Author Topic: Cosmology  (Read 3184 times)

Offline dna1

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Cosmology
« on: July 17, 2013, 01:19:04 AM »
Thinking a Platform of Fate type of situation... A structure sitting at the end of existence within a timeless void?

K so far we have...
•Connecting all existence and all time.
•Colosseum where heroes can battle.
•Paths or Gates to different worlds.
•????
•Profit?   :lol

Now I can't remember but I seem to recall you mentioning something about fate, or gods or something and I brought up the endless from Sandman comics.

Things we need to think about are like, who runs this place? Like is it staffed? Is there one lone keeper of fate? I know we were thinking the players would be called from there own worlds to save the multiverse or what not. So I assume that we are having some sort of keeper, or dude who draws in heroes from time to the platform somehow.


« Last Edit: September 07, 2013, 05:56:40 AM by professorgear »
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Offline professorgear

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2013, 04:54:24 AM »
Yippeeekayaaay muthafukaaa! I just had another epic brainwave. I've been thinking days about how to reconcile the stupidity of D&D's planes with what I was trying to do with my game. Then you reminded me of the image from Crono Trigger of the End of Time. There's a lamppost surrounded by undefined darkness. So I would like to propose the Lamppost cosmology.

[Before I get any farther, I'd just like to know that I'm tired and my brain is addled. So I will probably leave out many transitions. Hopefully you'll be able to see where I'm going.]

In case you're unclear about what I'm alluding to, I'm proposing the Lamppost cosmology as opposed to, say, the Great Wheel, World Tree, or World Axis cosmology. Because it's hard to understand how planes interact, these "cosmologies" are simply visual representations of relationships between planes. The thing mentioned earlier that I was trying to reconcile was the fact that alternate worlds connect in D&D via the Plane of Shadow. At first, it didn't seem there was any good reason why the Plane of Shadow, of all planes, should be the plane that connects alternate worlds. But then I realized, I was wrong to think of the Plane of Shadow as "something;" I should think of it as "nothing." The Plane of Shadow, then, connects alternate worlds in a similar way that outer space separates Earth from other planets. Unlike outer space, though, the plane of shadow sort of "borders" on reality, receives some of the traits of the realities that border on it, and therefore is not entirely nothing. Anyways, in this cosmology then the Plane of Radiance is the lamp, the outer darkness is the Plane of Shadow, and the lit area surrounding the lamp is composed of the other planes, like the Abyss and the Elemental Plane of Air.

Every separate world is it's own lamppost. Greyhawk is its own lamppost, the Forgotten Realms is its own lamppost, worlds created by the players are their own lampposts in the darkness. Technically, there is no effect that allows a character to travel from one lamppost to another. However, they might theoretically do so with a wish or miracle. However, every DM or player is the god of their own universe. Or truth be told, any DM or player can be the god of multiple universes or "sister" universes in a "family" of universes. In our game, for instance, the DM is god of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and all other official settings. Anyways, if a player and a DM agree to allow a character to travel from a player's lamppost to a DM's lamppost (or to force the character), then the travel can (or will) happen. A character that makes this journey gains the Scar of Destiny, which is a mark that he is sort of "maintained" in this world by the active will of the player and the permissive will of the DM. Hence why, if the player goes on vacation, active will is absent, and the character disappears (presumably back to their world of origin). Also, if a DM stopped permitting the presence of a character, he can force him out (which allows a DM to scar port a player who has dropped from the RADAR). This cosmology is even more like Crono Trigger in that the iron gates imagery would also be present, as characters can only enter a lamppost cosmology at the discretion of the DM (who we could call a gatekeeper, among other things).

[It's worth noting that I don't think the divination features of the Scar of Destiny have worked in the previous game, so those will probably be dropped, but we can discuss that elsewhere.]

Anyways, that's the Lamppost cosmology so far. With it, I've explained the Plane of Shadow. There are two other planes though that are important enough that they also need explanations. The ethereal plane I think should basically be the Spiritual Plane. It's where ghosts lives and it overlaps the material plane. We might consider having the Weave actually be material on this plane.

This astral plane is somewhat more interesting. I think it should be THE mental plane. In other words, the astral plane is my imagination, your imagination, and the imagination of all the players. In many ways, the ethereal plane is to the PCs and NPCs what the astral plane is to the players and DM. The astral plane is where the minds of the DM and players live. In colosseum worlds, the DM or a player acting as a DM usually make their minds visible to characters in the form of avatars (which are invincible and omnipotent). The astral plane, which is where ectoplasm comes from, might also be the kind of substance from which the DM forms the other planes.

Player avatars or minds do not need to travel on the Plane of Shadow to "go" from their world to play in our world, even though the characters they control do. Players interact with our world not through the Plane of Shadow, but through the astral plane.

In this schema, I think colosseum worlds are in fact full lamppost worlds, but they are usually very small (unlike some material planes, which have infinite boundaries).

Anyways, that's all I've got for now, lol.

Offline dna1

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2013, 01:27:40 PM »
Hmmmm....  I like it!

Praise be to the late night random strikes of inspiration!


I will do another more indepth reply later, I'm bout to take the fam out house hunting  :D
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Offline professorgear

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #3 on: August 13, 2013, 05:45:13 AM »
Anyways, as I mentioned in our chat, some thoughts on time travel.

Reverse time travel actually was a relatively easy problem to resolve. Just don't go with the infinite loop approach of say Harry Potter or Back to the Future. Posit multiple universes or the spinoff timelines, as in Star Trek, and you're good to go. But forward time travel is rather more difficult. And in D&D there are divination spells, the Time Dragon, time deities, and perhaps other beings and things which can travel forward in time. The reason why forward time travel is difficult is because it implies the present is determined. If I say someone traveled into the future and returned to my present, then he could tell me what happens in my future. He could tell me what I do, which means I no longer have the choice of not doing it. The same goes for divination spells. And there is the question of why future-seeing divination spells have an accuracy percentage instead of a certainty.

I think the answer to this question is that beings who travel into the future are utterly lost to the present. They are in a new and entirely different reality. If they "return" to the present, they have actually traveled back in time from that particular present, and the same rule applies to this reverse time travel as applies to other reverse time travel: that it creates a new spinoff timeline. So future time travel would be dealt with in one of two ways, depending on the situation. Either said being travels to the future (whatever that is, no one knows) and never returns. Or he does return, and people may even know about it, but he only "returns" in a sense. What he's actually done is gone back in time from the perspective of the future, thereby generating a new spinoff timeline. There are now two timelines: the unaffected timeline and the timeline he created by traveling into the future's past (lol, I hope I'm not giving you a migraine).

Because not only the characters but even you and I (which is to say players and DMs) are temporal beings and not eternal, we can only understand reality as existing in a linear temporal setting. Because of our limitations, no one knows anything about the true future. The future in our game I think would be really and truly "determined" which is to say in some sense immutable. But reverse time travel (from the future) and future-seeing divination spells only see what was the true future of the unaffected timeline. In other words, the character who went into what would have been my true future then returns to tell me about it is really only telling me about what would have been my true future if he hadn't changed the timeline by returning. But because he did return, he did change the timeline. So what he tells me is now only a probably future. The true future will now only be "close" to the future he describes to the extent that the timeline as it now is "closely" mimics the unaffected timeline he came from. Divination spells work off of this same principle of probability. Basically we would describe future-seeing divination spells as features or aspects of the future traveling back in time to our present. Like if you had a visual-audio "experience" of a future event, what that would really be is more or less light and sound being magically transported from the future to its past, which would be your present. But by virtue of that light and sound going back in time, they created new spinoff realities. And though those realities would be extremely similar, they wouldn't be exactly the same. Hence why divination spells work off of probabilities, even if they're very high probabilities. Anyways, let me know if I made any sense.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2013, 08:39:25 AM by professorgear »

Offline professorgear

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2013, 03:31:36 AM »
So, I couldn't resist. I wanted the gratification of some art, lol. So I made this little page which is totally a rough draft. We can change Jeriah's name, as mentioned earlier, as well as some of the wording of these laws. I understand right now some of them probably don't make sense as I haven't explained them, I'll do that later.



Personal note for later: headwaters, source, origin, offspring
« Last Edit: August 26, 2013, 07:12:00 AM by professorgear »

Offline dna1

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2013, 03:38:03 AM »
whats that? it didnt past right...
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Offline professorgear

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Re: The Multiverse & Colosseum stuff
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2013, 06:49:43 AM »
Ok, now to explain my most recent post. The final modifications I had to make to the rules of time travel involved the complications brought in by extra-dimensional travel. Hopefully my simplifications won't cause too much confusion, but I'm going to try and be brief as a proper treatment of the subject could take all of forever.

By "upstream" I mean going back in time from any one point (whether in the past, present, or future). You can guess what "downstream" means. By "correspond" and "correspondence" I mean every spin-off world shares the same timeline. While different worlds may have time pass at different rates or in different ways, every point on one world's timeline corresponds to one point and only one point on the other world's timeline. In other words, if I Extra-Dimensionally Travel (EDT) from Greyhawk to Faerun via the Plane of Shadow, I will travel from Greyhawk's present to Faerun's present. I will not be able to pick which time I enter into the Faerunian timeline. Because of the possibility of extra-dimensional travel and downstream travel in D&D, I had to create rules so our world wouldn't produce logical contradictions, specifically laws 7 and 8 from the above jpeg. Basically, as I've noted before, if I travel back in time, I create a new world. But, in D&D where there's EDT, all the worlds are connected and can basically create one "meta-world." So, as an example, right now it's Sunday night. If I go back in time to tomorrow morning, I will create another world for a total of 2 worlds. If I then stay in that timeline till Tuesday and then travel back in time till monday, I will double the number of worlds from 2 to 4. The reason is because the first 2 timelines began to "correspond" when the 2nd timeline went past Sunday night. By correspond I mean they literally became magically connected by the Plane of Shadow, such that people could travel between them and they composed one effective world. So when I traveled back in time the second time, this metaworld of 2 worlds was duplicated to yield 4 worlds. However, a world is not connected to other worlds via the Plane of Shadow the instant its timeline is initiated. It has to wait till "Sunday night," otherwise it could undo the very acts that led to its initiation, which would be the effect preventing its own cause. In rule 8 I simply used the temporal energy plane as this block or interruption because I thought it sounded cool.

Other terms that may confuse are "origin" and "father" timelines. This is just my term for a timeline that spawns an offspring timeline. So when I traveled back in time from Sunday night, the original Sunday night timeline is the father of the offspring timeline I'm in after the first act of reverse time travel.

BTW, I'm interested in this sort of stuff, but you don't have to be. We can each cover the other's blind spots in world-building, so if you don't really care about this stuff just let me know.

Rule 6 I found rather pleasing as a storyteller. Because the Plane of Shadow eventually reconnects all words into a kind of metaworld, eventually all the timelines become intertwined, and because the DM gets to say so, they will share the same fate, whatever that may be.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2013, 06:56:29 AM by professorgear »