L. Marcus Posted September 21, 2010 Report Share Posted September 21, 2010 Re: The Last Word Balance is the issue there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 22, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2010 Re: The Last Word A time travel game-cosm is something else entirely. Then you really need to assault people's sensibilities, because time travel completely demolishes the principle of causality. Now, you can mute that somewhat by positing local temporal inertia, but.... IMO the best thing to do in a time-travel game would be to have the PCs be on opposite sides of the same fight. I almost got the guys in my group to try this in a very simple way. You need to have them have a fight against bad guys in the past, and win, messing up the bad guys' operation. Then it turns out the result of THAT is catastrophic, and that result has to be reversed. One option is to go back again and fight themselves.... Instead they ended up going into the future, hijacking a commuter airship, using it to capture a congress of mathematicians (the guys who worked out the theoretical basis for time travel) and take those into a pocket dimension, thereby refuting the future which reaches back into the past to eliminate a threat and pre-empting the entire incident. Lots of fun with that one, with "chronoentropic lifeboats" accumulating everywhere ... mirror-finish Klein bottles which holds a person-size packet of space-time in stasis as the timestream disintegrates into basal chaos, and with luck the survivor ends up on another, viable timestream. Most such lifeboats are lost in the backwaters of eternity, swirling in unresolved probability vortexes of very low chronoentropic potential. After all, the lifeboats have been accumulating for an infinite number of forevers.... 1) a lot of the science stuff went over my head 2) the adventure sounds good 3) now add in "what if" parallel timelines that diverge from key events. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 22, 2010 Report Share Posted September 22, 2010 Re: The Last Word There was no science there, aside from "time travel demolishes causality". It's just good-sounding babble. Every GM can use a few skill adds in babble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 22, 2010 Report Share Posted September 22, 2010 Re: The Last Word And an audience who isn't skilled enough to point the babble out. ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 22, 2010 Report Share Posted September 22, 2010 Re: The Last Word Or think they can, say something, and then get really buried. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 22, 2010 Report Share Posted September 22, 2010 Re: The Last Word I've never lived through that, but I can see the lure in it. ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word There was no science there' date=' aside from "time travel demolishes causality". It's just good-sounding babble. Every GM can use a few skill adds in babble.[/quote'] So if time travel is possible then... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word If time travel is possible then if-then statements have no meaning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word Causality bye-bye. ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word So if time travel is possible then... If time travel is possible then if-then statements have no meaning. Philosophical conundrum meets philosophical gordian knot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darbor Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word If time travel is possible then if-then statements have no meaning. Not so. If-then statements are static in nature despite the apparent action language. It is not saying that "if this happens, then that will subsequently happen", it is saying that "if this state exists, then this other state must also exist." Oops, just saw your smiley. (note to self: don't take life so seriously. ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Re: The Last Word I have a love of self-refuting statements (or apparently self-refuting statements) and cannot pass up the opportunity to put one forth, even when not quite right. Things like "This statement is unprovably false" and similar absurdities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word *brainbroke* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word Things like "This statement is unprovably false" and similar absurdities. I understand the words, but not the context of the content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word Have you read Gödel, Escher, Bach? Much of that book deals with such things in a serious way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word Have you read Gödel' date=' Escher, Bach[/i']? Much of that book deals with such things in a serious way. No...not yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word Nudge it further up your list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Re: The Last Word Nudge it further up your list. Above the 30 other books I have already got? And I have got GEB yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted September 25, 2010 Report Share Posted September 25, 2010 Re: The Last Word I hope you bought pocketbooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 25, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2010 Re: The Last Word I hope you bought pocketbooks. Nope. Just softcovers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 25, 2010 Report Share Posted September 25, 2010 Re: The Last Word Well, there's lots of good books I haven't read either, so I better not complain too loudly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 26, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2010 Re: The Last Word Well' date=' there's lots of good books I haven't read either, so I better not complain too loudly.[/quote'] A d I'm still waiting for my 1.5kg academic tome of a book to arrive - the texts of early Greek philosophy if you are curious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darbor Posted September 26, 2010 Report Share Posted September 26, 2010 Re: The Last Word A d I'm still waiting for my 1.5kg academic tome of a book to arrive - the texts of early Greek philosophy if you are curious. Cool, I love early Greek philosophy. I like to see how some of the earliest great thinkers tried to figure out the world without the benefit of modern science. And I still remember reading for the first time the early thinkers describing man's strengths, weaknesses, foibles and interactions and being amazed that through all those years what they said holds up very well. On the subject of great books that I own and haven't read yet: Goedel, Escher, Bach - I think I got about 2/3 through this and lost interest. It was just too much of the same stuff over and over. A New Kind of Science - Has to be high on the all time list of books bought and never read. I've read about 50 pages or so...just enough to get the general idea. Shakespeare's Complete Works - I've actually read about five or six plays and most of the sonnets but that leaves a lot left. Several Thomas Mann Books - The Magic Mountain was quite enough effort to get through, thank you. Being and Nothingness (Sartre), Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) - has anyone actually read these books that didn't have to for a test? The only one on this list that I have any intention of reading is more Shakespeare. Sometime soon I will get around to it again. There are several more. But I do take pride in having read most of the books in my library. I just get carried away at used book stores and garage sales and there's no way I will read them all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted September 26, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2010 Re: The Last Word Cool' date=' I love early Greek philosophy. I like to see how some of the earliest great thinkers tried to figure out the world without the benefit of modern science. And I still remember reading for the first time the early thinkers describing man's strengths, weaknesses, foibles and interactions and being amazed that through all those years what they said holds up very well. [/quote'] I like that some are labeled scientists, others philosophers and others have a mysticism to them. On the subject of great books that I own and haven't read yet: Goedel, Escher, Bach - I think I got about 2/3 through this and lost interest. It was just too much of the same stuff over and over. Oh, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sure Cancer will respond. A New Kind of Science - Has to be high on the all time list of books bought and never read. I've read about 50 pages or so...just enough to get the general idea. never heard of this book before, and I think your experience is pretty common judging from the comments on Amazon. One to skip I think. 'linked', 'sync', & 'complexity' are three books that Amazon recommends when searching for the book. With that in mind, you may find Ervin Laszlo's Science and the Akashic Field a better read. Shakespeare's Complete Works - I've actually read about five or six plays and most of the sonnets but that leaves a lot left. I have a copy but haven't read any plays nor 'his' sonnets. Several Thomas Mann Books - The Magic Mountain was quite enough effort to get through, thank you. Never heard of the author. One to research later methinks. Being and Nothingness (Sartre), Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) - has anyone actually read these books that didn't have to for a test? Editors & publishers come to mind. The only one on this list that I have any intention of reading is more Shakespeare. Sometime soon I will get around to it again. I bought Watchmen to give myself the multidimensional narrative of Shakespeare but didn't get through it all. There are several more. But I do take pride in having read most of the books in my library. I just get carried away at used book stores and garage sales and there's no way I will read them all. I get carried away at online book stores and conventional retail book stores, so like you I won't read them all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Re: The Last Word I've read A New Kind of Science and while it's fun if you're a numbercrunching geek, I can also see putting it down after fifty pages. While I made it all the way through, I also haven't picked it up again since, which is a little unusual. G-E-B does bring up the same points repeatedly, which is intended and part of the point, I think. There are some subtle differences between reiterations. Can't say I've ever read any Sartre (which would offend my colleagues across campus), though I have read Comte (albeit for a very specific purpose). A little Plato, not much. My recreational reading tends to be stuff found on the history shelves rather than the literature or fiction section (though I know that at times the placement of a book in one or the other of those two is idiosyncratic). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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