May Day, Games and Time Travelling!

[tcpip]

hathhalla and ser_pounce visited today, a pair that we haven't seen since for more than a year. They're part of a semi-regular planned group (we hope) of Saturday attendees to our abode at Willsmere estate. Being May Day, we had a round of the Avalon Hill boardgame Class Struggle, which could really do of a re-write more in the game-system, but also perhaps its politics. Early game session of Eon's Quirks was significantly more enjoyable.

On a related note on Friday my review of Trail of Cthulhu was published on RPG.net after several fun sessions. Reviews of Torg and Powers & Perils are planned. Thursday was our regular Dragon Age game which will be replaced with Mouse Guard in about a month or so. This Sunday will be a continuation of my RuneQuest Prax game which has had some recent significant events.

Last Sunday our co-GMs for the GURPS Krononauts game resolved a lot of the well-known paradoxes of time-travel (grandfather paradox, free lunch paradox). With a little bit of dealing we've adopted a policy of object independence of items (including people) that have time-travelled, an observer effect for things that have not (very Phillip K. Dick), and the future not being affecting the present (because that would be too hard in actual play).

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* As linked, one of many paradoxes that come within the bounds of potential backwards movement in time; the theory of time dilation with proof positive through the Hafele–Keating experiment.

What I find fascinating about this is while were a bunch of guys who are primarily using it as an excuse to do short narrative explorations of past-times (e.g., the fall of the Aztecs, late WWII Prussia, the French philosophes etc) there is a number of physicists who have devoted a significant amount of research time to the subject - such as Igor Novikov, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Matt Viser etc.

This world of cosmological physics is absolutely fascinating - the manipulation of time as a 'thing' - and a far cry from those in the past who argued that it is 'mere' temporal space or a universal mental construct.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

It could have a practical application, that is if mankind ever finds a way to bend and curve time as has become evident that space could be bent and curved (however huge quantities of energy and/or mass are required to do that).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, I can hardly say we're applying a hard-sf set of rules to those issues, rather applying a set of consistent ground-rules for narrative purposes that do not contradict existing theory. It's not like a Jasper Fforde novel - he relishes in the contradictions.