Alternate Realities

This is a sub-genre' of Time Travel Science Fiction, sometimes called Alternate History, found in novels, hollywood, and games.  Also see my Aug 12 post on the prudence of investing in this future technology possibility.  I started this story because I was talking Alternate Realities in Heaven Dimension and wanted to do separate stories to define some of the concepts that I took for granted in there.  However, for most stories that I start, they can lead me to doing a proper job of detailing the subject.  Alternate Realities are but a part of the Science Fiction dimension of Time Travel, and I want to talk about more than just Alternate Realities, so watch for more stories in my Weblog collection, of this nature.   I will announce them on my regular Weblog topical pages as they get started.

Let's also define sequel vs. prequel.

• Sequel is when there is a novel, then a later one is published that is in the same universe plotline as the first, taking place LATER in the story line than the earlier published.
• Sequels are the norm outside of the Science Fiction Literature world.
• Prequel is when one novel published, or into a movie, then a later one, or later series comes out whose time is from before the time depicted in the first published.
• We see a lot of Prequels in SF movies such as Star Wars, and the Enterprise series of Star Trek.  The latter has also had a lot of episodes related to Time Wars.

This Radio story details Movies and Games.  I plan to list books in a separate story since the list can get pretty long over time.

Alternate Realities in Movies and TV

Some people might consider some of the different futures shown by Star Wars or Star Trek as Alternate Realities, but if you are loose in your definitions then practically all of Science Fiction and Romance Novels are Alternate Realities.  Many classic time travel novels have been made into movies or TV, and some that were not so well known prior to going on the screen.  In some cases we have multiple versions.

• Back to the Future - Spielberg movie series
• Doctor Who - British TV series
• Final Countdown - movie
• Pepsi - TV commercial
• Relativity - Star Trek TV episode
• Terminator - movie series
• Time Storm - Twilight Zone TV episode

Alternate Realities in Games

Al Macintyre has been out of Time Travel gaming for approx 15 years, so what Al knows is a bit obsolete, not recognizing the latest contributions to the field.  However, hopefully Al has successfully shared the flavor of what was possible at a stage of this game design history.  Game enthusiasts might also enjoy reviewing Al on Chess Variants.

Kelly Coyle designed a tactical time travel game, now out of print, which explored the notion of changes in the past creating Alternate Realities whose very existance was dependent upon those changes, so the personnel who had done so, had a kind of Karma.  People could travel across between the different Realities.  The vehicles, of travel across the dimensions involved, have an uncanny resemblance to Flying Saucers. The act of  time travel actions in the past creating Alternate Realities needed some new terminology, since additional splits could be done in the future history of each of these Realities by additional actions.  

In Kelly Coyle's game system, we have a simple board game, usually played on graph paper, with fighting machines shooting weapon systems and messages into the past, and also able to move sideways and/or vertically in time.  Actions change the past, creating multiple realities in which the past was changed, those in which the actions failed, and those in which the actions never occurred.  To win the game, you have to win in more realities than any other player.

Dan Reece's Time Marines was a computer test bed for Kelly Coyle's game system, using computer to keep track of all the book keeping, but still a work load for the moderator..

When a player character goes back in time to change a historical fact, such as the player's own move, or interfere with the actions of another player, the game system needs to resolve the conflict between what was, and is now, by recomputing all player actions from the point of this change forwards.  This concept is often called the Ripple Effect, especially when the alterations to the future of time flow forwards in time in a manner that is not instantaneous, which gives observers an opportunity to research the cause of the changes and try to do something to reverse the consequences.  This is especially important in the games Philosophies by Al Macintyre, and Time Tricks by Marc Acres.

In some cases, the game system shows the players the consequences of their actions, so they have an opportunity to bail out, while other games deal with different combinations of consequences being resolved concurrently.  Classic novels on this concept include McCullum's Greater Infinity, Piper's Kalvan series, and Pohl's Quantum Cats, except that reality splits are not as heavy a part of the books as in the games.

Multi-Verse was coined to keep track of the relationships between each of the Universes, and how they were related, specifically the Pivot Points of History where things could have gone either way, and which Universes did in fact go which way.  Think of it as a Family Tree of Realities mapping out cause and effect, so that if the cause gets tampered with, the Game Moderator knows which Realities are now at risk, and also tracks the past history life line of the actors whose Karma is tied to Realities coming into being, so that if those time lines get tampered with, the consequences are then known to be a priority to figure out.  This Multi-Verse concept shows up in many time travel games, such as Time Tanks and Time Marines by Dan Reece and Alternate Realities by Kelly Coyle, all now out of print.  Both were tactical war games involving battles across multiple time dimensions.  Time Trap by Richard Loomis also uses this concept but it is less central to the  overall game strategy.

In most time travel games of alternate realities, players only have knowledge of the one universe of their actions in concert with other players, which get populated by random non-player characters.  This is central to Philosophies by Al Macintyre, a game never published, that never got out of the Play Testing stage.  Basically in Philosophies each player selected some concept critical to current day belief systems, such as Democracy, Christianity, Capitalism, and so forth, and had a set of key Pivot Points in history to defend against Time Travelers who wanted to strengthen the trade off in the world for some other Philosophy ... if their opposing beliefs never got dreamed up, they would not have to be argued down. 

This one universe view for the players has medium significance in Time Tricks by Marc Acres, which is a variant of Time Master from Pace Setter.  The one universe at a time of time conflict games has tactical significance in Time Trap by Richard Loomis, and intermediate tactical involvement in Paradox by Al Macintyre a variant of Al's earlier Assassin! game, Out Time Days from Twin Engine, and Time Master by Marc Acres.  By Intermediate, I mean that the rules framework has specifics for this perspective, but it is not the dominant aspect of the game play.  Minor involvement in this concept is found in Maze, the basic game of Assassin! by Al Macintyre, Zombie variant of Assassin! by Al Macintyre, and Red Ace High by Marc Acres, a variant of Time Master from Pace Setter.  This concept is in several games, that Al does not know well enough to categorize their involvement, or there was serious evolution in the design at the time that Al started to make these evaluations, specifically Time Marines by Dan Reece and Alternate Realities by Kelly Coyle.

Alternate Realities as described above is not the conventional form of Time Travel Games that Al has experienced.  More often the games involve Vertical Loops of Consequences, in which player characters return to earlier moves and times to alter the results of their actions.  This conflict between the earlier realities, and the player moves, is resolved by uncreating the earlier situation and its consequences, reconsidering the records of the players whose future flow from the event now changed, in which the players are delivered of a blue print of what their current history reality now is, how it was (in their memory only in reality) to illustrate the significance of past changes, then the surviving players get another chance to meddle in the new historical situation, with this continuing loop of consequences for any further changes.

Classic novels on this concept include Chalker's Downtiming and Silverberg's Up The Line. 

This vertical loops of consequences concept is at the core of the Assassin! Time Travel Game System developed by Al Macintyre.  Basically they involve a single time stream universe for all the players, who travel in time past/future and in space, in which the universe is defined by the travels of the players, who then seek to explore and interfere with each other's time lines.

Maze is the basic introductory game of Assassin!  It familiarizes new players with the fundamental mechanics of the game, while banning anything that will actually change the history of the game, with time changes or branching.  It is basically locate and destroy the other players with the goal of leaving only one survivor.  It can be played without a game moderator.  Some Maze enthusiasts expanded the map to include more time space coordinates with different complexities.

In Zombie, you can loop back in your own life history, to encounter your younger self, and persuade that younger self to reconsider some actions that the older self found by experience to be unwise.  In Maze you are forbidden to cross your own past life line, so as to avoid this kind of entanglement.  Meeting yourself leads to a family tree of time clones in the same reality universe, cooperating in the battle of wits with other player similar families.  If it looks like someone is getting too close for comfort, you can uncreate a time sibling to complicate the detective game. 

Suppose player A clone-5 assassinates player B clone-3 at a particular point in both time and space, and the time lines of the folks involved, then later in the game, player C clone-2 assassinates player A clone-5 at a point in A5's time line before getting to the point where A5 zapped B3.  This means that A5 could not possibly have been there to do that, so B3 gets reincarnated into the game almost as if the assassination had not taken place, except player B has lost some turns of advantage.  All time clones are in mental telepathic communication with each other, and there is a ceiling on human mental ability to cope with this.  A game strategy is to kill off time clones, then after they are recreated, uncreate the circumstances of the killing off, meaning there are now too many time clones in one family linkage and they all go insane because there is too much data to handle.

Paradox involves time traveling battle groups, in which there are tactics directly related to time travel.  If ambushed, survivors can double back to help in the battle, ambushing the ambushers, which can involve similar loops for the other side.  Survivors of such a time skirmish may have gone on to another battle, but now the odds have changed because there are less time soldiers on a particular side.

Last update: 11/06/2002; 2:25:57 PM.