Time Travel & Divination

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: David Cheng (drcheng@sales.stern.nyu.edu)
Date: Thu 02 Dec 1993 - 18:32:04 EET


TIME TRAVEL I feel a great need to add my 'bah humbugs' to Geoff Gunner's. The whole time travel thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. One of the many reasons RQ appeals to me so much is that it is explicitly stated that even the gods cannot affect time. Thus, the weenie powergaming excesses are quashed.

When I first heard the theory that perhaps some of the demigod-like beings at the battle of Castle Blue were actually heroquesters coming back in time to influence the past, I immediately didn't like the whole idea.

I am perfectly happy using even the hint of time travel purely as a dramatic device. See Staffords writeup of Queen Leika Ballista's quest into Snakepipe Hollow: at the Duke of Disorder's dinner banquet, the more glasses of water drank, the longer Leika and crew would be away from the mundane world, by a factor of hours/days/weeks (WF #14).

While I have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on with this adventure, this bending of time as dramatic plot device struck me as kinda neat.

DIVINATION I am very uncomfortable with Colin Watson's ideas that you need to use sneakily-worded questions to get useful info out of your deity.

Here's my take:

I think the gods are very aware of the concept of time. It is the prison which they are all constricted by. Before Time, they had free action. To save the world, they grudgingly accepted to give this up. I might even say that all of the God Plane is bound to a timeline now too, but I'll probably catch plenty of flak for it.

My ideal guide for divination is the way it is presented in the CoPrax Biturian Varosh story. When he needs guidance, Biturian spends a few points of Divination and asks Issaries. Issaries doesn't send him confusing visions, or arcane max-7-word answers; he just answers the question! See the Chalana Arroy chapter:

Must I undertake this dreadful expedition? 

	No, but you've got your Lightbringer obligations to live up
	to.

Relating to what the gods know about their worshippers:

The way I see it, your god knows these things about you, and not much else:
* what you tell him through prayer

With a bit of effort, the god could probably figure out where you are, _roughly_. He does have the magical 'initiation-link' with each worshipper. This is not an exhaustive list; I'm probably forgetting a lot of little things.

(I've just gone back and re-read Colin's post). I agree with the second half a lot. I'm just not too big on ideas A-D, as presented.

DRAGON PASS A belated kudos to Joerg for all the effort he's put into expanding our board-gaming possibilities. Those hex maps must have been a real bear to develop.

More later,

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:32:32 EEST