Oh, I dunno about that. Because here's the thing; the actions of any one individual usually doesn't have a massive effect on the universe, assuming that the universe is significantly large and the stories are not central conflicts that shape the entire fate of the world(s). So it's more then possible to make a large universe and have stories within it that have minor effects on the universe without making any forward planning impossible.
And I suppose if you want to have the stories have major effects on the universe you can still do it, but it's gonna require careful thinking between each story as to how the universe will be effected. Which isn't that unreasonable either. I used to do a writing exercise like that some times.
((I think you underestimate just how much sufficiently crafty characters can wreck you world. Especially characters who possess advanced knowledge of future events/world, or stuff like more advanced technologies. And I don't doubt that you can have some fun with the changes in the universe, but don't you think it only works for a limited amount? The more stories you do, the more complex the world becomes, the more stuff you have to keep in mind, the more stuff you have to change. You get where I'm going?
Also, about what I said about time travel, I just want to stress that you were replying to a single sentence of an unfinished tractate.))
((How can I be throwing plotholes left and right? It's more about recreating the future every time the past is altered significantly then changing some plot to fit the player's actions. I think either I don't understand what you're saying or you've misunderstood what I'm saying. Could you give me an example so that we can clear this up?
And time travel is there because players like to see their actions have an impact. ER for example has new equipment becoming available based on what people did on a mission. In a game about stories, time travel allows you to see how the stories work out or change based on what you do. And since you, the writer, ultimately has control over when and where the next mission is going to be, you can make sure you have to worry about updating only that 4D section of the universe instead of the entire universe and all of its stories every time. The only thing that would be difficult for the GM is that he has to write down all the info he gives players during missions so that he won't have to search the entire thread every time he posts.))
((It all has to do with the complexity of the story. With an easy real-time change, if you cut the rope holding the drawbridge, the bridge will fall down. If you chop down a tree, a tree will fall. With the time travel, you basically have the opposite of that, with the variables to remember multiplied.
Say you're go to an ancient Egypt, bury some treasure in one of the Pyramids, and then go back and dig it out. It will be worth much more than the actual treasure's cost (an example from an actual story). On the surface, it looks pretty good. But if you think about how the treasure seekers spotted treasure, they might be able to spot it because of how the stones sound, and dig it up. Or during #33rd mission, you see the same pyramids, and take that treasure prematurely/for yourself. I don't even know where to go with this time loop. The plothole begins when a player Ira remembers that the said pyramid was actually reconstructed five hundred years after you visited it, meaning you should not have gotten that treasure. And because that reconstruction was briefly mentioned during mission #9, you already forgot all about it by the time mission #33 came up. That example might be faulty, but I hope it as least somewhat presents the problem.
But that's not all to the example. The fun also continues when you carved your name on one of the rock slubs (because that's what players do). And if the DM decides to keep that name to our present day (not just erased by laborers), it can easily become something stupid like "the first graffiti". From then on, it can easily become a self-defeating trap. If you decide to have people studying that graffiti, and have it recorded as the first graffiti ever, you have just added a lot of detail to the game world. Detail to keep track off. And when in mission #40 the players destroyed the old building that was going to become a future mega-corporation office, you will have to update the status of the mega-corporation. Because if you don't, it will be almost as if what you did didn't matter. So if this was a first mission, you could just forget about that building. But in fortieth you will have to keep track of a lot more stuff changed, including random buildings blown up.
The problem with time travel missions, even if you ignore the Butterfly Effect, (Anybody has a better name for this? I hate that term.) you still have to keep track of the details. You say that you have to change something only when stuff is altered significantly, but the devil's in the details. If you follow the Back to the Future model of only caring about the events that you want to care about, you're basically stifling player creativity of what they can do. The player's can't say "Screw those objectives, we think we can manage another way to fix this." because only the things you have selected as important will actually matter. Or they would have to say: "I think it is a better idea to do this, because it will lead to that, which will lead to that." And you either can tell them straight away whether something would work, or "randomly" disappoint them. And it may well make it hard for you to even know the answer, because the detail the player's will be using to accomplish their nefarious plans will ultimately be bigger than the level of detail you're simulating, resulting in really wonky decisions, and feeling of a still world in which the only thing changing is a very specific set of events. (like when facial animators change one aspect of the face without changing the others).
Another way you can deal with the actions having an impact, is to control different characters across the time-spectrum. They'd still have the same stats, but would be in different times.
Or have it like ER when you're traveling across light years.
Or have alternative realities. (I'm actually a big fan of alternate realities.) You could have worlds in which time flows at a very different speed that in yours, having a multitude of worlds, and so on.
Or give players near-immortality, so they don't have to worry about time.
Not to say that plenty of fictions accomplish that without needing to speed up or slow down time.
Now, about only having to update only a certain section of the universe, I must then ask what the point of even having time travel is.
If you're only going in a certain region once,
play an American change stuff as you see fit, and leave never looking back again, then what's the point?
You might as well be traveling across vastly different technologically worlds. Or once again, why even bother keeping the same characters and the whole plot machine? (You know what would help? If I knew you had read the same books as me, because I have when I give an example, and people simply haven't read the book.)
What can be accomplished with time travel that can't be accomplished with something else? And how can that really be called having an impact if you're going to a different section of the world next? In this game, we've had an impact developing new weapons for humanity and uncovering mysteries of the worlds. But did we really see the impact we had on the surviving people of China 9 or that Village? No, at least not any real impact, because we didn't have any missions or anything else there.
And I would actually argue that when you do this kind of Universe jumping, we're dealing as much with alternate universes as with time travel, because each part might as well be it's own self. Especially if you don't update it based on players actions.
--time warfare---
((I think the only way this could be done is if you had some form of time travel countermeasures. For example, you can have the ability to "lock" certain time periods or places so that they aren't affected by changes in the timeline (in essence a paradox enabling device) and people with time machines cannot enter or exit them through time travel (to disallow things such as having people arrive in the location a planet will be in 1000 years and then travel 1000 years in the future with an antimatter bomb). Or maybe each faction has a place outside the universe that isn't affected by changes in the timeline and that cannot be accessed by the other factions without doing something hard in the universe first. And then there's the problem that unless there's some space magic involved, the energy required for time travel could be used to do almost anything. Then again, logic and causality went out the window the moment time travel was invented, so that's fine. Then you'd need some reason for the factions to fight, either a rebellion or some ideology.
You'll also need some way to resolve paradoxes, so as to disallow paradoxes. Having the time traveling factions exist outside the universe mitigates that problem somewhat, however this all changes if you start taking living things in your time machine. Maybe the universe somehow heals itself and creates closed time loops so as to solve paradoxes, meaning some of the player's actions get thrown out the window.
Anyway, seems like too much trouble to me for an RTD. It would make a good suggestion game though, with a good writer.))
((Once again, even more so than before, we've just changed the theme from time travel to alternate realities. Keep in mind, I have nothing about the latter one, but let's not confuse them. Come to think about it, should I define the line?
Different worlds/realities, is when the "Common World" and the "Realm of Adventure" (bad names, but screw this) exist independently of each other. RoA be completely different, have some similarities, be a rip-off of Native Indians or Japanese, or be basically a copy of a more advanced or primitive time.
Time travel is when the changed in RoA affect the Common World, through the use of a chain of events and consequences.
The main difference here, is that in the "War of Times" that you suggested, by removing the actions of one world affecting the others, you have just pushed it over the line from time travel to the alternative reality. And even if you have the same historical events, and have some characters related to each other, it doesn't change the fact. Those things are symptoms, not key functions of what time travel is based on. Plenty of lazy writers have written alternative worlds with characters might as well related to each other, and historical events that might as well be identical. Does anybody disagree with this definition of time travel and alternative realities?
Also, sorry for being so brief. This topic deserves so much more.))
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