Forums of the Megaverse®

From the Trandimensional TMNT there is mention briefly of time travel by the method most popularly known to have been used by the time traveler in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, and how energy intensive traveling backwards is (stating you'd probably need a small nuclear reactor to travel backwards at a rate of 30 seconds per minute). The thing is there's no reason to think someone wouldn't end up using such a method if from a time period or genius enough to harness a power source that could power said method as well as make use of other technology to make it more feasible (such as using Suspended Animation technology so that the traveler(s) could avoid the problems of the long time required to travel back decades or centuries).

Given the vast increase in the technology of the After The Bomb setting alone you'd think someone would have given this a try, as they had their golden age and should have had the energy-dense means of powering such a time machine as well as the medical technologyto allow for suspended animation. I'm curious if anyone's considered or tried this or what other suggestions or ideas they might have on this topic.

I've only sent a character back in time once before, but it's an idea I've wanted to revisit again if I can ever get another group together. The "slow way" would be an interesting option and sounds like something a crazy scientist might come up with in the AtB setting.

In a way it kind of reminds me of the method used in "Primer".

Rali wrote:I've only sent a character back in time once before, but it's an idea I've wanted to revisit again if I can ever get another group together. The "slow way" would be an interesting option and sounds like something a crazy scientist might come up with in the AtB setting.

In a way it kind of reminds me of the method used in "Primer".

An interesting movie, might check it out someday. Playing with time travel in a game isn't anything I've done to date but it's an interesting idea, and the idea of someone using the equivalent of a 'sleep ship' only to be a 'sleeper time machine' is a somewhat unique idea. Plus it does avoid the issues if you stick with the idea of time coils and set jump lengths as given in the book and be able to eventually reach any specific point in history.

Nightmask wrote:From the Trandimensional TMNT there is mention briefly of time travel by the method most popularly known to have been used by the time traveler in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, and how energy intensive traveling backwards is (stating you'd probably need a small nuclear reactor to travel backwards at a rate of 30 seconds per minute).

actually, real physics does allow it. you just need enough energy to exceed the speed of light in regular space. in other words, Infinity+1. TDTMNT dramaticaly understates the issue.

this is why in TDTMNT, like in real life, efforts at time travel look at ways of travel that sidestep normal physics. real life ideas include things like Krasnikov tubes (lanes of altered space layed down as you travel via normal space to a location. on the return trip, you travel through the tube, which 'rolls up' as you go, so you arrive before you started the return trip, not long after you left on the outbound leg of the journey.), and wormholes (which are fixed in space and time, so you'd generate a wormhole, fixing one end on earth, and the other you stick on a relativistic ships, which then goes on amulti-year round trip. say, 10 years. when it gets back, the two ends are now seperated by 10 years of time. so you can go forwards or backwards ten years just by walking through the right end of the wormhole.)

TDTMNT's "cycles" approach, while not based on any real world concept i'm aware of, is a rather clever way to not only justify timetravel, but also to prevent it from becoming too much of a tool for cheating. your not going to be getting into any bill&tedd paradox duels in TDTMNT.