Time Traveller

[far-trader]

Originally posted by far-trader:
That said, as a time-traveller (stuck in forward at 1 to 1 for the moment), I doubt I'd use it in a game. Using time travel as a story element is fraught with pitfalls. It is rarely done well, perhaps because those who attempt to use it (the literary device) are not well versed in the mechanics of time. I'd say at the least think it out very carefully, then think like a player given the ability and you should find at least one very good reason to not do it, or make it a one way trip for the player(s).

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Oh why not? Is time travel all about creating paradoxes and killing your grandfather? That stuff gets old really fast. You simply disallow paradoxes from occuring. Just say, "Sorry your character can't do that, it is inconsistent with your characters history and existance, or if you accomplished this you would have no reason to under take this mission."

Your players are very different from mine then. They don't want to be told what they can and can't do and I don't like to GM that way either. They are more likely to accidentally trigger a chain of events that could lead to serious consequences if they time travelled in the sense of a single mutable time line. I can almost guarantee they will try to find an advantage in such a situation. Simple (as if such is possible in a few sentences) example: You travel a few years into the past. An enterprising young man has just announced an IPO for a little company called MicroSoft. Tell me you wouldn't buy all you could and address it to you in the future. Oh Oh. Paradox?! If you got rich before you came here, why did you come here, or was it to buy into MS? If you weren't rich is it because you didn't have the stock or because Mr. Gates little venture flopped? I could go on, but won't.

In one thing we agree, paradoxes are a bore. My solution is (imo) elegant in simplicity. Time travel is possible.

Imagine time as a current. It flows in one direction (forward) at a generally fixed rate (subject to certain affects such as massive gravity, i.e. blackholes). We can only experience time as a point event, the present. We can only record the past and imagine the future. Now the key to time travel is there are more than one time stream, many more than one, in fact there are an infinite number.

To travel forward in time at the normal rate in our current stream requires nothing, and some find this kind of boring

If you wish to travel into the future you need to accelerate yourself and that is easy enough and will almost certainly keep you in the same time stream, so you can for example invest in some sure security and cash in when you get to the future.

With a little more energy, or a lot if its a quantum effect, you can move sideways out of your own time stream into another. The lower the energy the closer to your stream you end up and the more similar the universe will remain. The easiest way to move sideways is to move forward and use that energy to ease the transition across the current. Of course that also moves you into the future.

Hopping laterally across the current will be more difficult, in fact to move exactly sideways will require countering the normal forward flow of the time current.

Finally to move backwards in time will require the most energy, fighting the current all the way. To move directly into the past in the same time stream would require a nearly infinte amount of energy, but by 'tacking' across the current you can use the energy of the current and move into the past of a near alternate stream. If you can figure out the navigation you might be able to make multiple tacks and end up in the past of your original time stream.

Now paradoxes don't happen because your very presence in the past, even your own past time stream, affect the eddies and current and in no time (literally and pun intended) you are in a newly spawned time stream.

That's the rough idea anyway, worked out when I've had an itch to dabble in a time travel game a few times, but never actually used. It may be workable but how much fun is it? Certainly no need for Time Cops, or Dr. Who going around fixing things cause nothing ever gets broke. Not a lot of point for the players that I see. Even historical research trips would have to be a quick drop in and take a snapshot before the new stream wanders too far from your own and invalidates the recording. Even with this I can see players taking something, say a forged antique into the past and dropping it in a secure place to get an authentic age for it, then going back to the future/present and collecting it to sell as genuine. Of course the energy and resources to do it would make such petty larceny a losing proposition, never mind the dangers. The H.G. Wells idea of a backroom tinkerer making a simple practically free and foolproof time machine makes a good story but isn't very realistic in Traveller (i.e. SciFantasy as opposed to SciFiction). Just my opinion of course and there's nobody can say playing Traveller as (more?) SciFantasy is wrong either.

 

[MichaelL65]

The way I understand Jump-drive to work, is it basically causes a ship to tunnel through some unknown substance/dimention/universe/whatever to get from point A to point B. These points are in 3-dimentional space, but the universe is actually made up of at least 10 dimentions (time is the fourth, AFAIK the other six are completely speculative, but they make modern theories of the universe work out).

Misjump often means not coming out at the point expected, so there are several possabilities as to "where" you could concievably exit jump-space - including not only in a different time, but perhaps a different reality. For example, while escaping Virus in TNE, you suddenly are in GT - or more dramatic, suddenly in the DnD Spelljammer setting!

Now THAT would be just wrong!

 

[travalv]

Zenon,

You might be right about Jump drives being inefficent Time Travel devices. From what I have heard regarding Einstein's Theory of Relativity, FTL Travel implies time travel, at least in going forward. "Time dilation" as you approach c. is a side-effect of pushing the space-time continum

(Which really IS a continum, in one sense at least: the faster you are travelling in space, the slower you are going in time. And equally odd things ocurr when you are approaching the event horizon of a black home.)

 

[TKalbfus]

8) Would channeling more power enable you to move further into the past? Drives may be developed that could be rated at T-factors. T1 (+/-1 year), T2 (+/-2 years), T3 (+/-4 years), T4 (+/-16 years), T5 (+/-256 years), T6 (+/-65, 536 years), etc.
I kind of figured that Travelling into more recent time periods would require more energy than traveling into more remote time period
Time Jump-1 or T1 could be anywhere from 1 billion years in the past to 10,000 years. From the Traveller current Year the most recent time period you could reach with a T1 drive from the 57th Century would be about 4400 BC. This is roughly the Dawn of Human History on planet Earth. The T-1 Drive can only jump in increments of 10,000 years. This the time periods available to it would be 4400 BC, 5600 AD, 15600 AD, and further into the future or the past. History is only dimly recorded in 4400 BC and there is not alot of opportunity to create time paradoxes that cannot be fixed by the intervening time period. Only deliberate time colonization is likely to affect the timeline rather than just a visit. It should be fairly safe to colonize the time periods before humanity evolve say about 1,004,400 BC and Earlier. Whole towns and cities may be built in this past Earth at TL15, but chance events in the intervening time period that follows will wipe out this colony eventually and all trace of its existance so as not to cause a time paradox. Travelling to 65 million BC is not any harder than traveling to 1 million BC, it all requires the same power level, but the T-1 drive can only jump at increments of 10,000 years. the timeline in the past also advances at the same rate as the timeline in the present so you can't go back and rescue killed characters with this Time Drive. The T-2 Drive can make time jumps of 1,000 years and can go as far back as 100 million BC making the late age of the Dinosaurs accessable as does the T-1 drive. Dates such as 600 AD, 1600 AD, 2600 AD, 3600 AD, 4600 AD, 5600 AD, and 6600 AD are accessible. Some historical research and meddling can be done with this Time Jump Drive, it requires twices as much Hydrogen per jumps as the T1 however. The T-3 Drive can jump increments of 100 years and reach as far back as 10 million BC with triple the jump fuel requirements of T-1. The T-4 can jump 50 years at a time. The T-5 can jump 25 years at a time. And Finally the T-6 can jump 10 years at a time. How does that sound?

 

[TKalbfus]

I want to amend the idea above a little bit. The key to time travel technology is the Chronocom which was developed at the Imperial Research Station on Luna. Basically it is a module that attaches to a preexisting jump drive. The Cronocom is about the size of a baseball, but it weighs 1 ton, inside it is a quantum wormhole. This wormhole is good for communications purposes only and it connects the starship's computer with the computer at the research station through the wormhole. (Which is about the size of an atom.) It takes a considerable amount of energy to keep even this tiny wormhole open, but its operations is vitally important for turning a jump drive into a time jump drive. You see a time jump is a deliberate and controlled misjump. The calculations for this timejump are much more complex than for an ordinary jump, and it requires that the ship's jump drive computer be networked with the research stations mainframe and an experimental quantum computer in order to time jump.
When things go wrong and history starts to change time jumping from and to the affected historical period become much more difficult, more energy is required to keep the wormhole open, and the jump drive itself requires more jump fuel to make the time jump. Now lets go over the jump capabilities of each jump drive.

Jump 1: Has a range of 1,000 time increments, each time increment is 10,000 years so a single jump 1 drive can travel backwards or forwards in time by as much as 10,000,000 years or as little as 10,000 but no fraction of 10,000 years is possible. A jump drive can only travel an interger multiple of 10,000 years where the numbers range from 1 to 1,000. Not for example 50.23 or any other fractional value. If you want to travel further back in time than 10,000,000 years you need to make another jump.

Jump 2: can jump up to 1,000 time increments of 1,000 years same rules as for jump 1.

Jump 3: can jump up to 1,000 time increments of 100 years.

Jump 4: can jump up to 1,000 time increments of 50 years.

Jump 5: can jump up to 1,000 time increments of 25 years.

Jump 6: can jump up to 1,000 time increments of 10 years.

Any starship can be so modified to become a time ship through the installation of a Cronocom in their jump drive. As a side benefit, the Cronocom allows for instantaneous communication between the Time ship and the base at luna. The range is about 100 Astronomical Units from Luna, but its range in time is indefinite. It can communicate with as timeship in the past and it can communicate with a time ship in the future. One of the main benefits of time travel is mineral exploitation. The location of various mineral deposites from peviously exploited veins are already well known, and so they can be mined again in the past. A temporary time colony is set up in Earth's past, and minerals and resources from known locations are mined out. This causes the timeline of the mining colony to split off from the historical past and time jumping from that era becomes increasingly difficult as the mining goes on. Within 10 years time travel out of that time period becomes impossible and anyone still remaining there is stuck in that new time line, Their Chronocom ceases functioning and their jump drives can only perform ordinary jumps through space. Typically time colonies are temporary affairs where all the miners pack up their equipment and leave before the time line is lost. After 10 years futher attampts to return to that time period find it to be completely untouched by the miners presence. The previously exploited mineral veins are not unexploited and can be mined again. Also polluted streams are un polluted. And none of the natives previously met by the colonists have ever remembered seeing the colonists and all effects of contacts between colonists and natives are undone. A native from that previous time period who was removed to the future and the traveled back to his own time would encounter his own double in the past.

 

[travalv]

Meanwhile, in related news...

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/wwn/20030319/104808600007.html

"NEW YORK -- Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

Sources at the Security and Exchange Commission confirm that 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin offered the bizarre explanation for his uncanny success in the stock market after being led off in handcuffs on January 28.

We don't believe this guy's story -- he's either a lunatic or a pathological liar," says an SEC insider.

But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck. "

[...]

"Officials are quite confident the "time-traveler's" claims are bogus. Yet the SEC source admits, "No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002."

 

[TKalbfus]

Well he is innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on the authorities to prove that he is an inside trader. There may be a small chance that he is from the future. There is a somewhat larger chance that he is just lucky. It is most likely that he is an inside trader, but the government must prove it. The trader shouldn't have to prove that he is not. I don't know what the chances are of having a visitor from the future, but it can't be very high.
I think in True backwards time travel, free will is constrained to those actions that are observed and recorded in historical records. The kind of time travel where you can actually changes history ceases to be time travel the moment history is change. The past that the time traveler is in is no long the past but a parallel universe or parallel history. The observers left behind in the original future will observe nothing unusual, they may even think that the original time travellers they sent back in time have return, but it would be a parallel version of those time travellers, the version that did not change history for whatever reason even though they may have wanted to. Things just didn't go their way, they got sidetracked or killed in their mission. That may be the only version of the time travelers that can return from their mission to change history.
You see, not only does the historical timeline split when the time travellers try to change history, but so does the personal timelines of the time travellers themselves. There is a version of the time travellers that succeed in altering history, but they never return home to their own present. the version of the time travellers that fail in their time altering mission are the ones to return home. So from the perspective of the time travellers home base, time might seem in alterable, they may even think its impossible to change history and cease worrying about it. Time tours could be arranged, and each time tourist that goes back in time will fully expect that whatever their actions history will not change and they will be wrong each and every time. Traveller PCs could get caught in this trap as well. Maybe a version of their characters returns to their original timeline, but not the version controlled by the players. If the player characters want to return home, they must set history back on the right course. Of course once the PCs have returned home no one their will believe them, but then again may be they will, especially if two versions of them return to the same present, or scenes of the altered timeline get recorded on the timeship's instruments.