Paratime Travel

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is my map of parallel timelines, Each column is a separate timeline, each box with a blue circle in it is the present time of the World in the time line, the number above or below the circle is the exact year AD. At the top along the x-axis is the range of dates at which the timeline below departs from our history. The y-axis on the left is the beginning year of the range of dates for the box the timeline is in, the y-axis on the right is the end year of that range. At the bottom is the simply y-axis which is used to distinguish each parallel Earth.

We use the Jump Drive as the time engine, it requires jump fuel, there is no maneuver drive, the time ship simply transposes across the timeline a number of timelines equal to its jump number. The reactionless maneuver drive and artificial gravity haven't been invented yet.

The pink cone at the bottom are the pure historical timelines, they are indistinguishable from our history, except for what may be done in them to change history. The most advanced timeline is column -9 indicated by the numbers along the bottom of the chart. The current year there is 2185 AD, this timeline departed from our own between the years 1820 to 1839, in this timeline the British Empire expanded to cover the entire globe, and colonized neighboring planets in the Solar System, the current reigning monarch is King George XII. This Empire is a fairly conservative one, run on the pure Capitalist model, the Monarch has more power than the Queen in our timeline, he is the Chief Executive of the Empire, leader of the Church of England, Commander and Chief of the Royal Armed Forces, and has all the power of a US President, except that he doesn't have to run to reelection to keep his position. The Prime Minister is the leader of Parliament, and has comparable duties to the Speaker of the House of the US Congress. The British Empire aided the Confederacy during the Civil War, and basically incorporated the Southern States after their successful rebellion. Slavery was later abolished throughout the Empire in the 20th century. The French Empire was incorporated in the 19th century, through a series of arranged marriages, the German states were taken over in the late 19th century, in a war, the Russian Empire was defeated in the Early 20th century and that land was added to the British Empire as well. The invention of the atomic bomb cemented Britain's global government, and there hasn't been another major war since. Sometime in the 22nd century this timeline discovered the secret of paratime travel, and this is the source of the paratime ships in this setting. Timeline 0 is our home timeline.

 

[Spartan159]

Wow. I can definitively say I can't understand this yet, I'm gonna need time (no pun intended) to absorb this.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Wow. I can definitively say I can't understand this yet, I'm gonna need time (no pun intended) to absorb this.

Basically this map is a way of plotting timelines. Timelines come in two categories, some are parallel, while others are historical, Those which have a departure point in the future of their current date are historical, those with the departure point in their own past are parallel. Each timeline is a copy of Earth, the Solar System and the surrounding Universe. The British Empire timeline has sent traders and mechants to the other timelines they can interact with. The historical timelines become nonhistorical in their timelines are changed, and thus very difficult to travel to, since most of them go off the map, and anyone in them at the time, become stranded and cannot return home. Those timelines on the edge of the historical time cone can become parallel timelines without going off the map. Various researchers like to study the historical timelines to find out what happened or likely happened in their own pasts.

 

[phavoc]

Everybody knows the 1st Level is the bestest! Now get back to your stinkin 4th Level life you out-time barbarian!!!

Go Mars!

 

[Reynard]

This seems all wibbley- woobley, timely-whimely to me.

 

[phavoc]

This seems all wibbley- woobley, timely-whimely to me.

Great Ghu man! How can you say that??

 

[Condottiere]

He needs not a doctor, but the Doctor.

 

[Rick]

I'd say he needs stronger meds, or to lay off the Absinthe for a bit.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I'd say he needs stronger meds, or to lay off the Absinthe for a bit.

It is no more a fantasy than faster than light travel, it also doesn't require going faster than the speed of light. The assumption in this setting is that instead of a way to bypass the speed of light, a means of travelling to other parallel universes is discovered instead. To make it easy on the GM, this map doesn't show every possible world, just a few select ones that are easiest to travel to. The jump number of the starship determines how many world lines can be crossed, left or right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). In lay terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite[2]—number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. The theory is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, or just many-worlds.

The original relative state formulation is due to Hugh Everett in 1957.[3][4] Later, this formulation was popularized and renamed many-worlds by Bryce Seligman DeWitt in the 1960s and 1970s.[1][5][6][7] The decoherence approaches to interpreting quantum theory have been further explored and developed,[8][9][10] becoming quite popular. MWI is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy. It is currently considered a mainstream interpretation along with the other decoherence interpretations, collapse theories (including the historical Copenhagen interpretation),[11] and hidden variable theories such as the Bohmian mechanics.

Before many-worlds, reality had always been viewed as a single unfolding history. Many-worlds, however, views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised.[12] Many-worlds reconciles the observation of non-deterministic events, such as random radioactive decay, with the fully deterministic equations of quantum physics.

In many-worlds, the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse is explained by the mechanism of quantum decoherence, and this is supposed to resolve all of the correlation paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox[13][14] and Schrödinger's cat,[1] since every possible outcome of every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world".

 

[phavoc]

Nobody got the Lord Kalvan references?

Sheesh...

 

[Rick]

I'd say he needs stronger meds, or to lay off the Absinthe for a bit.

It is no more a fantasy than faster than light travel, it also doesn't require going faster than the speed of light. The assumption in this setting is that instead of a way to bypass the speed of light, a means of travelling to other parallel universes is discovered instead.

Ahem - just to be clear; I was actually commenting on Reynards 'timely-whimely' post, not yours Tom!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

And this is different from the old Tangents supplement for the old Alternity RPG from WotC? Besides their map being somewhat hexagonal and yours being square?

 

[Reynard]

Tangents is clusterly-wusterly with each like alternate universes in clusters of 7 forming on the map what looks like a hex. Looking over the generation rules (quickly), this is alternate space rather than access to past and future. It's either a jump to the left or a step to the right. The elevator up and down doesn't work.

A system like this would allow our universe here and over there is the Traveller universe with it's similar physics and historical development. Their tech level is certainly not our tech levels for the same time periods, communications across space doesn't travel very fast or far and their galactic topography is two-dimensional.

And they have Grandfather.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Tangents is clusterly-wusterly with each like alternate universes in clusters of 7 forming on the map what looks like a hex. Looking over the generation rules (quickly), this is alternate space rather than access to past and future. It's either a jump to the left or a step to the right. The elevator up and down doesn't work.

A system like this would allow our universe here and over there is the Traveller universe with it's similar physics and historical development. Their tech level is certainly not our tech levels for the same time periods, communications across space doesn't travel very fast or far and their galactic topography is two-dimensional.

And they have Grandfather.

Alternity was similar to Traveller in its StarDrive campaign. Alternity also had DarkMatter, and Tangents. My system allows sideways time travel and backwards and forward time travel to a limited extent. There are alternate worlds that are indistinguishable from our past, unless a visitor does something to change them. Also only a tiny percentage of all the alternate times are available to travel to, most cannot be reached. My rule is, if someone goes into the past time cone, and visits a world that is not on the border with parallel timelines, and changes history, then it gets harder to be reached from the home timeline and the home timeline becomes harder to reach from it. This manifests as a Jump penalty, that means you need a jump-2 to jump only one timeline, and it becomes progressively worse as the timeline diverges.

If the past timeline is right on the border of the past timecone, then it just becomes an alternate timeline instead of a historical timeline. Usually there is open commerce between the alternate history timelines and the border historical timelines, but the deep past timelines are restricted, because altering history there makes those timeline unavailable to homeline. Usually something can be done to put history back on the approximate correct path, so there are something like timecops patrolling them to make sure there are no undue influences in the way history unfolds by visitors, sometimes they fail, and that timeline becomes lost, leaving all people in that timeline stranded.

The way I generate timelines, is from the top down, I roll for presence 2d6, and if I get 11+, I place a blue circle in a box, and eliminate everything that is in the future and the past for that timeline, whatever date it is, is what you get when you travel there, time moves forward at the same rate in all timelines with no possibility of traveling in your own future or past, it also eliminates the possibility of time paradoxes, the worst you can do is change a historical timeline into a parallel timeline. I've also eliminated access to the future of the Home timelines, all the future timelines are in the future of an alternate timeline. There is one where the British Empire continued on as a global government up to the year 2185 AD, the change in history occurred in the years from 1820 to 1839, this version of the British Empire became a global government by the time it invented the atomic bomb, this timeline also had no World Wars besides the one Napoleon started in Europe, this Empire took advantage of the American Civil War to break up the United States, folding the Confederate States into its Empire and later on gobbling up the North as well.

The Monarchy got stronger due to interactions with Napoleonic France, which gave republicanism a bad name, and the collapse of the United States weakened it further. So you can call this version of the British Empire a Strong Constitutional Monarchy, that is the King holds real political power, he makes executive decisions, that in our world would otherwise be made by the Prime Minister, but that power is still checked by the British Parliament. Some of the colonies elsewhere in the Solar System don't much like this arrangement, and they are in a rebellious sort of mood. The Empire has also established some colonies in some distant alternate timelines, where there is not expected to be much resistance, say for instance due to a low native tech level. The British Empire typically trades with, rather than conquers Tech Level 5 non-historical timelines or better, this include the home timeline, as it is not a part of their history, and the Empire is not in the habit of destroying civilizations that have their own nuclear weapons, they prefer to go after the lower tech levels and conquer them intact.

 

[Reynard]

"Alternity also had DarkMatter"

DarkMatter was d20 Modern.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

"Alternity also had DarkMatter"

DarkMatter was d20 Modern.

No I think Alternity originated it, and then d20 Modern picked it up. What d20 didn't pick up was Stardrive or Tangents. Alternity was supposed to be the D&D of science fiction, and was a direct competitor to Traveller in that genre. I wonder if Traveller could ever pick up the StarDrive setting, the main difference in settings is while Traveller was dominated by the Third Imperium, Stardrive had about 12 stellar nations, one was called VoidCorp, One was called the Thuldan Empire, there was the Concord, which was sort of an Interstellar UN but also a nation unto itself, and a bunch of others. I think Wizards currently owns it, but is not doing anything with it at this time. StarDrive also has FTL communications I believe using gravity. Lots of grav tech as well, not just to hold things down on the floor of spaceships either, they had gravity rifles which caused damage with gravity waves, intense gravity fluxuations which pulls matter apart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Drive

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Alternity originated several things which WotC put into their d20 Modern Game. If you have both, you can see some of the shoehorning. Things like

Progress Levels. The values represent the same development timeframes. Most of the names for the PL are identical....
The Dark Matter Campaign - two supplements and a few novels were originally made for alternity
Several alien races found in d20 Future and d20 Dark Matter because the same races were used in Star*Drive original Dark Matter
The d20 Future Starship design system can trace its roots directly from the unpublished but "released on the Internet" Alternity Warships pdf.

and yes the Star*Drive setting IS written up about in d20 Future. Then again so is the old Star Frontiers setting

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Alternity originated several things which WotC put into their d20 Modern Game. If you have both, you can see some of the shoehorning. Things like

Progress Levels. The values represent the same development timeframes. Most of the names for the PL are identical....
The Dark Matter Campaign - two supplements and a few novels were originally made for alternity
Several alien races found in d20 Future and d20 Dark Matter because the same races were used in Star*Drive original Dark Matter
The d20 Future Starship design system can trace its roots directly from the unpublished but "released on the Internet" Alternity Warships pdf.

and yes the Star*Drive setting IS written up about in d20 Future. Then again so is the old Star Frontiers setting

Yes I have the d20 Future book, and the StarDrive setting gets a few pages in it, along side Star Frontiers, but it is a far cry from the StarDrive source book that Alternity had, there was also a book of Worlds, which detailed the major worlds in the Stardrive setting. Each of the stellar nations had a theme, VoidCorp for instance was a Corporate State which referred to its citizens as "employees". The Thuldan Empire was a brutish empire that emphased physical perfection. There was a communist nation, I forget the name of it, each nation had its favored profession and overall theme underlying its identity.
http://rpgresearch.wikia.com/wiki/Star%2ADrive