Has a player ever literally met themselves? I don't mean a divergent you, I mean literally yourself. Go to a world that you not only have been to, but that you are still at? Like could I verse back into Pearl Harbor and meet myself there dealing with the situation like I was before? I would be sort of like time travel, but not. I wonder how that would play out.
Meeting Yourself
(4 posts) (4 voices)-
In play, this is very difficult to run, because although there is no time between verses (in theory), there IS linear time at the game table. MJ's marvelously effective theories of time travel don't help us here, either, because this isn't time travel - I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's not that.
In actuality, though, you can never really be sure that you've met yourself and not a divergent. I mean, imagine that you walk up to yourself and say, "I'm you from later on - I mean really you, not a divergent." Then the you you're talking to says, "Prove it." What can you say?
Mon Apr 7 2008 7:03 pm # -
I would avoid it in play, precisely because I doubt the ability of most players to play both sides honestly. That is, as Scott points out, how can you prove that you really are this person from the future? (In fact, how can you know with certainty that this is not a divergent verser you going through a divergent version of a world you previously visited?) Yet most players would have the tendency to think that because their future version has done what they think would persuade them, their past version would be persuaded, and then everyone works together hunky-dory.
There's also the problem that even though it is not "time travel" in one sense, it actually is in another--by re-entering a world you've already visited at a time prior to your departure from it, you have the potential to create anomalies of exactly the sort the anomalies materials are designed to handle: what you do will change the world in which you are going to be later. If you intentionally meet yourself and attempt to change what that version of you does, you've created an anomaly and we have to follow it through to find out whether you still exist as you are, or who you are instead. That would mean I would have to verse you through all the worlds you have since seen, re-roll everything that might be different, and you would have to play it exactly as you think you would if you had absolutely no knowledge of having been through it "before".
Very difficult to manage. I can count on my fingers the role players I've known over the years whom I think could do it, and a lot of people would be offended that they're not on that list. I dare say, anyone who thinks he should be on that list probably shouldn't, because one of the first requirements is you recognize the difficulty of the task.
Much better to have you meet a divergent self, someone you might have been.
--M. J. Young
Tue Apr 8 2008 3:25 am # -
Ryven
MemberHey guys! I'm new here, and I'm about to introduce myself in the character generation thread, but I figured I'd reply while I was reading this.
This topic actually has its own entire RPG devoted to it: Continuum: Roleplaying in the Yet, by Aetherco. I haven't played it, but I was looking for the books recently, and I've heard a little about it. The player characters are known as Spanners, and have the ability to (among other things) travel through time and teleport with little effort. I actually found out about Multiverser while looking for stuff about it, and immediately wondered what playing verser Spanners would be like.
The Continuum, the primary time traveler group in their 'verse, asserts something to the effect that there are no paradoxes, only apparent paradoxes, and that it is the duty of each Spanner to ensure that the paradoxes remain apparent. The universe enforces its stability through Frag, which is kind of like damage to a player's existence that they get from being involved in paradoxes, to motivate them to avoid them.
In the example of returning to Pearl Harbor and meeting yourself, in Continuum, that would be a very bad idea. You already have memories of the events there; if you came back and changed them, you would either need to disguise yourself as someone you know you saw there, and perfectly act out what they did in your presence (no apparent change), or cause apparent paradox, and accrue Frag. To get rid of the Frag, you would need to somehow put things right... but interfering in your own Age (subjective past) is tricky enough that, if I understand correctly, you could easily Frag yourself out of existence.
I'm actually not sure how you'd fix your frag in the "went back and had an unexpected meeting with myself" scenario, as I'm not familiar enough with the game, but I would assume that using memory modification technology on your Junior (you from earlier in your subjective life) to give them the memories you remember having would be adequate.
Thu Jun 26 2008 3:39 am #
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