Spoiler Alert/003

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS SECTION IS CONSIDERED OOC KNOWLEDGE! Do not reference information on this page without speaking to staff first.

Happy New Year everybody, in more ways than one. Twisted has moved on to it's next calendar year as we've moved on from 2016, and since it follows the same theme...

Temporal Theories - The Passage of Time on Twisted

Issue 003: January 17th, 2016

Before we step away from Chronos completely and start getting fully into Twisted, let's talk about one last thing. Time itself. On ChronoMUCK this was simple. It had a start, it had a finish. We had maps for each major time period and frankly the only reason we didn't open them all from the start was because it was so much that it was super easy to get lost and never find another player. Plus it was hard to find reasons to make the time periods accessible to everyone. They just became vast, empty graveyards filled with unfinished ideas.

Twisted on the other hand was much more simple. No time travel. Just one map with everyone existing and moving at basically the same speed. Well, at least that's how we viewed it at first. One of the more interesting things that evolved from Twisted was the realization that sometimes characters in private scenes would see only a day or so pass, but then they'd go out onto the grid to find that weeks or months had passed around them forcing everyone to come up with an explanation for that lost time. Originally our idea was just to blame it on the chaotic nature of Twisted, but as Twisted was described as becoming more stable other ideas needed to be found.

Primarily the concept of time on Twisted came about from reading the Sluggy Freelance archives. Sluggy Freelance is a bizarre on-going webcomic full of terrible puns and shockingly elaborate plotlines. One in particular dealt with people who'd been lost outside of time and the way that reality worked there. Not only would it work for Twisted, but it actually helped explain a lot of things brought about by players coming and going and the discrepancy between the amount of time that passes between different player/character combinations. If you're not aware of what I mean by discrepancy, try not having your character talk about "yesterday" when the preceding scene went on for several RL days to someone who RP'd each of those real life days as though they happened naturally.

This is one of those moments where I have to sit and remind people that what we say in these Spoiler Alert articles IS NOT PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. Your characters don't know about this stuff. There's little to no way for them to find out. This is one of those tongue-in-cheek things we have going on in the background. So far only two characters have ever made comments about this. One being Setsuna - the Guardian of Time as her job is directly impacted by this, and the second is Yoiko Hax - a Star Trek engineer who spent several scenes testing and experimenting. DO NOT REFER TO THIS INFORMATION IN CHARACTER WITHOUT ADVANCE APROVAL FROM STAFF.

So how does time work on Twisted?

Normal time is a line. It starts. It ends. The bits in between happen in chronological order. We refer to moving along this line as the flow of time. The flow of time does not exist on Twisted. Twisted is too chaotic for this. This means that time travel is impossible on Twisted. Knowing the future is also impossible. Making simulations and gauging what MIGHT happen is possible.

On Twisted time, much like that story arc mentioned from Sluggy Freelance, is more of a substance. Instead of flowing along it like a river, people store it inside themselves. Each person on Twisted has a phantom amount of time inside them. As long as it is there, they perceive time as though it where flowing naturally. When time runs out, they literally freeze in place - unable to continue existing until it is replenished. Doing so is simple enough. Being around other people 'recharges' this time. Large cities then become self-sustaining bubbles of this time energy. However once you leave the city your clock starts to run down again.

Going by this logic people lost to the wastelands simply cease to exist - much like players who leave and come back to a character further down the road. They don't always have to age, they aren't always aware of the passage of time. With this in place - they didn't vanish, they were frozen.

It also means characters who go off on scenes of their own will begin to slow down. Time for the main city will pass normally but for them days might pass like hours - like a slow scene that takes a week to complete.

In the end, this is all just a gimmicky excuse and I will fully admit that. But it's an excuse that not only makes sense on Twisted but explains plotholes we normally wouldn't have ever addressed. It also helps us prevent time traveling characters who muck about in time and either try to force retcons on people or tell someone too much about their futures.

We keep this to ourselves because we don't want to see it abused in character, and we don't want to have to write up another paragraph on the rules explaining it for potential players to get confused and leave over. It's just another background plot detail of Twisted. Besides, the last thing we want is time pirates.

ADDENDUM: Since apparently it's going to be an issue let me point out something. This whole vanishing into the wastelands and running out of time thing? It's a moniker we use for explaining lost characters. Many logs have been posted of people going out solo into the wastelands and nothing happened to them. Why? Theoretically it would take days, weeks, months... maybe years before it would happen. One would not just go out there and turn to stone overnight. A reminder to everyone on that - abusing the information here is powergaming and it comes with harsh consequences. There are reasons we don't make this publicly known information. The Spoiler Alert articles are me extending trust onto the playerbase. Destroy that trust and you will have one very angry headwiz on your hands.