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<blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 5095954" data-attributes="member: 29746"><p><strong>The Grand(?) Unified Theory of Game-World Physics</strong></p><p></p><p>So, over a week since my last post- apologies for that, my life's been rather busy lately. But tonight, having packed for my vacation starting tomorrow, I type this on my laptop before packing that away as well. Hopefully I'll be able to get a decent Net connection in Florida.</p><p></p><p>I did have other reasons for delaying this: one reason was that my last post got me thinking about that old Piers Anthony series again (<em>Incarnations of Immortality</em>, consisting of seven books in all), and went ahead and reread it through from the beginning. The other reason is that the physics I espoused within my game setting and universe is such a deeply ingrained part of my DM personality that it was difficult to pull it out for a semi-objective look that would be useful to other people. In other words, I couldn't really figure out where to begin or what to say.</p><p></p><p>It's best to remark upon the connections between my game world's physics and real-world modern physics, first, I think. So, I assumed within this game universe that String Theory/M-Theory is a close approximation. I won't detail that here, not just because the details are often confusing to people who don't do a lot of science reading, but also because whole books have been written on the topic that can explain it far better than I can. For connecting to what I'm about to detail here, my best recommendation is to read <em>The Fabric of Reality</em> by David Deutsch- it's an excellent book that also happens to dovetail neatly with many of the concepts I used in my game.</p><p></p><p>Putting aside a detailed discussion of quantum mechanics and the deeper concepts involved with it, there are two prime areas wherein I extrapolated from modern Earth physics to create the "science" I always referred to in my games. Broadly speaking, the first is the concept of time and dimensionality I used, while the second is the existence and nature of a fifth fundamental force in the universe.</p><p></p><p>Time and dimensionality were extremely important in my game, both for the structure of the broad game plot, and for the existence and functioning of time travel magic and technology effects. Now, since my First Ones were not (strictly speaking) dimensions in the mathematical sense, I'll mention here at the outset that when I use the word "dimension" in this post, I'm using it strictly in the mathematical/scientific sense. Which is to say, one of a set of mutually orthogonal coordinates for positioning objects and events into a larger framework, and for measuring their extent.</p><p></p><p>With this idea in mind, the first concept to "get" is that time really <strong>is</strong> a dimension- there is nothing special about the past or future vs. the present. The best way to picture this is to consider a movie's real, physical existence. It isn't literally a picture whose components move and change- what it really is, is a set of still pictures arranged carefully in a sequence such that adjacent pictures differ only slightly from each other; when flashed rapidly enough onto a screen, the illusion of motion and time is created. The "present" visible on the screen while one is watching the movie is not by any means all of the movie that really exists- even when you reach the end credits, the opening titles still exist. They just exist on a different portion of the film reel, or on an entirely different reel that was projected earlier and then set aside. In this context, time is a dimension equivalent to space in exactly the same way. When one reaches a particular point in history, the past points which came before it do not disappear- they still exist elsewhere in the universe. So too, the fact that the PCs haven't experienced the future yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist- it <strong>does</strong> already exist elsewhere, they just don't (usually) have the ability to look across time to see it before they reach it. The fact that the "still frames" are entire three-dimensional universe-sized "slices" of the larger framework is irrelevant: the frames of the past, present, and future are all equally real and exist regardless of anything that happens in any of them. To borrow a helpful geek-culture reference, this idea is what Dr. Manhattan refers to near the end of <em>Watchmen</em> when he says "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."</p><p></p><p>But, and here is where it starts to get tricky for most people to picture, <em>time is not the only dimension that exists beyond the three familiar spatial ones</em>. The way I usually refer to this, to ease understanding, is by saying that "time has more than one dimension." Strictly speaking, that statement is meaningless, because "time" is merely the name given to the fourth dimension that exists beyond length, width, and depth. The <strong>fifth</strong> dimension is usually named (by me) "possibility," though one could also call it "luck" or "fate." In effect, this fifth dimension is where the concept commonly known as "parallel universes" lives. That term, parallel universe, is also meaningless the way my statement about time being multidimensional is- and for much the same reason- because it implies a separation between universes where none truly exists. But to relate it best to the familiar framework of space and time, this dimension is best thought of as the reason multiple outcomes exist for any given unresolved event- if you roll a d6, the "result of 1" exists in one location along the fifth dimension, while the "result of 2" and "result of 4" exist elsewhere along it. Before you actually "run through" the event, there's no way to tell which one of the results will end up being "real" for you- but when you <strong>do</strong> get your result, it doesn't negate the existence of the others any more than the present time negates the past, or future. They, too, are "still frames" of four-dimensional reality which exist side-by-side stacked together in the fifth dimension. The existence of this dimension may be proven by the fact that the game is not a movie- its result is not determined in advance of the play. A holographic movie (if you presume such things exist) would be a purely four-dimensional construct; you could watch it a hundred times and never see the sequence of events change. But the "real" universe doesn't work that way. If you roll a die six times, the chances that it will come up the same way every time are <strong>minuscule</strong> unless you're using a loaded die. Thus, the "extra futures" exist in another dimension that's similar to time in that we can't see it directly, but its effects are obvious once you understand what you're looking at.</p><p></p><p>I suggested in game that a sixth dimension also exists, and explains the difference between "planes of existence," each of which contains an entire five-dimensional slice of reality that remains separate from the rest except under special circumstances. This dimension is even less easy to figure out/explain than the fourth and fifth, and in all honesty I never really fully explored the idea myself- so I'll just leave the above statement on its own.</p><p></p><p>Getting at last to the second point of departure from modern physics, it's important to consider first what the four fundamental forces are. They're called the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. All of these forces work on matter in broadly similar ways; they work on the principle of apparent/effective force weakening with distance from the source, and are carried by quantum particles in a generally wavelike manner between the objects they act upon. The two that people are most familiar with in the everyday world, of course, are electromagnetism (carried by the photon) and gravity (carried by the graviton, a particle which has yet to be spotted in modern particle accelerators), but the nuclear forces hold atoms together and control the transitions between elements among other things. And of course, an understanding of them allows construction of such things as nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. It's also worth considering the relative strength of these four forces; the strong nuclear force is by far the strongest, while the weak nuclear force mainly shows its effects in radioactive decay of certain elements (and both of those fall off in strength so rapidly above the atomic scale that they have almost negligible effects at the macroscopic level). Electromagnetism does not fall off nearly as much with distance the way the two nuclear forces do, and in fact has notable effects on the universe as a whole (the light reaching our telescopes from galaxies 13 billion light-years from Earth is a most obvious example), but it only works directly on charged particles, so doesn't affect matter nearly as obviously on the largest scales the way that gravity does. This is true, despite the fact that gravity's strength in energy terms is more than <em>10^20 times weaker</em> than the electromagnetic force. It has the greatest apparent effect on the wider universe, simply because it hits everything and has no charge dependence.</p><p></p><p>My game reality features a fifth force that's just as important and fundamental as the others- one which is even weaker than gravity by several orders of magnitude. Its effects on reality, though, are arguably greater still than gravity's, because its defining characteristic is that it does not spread out in every possible direction- it does not act in a random/deterministic fashion. Instead, this fifth force has <strong>intention</strong> and <strong>self-direction</strong> as an essential feature, and therefore can and does focus itself in a way no other force can match or overcome. This fifth force, called "life force" or "the living force," is carried by "vitons," and those little particles lead to the existence of most of the fantastic concepts that are a part of the game universe.</p><p></p><p>Souls, I explained to my players, are really just constructs of vitons existing on some greater framework and operating on it to cause changes within the universe. Creatures and plants- and in fact, anything at all that can be correctly called "alive-" are all that way because they carry embedded vitons within their physical matrix somewhere (typically within a brain, for animals). Multicellular lifeforms carry vitons in every cell of their bodies that's alive, and when the viton goes, that's when the cell dies. So, too, any creature that's a robot or Construct but is actually alive, is alive because it carries vitons embedded within its structure, and not because of some special piece or component within that structure (thus, it is possible for there to be robots which are not truly alive, but which act and think as if they were, while other robots that do carry vitons are truly living despite not having any cellular processes like organic lifeforms).</p><p></p><p>Vitons, like photons, come in several flavors- in a spectrum. The scale works like this: souls are the lowest level, essentially like radio waves on the Em spectrum; the next stage up is the "ki" or "qi" that classes like Monks and Ninjas tap into to power many of their fantastic abilities (this would be about the level of microwaves or infrared). Above that are magic and psionics, which are very close to each other in energy terms but react differently with different particles; this is essentially equivalent to the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (psionics would be around "orange," while magic would be about "green"). Above even this are the levels of viton referred to by mortals as Quintessence, or Primal Energy. Gods, in this framework, are just patterns of "primal-spectrum" vitons that have gathered "bodies" formed out of other vitons around their real, primary souls.</p><p></p><p>All of this talk of vitons, when you consider its consequences, explains at a stroke the reason why mortals can gain levels (they attract more vitons), use magic and psionics (they convert their existing vitons to a higher spectrum), need higher levels to do more powerful things (they need the greater number of vitons that come with higher levels in order to apply enough force via said vitons to accomplish the greater effects), and how mortals can draw power from and give power to (via worship) the gods. It's all just vitons converting between different portions of the spectrum. It also explains why magic items need XP during crafting; XP in this framework are simply a method of tracking the number of vitons a mortal or god has to work with, while the item clearly will be incapable of generating an effect based on magic (which is a manifestation of the life force) without having an embedded pattern of vitons within itself to generate the effect. Artifacts are more powerful because they contain QP rather than XP, and QP (being higher-spectrum vitons) can impart much greater energy upon interacting with matter.</p><p></p><p>But if mortals are patterns of vitons embedded in particles of regular matter, and gods are patterns of vitons embedded in larger structures of energy, what then are the beings that exist <strong>beyond</strong> gods? What are the Sidereals? This, too, I have an explanation for, but it's best saved for a future post.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="paradox42, post: 5095954, member: 29746"] [b]The Grand(?) Unified Theory of Game-World Physics[/b] So, over a week since my last post- apologies for that, my life's been rather busy lately. But tonight, having packed for my vacation starting tomorrow, I type this on my laptop before packing that away as well. Hopefully I'll be able to get a decent Net connection in Florida. I did have other reasons for delaying this: one reason was that my last post got me thinking about that old Piers Anthony series again ([I]Incarnations of Immortality[/I], consisting of seven books in all), and went ahead and reread it through from the beginning. The other reason is that the physics I espoused within my game setting and universe is such a deeply ingrained part of my DM personality that it was difficult to pull it out for a semi-objective look that would be useful to other people. In other words, I couldn't really figure out where to begin or what to say. It's best to remark upon the connections between my game world's physics and real-world modern physics, first, I think. So, I assumed within this game universe that String Theory/M-Theory is a close approximation. I won't detail that here, not just because the details are often confusing to people who don't do a lot of science reading, but also because whole books have been written on the topic that can explain it far better than I can. For connecting to what I'm about to detail here, my best recommendation is to read [I]The Fabric of Reality[/I] by David Deutsch- it's an excellent book that also happens to dovetail neatly with many of the concepts I used in my game. Putting aside a detailed discussion of quantum mechanics and the deeper concepts involved with it, there are two prime areas wherein I extrapolated from modern Earth physics to create the "science" I always referred to in my games. Broadly speaking, the first is the concept of time and dimensionality I used, while the second is the existence and nature of a fifth fundamental force in the universe. Time and dimensionality were extremely important in my game, both for the structure of the broad game plot, and for the existence and functioning of time travel magic and technology effects. Now, since my First Ones were not (strictly speaking) dimensions in the mathematical sense, I'll mention here at the outset that when I use the word "dimension" in this post, I'm using it strictly in the mathematical/scientific sense. Which is to say, one of a set of mutually orthogonal coordinates for positioning objects and events into a larger framework, and for measuring their extent. With this idea in mind, the first concept to "get" is that time really [B]is[/B] a dimension- there is nothing special about the past or future vs. the present. The best way to picture this is to consider a movie's real, physical existence. It isn't literally a picture whose components move and change- what it really is, is a set of still pictures arranged carefully in a sequence such that adjacent pictures differ only slightly from each other; when flashed rapidly enough onto a screen, the illusion of motion and time is created. The "present" visible on the screen while one is watching the movie is not by any means all of the movie that really exists- even when you reach the end credits, the opening titles still exist. They just exist on a different portion of the film reel, or on an entirely different reel that was projected earlier and then set aside. In this context, time is a dimension equivalent to space in exactly the same way. When one reaches a particular point in history, the past points which came before it do not disappear- they still exist elsewhere in the universe. So too, the fact that the PCs haven't experienced the future yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist- it [B]does[/B] already exist elsewhere, they just don't (usually) have the ability to look across time to see it before they reach it. The fact that the "still frames" are entire three-dimensional universe-sized "slices" of the larger framework is irrelevant: the frames of the past, present, and future are all equally real and exist regardless of anything that happens in any of them. To borrow a helpful geek-culture reference, this idea is what Dr. Manhattan refers to near the end of [I]Watchmen[/I] when he says "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends." But, and here is where it starts to get tricky for most people to picture, [I]time is not the only dimension that exists beyond the three familiar spatial ones[/I]. The way I usually refer to this, to ease understanding, is by saying that "time has more than one dimension." Strictly speaking, that statement is meaningless, because "time" is merely the name given to the fourth dimension that exists beyond length, width, and depth. The [B]fifth[/B] dimension is usually named (by me) "possibility," though one could also call it "luck" or "fate." In effect, this fifth dimension is where the concept commonly known as "parallel universes" lives. That term, parallel universe, is also meaningless the way my statement about time being multidimensional is- and for much the same reason- because it implies a separation between universes where none truly exists. But to relate it best to the familiar framework of space and time, this dimension is best thought of as the reason multiple outcomes exist for any given unresolved event- if you roll a d6, the "result of 1" exists in one location along the fifth dimension, while the "result of 2" and "result of 4" exist elsewhere along it. Before you actually "run through" the event, there's no way to tell which one of the results will end up being "real" for you- but when you [B]do[/B] get your result, it doesn't negate the existence of the others any more than the present time negates the past, or future. They, too, are "still frames" of four-dimensional reality which exist side-by-side stacked together in the fifth dimension. The existence of this dimension may be proven by the fact that the game is not a movie- its result is not determined in advance of the play. A holographic movie (if you presume such things exist) would be a purely four-dimensional construct; you could watch it a hundred times and never see the sequence of events change. But the "real" universe doesn't work that way. If you roll a die six times, the chances that it will come up the same way every time are [B]minuscule[/B] unless you're using a loaded die. Thus, the "extra futures" exist in another dimension that's similar to time in that we can't see it directly, but its effects are obvious once you understand what you're looking at. I suggested in game that a sixth dimension also exists, and explains the difference between "planes of existence," each of which contains an entire five-dimensional slice of reality that remains separate from the rest except under special circumstances. This dimension is even less easy to figure out/explain than the fourth and fifth, and in all honesty I never really fully explored the idea myself- so I'll just leave the above statement on its own. Getting at last to the second point of departure from modern physics, it's important to consider first what the four fundamental forces are. They're called the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. All of these forces work on matter in broadly similar ways; they work on the principle of apparent/effective force weakening with distance from the source, and are carried by quantum particles in a generally wavelike manner between the objects they act upon. The two that people are most familiar with in the everyday world, of course, are electromagnetism (carried by the photon) and gravity (carried by the graviton, a particle which has yet to be spotted in modern particle accelerators), but the nuclear forces hold atoms together and control the transitions between elements among other things. And of course, an understanding of them allows construction of such things as nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. It's also worth considering the relative strength of these four forces; the strong nuclear force is by far the strongest, while the weak nuclear force mainly shows its effects in radioactive decay of certain elements (and both of those fall off in strength so rapidly above the atomic scale that they have almost negligible effects at the macroscopic level). Electromagnetism does not fall off nearly as much with distance the way the two nuclear forces do, and in fact has notable effects on the universe as a whole (the light reaching our telescopes from galaxies 13 billion light-years from Earth is a most obvious example), but it only works directly on charged particles, so doesn't affect matter nearly as obviously on the largest scales the way that gravity does. This is true, despite the fact that gravity's strength in energy terms is more than [I]10^20 times weaker[/I] than the electromagnetic force. It has the greatest apparent effect on the wider universe, simply because it hits everything and has no charge dependence. My game reality features a fifth force that's just as important and fundamental as the others- one which is even weaker than gravity by several orders of magnitude. Its effects on reality, though, are arguably greater still than gravity's, because its defining characteristic is that it does not spread out in every possible direction- it does not act in a random/deterministic fashion. Instead, this fifth force has [B]intention[/B] and [B]self-direction[/B] as an essential feature, and therefore can and does focus itself in a way no other force can match or overcome. This fifth force, called "life force" or "the living force," is carried by "vitons," and those little particles lead to the existence of most of the fantastic concepts that are a part of the game universe. Souls, I explained to my players, are really just constructs of vitons existing on some greater framework and operating on it to cause changes within the universe. Creatures and plants- and in fact, anything at all that can be correctly called "alive-" are all that way because they carry embedded vitons within their physical matrix somewhere (typically within a brain, for animals). Multicellular lifeforms carry vitons in every cell of their bodies that's alive, and when the viton goes, that's when the cell dies. So, too, any creature that's a robot or Construct but is actually alive, is alive because it carries vitons embedded within its structure, and not because of some special piece or component within that structure (thus, it is possible for there to be robots which are not truly alive, but which act and think as if they were, while other robots that do carry vitons are truly living despite not having any cellular processes like organic lifeforms). Vitons, like photons, come in several flavors- in a spectrum. The scale works like this: souls are the lowest level, essentially like radio waves on the Em spectrum; the next stage up is the "ki" or "qi" that classes like Monks and Ninjas tap into to power many of their fantastic abilities (this would be about the level of microwaves or infrared). Above that are magic and psionics, which are very close to each other in energy terms but react differently with different particles; this is essentially equivalent to the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (psionics would be around "orange," while magic would be about "green"). Above even this are the levels of viton referred to by mortals as Quintessence, or Primal Energy. Gods, in this framework, are just patterns of "primal-spectrum" vitons that have gathered "bodies" formed out of other vitons around their real, primary souls. All of this talk of vitons, when you consider its consequences, explains at a stroke the reason why mortals can gain levels (they attract more vitons), use magic and psionics (they convert their existing vitons to a higher spectrum), need higher levels to do more powerful things (they need the greater number of vitons that come with higher levels in order to apply enough force via said vitons to accomplish the greater effects), and how mortals can draw power from and give power to (via worship) the gods. It's all just vitons converting between different portions of the spectrum. It also explains why magic items need XP during crafting; XP in this framework are simply a method of tracking the number of vitons a mortal or god has to work with, while the item clearly will be incapable of generating an effect based on magic (which is a manifestation of the life force) without having an embedded pattern of vitons within itself to generate the effect. Artifacts are more powerful because they contain QP rather than XP, and QP (being higher-spectrum vitons) can impart much greater energy upon interacting with matter. But if mortals are patterns of vitons embedded in particles of regular matter, and gods are patterns of vitons embedded in larger structures of energy, what then are the beings that exist [B]beyond[/B] gods? What are the Sidereals? This, too, I have an explanation for, but it's best saved for a future post. [/QUOTE]
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