Gaming Outpost Discussions

1. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Interstate 60 is a really good movie, I highly recommend it.

   The point though is that in the opening scene, Michael J Fox gets into an accident with a man on a bicycle. The man crashes his bike into Fox's car. They get off the road. A semi truck then comes by and smashes the man's bike, which was laying in the middle of the road. The two men are assessing the damage, and Fox starts freaking out. His suit was splashed with mud by the semi truck, his cell phone was destroyed, and he's got an important meeting soon. He screams "I wish this hadn't happened!!! Why today??? OF ALL DAYS!!!!" The man on the bike says "Is that your wish?" Fox replies "Yes, that's my wish!!!"

   Time rolls backwards. The guy on the bike grants wishes. The guy on the bike stops way short of hitting the car. Michael J. Fox gets out of his car talking on his cell phone, oblivious to the world. Remember the semi truck that flattened the guy's bike?????

   I thought it interesting to note, and certainly related to gaming, how things can turn out because of choices made.

   (Doing Therapy)

   Mon Nov 2 2009 12:54 pm #
2. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   What about a world in which you can jump back ten minutes any time you wanted to? Well, let's say that it is a Simple stamina check, and after doing it a few times without rest, it becomes a Difficult Stamina check.

   You could have a guy and a girl arguing, and each jumps back multiple times to try to get to a point where the argument favors them...but not so much that the other person hates it and time jumps back.

   Or two guys in a gunfight, and each time you lose, you time jump...but whoever loses most often gets tired out of time jumping and so the guy who mostly wins the gunfights is the one left standing.

   Also, possibly have Professional Level Jumpers who can do probably twice as many jumps as a normal person.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 5:07 pm #
3. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   Second post...

   Head shots would become far more valuable in gunfights as an instant kill would stop your enemy from time jumping.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 5:08 pm #
4. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Eric, I think you were missing the entire point I was making. Mine was based on the idea of how choices we make can influence our lives. That things aren't always as they appear, and sometimes getting into an accident and ruining your suit and destroying your cell phone might just be the best thing that could have happened to you, and you will never know it.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 6:08 pm #
5. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   A real Drunken Monkey Universe (Drunken Monkey Kung-Fu is based on Monkey style Kung-fu with the added unpredictable actions of a drunk to make it very hard to predict.) But what about a universe where 'eat a frog in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you all day' is true. Or one where in order to get through a dangerous circumstance you have to botch first.

   Powerblock: You can have no successes in a given skill on a given day without botching first.

   John, the 'you will never know it' is problematic for a game. At least the player should know, even if the character doesn't.

   Edit: And that would be really cool for Graeme with his 128% chance of success spells. None of them work because they can't botch (unless he adds some insane sit-mods like ...I cast my spell as I ride my bike blindfolded through the city streets...)

   Edit: And while its really going off-topic, I somehow thought there was a potential for a Three Stooges game world in here.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 6:42 pm #
6. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   OK, so maybe my idea wasn't as much related to gaming as I thought it was. Still though, it is an interesting concept.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 6:47 pm #
7. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   Just think of a way for it to be related. Think of the Butterfly Effect, and then think how you would put this in to play. One way I thought is a Klutz Dungeon where the only safe path through was the one with the bucket on your foot.

   You could play your idea for comedy, or for grimness, or you could play it as a puzzle where you have to find the one highly improbable path through the situation.

   One way is to have those exact same parallel worlds that MJ has, and in one, a tiny incident happens,a nd it leads to success, and in the other normality reigns and it leads to failure. You'd have two players with almost exactly the same events, but one is doomed because he didn't fall in the mud from his horse.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 7:00 pm #
8. 

   Tadeusz
   Member

   And yes, you've made me scratch my head a bit on this one.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 7:02 pm #
9. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Well, at any rate, check out that movie. It's worth seeing.

   It's kind of like MJ's story The Perpetual Barbecue. The nuances of the world around you. "Dr. Hess 'Did nothing of consequence' but was critical in shaping the day he observed." (Direct quote from MJ)

   Getting into the accident with the guy on the bike was bad, but the alternative of getting into an accident with a semi truck was far worse. Nuances, choices, and the way they shape our lives. Fun to think about.

   Mon Nov 2 2009 7:57 pm #
10. 

    M. J. Young
    Moderator

    Hey, I was a Dungeon Master for decades. I know all about granting what was wished instead of what was wanted.

    Your ten-minute retro jump is interesting, but it leaves me wondering.

    I devised a skill once by which I would survive a one-minute confrontation and then use a minute to leap back to the beginning of that minute, so that I could fight alongside myself. I could do this multiple times, as long as when it was wrapping up each of me remembered to repeat the time travel the right number of times. Thus there is a way in which traveling back ten minutes would mean that you were duplicated.

    That's not the way you mean, though. You mean you want to wind back the clock ten minutes and replay it.

    The problem there is the question of whether you remember the version of history that you unwound. After all, the you that is now in the confrontation has not lived through that moment. What's to cause him to change his choices to be different from yours? The only answer would have to be that in winding back time you sent yourself information about those ten minutes, so that you could analyze them and make different choices based on the outcomes; but the more times you did this, the more information you would have to send, and thus the more you would have to process--take an intellect check to be able to sort out four different versions of events.

    There's also the question of whether the other person gets "future memories" as well. If so, we would assume everyone in the world does. If not, though, then if at any point the other person decides to jump back ten minutes, then the ten minutes of history you knew will be lost--you never had the chance to send them to your counterpart in the past.

    So it's a rather complicated time problem, but certainly an interesting one.

    --M. J. Young

    Tue Nov 3 2009 1:29 am #
11. 

    JTM
    Member

    I saw this text game, named All Things Devours, where the central premise was that you had invented a time machine, but if anyone in the original timeline observed somthing that went back in time, the object or person would return to the time it was sent back from and be converted into pure energy. Same if an effect was observed. Unfortunately, the other members of the research team did not believe the main character and were planning on sending a human back in time the morning after when the game takes place.

    The player has six minutes and that is not enough time for one person to perform the required tasks to destroy the machine and the documentation. However, there is a functional time machine in the basement...

    What is really interesting is that there are some tasks that actually require temporal copies to cooperate, with an "upstream" one pressing the button to open the door for the "downstream" one.

    The name comes from the riddle contest in the hobbit, specifically:
    This thing all things devours
    Birds beasts trees flowers
    Gnaws iron bites steel
    Grinds hard stones to meal
    Slays kings ruins town
    And brings high mountain down

    EDIT: I'd been hoping to add that before this thread was looked at, but then the website I was pasting it from crashed windows 7.

    Fri Dec 18 2009 2:45 am #
12. 

    JohnA1nut
    Member

    Six minutes would be more than enough time to destroy everything. Go back with 20 pounds of C-4 strapped to your chest.

    (Doing Therapy)

    Fri Dec 18 2009 2:51 am #
13. 

    JTM
    Member

    Except that the character does not have 20 pounds of C4 at the start of the game, and the plans are locked behind a massive door in a desperate room from the machine. There is actually a specific ending for destroying only the machine, where the article announcing the obliteration of greater boston is dated six months after when the game occurs.

    Fri Dec 18 2009 3:02 am #
14. 

    JohnA1nut
    Member

    It was just a joke JTM. That does sound interesting. I kind of liked the concept of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures, where if they plan to time travel back to do something, it will be done right after they think about it. That you could use time travel to help yourself before you even made the trip.

    (Doing Therapy)

    Fri Dec 18 2009 3:12 am #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.