I played Y Spy with MJ once. I blew up the car, with a passenger, with a piece of C4. Assuming quite a few things, the passenger would have been dead before I was. Maybe only milliseconds before, but still before. Why didn't the dead body of the passenger verse inside the car as equipment? She would have been dead before I versed, by the nature of the explosion, Why didn't her dead body come inside the car? I could imagine quite a few plot devices that could be used if you versed into a new world with a corpse in the car. Everything from landing in a frozen wasteland and needing to resort to cannibalism, to being accused of her murder. Just wondering.
Probably because you had no connection to her corpse as such, even if you had some connection to her as a person, so your scriff didn't claim the body.
No, you don't understand O'sevens. Anything in the car is considered On-person equipment. I versed out of my first world with a van fully loaded with hundreds of pounds of equipment. If the body was dead, it would have been equipment inside the car.
I'm assuming you were driving the car, seeing as it versed out with you.
If there had been a dead man in the trunk, stashed there by a mobster last week, it certainly would have come with you. A person who died at the same time as you seems . . . trickier.
Let me ask you this: would you expect the person's corpse to arrive in one piece? If yes, then why?
I hadn't thought of that Scott. You're right, the C4 probably would have left me with blood splattered everywhere. What I'm saying though is that I was driving, and technically, she would have died first. Maybe only milliseconds before me, but still before me. How is that different than a body in the trunk? MJ's time travel theory says that whether you left a microsecond or a year after another time travel theory, you still have to wait until their history goes. How is this different?
I suppose what I'm saying is that a dead body can be equipment; a live friend can be an associate; but a dying enemy is neither.
The reason you arrive in one piece is because when you travel through the scriff, it returns you to your last stable form. An hour ago, the car was in one piece; so was everything in the glovebox, and so were you. Your enemy, though, was still alive. He was killed by the same blast as you were - if he comes at all, he's alive on arrival.
Well, how about this. I'm driving somebody. They get shot in the head. The bullet passes through their skull and into mine. Now, it is unarguable that they died first. Could an instant, trauma less death cause the corpse to verse with you? I think I would ask for a GE roll on something like that. I'm not sure if I would want the corpse to come or not. John the player knows that it could be useful, possible clothing source, possible food source. Or possibly a lot of hassle. I think I would ask for a GE roll. I mean if anything is truly possible in Multiverser, ya know?
I mean why couldn't the instant of death be The Last Stable Form? It's just a weird idea I had.
I'm not sure. Questions about exactly what the scriff will or won't do are beyond what I'm willing to make solid calls on.
Obviously, if the ref says it happened, it happened; I'm just not sure about the theory. MJ will be along tomorrow . . .
It was just a weird thought that I had. That's all. I'd like MJ's thoughts on it.
And for the record, yes, in a survival situation, I would partake of cannibalism if I needed to. "Once the soul has left the body, the body is just a carcass." (Alive, the movie.) I believe that fully. It was just a strange thought that I had, and this is a good place for strange thoughts.
I mean seriously, suppose you verse out 10 miles from your equipment, and all you had was your on person equipment. I could see an extra set of clothes and 100 pounds of "Freshly killed meat" being very useful to a person.
I confess that I remember far less of that quick pickup game than John; I have no idea what vehicle he was driving, what C4 exploded, or who died. Thus my answers here are entirely theoretical.
How, though, do you know she died first? As Eric recently observed, being killed and being dead are not necessarily exactly the same thing--for a few seconds, you might be revived. In your example of the bullet passing through the passenger's head into you, the image is even more difficult. It is entirely possible that the passenger is dying but you are dead. If the passenger is dying, the body still belongs to that person, and that person gets to decide whether to go with you or not; if there's been no reason to think that the person might go with you, the answer is, not.
I would agree that if it were established conclusively that the person who died with you was already completely dead before you were, the body would be there, in the car, on the other side. If, though, the person were still dying, the body would not be; and if you died simultaneously, the body would not be.
That ultimately means it's my call, as referee, based on my view of the situation. I really wanted Mitzu to come with me, in part because it's lonely in the verse, in part because I did not want her brains splattered all over that club; but Graeme decided that a GE roll for who died first was appropriate, and Mitzu died enough before I did that there was no chance of her following me. It was his call.
In the same way, I obviously decided for whatever reason that the person with you in the van was still a person at the moment when the decision had to be made as to what goes with you, and that as a person that person did not choose to go with you. Had I decided that it was no longer a person but a body, it would have gone with you.
--M. J. Young
OK, that made perfect sense. I was just wondering why the corpse wasn't in the car when I landed in the next world.