporeal ass.

Oh, and Michael asked about mechanics: I was thinking along the lines of giving events a "strength." High strength means well-observed and overdetermined by multiple causes; low strengths means little-observed and dependent on a single cause. Then, when you travel back to before a given event, anything you attempt that would make that event more likely to occur gets a bonus equal to the event's strength; anything you do that would prevent that event suffers a penalty.

This can apply to big things (-10 to your attempt to kill Hitler) or small:

In 1993, one PC Archivist notices a weird slash on the ruined castle wall; a few minutes later in the game session (i.e. a few minutes later in Archivist time), another PC archivist in 1130 make sure to describe his Host's wild sword-swings gouging right into the castle wall -- and gets, say, a +1 bonus to his attack actually happening as he described, because he's helping cause an established event.

* I think this is the way Feng Shui handles it, but I've not read the game, let alone played.

[Andrew Morris]

Okay, I don't have a strong opinion either way, other than that the tunnels sounded cooler.

Thinking about the Einstein-Rosen bridges brought me to an idea which I think could be pretty cool, though. What if whenever an Archivist travels to Host time, he creates a portal? A two-way portal. Any random human can walk through into Archivist time. This puts a time crunch on any missions. Heck, maybe finding a portal and going through is what turns a human into an Archivist in the first place. Just a thought. It definitely needs some development.

[Michael Brazier]

Oh, and Michael asked about mechanics: I was thinking along the lines of giving events a "strength." High strength means well-observed and overdetermined by multiple causes; low strengths means little-observed and dependent on a single cause. Then, when you travel back to before a given event, anything you attempt that would make that event more likely to occur gets a bonus equal to the event's strength; anything you do that would prevent that event suffers a penalty.

Two points: the fact that an Archivist has witnessed an event has to raise its strength; and strength needs to flow along causal chains.  That is, if an event rises in strength, that raises the strength of both its causes and its effects.  

What if whenever an Archivist travels to Host time, he creates a portal? A two-way portal. Any random human can walk through into Archivist time. This puts a time crunch on any missions. Heck, maybe finding a portal and going through is what turns a human into an Archivist in the first place. Just a thought. It definitely needs some development.

That means defining "Archivist time" as a universe parallel to Host time, and Archivists as the people inhabiting it.  But if that's the case, why do Archivists have to possess people in Host time?  For that matter, why does going through a portal turn humans into beings that can possess other humans?  Moving from one space-time manifold to another doesn't entail transformation from a live human into a ghost.

Time travel by way of a parallel universe is a perfectly good premise; Asimov's The End of Eternity is built around it.  But is it this premise?

[BlueDanube]

First off, a request. Please, please PLEASE don't try to provide a realistic explanation unless you're at least a physics grad student! Better to leave it unexplained other than 'it happens. deal'. Few things are more painful than knowing enough science to realize that a core premise is completely bonkers (Matrix 1. Good wire-fu, but humans are the best possible source of power? GACK. Never saw 2 or 3)

Some suggestions I'd make:
1. Archivist time is time as viewed by an Archivist. Go possess a host for five minutes, thats five minutes for someone in the Great Library to realize whats up, go forward or back of you in human time, and try to stop you. Your deadline is to make your changes before anyone else can chip in.

2. Borrowing from Nobilis, possessing a host fixes a host in time. While you are possessing someone (archivist time), an enemy could travel to five minutes before the possession (earlier in human time, later in archivist time), kill your soon-to-be-host, and nothing would happen to you in the present. After you leave the host, either still nothing happens or time catches up. Dunno.

3. Events are strengthened by number of humans impacted, and by number of Archivists present. JFK - millions of people, hard. Exact time of death of someone not famous who dies in their sleep - no witnesses, low impact, easy. Same person dieing in their sleep, but 5 archivists present - hard, you'd need at least 8 archivists to make a change. So archivists have to work together to get enough temporal 'oomph'

4. Only stuff witnessed by intelligent life (however your game defines that) matters. A tree falling in the forest can be changed as long as no lifeform higher than a dog sees it.

Now, a question. Is it possible to do something so drastic as to 'damage' the timeline? Say all the Archivists work together to assassinate Hitler and prevent WW2. What happens? Time frays and the universe ends, or time makes a hard split and archivists can now go to 2 universes one with and one without Hitler, the Archivists get wiped out by temporal backlash, Germany vanishes from the universe, Hitler becomes an archivist, nothing special happens?

Actually, Hitler becoming an archivist sounds fun - archivists are people who have been affected so much by time-changing that they have been cut loose from time. The last Neanderthal, Rasputin, JFK, someone from the Midwest who would have become President except that time changed.

- Dan T

[daMoose_Neo]

Actually, I think I brought up a significant chunk of examples of why killing Hitler just wouldn't do it, going back to the causes of the Great War and asassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which prompted someone else to go off on that set of events as well ^_^

As to changes to significantly damage the state of time, I'd have to say that much IS impossible. End Humanity as we know it? Distinctly possible. Time is, as we have established, fairly elastic. Change one thing, other things change, time moves on with its bad self. Kill Hitler as a youth? WW2 still occurs, this time managed by a board of German Directors. Holocaust may not occur or it could still, the RBD (Reich Board of Directors) deciding that the best way to solve Germany's problems would be to exterminate the poor or other subjugated enemeis. Instead of the Jewish Holocaust we could have the French Holocaust.

'Viewed by intelligent life'...dunno about that one. And I'm quite disinclined to agree with the number of Archivists impacting the HST events. As for the Archivists, their duty is to change time to either bring it back into proper alignment or change to avoid this Nemesis. All sorts of Archivists are going to be traipsing through time, doubling back on themselves and other insane temporal muck. They will, however FAIL. And heres the beauty of time line hopping- you blow it, you still have a chance to change it. Just go back. Too many Archivists working on something, the more unnessesarily difficult it becomes to change something.

[Sydney Freedberg]

A few things:

(1) I think the idea of humans finding open portals traipsing into Archivist time is a dead end. Interesting, but doesn't fit this game as it's evolving. So -- as semi-moderator in Tobias's absence -- I'll gently suggest we drop that idea. (If anyone objects violently, of course, post!)

(2) I think there are so many valid interpretations of how easy it is to change history -- from "oops I stepped on a butterfly in 1600, now penguins rule the world" to "I conquered the entire world in 100 AD, why does WWII still keep happening?" -- that this should be considered an adjustable option, a "dial" that different groups can set as they please.

(3) Pseudo-science is probably necessary, but we always want to create causes to justify effects we already want, hence effects come first. (By the way, BlueDanube, I had the similar momentary gag when the first Matrix casually defied the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but made the mistake of seeing 2 and 3. Painful).

(4) The key unresolved question, it seems to me, is whether (a) Archivists can travel to any point in space and time, although as a practical matter some points give you a lot more room (indeterminacy) to work with than others; or (b) Archivists can only travel to specific windows in time. Doug has made a strong argument for the "Anywhen Option," and I'd agree; Andrew has been the chief (though, it seems, ambivalent) exponent of the "Windows" operating system. But I think we need to nail this point before we move on.

So, again using my Acting (left) Foot mightiness in Tobias's absence, before we go into any other issues, may I ask for a quick poll from all participants: Do you prefer "Anywhen" or "Windows"?

[Andrew Morris]

Andrew has been the chief (though, it seems, ambivalent) exponent of the "Windows" operating system.

Ack! No Windows...go Linux! Seriously, though, I like the windows idea slightly more, but certainly not enough to debate it strenuously. Unless someone else wants to take up that argument with the vigor I simply can't muster up, let's just move ahead with "anywhen" for the sake of not getting mired down in what is (to my way of thinking, at least) a minor point.

As for providing a rational scientific explanation, I most certainly was not trying to do so. The thought of open portals was simply sparked by a current theory, it had nothing to do with the theory itself. The main reason I liked it was because I've had trouble coming up with a method of becoming an Archivist that allows a wide range of starting backgrounds. For example, if the method of becoming an Archivist was primarily philosophical, it'd be fairly hard to reconcile the character concept of, say, an Archivist who was a hardened criminal in his human existence. Having the change into an Archivist triggered by the intervention of other Archivists gets around that somewhat, but I'd rather see something that was primarily driven by the human's actions, not simply something that was done to them.