WotG RP: How to handle the past?

With people RPing again, questions are bound to pop up. One big one is, "We screwed up the past once, what's stopping us from doing it again?" Obviously we need some mechanism that will both prevent another catastrophe, yet allow for any possible WotG mission plot changes to kick in. Ayvaen and I were discussing possibilities before he went on hiatus, but we never reached a 100% solid set-in-stone conclusion. However, one notable theory did spring out of our discussions, which I now propose as a solution.

Changing the entire world to the alt-setting, then changing BACK created tremendous stress on the timeline between Then and Now. The timeline fractured into multiple parallel ones, and any change done in the past gets run through all of them and lost in the 'signal noise', in effect being averaged out and canceled. Some changes might be powerful enough to reverberate through multiple timelines however, and take hold. Alternatively, maybe Cait Sith or Atomos would exert influence to make the changes take hold. The latter is hard to judge without knowing more of the plot, but this could cover possible WotG plotted changes.

In practical terms, from an IC perspective, the past is no longer changeable. If and when we start RPing WotG missions again, our characters may learn differently.

I'm personally for Cait Sith handling things nice and vaguely since the characters don't really know how it all happened and would be hard pressed to figure it all out. She can just throw some explanation at them and promise to not let them mess up again?

There are a few potential hooks floating around for people to investigate the past. Perhaps in the interest of maintaining the quo.

The problem with letting Cait Sith handle things is that we don't know enough about Cait Sith, and won't without doing more missions. They might be a bad guy for all we know... It's a sticky situation because we can't RP without figuring something out but we can't really figure it out without RPing.

Just flat-out saying "We don't know" won't work either, because then you'd have people like Sphinx and Verence actively hunting down and preventing (maybe even trying to kill) people who go and mess around in the past without knowing if it'll just make a repeat of everything that just happened.

I think we DO need some sort of explanation that, even if only OOCly, we know and can explain otherwise we'll just run into problems. Besides, it's not like we can't retcon if something that works better comes along, we've done it before and one of the big elements of an interesting plot is a twist or a revelation that what went before isn't actually that way, it's this way.

DV from Saudi Arabia here~ I'll be back tomorrow, by the way.

I've been thinking this now and then when my thoughts drift into IC ideas on how it'd work. Cait Sith idea would be nice, but like some say, we don't know enough about our favourite mascot.

Muir does bring an interesting point, and Vere's first idea also can be used, though the problem with THAT idea is that well, it'd be pretty much impossible to tell unless some greater power tells them.

I had an idea that we could say that there've been strange things happening in the present, so the only solution we can think of is going back into the past as that's the only viable option. In that way, it would actually force us to do things in the past and then we run into Cait Sith (iirc most of us who went back to the past has already met him/her at least once) and then follow the story from there, starting from Lion Springs?

Its a bit of a complicated idea, and given some characters weird thinking patterns (well, more like the ones that think about everything more rationally than an immature tigertaru) it'd probably end in more conflict.

I'm just glad I'm finally going back and I'd better start RPing with you all NAOWZ! >

See you soon~

I'm not really fond of 'strange things happening in the present' as it's likely to create a panic that everything alt is happening all over again, not to mention undermining the entire point of this discussion, which is 'how do we keep our characters from screwing things up again'. As for the not-knowing bit, not knowing ICly is fine. Even makes for good RP. As long as we know something OOCly to be able to structure and organize and explain things. There's no need to force past-RP as at least two characters have already resolved to track down Cait Sith to ask him/her/it what the hell happened, most likely with more soon to follow.

However, the argument about retconning goes both ways. We could say Cait Sith for now, and if they turn out to be a subversive element say "No, actually it was Atomos/parallel timelines/moon cheese."

I'm far more comfortable with something WE control and can explain however, since the entire alt timeline was 100% non-canon. Therefore to explain it, it only makes sense that we need a non-canon explanation. We made the mess, we fix it. If something crops up that work better, we do that instead.

I agree that having a non-canon explanation for non-canon events is a good idea, I don't see the need to rush to an explanation right now though. It's my understanding that most people are on or around the Cait Sith mission. Perhaps some details have revealed themselves in the cut scenes that we haven't seen yet.

For now we have several motivations for mucking around in the past again; though not all of our characters share those motivations.

1) To find out what the hell happened.
2) In the interest of maintaining the current timeline.
3) In the interest of triggering the alternate timeline again.

I say we pick up RPing the missions again and keep several explanations in a "pool" of ideas, once we have enough info from the cut scenes we'll pull out the one that fits and make it official.

Do we know who controls the Maws? Is it Cait Sith, Atomos or a combination there of? If it *is* Cait Sith a simple, "Yeah, you glitched the Maws with your past bending, but I fixed them could work." We could pick one or two (or more) specific things that people did in the past that were big nonos cause I'm sure there were some (I think DV was trying to meet his family, for example?) and have Cait Sith point them out as the very specific type of thing that will mess up the past. The characters then make a conscious decision to avoid (or not avoid, which could be interesting too) such actions.

On a tangent, in the case of not trying to avoid messing up the past, can you imagine everyone having to do something crazy like blow up part of Bastok or something to make up for one of the others of us saving it? Weirdness >.>

Yeah, but you see, there's a problem with the second thought, really...our dear

Spoiler:

Lilisette, the main character in WoTG wants to change the future, which obviously conflicts with what most of what we want to do.

Even if Cait Sith told us what we can do and what we can't do, I doubt given our characters personality most of us would really think about that and go 'no messing about period'. unless there was an absolute reason to, which makes me point out to the WoTG story which seems to imply that

Spoiler:

the future's changing on its own (for the worse) because there's some inconsistency in the past to begin with - probably because of Atomos/Cait Siths/Something else that used the power to travel back and made the beastmen stronger or more cunning, or even Lilisette herself can be the fault of it all.

Xenedra wrote:Do we know who controls the Maws?

As of where we've RP'd to in CPM, no. I don't know if it's even explained at all yet, we'll have to find out.

Xenedra wrote:We could pick one or two (or more) specific things that people did in the past that were big nonos cause I'm sure there were some (I think DV was trying to meet his family, for example?) and have Cait Sith point them out as the very specific type of thing that will mess up the past. The characters then make a conscious decision to avoid (or not avoid, which could be interesting too) such actions.

I'd really rather not. The 'screwing up the past' plotline is over now, I don't want to kick the corpse and hope it dances. This will only usher in renewed conflict, IC and OOC. It also creates scapegoats for the alt-plotline instead of keeping it vague. What do you think DV's life expectancy would be if he was squarely pegged as a deciding factor in all of that, then it was revealed he could potentially do it again? Not long.

Unless people have independently progressed past CPM canon in the plot, we don't even know if Cait Sith has the ability or authority to do this. Best to avoid godmodding NPCs in ways that may necessitate hasty retcons in the future.

I think our best bet is to go with Sab's suggestion and shelve it for now. We can say "We can't change the future unless the WotG plot says so," have an official stance of We'll Figure It Out When We Know More, and figure out how best to RP the WotG missions. If necessary, we can say Cait Sith deflects inquiries or doesn't give our characters a chance to speak until we have a more complete picture.

Not having a chance to question Cait Sith is pretty much how the plot has played out so far.

Mhuirnin wrote:
Just flat-out saying "We don't know" won't work either, because then you'd have people like Sphinx and Verence actively hunting down and preventing (maybe even trying to kill) people who go and mess around in the past without knowing if it'll just make a repeat of everything that just happened.

Why is that bad? Isn't conflict between the characters our bread and butter?

Conflict is good.

It is good, though it wouldn't do if it ends up in us being in a standstill.

I am for whatever though; DV's in a bit of a free-esque position and he's not really bound by anything. (Since when is he?)

I think we're a creative enough group to avoid any lasting standstill.