[DGD] time travel

[Troy Fisher]

You know this is an interesting subject. The technical details will bog you down forever.  But why don't you take a page out of a successful time travelling game?  Prince of Persia? Have time travel be able to only rewind you 5 to 10 minutes? It would be a useful combat skill to have and train up.

On the other hand you could take a page out of Quantum Leap. Where the quests are time travelling and give you a bonus. For instance you are in a combat with a dragon, and you initiate a 'leap' back into the timeline of either you or the dragon. If you leap back into the drqagon's timeline, you have the chance to pre-wound the dragon. You know something like cutting it's wings or disabling it's breath weapon. Or if you were leaping back into your own timeline you would enable a quest that would power you up against that dragon.

I think a concept like that is a lot easier to build and a lot easier to play. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Shentino <shentino at gmail.com>
Sent: 2/23/2009 2:01:59 AM
To: All about Dworkin's Game Driver <dgd at dworkin.nl>
Subject: Re: [DGD] time travel


It does sound like fun.

And yes, griefers and cheaters will consider time travel as yet another way
to cause trouble.  (perhaps "guardians of time" would be around available to
be dispatched as needed to enforce the "temporal prime directive", perhaps
it could protect the timeline in the same way that CONCORD protects ppl in
EVE)

Which is why I'd like to resolve the "prospective cancellation of your own
time travel" paradox, where you kill yourself as a baby, murder your
parents, break your time travel machine, and so on.

If that happens, what do we do?

Do we consider the entire time trip null and void on account of a
self-contradictory causality loop exception?

Or does the past "reboot" on account of you going back and leave you stuck
in history Harry Potter and the Time Turner style?

Not to mention that taking things back with you just by itself may majorly
break mass-energy conservation by making the past heavier than it used to
be...plus, you need to "dispose" of your present self when your past self
catches up to when it went back...and are we even sure it still went back?

This is messy messy messy.

Oddly, the more I think about it, the cooler I think it will be to pull it
off, in a sick sort of "the highest mountain is the one most worth climbing"
way, simply because it's a challenge.  It sickens me, in an oddly addictive
way.

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Dread Quixadhal <quixadhal at chartermi.net>wrote:

> There's also the question of abuse of the system, if it's anything
> other than a heroic undertaking to accomplish time travel. :)
>
> Sure, going back in time to change history, so that your party slays a
> dragon before it burns down a city, and then returning to find that
> the city in question became an iron-fisted regime that enslaved all
> the neighboring communities, and that nobody has ever even heard of a
> dragon... that could be fun!
>
> However, if I know players, what they'd end up using it for is
> collecting 1000 steel swords, selling 10 at 10 gold each, then when
> the price drops to 5g due to oversupply, travelling a few hours back
> in time to sell another 10, and repeat until they're out.
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