Time Travel (was [Torg] Re: Axioms and PE)

[Chad Dickhaut]

--- Jasyn Jones <jasynj at gmail.com> wrote:

> Time travel is a genre, nor a "33" tool. 
> 
> It can happen at nearly any axiom level, if the GM/writer/publisher  
> wishes to introduce it.

I disagree that time travel is a genre; I think that it is more akin to
a plot device used within the genres of science fiction and fantasy. 
While there are entire novels, movies, and even series that revolve
around time travel, very often it is used as a one-shot episode plot or
as a DEM to get the Heroes out of a seemingly hopeless jam.  Yes, there
are stories in which the time travel is central to the plot (e.g. the
Back to the Future series, The Butterfly Effect), but in many cases it
merely serves a vehicle to take the Heroes to the next plot hook (e.g.
Quantum Leap, The Time Machine).  

While it's true that GM’s or author’s fiat can introduce time travel at
nearly any axiom level, this doesn't mean that it isn’t useful to place
time travel on the spectrum of axioms.  Indeed, the axioms provide a
metric to explain why it is that time travel is not more common in the
settings in which it is used.  In many cases time travel may be
explained by an anomalous (that is, contradictory) tool (e.g. Wells’s
time machine, Doc Brown’s flux capacitor, Evan Treborn’s psychic
time-hopping ability), and in others it may be explained by the time
travel’s point of origin possessing sufficiently advanced technology or
magic (or whatever) to support time travel.  Either way it seems to me
that the paradigm of “time travel is possible at high axiom, possibly
available in other cases through world laws” is a more satisfying
approach than merely invoking GM’s/author’s fiat every time it is used,
and more in line with Torg’s metaphysics (that is, unless you want time
travel to be a transcendent effect akin to PE and the Everlaws).

Just my take, mind you.

Chad



       
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