Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Spacemaster => Topic started by: arakish on March 10, 2012, 09:23:56 PM
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Once again, I get a good question my players. Although this question can also apply to Rolemaster (all versions), it got asked in the Spacemaster campaign. I searched the forums, but there were no topics devoted to just Time Travel. Just posts that mention "time travel" in passing. And all of those are 3+ years old.
Question: Why can't we time travel?
I did not give them an answer right away. Besides, I just hate always saying, "It's impossible," all the time. I'd rather give a good reason why it is virtually impossible, instead of just saying it is impossible. Below is the response I am currently working on. Please give me some feedback on what y'all think.
Time Travel
Time Travel has become one of the most exploited subjects. No other subject has elicited as much speculation in all fields of writing: science-fiction, romance, drama, suspense, and even theoretical physics. In this section, I cover how I handle time travel. Basically, anyone achieving the capability to telephase through time simply ceases to exist in the current timeline and slips into another, yet different, timelime, regardless. Even if you try to get back to your original timeline, you will never make it. Each time you try, you just create another timeline. The best you can do is to find another timeline very similar to your original timeline.
IMHO, in real life, I do not think time travel is possible. Even our current understanding of physics does not say that time travel is impossible. Nor do they say it is possible. When I say time travel, I do not mean the nice little "tricks" we can use to "appear" to time travel by using relativistic velocities or close approach to an immense gravitational field. I mean true time travel much like opening a portal and stepping through like walking through a doorway. Even if it were possible, I believe one would truly cease to exist in their original timeline and slip into another timeline. And each time they telephase, they simply go into yet another completely different timeline. And if they keep doing it, they may get so far removed from their original timeline, that the timelines they enter become more and more different than their original timeline. The timelines may even get to a point where they are completely insane and unrecognizable. One could even say that this would be similar to the sci-fi TV show Sliders (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliders) and IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112167/) and an Unofficial Site (http://www.sliders.net/)).
Into the Past
Travelling into the past is handled rather simply. Since you will slip into another completely separate timeline, differences between the timelines can be virtually nil to extremely drastic. To determine the differences between the two timelines, use the below equation:
Equation 1) oed100 - 200 - Mod; where oed100 = unmodified open-ended d100 roll, and Mod = -1 per 5 days travelled into the past. NOTE: Travelling one 365-day year into the past would mean a Mod of -65.
Equation 2) oed100 - Mod; where oed100 = unmodified open-ended d100 roll, and Mod = -1 per 5 days travelled into the past. NOTE: Travelling one 365-day year into the past would mean a Mod of -65.
The greater the negative number, the greater and more drastic the differences. Basically, time travel into the past is usually not done.
Into the Future
Travelling into the future is handled in the same manner as travelling into the past. However, the chances of differences are more drastic than travelling into the past. Reasoning: The future has yet to happen and possesses many more possibilities. To determine the differences between the two timelines, use the below equation:
Equation 1) oed100 - 500 - Mod; where Roll = unmodified open-ended d100 roll, and Mod = -1 per day travelled into the future. NOTE: Travelling one 365-day year into the future would mean a Mod of -365.
Equation 2) oed100 - Mod; where Roll = unmodified open-ended d100 roll, and Mod = -1 per day travelled into the future. NOTE: Travelling one 365-day year into the future would mean a Mod of -365.
The greater the negative number, the greater and more drastic the differences. Basically, time travel into the future, also, is usually not done.
Another question. Do you think Equations 1 are too drastic? Or, not drastic enough? Or, are Equations 2 good enough?
rmfr
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From fiction I tend to think of time travel in two ways. One the portal method and the other the ability to change things as you go until you get to where you want to go (Amber book series). The portal method requires magic, psionics or machinery to operate, IMHO. The Amber Method as I will call it the person changes small things until they get the right image of the place/time they want to go. The Amber Method IMHO would require a lot of Re, Me and SD to get things just right for you to go where you want to go. I would place the stats above 110 or maybe higher to represent the level of dedication it would require to manipulate reality this way. Once you have decided on which method or methods then you can decide on the particulars on how you manipulate reality.
About Time Travel if you could switch to dimension in which time had no meaning then you could in essence go back or forward in time upon returning to the dimension you wanted you would be when you wanted.
So you can see, I see Time Travel as a sub set of Dimension Travel.
MDC
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I am perhaps fortunate in that I have never had the problem of players wanting (or even asking about) time travel. I am not sure it's possible in the real, so I can't see a tech solution happen. But Psi and Magic do a lot of things that aren't possible according to physics so that seems like the way to go if ever I had a need to have it in a game.
For the future, this would be handled in much the same kind of way as you might handle divinitation magic and prophecies in a fantasy game. You can make a reasonable guess as to how things might turn out, but make it clear to the players that future events are inevitably tied to the past, and that things that happen in the present may still change the future that they visit.
For the past, I don't see a huge problem. I've always thought of the grandfather paradox as sloppy thinking. here's why. Let's say that a set of circumstances have happened that mean you have travelled into the past and shot your grandfather. Those who love this paradox say that when the grandfather is killed by the shot, that you will never have been born and therefore cannot have fired the shot, which means that your grandfather wouldn't have died, so you do exist after all, which means you can have travelled back in time and shot him... and so on. My take on this is that up to and including the moment that the trigger is pulled, you exist and the event then becomes a part of the past. The bullet kills the grandfather, at which point you cease to exist. However, because the trigger pulling is now an event in the past, it isn't changed. In effect, you have just set up a loop in time, and closed off one pathway. You future (and the future of that loop, technically) ends with the closure of that loop. However, in the world where the grandfather died, all that happens there is some guy from the future comes back, shoots the grandfather and then disappears without a trace. Your grandmother may remarry (assuming she has even met the grandfather by that time), and still have children, and the children of her kids may be similar to you... so if you insisted on still playing that character, the GM could have free rein to change your stats and perhaps even race and skills and history, as he wishes :) (is this the right moment for an evil laugh? Muahaha. :evil2:)
I do like time travel fiction though and have a number of short story compilations. Most of them about unforeseen consequences - e.g. a scientist goes back in time to visit the ancient Greeks. His intention is to pose as a traveller from a far off country, and give a push of a few hundred years to the advancement of science, so that when he returned to his own time there would be greater scientific achievement. However, when he returned it was a barely feudal world - what had happened was that the Greeks, while impressed by him, had decided there was no point trying to compete and so had turned away from the science entirely.
However, my favourite story is one where there is a time travel tourism business, and the guy in the story goes back in time to visit the crucifixion of Jesus. So he's given appropriate clothing to blend in, and there in the square, Pontius Pilate does his thing, and and the guy notices that actually, there aren't that many people around him that look very middle eastern. And he can't hear any language other than his own. The story ends with the realisation that actually, everyone in the square clamoring for Jesus' death is actually a tourist like himself, too caught up in the thing to realise that they are changing (indeed, have already changed) history in a major way just by being there.
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The bullet kills the grandfather, at which point you cease to exist. However, because the trigger pulling is now an event in the past, it isn't changed. In effect, you have just set up a loop in time, and closed off one pathway. You future (and the future of that loop, technically) ends with the closure of that loop.
Exactly. Whatever happens stays happened. You may be able to make it happen differently in another dimension, but you can't make it unhappen.
The Amber Method as I will call it the person changes small things until they get the right image of the place/time they want to go.
Which works for various incarnations of "reality" that are in a concurrent place on the timeline. But if you travel "back in time" to "your own past", but before _____ event happened, you actually traveled "sideways" to a nearly congruent reality where _____ event hasn't taken place yet, and may not. Yes, the guy looks and acts just like your grandfather when he was young, and is involved with a girl who looks and acts just like Grandma when she was young. They even have the same names. This reality is, after all, very nearly congruent.
But whatever happens stays happened. Unless the reality you were born into already has in its history (known or not is beside the point) the events you cause by your presence in the past, you can't travel back along this timeline, because those events have already failed to happen.
Travel "along a timeline" into the future is meaningless because the timeline you're in doesn't exist yet in the future. Or rather, it exists as a possibility, but there's no guarantee that the chaotic blend of events and decisions leading from "the present" that you traveled away from will ever result in "the future" you traveled to.
There are no "parallel realities". They aren't parallel for the same reason water molecules in a river aren't parallel, the term makes no sense where it is applied. Realities that appear to be "parallel' are only moving in a common direction at that point in their respective timelines.
Personally, I think the equations should do fine as is.
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Although I do find that imaginings are generally a lot more interesting and believeable than randomness. I think this is why I enjoyed that Sliders show (mentioned above) so much when it was on - someone had clearly spent some time visiting significant (and sometimes not so significant) junction points in history and asked the question, what would have then happened if Y had happened instead of X? I strongly suspect that a lot of the creative minds behind it were very interested in modern history, because from that point of view it was quite educational. Like, if penicillin had not been discovered, with the population boom, bacterial infection was rampant, and by a country mile the number one killer. And that show also raised an interesting point about getting back. There was one episode where they had literally a few seconds to decide if they were going to stay there, or miss the jump. They had appeared outside the main guy's house, and he tested the garden gate to see if it still squeaked - it didn't. Then he found a newspaper and quickly read some of the more unlikely things that had actually happened in the real world since they had gone. The consensus was that they were in a close parallel, but not the actual. Only to move on, and seconds later, his mother came out of the house, thanking a guy for finally oiling the gate and stopping it squeak, and the two of them wondering if the main guy whose name escapes me... (my memory is over 40 years old - remembering things isn't what it's good at any more) is ever going to find his way home again. Quite poignant in its own way.
The point (I think) is that when you start travelling in time, it's a one way journey. Because you can never be sure that you're back where you started.
Unless you take the view that in the very far future, someone travels forward in time, does that mean that all events up to then become set in as a timeline? Because that would mean that (Dr Who-like), you could then travel up and down it as your technology allowed.
Or, you can take the view that time heals itself. Sure, you can go back in time and kill Hitler. But that just clears the way for soeone else with strikingly similar views from rising up in his place. Or, to take the penicillin example above - maybe it wasn't discovered at the same time, but with advances in science and the proliferation of micro-biologists it is inconceivable that no one had ever discovered it. One thing I have noticed the more I study science is that quite often, a breakthrough happens in several places at once. For every person famous for whatever discovery, there are half a dozen people in the wings who very nearly got there before him (or in some cases actually did but failed to publish in time or even realise they have d a breakthrough.
The (new and improved) point here is that essentially, you can let your mind go wherever you want once you start in on time travel, because somewhere, there is a theory ready to be made up to explain it :) It's exactly what science fiction does best.
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That's funny... Just this past week two gentlemen at one of the airports I was in had a discussion about the exact same example - Penicillin had not been discovered. They then went on to discuss
* What if Hitler had been killed earlier in his rise
* What if the nuclear bomb had never been dropped
* What if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated
A very interesting conversation...
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That's funny... Just this past week two gentlemen at one of the airports I was in had a discussion about the exact same example - Penicillin had not been discovered. They then went on to discuss
* What if Hitler had been killed earlier in his rise
* What if the nuclear bomb had never been dropped
* What if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated
A very interesting conversation...
And my short answer to those questions is that we'd be in that timeline, "what if" ing about if Hitler had lived, if they'd actually dropped that bomb, if they hadn't caught Oswald before he pulled the trigger.
Granted, that's only my answer, not necessarily everyone's. ;)
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... at one of the airports I was in ...
So well travelled! And of course, you have travlled faster and further than most of us which means that relativistically you're now in a different time line. Hope the weather's nice over there :p
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...which means that relativistically you're now in a different time line. Hope the weather's nice over there :p
Hmmm... I guess that explains the many times I've seen it rain on one person's yard and not his neighbor's.
:o
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Let me first give my thoughts on traveling back in time.
1) Is it possible? I'm going to say yes, although I don't think in real life it is possible. Even if it were rule two applies...
2) You can't change anything. Whatever you do is either irrelevant (if you don't have a goal) or is part of what results in what you already know of your life.
3) Moving from one variation of a reality to another has nothing to do with your time travel.
So, Rule #2 is the main sticking point. If you move backwards in time do you remove yourself from the effects of that timeline? Meaning if you change something, would you know it?
Let's say you want to stop something from happening. So you go back in time and you actually stop it from happening. It now did not happen and there was no reason for the future you to try and stop it from happening - because it didn't happen. Thus, you could potentially change something... but you wouldn't know it because the new reality is your reality.
Now, this is where you could say that the character has created a new reality and is now stuck with the consequences (their life may now be unrecognizable to them). Furthermore anything they do to try and 'repair' that could result in further corrupting things from the eyes the person messing with time. In this theory you are assuming the pre time travel character is immune to the impact of the changes. That doesn't make sense to me. So, I don't subscribe to that theory. I just say you can't change the past and everything you do to try and change something is either ineffective or partially responsible for what you are trying to change.
Why? Because I don't want spells with the ability to mess with things that have already occurred to throw a campaign into chaos from the GM's perspective. If it were not for that I might let people actually change the past.
Now, can you travel forward in time? Sure, why not.
Real world? In a manner of speaking we already know it's possible simply due to the slowing of time due to speed... you just have to be going really fast for it to have any impact what-so-ever. Ok, so you really are not 'traveling through time', but you almost accomplish the same thing. However once you've traveled forward you can't go back so far as we know.
Game world? I would allow the player to see what has happened in the future and act on that information, possibly changing the future because it has not happened yet. Now, this is an interesting situation because you could really do whatever you want as a GM.
The character may want to prevent a certain persons death at a specific point in time for example, and accomplish it, but in doing so change the future they saw thereafter... so everything else from that point on out no longer applies. For example, let's say in the future they saw they were very poor, but also see a fledgling company from their normal timeline that became a mega-corporation in the future, so they invest heavily in it when they go back to their normal timeline. In the future they saw this did not happen and they have therefore altered that future. Butterfly effect - they set off a series of seemingly unrelated events that result in the failure of that company. They know what would have happened if they'd left it alone, but because they didn't it potentially changed.
Hopefully that all made sense.
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Oh... and the "Grandfather" paradox. Simple: Whoever was trying to kill the Grandfather screwed up.
1) You, or whoever's grandfather you thought you were killing, was not the correct person... same name, mistaken identity, identity theft, adoption... etc.
2) One of the women who helps/saves the shot grandfather turns out to be the grandmother.
3) Maybe you got caught trying to shoot him and now spend X number of years in jail in the past... (which could create a wonderful new problem for your character in their normal timeline if they ever get back to it depending on how much of your identification was tracked).
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You shot Grandma's boy toy! :o
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There was a show called "Seven Days" on once where the main character was able to travel back in time up to seven days via a government program created to stop 'bad things' from happening to the US/World.
We always laughed because how did the people who sent him back really know what happened? He always prevented what they sent him back to prevent. So you go back seven days, spend a week on the beach in Hawaii, come back and... "Hey guys! I saved the world again! You'll never guess what happened this time..."
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Cory,
I remember "Seven Days" and wondered the same things for the same reasons.
I also understand the "Butterfly Effect" you mentioned. For instance, since I know what has happened in my current timeline, suppose I could send a message back to myself while I was in the US Navy and tell myself to invest heavily in Microsoft, thinking it might make me a millionaire today.
However, step in with the "Butterfly Effect". I do invest heavily in Microsoft starting in 1981. But my investments causes Microsoft to completely fold under, still leaving me as I am today.
I completely understand that. The same goes for seeing the "future" and and making changes "now". However, no matter what, that "future" still happens, just in a different fashion. Say it was seeing one's love dying in a car wreck. You work to ensure that the time of the car wreck your love is not in a car. However, instead of dying in a car wreck, your love dies in an elevator accident.
I can also see such happening.
All Others,
Thanks for your insights and thoughts. Even I have to admit, when it comes to time travel (or more accurately, temporal mechanics), I tend to begin to think that it is just easier to say it is impossible. Yes, I do enjoy a good time travel story. However, like Corey Magel said...
... I don't want spells with the ability to mess with things that have already occurred to throw a campaign into chaos from the GM's perspective. If it were not for that I might let people actually change the past.
However, I always state that the future is mutable. By acting in the present, you can change how the future may occur. Then comes the sticky part with actually knowing exactly what the future will be like.
Thus, I am with Cory Magel. Travel into the past is just plain impossible. They can use spells/psions to "see" the past, but that is all they can do.
As for travel into the future, I'm still going to have think about that.
rmfr
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When I played in a game in 84-86 what my PC did was go back in time and bury items that I would dig up when I went into the future. Sometimes the items were there sometimes they were not. At times the items were in good condition and others they were not. So it was not a sure thing which I was ok with.
I used some of the $ to fund a magic item I was making and the rest I gave away to various charities, the poor, to have parties and other people and events that I deemed of worth (both good and not so good, but not evil). There were also time police so I was careful as I could be to not upset the timeline too much.
MDC
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I completely understand that. The same goes for seeing the "future" and and making changes "now". However, no matter what, that "future" still happens, just in a different fashion. Say it was seeing one's love dying in a car wreck. You work to ensure that the time of the car wreck your love is not in a car. However, instead of dying in a car wreck, your love dies in an elevator accident.
Just to clarify on what I meant... I would actually let someone save an individual if they saw they were going to die in the future (or alter any event if they managed to do so) and that same relative event (a specific person dying for example) wouldn't then still happen some other way, but what would happen is that everything else they saw from that point forward would no longer be reliable. Once they changed one thing everything else from there on out was up in the air again.
So you can look into the future, see a whole bunch of stuff, but change one thing and the timeline from there on out is now subject to change.
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At Q, M, Super String, what ever you call it if particles are interfused in to a system (you travel in to the past) the new particles (you) crated a different reality. This is tacking place a uncountable number of times every skein. The simple explanation for this is in Hawking black holes evaporate I think it is in Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Any way travel to the past new past is made with a new future. It may be close to the one your from it may not depending on what you do. This also works if you go to the future because you weren’t in the past so it will be different then if you there. The difference may not be noticeable or it may be that you did not travel into the future in this reality so it is untainted by your lack of being there.
Forgive my bad English.
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Yeah, that. ;)
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Forgive my bad English.
Nothing to forgive. I understood what you were saying.
It is kind of like in another campaign where I allowed time travel, the characters actually (at the same instant) created and enter a different and completely separate timeline from the original one they left. Of course, they never could get back to that original timeline due to the fact that they just kept creating and entering new timeline everytime they tried.
It is my humble and honest heartfelt belief that if time travel were possible, you would create and enter a completely different and separate timeline. And everytime you tried time travelling back to your original timeline, you simply created and entered yet another different and completely separate timeline. Thus, you would never return to the original timeline you left.
Also as you mentioned, the differences between the timelines could be so alike you could not tell the difference, or so drastically different that you are trapped in a depraved nightmare.
But as I mentioned in a previous post, I side with Cory Magel:
... I don't want spells with the ability to mess with things that have already occurred to throw a campaign into chaos from the GM's perspective. If it were not for that I might let people actually change the past.
I learned that lesson on the one campaign I did allow time travel.
In fact, I have decided to make time travel COMPLETELY impossible. You can see into the past and into the future, but you cannot travel there. Viewing the future can be very chancy. Since it has not occurred, you cannot be certain that what you see will actually happen. Since the future has not occurred yet, there are infinite possible futures. And NO. The spells that say "... a 95% chance of seeing the correct future ..." et al are hogwash. The equation I will be using is:
OEd100 - 500 - Mods; where Mods is any modifiers the GM feels are applicable and a -1 per day viewed into the future. For example, viewing one 365-day year into the future would be:
OEd100 - 865.
In other words, the above OVERRIDES any spell description. Period.
But that is just my opinion. I feel since the future has not happened, then there is no way to be certain of what will occur. A good real life example is how many times have you heard "there will be world peace in the future"? I have been hearing it endlessly for the last 45 years. Yet, we are as close to world peace today as we were back in 1966. My simple reason is: "As long as there are differing human cultures and religions, there will always be war and terrorism. Until we truly become one human culture with only one religion, we will never have peace."
rmfr
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days
Check out the Light of Other Days. Great story about wormhole cameras that can look anywhere and into anywhen in the past.
It's less about time travel and more about how society changes with these new discoveries. Absolutely no privacy in the present or the past doesn't grind society to a halt.
If you allow time travel, it could very well make an entirely new reality that does not effect the original timeline. Consider that all possibilities can happen and your actions are what define the present. Everything you did in another present, would alter that future, but would have nothing to do with the present that you left.
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Great book. It is in my library. That is where I got the idea that you can "see" the past and possible futures, but can never travel there physically, et al.
rmfr
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Consider that all possibilities can happen and your actions are what define the present. Everything you did in another present, would alter that future, but would have nothing to do with the present that you left.
Exactly. But you define your reality by what you experience, you have no other real reference points besides the basic "You Are Here", which you know constantly moves (with the flow of time.) "The past", "the future" and "now" are something we all define internally solely in relation to ourselves.
So if there are multiple pasts and futures, and you know this for certain because you've been in more than one of them and changed things.... which is the "real one" anymore, other than "whichever one I happen to be in"? And how can you tell?
If you changed the past, you changed which reality you're in. Yes, you killed your father before you were born, but it doesn't matter because that reality isn't "the real one" anymore.
:o
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Another way to run time travel in the game is that by magic it is possible to time travel back in time and change things. Problem is just that you then must make the choice of staying in the new time line you created or traveling back to your original time line. This mean that you can go back and kill you father/make him rich or what ever but when you return to your own time nothing has changed.
Obviously the society might not be very keen of accepting this person that came out of nowhere and claims he is from the future and have a better understanding about how things really are. This is especially true if your native self from the time line is around.
I think this kind of setup makes for great stories about heroes from the future returning to stop some apocalypse to happen. It also totally dodge the awkward "we need to do real time travel to be able gaming a setting when our characters do time travel..."
In some case the heroes from the future might decide to stay instead of returning to the misery of the future. In other cases they return back to their own time to not disturb the life of others with their greater knowledge of the state of the world, at least they can be content with that there are a time line that escaped the horrors of their future. Possibly they could have learned something important that give them a chance to turn the tide in their own time line.
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This is especially true if your native self from the time line is around.
Then, you would have to worry about entropic cascade failure. That is if you subscribe to such psuedo-science.
Entropic cascade failure is a side effect that can occur when traveling to an alternate reality or alternate timeline. It is caused by the increased entropy created by multiple versions of the same person in one reality. The effects, which only affect the non-native versions, continue to get worse over time, eventually resulting in death. The only way to prevent this is for them to go back to their own reality.
rmfr
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I have only allowed Time travel in a small way in my campaigns (one SF and one fantasy). I had a professor in college one time discuss this. I think he was one of the few people that could read Einstein's notes (face it the man was a PhD in Mathematics, meaning he had like discovered new ways to do math....strange). He mentioned that two things would happen is a person went back in time (physically).
One, the event would cause a fracture of the time line and the person would be in a totally new time line. This would mean that there were an infinite number of time lines out there. Each slightly different from te others (al la Sliders). So going back would preclude coming back to the time you left since you are in a different time line. All this was too much to keep up with. It would become oike a Marvel Multiverse with too man possibilities to track.
Two, the outcome of a single persons actions are like a rock dropping in a pond. The further you get from the event the less effect it has. So if you go back 10 years you might see profound changes in your local area. But if you went back 100 the effect would be less, and at 1,000 it might be undetectable.
Yes if we went back a week and bought tickets for that $640M lottery that just took place we would be rich, but 100 years in the future nobody would know. Bu the chance at going back to 1930 and finding a man that was obscure and I think in jail and killing him to prevent World War II, would be more than likely impossible. And given the social and economic pressures in Germany at that time someone would have filled the void. Would he have been as bad? I cannot say.
How I did this in my games is that they players were tip toeing around and trying not to change anything. So when they got back, the changes were minor. "Say, didn't that used to be a coffee shop?" Of course, I did have a few changes just to mess with them. Everyone seemed to think it was fun, but did not want to do it again.
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Update Post
Here is the final version of how I will handle the prospective question: "Why can't we time travel?" in my upcoming campaign world of Onaviu. This is literally a cut and paste of my webpage.
Time Travel has become one of the most exploited subjects. No other subject has elicited as much speculation in all fields: science-fiction, romance, drama, suspense, and even theoretical physics. In this section, I cover how I handle time travel on Onaviu.
One surprising fact is that physics, as we understand them today, do not say that Time Travel is impossible. Nor do they say it is possible.
I will also be the first to admit that I do enjoy a good time travel story as much as anyone else. However, from a GM's perspective...
Then there is always the joke: If time travel were possible, then how come we haven't met any time travellers?
Into the Past
As one member on the Iron Crown Forums stated (emphasis mine):
… I don't want spells with the ability to mess with things that have already occurred to throw a campaign into chaos from the GM's perspective. If it were not for that I might let people actually change the past. …
(about halfway down in his post)
Like Corey Magel, I DO NOT want anyone, except the GM (me), to have the capability of throwing a game into complete turmoil and disarray. Especially from the GM's perspective. One major reason is because I, the GM, will be the one forced to deal with such turmoil and disarray, possibly with no help from the players, especially the one who caused such problems. One thing I learned early in my GM career is that if you give the players the capability of completely destroying your campaign's timeline, they will do so. And the one specifically who is actually responsible for doing such, will also leave the GM to deal with the mess by him/herself. The other players may help the GM, but usually the one who causes the problem also refuses to help.
Thus, before the question even arises, travelling into the past is IMPOSSIBLE. Period. Exclamation Point. End of argument.
The past is immutable. However, one can "see" into the past. That is the best one can do.
Into the Future
Travelling into the future is a much different pile of horse hoowhee. The chances of divergence from the current timeline are incredibly drastic. And dramatic. Reasoning: The future has yet to happen and literally possesses an infinite number of infinite possibilities.
OEd100 - Mod; where Roll = unmodified open-ended d100 roll, and Mod = -1 per day travelled into the future AND any other applicable modifiers. For example (with no other mods), travelling one 365-day year into the future would mean a Total Mod of -365.
The greater the negative number, the greater the chances for more drastic divergence. Basically, time travel into the future is usually not done.
As with the past, one can "see" into the future. However, one must also remember that what is seen is ONLY one possible future. Only Nimnaur (a god on Onaviu) has the ability to see all possible futures. Thus, the reason he is considered the darkest and most brooding of the gods. 7734, wouldn't you be if you could see all possible futures?
By no means does this mean that this topic is "dead." If others have ideas and criticisms, then please post them. I may even consider using them. Additionally, they may help others who ask "Is time travel possible? And if so, how should I handle it?"
Thanks for all of y'all's ideas and criticisms.
rmfr
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What about this situation:
A person goes forward in time from time 00:00.00 to 20 years from then. Can he/she go back 10 years without any problems?
MDC
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Thanks for pointing that one out.
Only if they use a "Signpost" (or similar) power/spell. Even then, they would still have the same modifier/100 on finding that Signpost. Thus, a 20 year trip to the future would entail a modifier of -7300. Quite a divergence from the current timeline. To find their way back plus ten years, would entail a modifier of -3723 ((-7300/100) + (365 * 10 * -1)). Still quite a nasty chance of not getting back to where they wanted.
In other words, although travel to a possible future is possible, one has to be careful how far.
And for some more of my thoughts.
Ultimately, travel to the past could be possible. However, I still feel that such would not be "true" time travel but actually crossing barriers into an alternate reality/timeline. And for such, I may apply the same equation as I do for travelling to the future.
And I still think the joke about time travel does have an interesting point: If time travel were possible, then how come we haven't met any time travellers?
One answer I've heard is: Because they keep themselves hidden. They blend in so well you don't know they are time travellers.
To which I always say, "Horse Hoowhee! Do you honestly think that all time travellers would be so damned benign and incorruptible?"
My ultimate answer is "7734 NO!" Although, yes, there are some persons who are incorruptible, but ALL of them? Horse Hoowhee. Always remember the saying about power: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then again, power just attracts the corruptible. (That is someone's signature, but forget who's.) Frakking with the past would be too tempting of a prize for there to be absolutely not one time traveller who wouldn't frak with something in the past "just to see what happens."
Then again, there is the ultimate question: "If a time traveller did frak with his past in our present, how would we know?" To which the answer is: "We wouldn't. But he would."
Basically, it is up to the GM if s/he allows time travel. If s/he does not mind keeping up with that migraine, then more power to him/her. As mentioned in another post, I had one player do something in the past that led to such a cascade effect (a la Butterfly Effect) into their present so as to totally destroy my campaign world as I had envisioned it. Ultimately, to keep from having to deal with that migraine, I said that we actually were playing an alternate reality version of that group for just that session. Thus, leaving my world intact. Needless to say, the player who did that left the game because person to person (not player to GM, or character, et al), I told him flatly, I was not going to allow him to destroy or disrupt my gameworld just because he wanted to try and change the past in a chance to give his character more power.
On this, I totally agree with Corey Magel (emphasis mine):
Because I don't want spells with the ability to mess with things that have already occurred to throw a campaign into chaos from the GM's perspective. If it were not for that I might let people actually change the past.
Believe me. Running a world where time travel is possible is a major migraine. I did it run a "timeliners" campaign once, and it led to a MAJOR MIGRAINE. If any person out there can keep up with the infinite number of infinite realities/timelines, more power to him/her. It is hard enough just to keep up with one reality/timeline.
And again, I will say that like most people, I do enjoy a good time travel story. I just do not think it is possible.
rmfr
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After reading your comments in the RM sections about Gods and TT (time Travel) I had the thought of ... is it not just as good to communicate with someone in the future or the past? Is the communication itself considered TT? Or does there have to be some other interactioin?
MDC
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Low tech time travel: go to sleep. :)
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(http://serve.mysmiley.net/happy/happy0064.gif) (http://www.blueislandsdiving.com) (http://serve.mysmiley.net/happy/happy0071.gif) (http://www.blueislandsdiving.com)
a la Rip van Winkle
Love it.
rmfr
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I am taking this into a new direction as can be seen below. Let's have your thoughts.
But What If I Do Not Want to Deal with the Migraine Time Travel Can and Will Cause?
Actually this is quite simple. It all depends on how badly you want to discourage time travel, yet do not want to just say, "It's impossible." And then deal with the "Whys" and "Why Nots".
Idea One
Simply inform your players of the die roll equation involved with travelling through time. Of course, this is a modified version of the ones in my first post.
OEd100 - Modifiers; where OEd100 = an open-ended d100 roll; Modifiers = -1 per <time unit> travelled through time and any other modifiers deemed appropriate by the GM.
The <time unit> above is whatever time unit you want to use, whether into the past or future. To truly and strongly discourage time travel, make the <time unit> equal to 1 second. If you want to make time travel easy, then you could use per 100 years as the <time unit>.
The smaller the result means the more drastically different the timeline becomes. For example, if the final result is -86205, then the timeline is so different, it is a depraved nightmare. BTW, the -86205 is from using -1 per second and going back the equivalent of one Earth day back into time (86,400 seconds) and rolling a total of 195 on the OEd100. Of course, that is if you want to be a nasty GM, or just DO NOT want to deal with time travel.
Furthermore, you could also apply the above equation on those damned spells that allow players to see into the past or future. You could even apply the equation to scrying spells using <distance unit> instead of time unit.
To be particularly nasty, you could use both<time unit> and <distance unit> as modifiers.
Idea Two
Use my approach from above. Tell your players that time travel is nothing but a fancy naming for what is actually slipping across alternate realities/timelines. Furthermore, to complicate things, tell them that time flow in each alternate reality/timeline is not the same. Some flow faster, some flow slower. That ought to throw a big monkey wrench into the gears. This is what I am going to ultimately do with my upcoming game world of Onaviu, except time flow remains equal in all alternate realities.
Idea Three
Sorry, but just be honest and tell them time travel is impossible. Tell them you just do not want to deal with the migraine that keeping up with time travel will cause. Believe me. In the one campaign I allowed time travel, it did become the biggest migraine I have ever had. Then I literally threw all the papers into the trash. Guess what? The migraines went away. Seriously.
rmfr
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IMHO #3 is the best. TT is a nightmare unless there are people/things that protect the timeline.
MDC
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Another option is to not tell them anything.
So you've learned a Spell List or found some megatech that claims to allow time travel. Many scholars of various races and different worlds have written texts on what this means and how to do it..
That may have very little to do with what actually happens when they decide to use the spell/device.
It's ok to throw out more false rumors and red herrings than actual facts. ;)
Such is life.
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Or maybe TT requires you to be a specific type of being and the PC's are not evolved enough yet to survive TT.
MDC
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Or maybe TT requires you to be a specific type of being and the PC's are not evolved enough yet to survive TT.
MDC
The PC switches on the machine, steps inside, and disappears.... and all the other PCs know is that the character does not return. The GM hands a clean character sheet to the player whose character tried this. PCs take the hint.
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My take on time travel does pretty much eliminate the possibility of a huge headache.
As I've mentioned before, you can't change the past even if you can travel back to it. Reasoning being the paradox issue. If you make something happen the way you wanted then there was no reason for the future you to need to go back and change it. Thus, the best you can expect is to simply witness the event or, worse yet, be part of the cause by way of the attempt at tampering with it.
Going forward in time I will allow. If you look forward in time and see an event you want to change you can do that. However everything from that event forward is now subject to change. When you go forward in time you can only return to the exact point in time from which you traveled forward from... doing otherwise would cause the time travelers destruction in a way that I don't bother to explain (I'd likely just say it puts the traveler out of sync with time and they simply cease to exist from that point forward).
This causes backward time travel, even if allowed, to not screw with the campaign and causes sight or travel into the future to become useful (even if not time traveling) in trying to prevent a specific event only.
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Seems like I keep running into older threads that call for my input.
Rolemaster Companion V had a unique take on the whole time-travel shtick that basically made paradoxes impossible. I won't try to reproduce the whole thing here (mainly because I'm going from memory), but here are the basics as I can recall them:
Everything on a timeline is moving forward at a uniform rate. When you remove yourself to go time-hopping, your origin point continues to go forward -- so, for instance, if you spend 3 days in the past, your 'home' point is 3 days later when you return. If you go into the future for a week, then a week has passed when you come back.
Events in the past get overwritten when you travel, but the effects of these changes never affect your 'home' time because they never catch up. If you go back to 1963 and prevent President Kennedy's assassination, it still happened in your origin time. Anyone else who travels within the time-frame that you altered will see the changes -- but only after enough time has passed.
Let's say you use the above example, go back to '63 and prevent the shooting. If you want to see how this affected things, say, a year later, you would have to wait a full year and go to that exact point in '64 to see it. You couldn't just jump from '63 to '64, because the original '64 is still there. Since everything moves forward at the same pace, you have to give time for changes to take place.
Now, while this prevents paradox, it doesn't prevent exploitation. A good example is the lottery: you could easily wait for the winning numbers to be announced, then go back a week and buy a ticket. The problem here is when quantum physics gets involved -- your buying a ticket changes how many people are participating, and the random elements of the drawing may turn out differently.
If your GM wants to run it that way, at least. You may simply get away with it. Just be sure to take a single lump-sum payment in cash, so you have something useful to take back home. But if you do, be aware that every bill you have in your pockets has a duplicate somewhere, which could cause problems.
This sort of temporal view actually allows for scenarios like in the movie TimeCop, where people have the task of dealing with those who try to steal from the past. Might make an interesting campaign, actually.
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This thread is a great example of how we know time travel (in a single dimensional time frame, rather than multiple diverging timelines) will never happen. If it were possible, our single timeline would have imploded with people in the future trying to make changes to get things 'their' way.
If people are happy to strap bombs to themselves and blow up buses full of innocent passengers, imagine what you could expect from some future extremist? :(
That's the problem with time travel. Sane people would think twice about the repercussions of tampering with time. Unfortunately, it's not the sane people you have to worry about.
However .... 8)
This train of logic is the very reason that Time Travel is such a cool idea in roleplaying games. The idea of chasing down these lunatics and stopping them or putting things right makes for potentially great gaming. ;D
Time Riders is still one of my favourite sourcebooks. ;)
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The most dangerous person is one who has nothing left to lose.
MDC
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This thread is a great example of how we know time travel (in a single dimensional time frame, rather than multiple diverging timelines) will never happen. If it were possible, our single timeline would have imploded with people in the future trying to make changes to get things 'their' way.
Of course, there's always the theory that things are so messed up right now precisely because of people like that.[/tinfoilhat]
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Or that time travel gets invented over and over, but causes so many problems that it's no sooner invented when a time traveler comes back and kills the inventor to save everyone trouble.
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This thread is a great example of how we know time travel (in a single dimensional time frame, rather than multiple diverging timelines) will never happen. If it were possible, our single timeline would have imploded with people in the future trying to make changes to get things 'their' way.
Of course, there's always the theory that things are so messed up right now precisely because of people like that.[/tinfoilhat]
You think this is messed up?
This is what the world looks like with shadowy cartels covertly manipulating things behind the scenes to enable a One World Government.
Imagine what it would look like if your benevolent Illuminati Overlords weren't here to protect you. 8)
Can I borrow your tinfoil hat please? ;D
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Slightly going off topic :) But I remember a published Cthulhu adventure where the end result was the depression in the 20s and 30s. If the players had somehow managed to spoil the plans, the GM was meant to hint that it could have been even worse. Which I thought at the time (and still think now) was a pretty sucky way to end the adventure.
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When you get something that gives you wishes, you destroy it. Time travel is the same.
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In my homegrown fantasy world (mainly used for d20 but not exclusively) the only beings able to grant a wish are gods. So whenever a player uses one I roll randomly to see which one of them is on "wish duty" and see how likely they are to try and twist it. My players usually only use one or two before Bad Things happen.
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With three wishes, the last wish is usually to negate the first 2.
With time travel, you might not have that luxury.
But I still see each trip as an individual universe into and of itself. You don't really alter anything in "yours", just the one you are in right now. Even then, as a GM I'd make at least subtle changes. Your heroes are drug addicts, different presidents are in power. Maybe we have non-polluting electric cars, but Monsanto Corn has caused an extreme allergy to cheap food so the world is starving..
All because you wanted to go back and win the lottery.. ;)
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With three wishes, the last wish is usually to negate the first 2.
With time travel...
...you wish to negate the last 2 wishes, show up in front of yourself, snarl "Ignorant fool, you just had to meddle, didn't you?" and plunge a knife into your heart, whereupon you both cease to have ever existed in the first place.
Piece of cake. ;)
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Here is a physicis't angle on time travel:
1) Be aware that we are already travelling in time. Consider Einstein's definition of time as the 4th dimension. When we travel through space, we continuously change our position in some arbitrary x, y and z axes. But we are also changing our position along the time (t) axis. In fact, we advance through time at a constant speed of one second per second! Every second, we travel foreward in time at a distance of exactly one second. So countrary to x, y and z where we can vary our speed, travel through time is restricted to a single speed, one sec. per sec., and in a single direction: foreward.
2) When we travel through space, we do not magically teleport from one point to another, instead we gradually change our position at various speed, so that we pass through every point between our origin and our destination. This excludes quantum teleportation, which is another story for another day.
3) So for me, time travel means that we gain the ability to change our travel speed through time. It is not different from travel through space. If I want to time travel into the "future", I will have to increase my "speed" through time. If I want to time travel into the past, I will have to reverse my direction of travel.
4) Time travel through the future: So let's pretend that we can construct a mechanism that allows us to increase our travel speed through time. What happens? Say we advance at 10 seconds per second. In this example we would see everything around us evolve ten times faster than normal. The people around us would see us as well, but they see us behave in slow motion, by a factor of ten. Once we reach our "destination time", we resume our normal speed through time. Of course, with this process it is impossible to go back in time. We are stuck in the future. On the other hand, with this process there is no chance of meeting an older version of ourselves. We are the original. There is no paradox, and no violation of conservation of energy (more on this later)
5) I have more trouble justifying time travel in the past, since it involves reversal of time travel axis. So let's say we reverse our speed through time, so we go at -1sec. per second. Everytime the world moves foreward by one second, we move backward by one second. From our point of view, we see everything around us go backward, like a videotape that we rewind. But there are problems: I) Travelling backward in time does not mean we travel backward in space. Which means that the inertia that we possess initially (say our velocity due to Earth's rotation etc) is carried with us. But, when we see the world go backward, they also go backward in space, which means we see the Earth travel backward in its trajectory while we continue to travel foreward. Consequence: we are expelled from the orbit of Earth, violently. So on top of travelling backward in time, we have to travel backward in space relative to Earth. II) Now there will be a paradox, as we gradually travel backward we will exist along with the younger copy of ourselves. If not then it would mean we are changing the world by the mere act of travelling backward. III) Worse is the problem of conservation of energy. The total energy of the Universe is constant. This is a sacrosaint law of physics. When we travel backward, we are carrying our energy (E=mc^2) with us. We are introducing this new energy in the "past", and we are taking this energy away from the "present". So we actually violate conservation of energy twice. This is not acceptable.
- For those who want a teleportation type of time travel, as in I magically disappear from the present and appear in the past/future, please remember to account for energy conservation: you need to add energy in the time frame you left and remove energy to the time you visit, equal to your mass times the speed of light squared. Somehow none of the time travel movies seems to take this important little detail into consideration.
N
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- For those who want a teleportation type of time travel, as in I magically disappear from the present and appear in the past/future, please remember to account for energy conservation: you need to add energy in the time frame you left and remove energy to the time you visit, equal to your mass times the speed of light squared. Somehow none of the time travel movies seems to take this important little detail into consideration.
So a poorly cast teleport may freeze everyone solid at the spot you left, or fireball you and all around you upon arrival.... or vice versa, depending on how you misjudged the spell. But the same could be said for teleporting in space, at least to whatever extent your motion is along a N-S axis. The change in the relative motion of the planet under you never forces you to land running, so that energy has to have appeared from (or gone) somewhere, it didn't just cease to exist.
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So a poorly cast teleport may freeze everyone solid at the spot you left, or fireball you and all around you upon arrival.... or vice versa, depending on how you misjudged the spell. But the same could be said for teleporting in space, at least to whatever extent your motion is along a N-S axis. The change in the relative motion of the planet under you never forces you to land running, so that energy has to have appeared from (or gone) somewhere, it didn't just cease to exist.
Haha! Yeah, same problem goes with teleportation. Assuming energy cannot be transerred faster than the speed of light, when you teleport, your mass/energy is transported through space too fast. One possible outcome is that your teleportation will create a shockwave, or a rift through space, as the mass/energy of the Universe would try to rebalance itself and compensate for the sudden change, so there would be a rapid (at speed of light) flow of energy from destination to origin, perhaps affecting everything on its path, just like air would flow from an area of high pressure toward low pressure...
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So the assumption that magic works at all has to assume that a successfully cast spell included constructing a bunch of "safeties" whose sole purpose was to transfer energy from one place (or possibly time) to another to balance things out. To at least some extent you have to assume this is true of even something as simple as an Ignite cantrip, otherwise the apprentice's first successful casting results in his death from ice crystals in the brain.
:o
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I always assume that magic, psionic or any other super power has to obey the laws of physics. Of course, there are tricks to deal with this (example exchanging energy with another parallel dimension).
I will make a post soon about magic/psionics and Newton's 3rd law