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GMs: My conspiracy twist...

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Thu, 2013-08-22 20:06

Nevil Clavain Nevil Clavain's picture

GMs: My conspiracy twist...

Spoilers. Obviously. As in, if you're in my campaign - don't read this. Ok. Here's my loose outline / take for my overarching plot: My players are getting moved to Titan after playing some of the official modules (Ego-Hunter first, then Glory. Fun twist - plop the former member of the infected gang in the Martian triads instead, and you can link these up really well). Why is Titan important? The PC's are supporting Titan/TAU spaceflight endeavors and protecting from threats from various quarters - exsurgents, ultimates, ex-human piracy, etc. because Firewall cares a lot about human space exploration. The twist, the behind the scenes problem - is that the Pandora gates are fake. As a transportation system, they don't go anywhere. Instead, they're a really advanced simulation with a matter printing system that creates whatever went in. Devised by an alien civilization way more advanced than ours, we haven't reverse engineered them yet to figure out that they're a red herring. We'd probably have to dismantle one and no one who controls a gate is game for that - they're too valuable. What's in there is real, but it doesn't match the present state of the universe. They're states of contact preserved by the ETI. In the ETI's own language, this distributed system's name would best translate as "A Catalogue of All Worlds." It's a pretty exhaustive simulation, sufficiently advanced that human beings can't tell it apart from the real thing (if you're familiar with the Simulation argument in philosophy, this should be relatively straightforward). This is why real space exploration is important. If humanity can reach out into the universe, they'll realize things are not in sync. Especially if they can get to a planet they've actually 'visited' via Pandora Gate. Firewall has suspicions that something's amiss with the Pandora Gates - but they're not sure what. There are various theories out there, but they know that spaceflight / travel at ordinary relativistic speeds is required. (in my game, also as an aside, Factors do not have FTL. This whole thing actually started as a means by which to make the setting more 'hard.' I wanted to remove FTL and modify some things that don't quite match modern physics). For the ETI, the pandora gates and exsurgent virus work as a distributed intelligence. In fact, they are, to some extent, the ETI - at least, one of its manifestations. The Pandora Gates give them a range of simulations through which to study transhumanity and its various manifestations. Parts of the ETI are also a distributed intelligence that thinks across scales sufficiently vast that this whole Fall to present nonsense is noticing a fly for a second or two. What I'm shopping for a bit, here, are issues where this might cause problems/conflicts with core. Let me say the way Quantum entanglement works in EP has already been a little modified by my house rules and Q-bit entangled comms are not player accessible at the moment. This removed, the question is: If you can't reverse engineer the system that creates the simulation and matter printing effect, is there really any way to tell the difference between real transportation to an exoplanet and back through quantum technobabble or a simulated travel to an exoplanet in which you print out whatever matter you brought back with you on your return? Will this interpretation of the Pandora Gates create discrepancies I'm not taking into account? Are there validations of the Pandora Gates as having real effects in the core I haven't considered? I don't have Gatecrashing on hand yet, but will probably grab it. Thoughts? Problems? Other cool things I could tie in using this as a premise?

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But nobody pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you're not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven’t I learned that by now, if I've learned anything? Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

Fri, 2013-08-23 04:37

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Nevil Clavain wrote:Will this

Nevil Clavain wrote:
Will this interpretation of the Pandora Gates create discrepancies I'm not taking into account? Are there validations of the Pandora Gates as having real effects in the core I haven't considered? I don't have Gatecrashing on hand yet, but will probably grab it.

You can grab a free copy of Gatecrashing here: http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/ Feel free to examine it until you are ready to buy. ---- In regards to problems with the Gates being merely simulations, there are a number of problems. Mind you, it would be far easier to edit out these problems than to write a new book. If they were simulations, why aren't there any simulations of intelligent species? If I were to enter a simulation of France during the 1960s, or the early Roman Empire, I would expect there to be people there. Thus far, the only real evidence of intelligent life is the ruins of civilizations that apparently died out. A possible explanation is that transhumanity is subconsciously thinking about the recent near extinction of their species, and the Gates are able to read such thoughts, so any simulation they enter is flavored by death and destruction. People have came back with objects. Some of it is advanced technology. For instance, there are these devices that can defy gravity. If I recall correctly, some Titianian city use a pair of these to hang their national flag in mid air. Another example is that a group of gatecrashers have took apart an alien ship and have reassembled it in our solar system and now use it as a bar. Many hypercorps are involved with mining projects to gather raw materials. Its possible to travel through the gates in our solar system and travel through many gates until eventually we reach another gate in our solar system. In fact, a pair of gates in our solar system are able to connect directly to each other (I forget which pair though). It would be bizarre for someone to "return" the way it came through the gate networks, be interrogated because they were gone for a long time, and claim that there was a way to the other gate through the gate network, only to find there are no records of it anywhere. People have died beyond the gates. In some cases, they lacked backups so they suffered final death. It would very tragic if these death all happened in a simulation. Wouldn't there be safety protocols? If there was sufficient doubt as to whether or not an alien species (to the ETI) might discover the gates before they were ready to properly understand them, then wouldn't safety protocols be on by default?

Fri, 2013-08-23 07:39

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

There are a few hints the

There are a few hints the characters may trip over. The biggest is, it is possible to hop between Sol gates (after a bunch of change-overs). So if I go in the Mars Gate and come out the Fissure Gate, but people at the Fissure Gate never seem me, that would prove the true nature of the gates. That's an easy thing for you to fix, though. The next thing is radio visibility. Supposing I pop out on Alpha Proxima and set up a big radio tower there (truly massive) which I point back at Sol. In a few years, Sol should get my transmissions. If they don't, that's a sign that's something wrong, although "I'm in a simulation" may not be the first thought. There may be failures in the simulation itself or the manufactured artifacts, such as a homogeneity of isotopes, oddities about the molecular structure, etc. Perhaps the biggest question is what I see of the sky on the other side. If this is a simulation paused at a moment a million years ago, the star positions will be different. Those star positions will let you determine location and time pretty easily. However, if the time is paused within the last few hundred years, you'll need some heavy duty equipment to determine that difference.

Fri, 2013-08-23 18:13

Nevil Clavain Nevil Clavain's picture

Good problems!

These are good issues - here are some thoughts at the moment.

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If they were simulations, why aren't there any simulations of intelligent species? If I were to enter a simulation of France during the 1960s, or the early Roman Empire, I would expect there to be people there. Thus far, the only real evidence of intelligent life is the ruins of civilizations that apparently died out.

For this one, I'm going with the idea that the gates try to seem consistent with Fermi's paradox. If there's life all over the place, then why hasn't life already come through the gates? Why hasn't anyone seen the TITANs? Having life in the gates seems to create more problems than it solves.

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People have came back with objects. Some of it is advanced technology. For instance, there are these devices that can defy gravity. If I recall correctly, some Titianian city use a pair of these to hang their national flag in mid air. Another example is that a group of gatecrashers have took apart an alien ship and have reassembled it in our solar system and now use it as a bar. Many hypercorps are involved with mining projects to gather raw materials.

I see this as still consistent with the matter printing function. The gate prints out whatever people bring out with them. In essence, the gates are designed (or act intelligently, rather) to trick people into thinking they're a medium of interstellar travel.

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Its possible to travel through the gates in our solar system and travel through many gates until eventually we reach another gate in our solar system. In fact, a pair of gates in our solar system are able to connect directly to each other (I forget which pair though). It would be bizarre for someone to "return" the way it came through the gate networks, be interrogated because they were gone for a long time, and claim that there was a way to the other gate through the gate network, only to find there are no records of it anywhere.

I'll have to think on this one. Currently my thinking is that the gates pass messages to each other and other things (including exsurgents and their forms) as part of a giant distributed intelligence occupying the solar system. So, a gate could essentially egocast someone to another gate, using its own form of signaling through intermediaries. The probably is the perceived instantaneous transfer, but the gate could anticipate or handle this in some way. This is probably the biggest thing I'll have to address.

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People have died beyond the gates. In some cases, they lacked backups so they suffered final death. It would very tragic if these death all happened in a simulation. Wouldn't there be safety protocols? If there was sufficient doubt as to whether or not an alien species (to the ETI) might discover the gates before they were ready to properly understand them, then wouldn't safety protocols be on by default?

Well, the gates are a nefarious entity. Their only goal is to properly simulate interstellar travel to satisfy the curiousity of the intelligences they're studying (transhumanity) as they make determiniations about them. They are less concerned about other ETIs than we are about killing bacteria in a petri dish. So it is very possible that people have suffered final death only in a simulation.

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There are a few hints the characters may trip over. The biggest is, it is possible to hop between Sol gates (after a bunch of change-overs). So if I go in the Mars Gate and come out the Fissure Gate, but people at the Fissure Gate never seem me, that would prove the true nature of the gates. That's an easy thing for you to fix, though.

True. I guess I'll have to contemplate whether I want to provide a means of gate-to-gate communication that can simulate instantaneous travel or turn off this ability of gates in my world.

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The next thing is radio visibility. Supposing I pop out on Alpha Proxima and set up a big radio tower there (truly massive) which I point back at Sol. In a few years, Sol should get my transmissions. If they don't, that's a sign that's something wrong, although "I'm in a simulation" may not be the first thought.

This is somewhere I'll have to check the source material. I like this idea, but at a longer time scale than Proxima Centauri or somewhere that near. I'm not sure where the gates go in canon yet and where they'll go in my take.

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There may be failures in the simulation itself or the manufactured artifacts, such as a homogeneity of isotopes, oddities about the molecular structure, etc.

This is where I sneaking in exsurgent stuff periodically. I'm assuming the gates are sufficiently advanced so as not to make certain mistakes when 'printing' matter, but they can be deliberate in their designs - sabotaging things, infecting things, propagating themselves and their interests, etc.

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Perhaps the biggest question is what I see of the sky on the other side. If this is a simulation paused at a moment a million years ago, the star positions will be different. Those star positions will let you determine location and time pretty easily. However, if the time is paused within the last few hundred years, you'll need some heavy duty equipment to determine that difference.

Good point. I may hand wave it as the simulations deliberately spoofing current star positions to make it seem like the present. There's always the problem of butterfly effect stuff - e.g., think of the Anasazi pictogram showing a supernova - what if you fudge this and the timeline doesn't line up any more for an exoplanet's dead civilization's analogue? But maybe that's exactly the level of clue that can lie in wait for players who are suspicious prior to me dropping more forced clues. Thanks a lot for raising these points! They're exactly the type of issues I'm trying to anticipate and account for.

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Fri, 2013-08-23 18:20

Nevil Clavain Nevil Clavain's picture

Ha!

Ha! Sorry, I just started looking into the PDF:

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Vast Simulation: One philosopher has suggested that all of the experiences people have had traveling through wormholes are not real but part of some massive virtual reality simulation run by an unknown cosmic entity. According to this idea, the gates are in fact nodes or routers in some sort of galactic computer network. This theory has led to speculation that other intelligences are living within this computer network, monitoring and analyzing transhumanity.

So much for my idea being novel! It's strengthened my resolve to stick to it, though, and maybe more of the flavor text / seed stuff will point to the possibility.

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Mon, 2013-08-26 10:46

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Nevil Clavain wrote:The twist

Nevil Clavain wrote:
The twist, the behind the scenes problem - is that the Pandora gates are fake. As a transportation system, they don't go anywhere. Instead, they're a really advanced simulation with a matter printing system that creates whatever went in. Devised by an alien civilization way more advanced than ours, we haven't reverse engineered them yet to figure out that they're a red herring.

Yay! Somebody else who agrees with me! (I think I might be that philosopher mentioned in Gatecrashing :-) )

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For the ETI, the pandora gates and exsurgent virus work as a distributed intelligence. In fact, they are, to some extent, the ETI - at least, one of its manifestations. The Pandora Gates give them a range of simulations through which to study transhumanity and its various manifestations. Parts of the ETI are also a distributed intelligence that thinks across scales sufficiently vast that this whole Fall to present nonsense is noticing a fly for a second or two.

I think this makes sense. The computational substrate might be in the gates or elsewhere, and it is likely *vast*. There could be entire computational universes in there. But transhumanity is just dialling the obvious first menu choice.

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What I'm shopping for a bit, here, are issues where this might cause problems/conflicts with core. Let me say the way Quantum entanglement works in EP has already been a little modified by my house rules and Q-bit entangled comms are not player accessible at the moment.

The gates presumably need to act on a femtotech scale, since they allow antimatter to pass through. That kind of supertech is not too far off from being able to handle entanglement too - when communicating from a "remote planet" the qubits used are actually in the gate system.

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If you can't reverse engineer the system that creates the simulation and matter printing effect, is there really any way to tell the difference between real transportation to an exoplanet and back through quantum technobabble or a simulated travel to an exoplanet in which you print out whatever matter you brought back with you on your return?.

If we assume the tech is able to do antimatter and entangled quantum pairs, there is not much it cannot do. But maybe it doesn't do quantum gravity: small black holes, gravity waves, stabilized cosmic strings and other things that distort spacetime are not faithfully copied. So while on Penrose a beam of coherent gravity waves get sent towards the open gate - but while people on the Penrose side gets torn apart by it, nothing comes out on the other side. Maybe just great filtering, but next mission to Foobar XI finds these nifty portable wormholes - which all disappear when brought through a gate. Same thing is later found with the cosmic string artefacts littering Baaz III, despite them producing a plethora of good data in the local lab. Another issue might be the computational power of the simulations. Running a simspace for a few thousand transhumans is nothing, but when a Promethean tries to build a M-brain it runs into a speed limit: the sim slows down and gets out of sync with the real world. One issue is time distortions if you pass through a loop of gates from Titan to (say) Mars. Will you arrive when you should, or would an atomic clock carried with you show a lag that cannot be explained from gravity fields and velocities? Maybe the gates *are* proper FTL (for information), but they could also be STL and communicate using undetectable channels.

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Mon, 2013-08-26 14:10

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Nevil Clavain wrote:I see

Nevil Clavain wrote:
I see this as still consistent with the matter printing function. The gate prints out whatever people bring out with them. In essence, the gates are designed (or act intelligently, rather) to trick people into thinking they're a medium of interstellar travel.

Mind explaining how you think this matter printing technology works? The matter used to create objects (or even people) need to come from somewhere. Are the gates able to store matter (in which case, they store a lot of what they think they should need)? Are they able to transmute matter (to lead into gold, carbon into gold, etc). Can they create matter somehow?

Arenamontanus wrote:
One issue is time distortions if you pass through a loop of gates from Titan to (say) Mars. Will you arrive when you should, or would an atomic clock carried with you show a lag that cannot be explained from gravity fields and velocities? Maybe the gates *are* proper FTL (for information), but they could also be STL and communicate using undetectable channels.

If the gates *are* able to transport one person to another gate, then wouldn't the gates be able to complete their function that transhumans think they can do? I mean, if they can get to Mars from Titan, then couldn't they reach an actual location outside the solar system? An explanation that covers both bases is, if their function is to fool people, then actually transporting people across the solar system would help in that regard. They would never connect to a location outside the solar system, unless it were part of a plan to further fool people. Maybe the gates will actually connect to nearby solar systems, if only to try to fool people into thinking they don't need actual ships to get anywhere. If successful, a civilization might never travel beyond 1 or 2 star system in any direction because they are convinced they don't need to. It might not fool them forever, but it might buy the time the ETI needs to make a perfect solution instead of reacting now. This assumes that the gates have actual FTL abilities. If it can only provide an illusion of such abilities, then this illusion can be broken the moment that transhumanity reaches other stars by ships and begins to find inconsistencies. In regards to making it appear that the gates are able to connect to each other through a gate network, perhaps the gates communicate and creates "forks" of everyone running around in the "Network". That way, if someone does travel the network to reach another gate in our solar system, then the gate that is the intended destination can print the "fork" and delete the other. Of course, this might lead to problems if a person aborts their decision to travel through a gate due to a change of instructions due QE comm (at the very last second), so that the gate prints a person or a thing before it realizes that the person its printing has aborted. Of course the gates are already known to be wonky, so someone exiting through the gate before the decision was changed, but then a few days later the other "fork" makes it home after traveling back through the network might not seem too strange (strange things have already happened). Also, the gates might be able to delete an offending "fork" if it felt it were convenient (people have disappeared and reappeared, so why not duplicate or do some other strange effect?). I need to think about details about this forking method. Do they really forks at 2 gates, or do they only need forks at whatever gate is "closer" as determined by the "gate network"? I'm thinking that the gates should never allow someone travel faster through the "gate network" than the gates can make forks, send them to other gates, and then accelerate time so they catch up so they are in sync. By the way, the way I'm thinking the forks should be handled is to try to feed them the same input data so they end up the same.

Mon, 2013-08-26 17:48

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

DivineWrath wrote:Mind

DivineWrath wrote:
Mind explaining how you think this matter printing technology works? The matter used to create objects (or even people) need to come from somewhere. Are the gates able to store matter (in which case, they store a lot of what they think they should need)? Are they able to transmute matter (to lead into gold, carbon into gold, etc). Can they create matter somehow?

Maybe they do have wormholes - but only to off-site matter storage sites. Or they do it by quantum teleporting it via the dark matter sector. Or they do indeed have a neutronium core for their feedstock, and can get depleted. Supertech can get weird and fun.

Quote:

Arenamontanus wrote:
One issue is time distortions if you pass through a loop of gates from Titan to (say) Mars. Will you arrive when you should, or would an atomic clock carried with you show a lag that cannot be explained from gravity fields and velocities? Maybe the gates *are* proper FTL (for information), but they could also be STL and communicate using undetectable channels.
If the gates *are* able to transport one person to another gate, then wouldn't the gates be able to complete their function that transhumans think they can do? I mean, if they can get to Mars from Titan, then couldn't they reach an actual location outside the solar system?

I think that might be an option, although being a no-FTL kind of person I like the idea of them only able to do it STL. So you can go to the real Alpha Centauri if you find the code, but the turn around time is 8.6 years. Meanwhile sim Alpha is easy to reach and has an obvious code. The idea that the gates are a trap is growing on me. Seed the galaxy with apparent easy transport, learn from the users, absorb them, keep the galaxy clean and empty.

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Sun, 2013-09-01 16:48

Nevil Clavain Nevil Clavain's picture

Quote:Quote:Mind explaining

Quote:
Quote:
Mind explaining how you think this matter printing technology works? The matter used to create objects (or even people) need to come from somewhere. Are the gates able to store matter (in which case, they store a lot of what they think they should need)? Are they able to transmute matter (to lead into gold, carbon into gold, etc). Can they create matter somehow?
Maybe they do have wormholes - but only to off-site matter storage sites. Or they do it by quantum teleporting it via the dark matter sector. Or they do indeed have a neutronium core for their feedstock, and can get depleted. Supertech can get weird and fun.

I think that's the angle I'll take. Basically, there is no giant wormhole, it only works at the subatomic level anyways, it's assembling and disassembling - so if matter and energy are transmitted from somewhere, how would you really know where they were going? Especially if that transmission is instantaneous? The atomic clock transmission idea is interesting. I'm still mulling this over - this is the long, slow burn underlying where the campaign is leading so I have a while to think on it. I have a core group of players who are pretty on the ball with stuff - we just finished my slightly modded run of Glory and I had one player anticipate the solar winds as the transmission angle the former White Khanhs were setting up when they figured out their planned route. There's enough comp sci and space industry at the table (this is front range CO) that too many dents in the hard scifi shell can kill the suspension of disbelief for players. There's enough fuzzy tolerance on the boundary there that I have wiggle room, but I can't leave gaping holes in the underlying plot. A lot of this has to do with time scales and the pacing of the campaign. In terms of the bases of discovery (and there are some good ones here) - manned or 'seed' spaceflight with synthmorphs and egos and embryos, etc. - is critical. Transhumanity can't rely on the gates, they have to explore other options. At some point, ICS-201 [Crystal Wind] - the Plurality's STL travel effort is going to broadcast a final distress signal that only reaches the solar system in a patchy form. But that will be some time, maybe 30 years on from 10 AF (but only briefly along in the journey). Rumors of sabotage? Interception by a Factor vessel? Hell, my players may all quit before then ; ) The secret to the Factors' drives is not that they are FTL but that they can get up to relativistic speeds, 0.8, 0.9 c, bringing in the messiness of time dilation in all its glory. The Factors are benign, at least this group (maybe other factions are not? I'm still thinking this out), but other Factors may be different, not because they're ridiculous factionalism, but because they are just so out of sync. My long term plot goal - adventure path level for anyone who has played PF - looks like this: (1) tour of EP - Ego Hunter (start), Glory, other exsurgent, exhuman threats, Ozma, etc. (2) seeds of things being wrong with the pandora gates, distress signal implying destruction of Crystal Wind on its way out of the solar system (maybe Factors will be implied, this may be a red herring created by the ETI, not sure on details yet). Sabotage of Titanian shipyards by Ozma, rumors that Ozma has kidnapped a Factor. (3) Infiltration of Ozma facility, there will be a dead Factor and several records of scan attempts of it. Logs to be found of anomalous occurences linked to the gates and Ozma's suspicion that the gates are not what they seem to be. More events with Ozma. Maybe an upping the ante exsurgent infection leading to nuclear detonation on a habitat like Locus or Extropia. (4) Firewall will determine that Ozma was/is on the right path and they need to unlock the secrets of Factor propulsion / lighthugging engines. A successful outcome will lead to Firewall becoming an entity on a slower relative timescale than the rest of Transhumanity as it continues to protect transhumanity's survival and expansion into the solar system. If anyone's read Alastair Reynold's House of Suns, not unlike the role the Lines serve. I haven't anticipated what that campaign might look like, but it would be well past EP's core setting and into uncharted territory.

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