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Quertus
2020-11-02, 03:27 PM
In a "reality vs reality" "battle to the death", which gaming universe do you believe could field the greatest military might?

Rules

(Hopefully we won't need many)

Rule #1) no infinite. No matter how unrealistic or out of character it may be, anything infinite in numbers or capabilities is not participating.

Rule #2) impossible alliances. No matter how philosophically opposed, all the (non-infinite) beings in the universe are working together. For reasons.

So, whataya got? Which universe do you think would be able to field the strongest force? Which would be best positioned to subjugate the others? What factors would potentially affect your answer?

Khedrac
2020-11-02, 04:04 PM
As a general answer, this depends what rule-set is in play.

When it comes to straight science fiction, universes where people can fight while FTL tend to be able to automatically beat anyone who cannot - you can dodge anything sent at you while they probably cannot dodge their attacks.

Once one starts adding in magic or other factors, the rule-set becomes dominant.
A many years ago there was a spoof story floating round the internet with the crew of the original Starship Enterprise meeting Road Runner on an away mission. The story ends with the Enterprise crew trying to work out why their engines are not working as the ship crashes into the plant (I think they had decided to kill the passing creature - the Road Runner - for lunch). The Road Runner's plot armour where physics stops working for its adversaries trumping the much superior Star Trek technology.

Similarly the power of magic-type technologies is suffienctly different to straight science fiction that the victor is likely to be determined by how one decides the powers interact.

Another problem is that lots of universes have entities who are pretty much defined as being able to survive anything done to them - e.g. Goku from the Dragonball universe who, from that I have seen, tends to lose his first fight against anything new, but always survives to come back able to beat what previously beat him.
Another example is probably The Hulk from Marvel (though I will bow to people with more knowlege of Marvel who can provide a better example).

End result is that this question cannot be answered without defining the terms in such a way that you know who will win before you do the anlaysis.

On the other hand, there are lots of universes you know won't win as they are well enough defined that you know they are weaker than others defined similarly. E.g. the Traveller universe will lose to the Star Trek universe (among many others) as the technology just isn't that great.

awa
2020-11-02, 05:09 PM
It will probably be a super hero setting, those tend to be able to throw such larger numbers at a problem as to render almost anything else irrelevant.

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-02, 05:17 PM
40k has technology to rival most science fiction settings, but if everybody is working together it potentially beats most superhero settings. Necron technology is insane, I believe they have Lensmen-style FTL (which means potentially parsecs/second), but now we can give it to orks. Even without mixing we can have Eldar seers helping us send Chaos Legions to key points, I'm not sure Superman could defeat both a battalion of Necrons and a company of Thousand Sons.

Batcathat
2020-11-02, 05:36 PM
40k has technology to rival most science fiction settings, but if everybody is working together it potentially beats most superhero settings. Necron technology is insane, I believe they have Lensmen-style FTL (which means potentially parsecs/second), but now we can give it to orks. Even without mixing we can have Eldar seers helping us send Chaos Legions to key points, I'm not sure Superman could defeat both a battalion of Necrons and a company of Thousand Sons.

Though if we include superhero settings and other kinds of fiction (the use of "gaming universe" in the OP made me unsure) there's the fact that a lot of them include beings far more powerful than even someone like Superman. How would you even quantify the military strength of someone like Marvel's the Living Tribunal, DC's Mister Mxyzptlk or Star Trek's Q? And a lot of settings have far more than just one being in the "effectively omnipotent" class.

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-02, 05:40 PM
Though if we include superhero settings and other kinds of fiction (the use of "gaming universe" in the OP made me unsure) there's the fact that a lot of them include beings far more powerful than even someone like Superman. How would you even quantify the military strength of someone like Marvel's the Living Tribunal, DC's Mister Mxyzptlk or Star Trek's Q? And a lot of settings have far more than just one being in the "effectively omnipotent" class.

Blood for the blood god!

ExLibrisMortis
2020-11-02, 06:02 PM
As I understand it, the WH40K universe, vast as it is, still mainly concerns a single galaxy. The same is true of the Culture universe, which, if Sublimed civilizations are counted, might be a contender in this competition. Is there even a setting that includes multiple inhabited galaxies at all?

Batcathat
2020-11-02, 06:08 PM
As I understand it, the WH40K universe, vast as it is, still mainly concerns a single galaxy. The same is true of the Culture universe, which, if Sublimed civilizations are counted, might be a contender in this competition. Is there even a setting that includes multiple inhabited galaxies at all?

Stargate does, I think. Atlantis takes place in the Pegasus galaxy and I think Stargate Universe is in yet another galaxy. Though that's just the first one that came to mind, I'm sure there are plenty of sci-fi settings spanning multiple galaxies.

Quertus
2020-11-02, 06:09 PM
40k has technology to rival most science fiction settings, but if everybody is working together it potentially beats most superhero settings. Necron technology is insane, I believe they have Lensmen-style FTL (which means potentially parsecs/second), but now we can give it to orks. Even without mixing we can have Eldar seers helping us send Chaos Legions to key points, I'm not sure Superman could defeat both a battalion of Necrons and a company of Thousand Sons.


Though if we include superhero settings and other kinds of fiction (the use of "gaming universe" in the OP made me unsure)

Sorry - what do I need to clarify?


there's the fact that a lot of them include beings far more powerful than even someone like Superman. How would you even quantify the military strength of someone like Marvel's the Living Tribunal, DC's Mister Mxyzptlk or Star Trek's Q? And a lot of settings have far more than just one being in the "effectively omnipotent" class.

Those sound like *exactly* the kind of beings I was aiming to exclude with my "no infinite" rule.

In fact, in *some* versions of DC, I think even Superman would qualify as infinite.

Quertus
2020-11-02, 06:13 PM
As a general answer, this depends what rule-set is in play.

When it comes to straight science fiction, universes where people can fight while FTL tend to be able to automatically beat anyone who cannot - you can dodge anything sent at you while they probably cannot dodge their attacks.

On the other hand, there are lots of universes you know won't win as they are well enough defined that you know they are weaker than others defined similarly. E.g. the Traveller universe will lose to the Star Trek universe (among many others) as the technology just isn't that great.

Well, let's start with these, then. Which universes have "fire from FTL"? Which universes otherwise have clear winners and losers?


As I understand it, the WH40K universe, vast as it is, still mainly concerns a single galaxy. The same is true of the Culture universe, which, if Sublimed civilizations are counted, might be a contender in this competition. Is there even a setting that includes multiple inhabited galaxies at all?

I think that the… uh… "bugs" came from another galaxy.

Also, if you choose Star Wars, you get our galaxy (in the distant past) as an added bonus. :smalltongue:

Batcathat
2020-11-02, 06:14 PM
Sorry - what do I need to clarify?

The fact that you specifically referred to as "gaming universes" made me unsure of whether something like the Marvel universe or the Star Wars universe would qualify since, while there are games set in those universes, I wouldn't call them "gaming universes" myself.



Those sound like *exactly* the kind of beings I was aiming to exclude with my "no infinite" rule.

In fact, in *some* versions of DC, I think even Superman would qualify as infinite.

Ah, that might be my mistake. I think I focused on the "nothing infinite in numbers" and kinda missed the "capabilities" part of the sentence. Still, it might be kinda hard to draw the line between "just really, really powerful" and "infinitely powerful".

Unavenger
2020-11-02, 06:20 PM
Probably one of the 3.5 ones where you can't take a run action without tripping over an epic spellcaster is at least a consideration, and as with similar discussions of this nature it'll depend on the optimisation level and whether any deities bother getting involved.

It's possible that Magic: The Gathering is also in the running, given the ridiculously powerful things that planeswalkers - and a few other creatures like the Eldrazi titans - can do just by feeling like it.

LibraryOgre
2020-11-02, 06:26 PM
40k has technology to rival most science fiction settings, but if everybody is working together it potentially beats most superhero settings. Necron technology is insane, I believe they have Lensmen-style FTL (which means potentially parsecs/second), but now we can give it to orks. Even without mixing we can have Eldar seers helping us send Chaos Legions to key points, I'm not sure Superman could defeat both a battalion of Necrons and a company of Thousand Sons.

And still, with all that, we would not have enough dakka.

awa
2020-11-02, 06:51 PM
I'm not sure Superman could defeat both a battalion of Necrons and a company of Thousand Sons.

sure he could, just hurl the entire planet into the sun. Also remember the dc universe is a multi-verse everyone works together you don't just get one superman you get many.

More seriously I don't think anyone is fast enough to matter, superman has both planet destroying strength and ludicrous speed. Few weapons in the 40K universe would have both the accuracy to hit such a target and the power to hurt him. A necron or traitor marine is so slow that they are capable of missing a target with only human speed, they would logically be helpless. Now maybe a named character would have enough plot armor to not get insta gibed but with out some kind of meta mechanic to hold superman back its utterly one sided.

Well maybe not superman his no kill rule would be a problem but that's fine, their are lots of other kryptonians and other being at a similar power level, you grab every DC villain at once and throw them at a problem your Zod, and Darkseid, and Dooms day and Braniac and like a hundred other less famous but equally powerful power monsters. They wont stand a chance.
You talk about necrons giving teck to orks but what about, every wizard, super scientist and time traveler teaming up to create super inventions. 40k universe is powerful but they cant stop the dc universe.

TeChameleon
2020-11-02, 08:04 PM
If Superhero universes are excluded (and it might be a thought to do so, since they're kind of game-breaking- DC has 52 universes to pull from, and when you've got 52 Kryptons and Daxams worth of superhumans, most other things are just kind of gonna get steamrolled... and even DC's 52 Earths might have a rough time with the-at minimum- tens of thousands of Marvel multiverses), then the Schlock Mercenary universe might have a good shot at things- they've got instantaneous transport at intergalactic distances (with enough power to work with) and weaponized gravity in the black hole range, along with a lot of the other goodies that tend to come with a high-science 'verse, like plasma cannons and suchlike.

... and of course, there's always the grandaddy of them all, the Lensmen universe. There... really aren't a lot of universes that can easily deal with FTL antimatter planets to the face.

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-02, 08:10 PM
... and of course, there's always the grandaddy of them all, the Lensmen universe. There... really aren't a lot of universes that can easily deal with FTL antimatter planets to the face.

To be fair they do have to pull the FTL planets from a different universe. I never quite got how different universes had different inertial velocities. I'm syreif we'd had a book five they'd be building negaspheres in the FTL universe (not that I've even finished Children of the Lens).

Lensmen makes Skylark seem reasonable.

awa
2020-11-02, 08:26 PM
If Superhero universes are excluded (and it might be a thought to do so, since they're kind of game-breaking- DC has 52 universes to pull from, and when you've got 52 Kryptons and Daxams worth of superhumans, most other things are just kind of gonna get steamrolled... and even DC's 52 Earths might have a rough time with the-at minimum- tens of thousands of Marvel multiverses), then the Schlock Mercenary universe might have a good shot at things- they've got instantaneous transport at intergalactic distances (with enough power to work with) and weaponized gravity in the black hole range, along with a lot of the other goodies that tend to come with a high-science 'verse, like plasma cannons and suchlike.

... and of course, there's always the grandaddy of them all, the Lensmen universe. There... really aren't a lot of universes that can easily deal with FTL antimatter planets to the face.

does lensmen have an rpg?
I'm pretty sure schlock does and that is one high power universe real hard to top some of the shenanigans there if the entire universe is united.

biggest possible weakness is a lack of magic and psychics but otherwise if we remove the most powerful comic book universes then it would be hard to beat late story schlock mercenary, long guns and nanite infections are op.

KineticDiplomat
2020-11-02, 11:35 PM
I suspect at a certain point it becomes rocket tag. The only variety in the outcome is how badly the “winners” lost. That point probably comes where WMD (be they human, magic, “science”, actual science, super heroes...whatever) can be employed in sufficient numbers to ensure that even if one side has truly amazing assets that all of the just plain regular people and worlds will die horribly/be bloated from existence in a mutual genocide.

If we take “actually omnipotent/infinite” off the table, you end up with a few super cool dudes looking around at floating rocks.

Or, for a scaling reference, the Avengers would not actually be able to stop the old Soviet strike plans for DENMARK, let alone the real exchanges planned in the Cold War. And that’s bog standard humans with nothing special on one world in a handful of nation states.

Quertus
2020-11-02, 11:39 PM
Since I forgot to mention this earlier: "giving the Orks tech", while technically an advantage of the (semi) "unified front" rule, will still take time; that is, assume that the "unified front" only starts at t=0, when the opposition could theoretically be opting to launch an attack that very moment.


The fact that you specifically referred to as "gaming universes" made me unsure of whether something like the Marvel universe or the Star Wars universe would qualify since, while there are games set in those universes, I wouldn't call them "gaming universes" myself.

Ah. I suppose... universes that have RPGs? So, yes, any Star Wars universe would qualify. I used the word "universe" to limit a given "competitor" to but a single universe, for those (like DC and Marvel, or even "normal" vs "extended universe" Star Wars) that have multiple "universes" in their franchise.


Ah, that might be my mistake. I think I focused on the "nothing infinite in numbers" and kinda missed the "capabilities" part of the sentence. Still, it might be kinda hard to draw the line between "just really, really powerful" and "infinitely powerful".

True, it could be difficult. I err on the side of, "if you cannot quantify it, assume it's infinite". That's why I discounted Q (even though I suspect he's actually finite).


Probably one of the 3.5 ones where you can't take a run action without tripping over an epic spellcaster is at least a consideration, and as with similar discussions of this nature it'll depend on the optimisation level and whether any deities bother getting involved.

Huh. I guess D&D deities aren't infinite, are they?


It's possible that Magic: The Gathering is also in the running, given the ridiculously powerful things that planeswalkers - and a few other creatures like the Eldrazi titans - can do just by feeling like it.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't actually considered MtG.


sure he could, just hurl the entire planet into the sun. Also remember the dc universe is a multi-verse everyone works together you don't just get one superman you get many.

More seriously I don't think anyone is fast enough to matter, superman has both planet destroying strength and ludicrous speed. Few weapons in the 40K universe would have both the accuracy to hit such a target and the power to hurt him. A necron or traitor marine is so slow that they are capable of missing a target with only human speed, they would logically be helpless. Now maybe a named character would have enough plot armor to not get insta gibed but with out some kind of meta mechanic to hold superman back its utterly one sided.

Well maybe not superman his no kill rule would be a problem but that's fine, their are lots of other kryptonians and other being at a similar power level, you grab every DC villain at once and throw them at a problem your Zod, and Darkseid, and Dooms day and Braniac and like a hundred other less famous but equally powerful power monsters. They wont stand a chance.
You talk about necrons giving teck to orks but what about, every wizard, super scientist and time traveler teaming up to create super inventions. 40k universe is powerful but they cant stop the dc universe.

I used the word "universe" on purpose - DC does not get its "multiverse", only one DC universe.

Superman (and, presumably, most Kryptionians) has problems with Magic though.


If Superhero universes are excluded (and it might be a thought to do so, since they're kind of game-breaking- DC has 52 universes to pull from, and when you've got 52 Kryptons and Daxams worth of superhumans, most other things are just kind of gonna get steamrolled... and even DC's 52 Earths might have a rough time with the-at minimum- tens of thousands of Marvel multiverses), then the Schlock Mercenary universe might have a good shot at things- they've got instantaneous transport at intergalactic distances (with enough power to work with) and weaponized gravity in the black hole range, along with a lot of the other goodies that tend to come with a high-science 'verse, like plasma cannons and suchlike.

... and of course, there's always the grandaddy of them all, the Lensmen universe. There... really aren't a lot of universes that can easily deal with FTL antimatter planets to the face.

Again, just 1 Superman / just one universe per challenger. Similarly, just one Marvel at a time.

FTL antimatter planets to the face? :smalleek:


does lensmen have an rpg?
I'm pretty sure schlock does and that is one high power universe real hard to top some of the shenanigans there if the entire universe is united.

biggest possible weakness is a lack of magic and psychics but otherwise if we remove the most powerful comic book universes then it would be hard to beat late story schlock mercenary, long guns and nanite infections are op.

Schlock? "Nanite infections" certainly sound like they could be OP...

Keltest
2020-11-02, 11:45 PM
And still, with all that, we would not have enough dakka.

One does not simply have enough dakka.

Having said that, my knowledge of 40k is somewhat limited, but dont the forces of Chaos have conceptually limitless numbers, limited by the logistics of actually deploying them anywhere rather than actually fielding the armies? Which if so would disqualify them.

Quertus
2020-11-02, 11:55 PM
I suspect at a certain point it becomes rocket tag.

Or, for a scaling reference, the Avengers would not actually be able to stop the old Soviet strike plans for DENMARK, let alone the real exchanges planned in the Cold War. And that’s bog standard humans with nothing special on one world in a handful of nation states.

Actually, I was planning on adding "the real world™" in as a bonus contender for calibration purposes. :smallwink:

But this was kinda my fear, yeah, that many worlds' offensive capabilities completely outstripped their own - and anyone else's - defenses, making this really boring and/or really bleak. And making cool actions like, "upgrade the Orks" unlikely to succeed.

Suppose, for example, that added to each world was the ability to travel to the other, and Star Wars faced off against "the real world™". The number of nukes we have... really wouldn't make much of a dent in the population of the Star Wars universe, for example. Whereas our (presumably) single planet of note makes us Death Star bait.

awa
2020-11-03, 12:00 AM
I suspect at a certain point it becomes rocket tag. The only variety in the outcome is how badly the “winners” lost. That point probably comes where WMD (be they human, magic, “science”, actual science, super heroes...whatever) can be employed in sufficient numbers to ensure that even if one side has truly amazing assets that all of the just plain regular people and worlds will die horribly/be bloated from existence in a mutual genocide.

If we take “actually omnipotent/infinite” off the table, you end up with a few super cool dudes looking around at floating rocks.

Or, for a scaling reference, the Avengers would not actually be able to stop the old Soviet strike plans for DENMARK, let alone the real exchanges planned in the Cold War. And that’s bog standard humans with nothing special on one world in a handful of nation states.

schlock mercenary universe has the advantage that they can almost instantly digitize a worlds population thus preserving the civilian population even if you shoot the planet out from under them.

Even with a single universe there are dozens of superman caliber beings even if limited to only one super man. Not to mention easy accesses to time machines and time manipulation powers. If the chaos gods get to use the warp and all its demons then the dc should get to call on all its heavens and hells as well.

Quertus
2020-11-03, 12:03 AM
One does not simply have enough dakka.

Having said that, my knowledge of 40k is somewhat limited, but dont the forces of Chaos have conceptually limitless numbers, limited by the logistics of actually deploying them anywhere rather than actually fielding the armies? Which if so would disqualify them.

My knowledge of WH40K is... both limited, and highly suspect, but...

Chaos has finite organic squishy things (Chaos Marines, cultists, whatever). So those can all be fielded, regardless of any other infinities.

Chaos has finite techno-heresy things (baby-powered space ships, demon breath guns, whatever). So those can all be fielded, regardless of any other infinities.

The Warp is... the psychic collective unconscious of all(most all) sentient-kind. Kinda like the Force. It can only support a finite amount of energy at any one spot (thus the ability to detect the "Bugs" by being unable to detect *anything* there, because they've munched all the bandwidth). So, infinite in size, just like space, but not infinite in power. Sounds fine so far.

The Warp can spawn demons, gods, etc. Individually, those are each of finite power. Are their numbers theoretically infinite? Maybe. But it feels to me like the warp, in toto, is actually only of finite power, just like D&D's infinite planes have only a finite population.

So, I think that you *could* mode anything from the warp's play-dough; I just don't think that you have an infinite supply of play-dough with which to manifest all the possible demons at the same time.

If I'm wrong, then WH40K does not get its demons. But that doesn't invalidate the *rest* of WH40K in this challenge / thought experiment.

Waterdeep Merch
2020-11-03, 12:29 AM
Gaming include video games? Because a lot of the Super Robot Wars universes could do some serious damage. I'd be partial to Alpha for it's length and roster (including Ideon, which can solo a lot of other verses whenever it gets annoyed), but perhaps one of the games with the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann would be stronger just for it. TTGL actually fought foes on it's level, while Ideon was an outlier.

If a game ever combines both those machines *and* we get a debut for Getter Emperor, that's probably going to be the power pinnacle for a mecha verse right now. The combined might of these three is enough to destroy multiverses outright, they're even good at protecting/recreating their own if necessary. And then you get some of the weirder mecha in the series, and all of their gonzo villains... We're talking a highly militarized universe filled with super science, magic, super science magic, time travel, mirror universes, and multiple powerful alien races. It's pure ridiculousness.

(Demonbane might be stronger, but I dislike that series. So I couldn't tell you much about that verse's potential beyond "kills Lovecraft's elder gods on the regular", and thus "has Lovecraft's elder gods adding to its overall strength". Apparently it was a game first)

Friv
2020-11-03, 12:38 AM
I'm giving it to the Doctor Who universe. They have paradox-resistant time travel, so timeframes don't matter. The Daleks can design weapons capable of literally eradicating multiverse, the Time Lords can go back to the start of the universe and unmake their enemies, and the Cybermen built an army that required the destruction of two galaxies to stop. And all three are non-infinite species that have been utterly eradicated, mostly by each other. If they join forces to wipe out everyone else, that's curtains.

Batcathat
2020-11-03, 01:43 AM
I'm giving it to the Doctor Who universe. They have paradox-resistant time travel, so timeframes don't matter. The Daleks can design weapons capable of literally eradicating multiverse, the Time Lords can go back to the start of the universe and unmake their enemies, and the Cybermen built an army that required the destruction of two galaxies to stop. And all three are non-infinite species that have been utterly eradicated, mostly by each other. If they join forces to wipe out everyone else, that's curtains.

Whether or not the Whoverse would win (I'm not that familiar with it myself), it feels like every universe capable of time travel (at least those who can actually change history rather than "just" creating alternate timelines) would have a huge advantage. Go back far enough and you could wipe out any resistance before they even discover fire.

Lord Raziere
2020-11-03, 02:12 AM
Whether or not the Whoverse would win (I'm not that familiar with it myself), it feels like every universe capable of time travel (at least those who can actually change history rather than "just" creating alternate timelines) would have a huge advantage. Go back far enough and you could wipe out any resistance before they even discover fire.

Yes any being immune to such time travel tactics would have to exist outside the confines of linear time itself. I can't recall many beings that have achieved such an existence, much less one in a "gaming universe". And any who have are probably infinite in some manner.

TeChameleon
2020-11-03, 04:12 AM
... yeah, weaponized time travel is pretty much a complete game-breaker.

To elaborate on the Schlock Mercenary universe (it has its origins as a now-complete and rather good space opera webcomic at www.schlockmercenary.com), it does, in fact, have roleplaying game (Planet Mercenary- previously known as 'Schlock Troops'- I can't speak as to its quality, since I've never seen it, but the author of the strip is a long-time tabletop gamer, so that's a plus).

Anyways, Schlock Mercenary; a quick rundown of what they can do for those unfamiliar.

Major Tech

- Total conversion of matter to energy with minimal loss in both controlled (Annihilation Plants for energy generation) and uncontrolled variants (Total Conversion Bombs)

- High-end gravity manipulation for both offense (ships that lose fights often end up compressed into neutronium, which is then stuffed into the aforementioned Annihilation Plants as fuel) and defense (gravitic shields, which on a large warship can ride out a supernova without undue discomfort).

- Instantaneous transport- the 'Teraport' is a wormhole-based jump drive that requires minimal power, next to no space (the initial prototype was the size of a closed fist and could jump a moderately-sized starship), and has galactic range. And while the Teraport can be shielded against, you need a specifically tuned field set to disrupt it, regular shields don't do it. And if you aren't familiar with the physics behind it, I'm not sure you'd come up with any kind of defense against it (in-universe, the guy that invented the teraport in the first place is also the guy that came up with the way to block it). Often used in 'terapedoes', which are basically insta-boom. Inside your ship. Or, if the one firing is feeling especially sadistic, inside your skull.

- Strong AI- Truly sapient AIs, which can attain borderline godlike intellect with enough processing power. Also extends all the way down to the nanoscopic level, as they have quasi-sapient nanomachines.

- Programmable nanites- can be used for everything from medicinal application to hijacking someone by overwriting their consciousness.

- Fullerene Armour- monomolecular armour that can only be consistently defeated by extremely energetic weaponry, applied via either velocity or heat.

- Powered Armour- From 'low-profile powered suits', which are bulletproof, allow flight via gravity manipulation, enhanced strength (guesstimating at about the 10 ton range... very roughly lower-end Spider-Man levels), and act as hostile environment suits, all the way up to the heavy-duty Fragsuits, which incorporate a base of the low-profile armour and add on another layer of heavy armour plate... which can separate into a dozen or so semi-autonomous drones packing heavy weaponry.

- Fabbers- sort of like slower Star Trek-type replicators. You feed raw materials into one end, get a finished product out the other. Can make basically anything they have the plans for, and 'raw materials' can be defined as broadly as 'unable to shoot back'. Range from factory-sized (for building entire starships) to small enough to be built into a fragsuit.

- Plasma Cannons- relativistic plasma fired from a handheld weapon, in a beam from 1cm wide to 6m wide at a 10m range. Sun-hot plasma coming in at a significant fraction of the speed of light equals 'ouch'. Er, well, very, very briefly ouch, then just 'gone'. Comes in orbital weapon sizes too. You probably don't want one of these pointed at you.

- Consciousness Uploading- in conjunction with the teraport, can be done very, very quickly- as in, use-it-to-evacuate-an-exploding-planet quickly. Also used as a sort of conditional immortality.

EDIT- whoops, just about forgot about a big one:

- Discontiguous Particle Acceleration System- (aka Long Guns)- galactic-range teleporting plasma cannon shots that can appear inside a target, and aren't stopped by teraport denial. For added fun, can use anti-proton plasma for double the fun (and rather more than double the boom).

- Various other sci-fi type toys in all sorts of fun flavours, since this post is already getting long.

Major Powers-

- Plenipotent Dominion- A coalition of independent AIs, merged into a single supermind. Controls the Milky Way Core generator, which is pretty self-explanatory- it uses the core of the Milky Way galaxy to generate functionally limitless power.

- F'sherl-Ganni (aka the Gatekeepers)- one of the oldest and most populous sentient races still active, they use unique hypergate technology, originally as a travel monopoly, but also as a way of manufacturing a whole lot of just about anything they like. Live almost exclusively in a series of buuthandi (lit. 'this was expensive to build'), a variant of the classic Dyson Sphere.

- Pa'anuri- Sentient dark matter entities that only interact with the baryonic universe (i.e. where the rest of us live) via gravitation. Very, very big, and prone to throwing planets and detonating stars as a diversion tactic.

- The Exo-Galactics and the All-Star- impossibly ancient, usually-consciousness-uploaded civilizations that have left the Milky Way for one reason or another and are stupidly technologically advanced, even by the standards of the setting (as an example, they took a group of uploaded sentients and downloaded them into meat bodies identical to their originals so seamlessly that they didn't notice until it was pointed out).

- Tausennigan O'benn- Cute, koala-like rabid xenophobes. They've been actively attempting to 'cleanse' the galaxy of everyone else as a matter of religious doctrine. The fact that they haven't lost yet should tell you just how much firepower they bring to the table.

- Earthlings- encompasses humans, along with a variety of uplifted critters, such as gorillas, dolphins, elephants, and chimpanzees. As can be imagined, the gorillas and elephants (especially once they've been genetically modified to have hands rather than just stumpy hoof-ish things) make for some impressive soldiers, especially in powered armour. Earthlings are also the ones who run around in Battleplates, which were designed to stop relativistic asteroids being chucked at Earth. Then they realized that with that much power and armour, they could do a lot more than just stop asteroids... That being said, they're relatively minor players on a galactic scale.


So yeah. Barring weaponized time-travel and extreme superhuman shenanigans, the Schlockiverse is a tough contender.

As far as FTL Planets to the face goes... I'll just leave this here (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LensmanArmsRace) (warning, TVTropes link... and the bit about the actual Lensmen series is under 'Literature').

Quertus
2020-11-03, 07:53 AM
Wow. So, Lensman and Schlock Mercenary both seem rather OP. Can any of the other "space opera" universes compete?


I'm giving it to the Doctor Who universe. They have paradox-resistant time travel, so timeframes don't matter. The Daleks can design weapons capable of literally eradicating multiverse, the Time Lords can go back to the start of the universe and unmake their enemies, and the Cybermen built an army that required the destruction of two galaxies to stop. And all three are non-infinite species that have been utterly eradicated, mostly by each other. If they join forces to wipe out everyone else, that's curtains.


Whether or not the Whoverse would win (I'm not that familiar with it myself), it feels like every universe capable of time travel (at least those who can actually change history rather than "just" creating alternate timelines) would have a huge advantage. Go back far enough and you could wipe out any resistance before they even discover fire.

Yeah, Time Travel certainly does seem like a game-changer. I'm not really sure that Dr. Who time travel is anywhere near the top of the food chain here, though - the Doctor seems to have issues with messing with time once he's already in the middle of events. Which will be the case for this challenge.

I think that there are other universes with time travel, however, which will have a decided advantage.

(No, not Marvel - Marvel time travel just creates alternate realities; Kang the Conqueror is just about the only (non-infinite) being I know able to freely navigate these realities.)


Gaming include video games? Because a lot of the Super Robot Wars universes could do some serious damage. I'd be partial to Alpha for it's length and roster (including Ideon, which can solo a lot of other verses whenever it gets annoyed), but perhaps one of the games with the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann would be stronger just for it. TTGL actually fought foes on it's level, while Ideon was an outlier.

If a game ever combines both those machines *and* we get a debut for Getter Emperor, that's probably going to be the power pinnacle for a mecha verse right now. The combined might of these three is enough to destroy multiverses outright, they're even good at protecting/recreating their own if necessary. And then you get some of the weirder mecha in the series, and all of their gonzo villains... We're talking a highly militarized universe filled with super science, magic, super science magic, time travel, mirror universes, and multiple powerful alien races. It's pure ridiculousness.

(Demonbane might be stronger, but I dislike that series. So I couldn't tell you much about that verse's potential beyond "kills Lovecraft's elder gods on the regular", and thus "has Lovecraft's elder gods adding to its overall strength". Apparently it was a game first)

... thinking about that question, I realize that it's a rather arbitrary limitation, especially given that I could just write a 2-paragraph RPG about any book / movie / concept and thereby it would technically qualify. Heck, the various homebrew RPGs I've played qualify.

comicshorse
2020-11-03, 10:08 AM
Yeah, Time Travel certainly does seem like a game-changer. I'm not really sure that Dr. Who time travel is anywhere near the top of the food chain here, though - the Doctor seems to have issues with messing with time once he's already in the middle of events. Which will be the case for this challenge.



The Doctor prefers to sort things out with minimum damage (and to let people fix their own problems with a little help if he can) the Daleks and the C.I.A. (Celestial Intervention Agency) not so much

Waterdeep Merch
2020-11-03, 10:51 AM
Going beyond gaming and mentioning time travel, a united Xeelee universe would not only have a species that can hit you with galaxy-sized weaponry that travels back in time to make sure it doesn't miss, but also their mysterious foes who soundly beat that level of tech somehow, the Photino Birds, who eventually succeed in stopping all supernovas and causing multiple white dwarfs to form instead to make gravity wells they find more comfy. While reading the rest of this, keep in mind that it appears the Photino Birds were so overwhelmingly powerful that they weren't aware the Xeelee even existed.

The Xeelee used time travel to advance their own technology by trillions of years, then went back to the big bang with all of it and started again, and did this multiple times until they reached a technological bottleneck. Their time travel is error free, reliable, cheaply available, common, and something they've weaponized to the point that it's their basic armament. They shoot you with missiles that go back in time and hit you while you were relaxing in bed after school a few years before you even thought of becoming a pilot to fight them. They're also massively FTL, able to move about to any point in the universe pretty much at-will, since this FTL tech is exactly what allows for time travel in the first place.

Humans never managed to do anything but annoy them a little bit, but we do get to add something to the Xeelee arsenal- we found a way to create moving pocket universe outside of the causal universe where time couldn't be manipulated, all for the purpose of avoiding said time-based attacks. They also developed a time traveling tactical computer that analyzed maneuvers, then sent whatever information it processed back to itself in the past, allowing it to outthink superior opponents like the Xeelee. After three thousand years and the deaths of billions of human children, humanity finally succeeded in threatening to destroy the super massive black hole the Xeelee were working on (to save a species that lived there, not kill all humans as we thought) and so they shrugged and wholesale left the galaxy. Humanity in this universe is highly capable compared to a lot of other fictions, yet we could do little more than annoy the Xeelee a little bit. Who themselves could do nothing, not even with reliable time travel on their side, to stop the Photino Birds who never even knew they existed.

Friv
2020-11-03, 11:22 AM
Yeah, Time Travel certainly does seem like a game-changer. I'm not really sure that Dr. Who time travel is anywhere near the top of the food chain here, though - the Doctor seems to have issues with messing with time once he's already in the middle of events. Which will be the case for this challenge.

Doctor Who has established that the reason that you don't try to do things like crossing your own timeline or unmaking your enemies before they were created or the like is that you're liable to create a planet-destroying paradox or shatter the fabric of a galaxy or something similar; misuse of time travel is very bad at solving problems, and very good at creating them. Since the Doctor does not, as a rule, want to break reality, they try to avoid doing that. (It has still happened a few times, mind you!)

However, we also know that it is possible to survive these things, because that's what happened in the Time War - the Time Lords and the Daleks both stopped playing by those rules and tried to retroactively destroy each other, except that they were both time travellers so they survived, and then things got bad. So bad that entire swathes of time were wiped out of existence, thrown into nightmarish repeating paradoxes, doubled-up on each other, and so on. The war only ended when the Doctor obliterated both species entirely from the timeline, undoing most of the damage that they did.

I think that's about as powerful as time travel can get before it moves into the "infinite capability" zone, honestly; you can make whatever changes you like, but if you make the wrong ones you blow up everyone you were trying to save. Of course, if your goal is the eradication of every other universe, blowing up their universe while making alterations to it isn't such a net problem.

Quertus
2020-11-03, 11:49 AM
entire swathes of time were wiped out of existence, thrown into nightmarish repeating paradoxes, doubled-up on each other, and so on. The war only ended when the Doctor obliterated both species entirely from the timeline, undoing most of the damage that they did.

I think that's about as powerful as time travel can get before it moves into the "infinite capability" zone, honestly; you can make whatever changes you like, but if you make the wrong ones you blow up everyone you were trying to save. Of course, if your goal is the eradication of every other universe, blowing up their universe while making alterations to it isn't such a net problem.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that there is little room between Dr Who and Infinite on the scale of Time utility (I may even create a separate thread about Time, senility willing); however, when you start talking about using temporal damage as a weapon rather than a negative side effect to be avoided, it certainly does change one's perspectives of what is "good" in the time-travel department.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-11-03, 12:27 PM
In a "reality vs reality" "battle to the death", which gaming universe do you believe could field the greatest military might?

Rules

(Hopefully we won't need many)

Rule #1) no infinite. No matter how unrealistic or out of character it may be, anything infinite in numbers or capabilities is not participating.

Rule #2) impossible alliances. No matter how philosophically opposed, all the (non-infinite) beings in the universe are working together. For reasons.

So, whataya got? Which universe do you think would be able to field the strongest force? Which would be best positioned to subjugate the others? What factors would potentially affect your answer?

If we stick into the realm of western widely-consumed media, it usually comes down to Star Wars or Warhammer 40k or something like that where the writers like to add zeros to every number and don't really understand what it means.

If we expand the realm to the really crazy, there's a couple of animes were giant robots use galaxies as weapons, so I think that probably wins.



Basically, the less the writers pretend to understand reality, and thus the crazier the feats and more zeros are attached to every number, the more powerful the combined forces of the setting are. It doesn't really have anything to do with strategy, tactics, logistics, or technology.

LibraryOgre
2020-11-03, 12:49 PM
- Earthlings- encompasses humans, along with a variety of uplifted critters, such as gorillas, dolphins, elephants, and chimpanzees. As can be imagined, the gorillas and elephants (especially once they've been genetically modified to have hands rather than just stumpy hoof-ish things) make for some impressive soldiers, especially in powered armour. Earthlings are also the ones who run around in Battleplates, which were designed to stop relativistic asteroids being chucked at Earth. Then they realized that with that much power and armour, they could do a lot more than just stop asteroids... That being said, they're relatively minor players on a galactic scale.


And, for a while, a significant portion of the galaxy* was clones of a single human. There were 950 million of him. (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-07-14)


*Small, but significant. With 10 trillion sophonts, 950m is a tiny fraction... but bigger than the other tiny fractions.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-11-03, 02:43 PM
The Doctor prefers to sort things out with minimum damage (and to let people fix their own problems with a little help if he can) the Daleks and the C.I.A. (Celestial Intervention Agency) not so much
Plus the whole Time Lord-Dalek time war which almost destroyed the universe.

I'm going to throw in an odd one - The Long Earth series (Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter). There's really not much you can do if your opponents can just step into the reality next door to dodge around your weapons or defences, although they're limited to non-iron items when they do so.

Batcathat
2020-11-03, 03:48 PM
I'm going to throw in an odd one - The Long Earth series (Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter). There's really not much you can do if your opponents can just step into the reality next door to dodge around your weapons or defences, although they're limited to non-iron items when they do so.

It's an interesting choice (and I like that series a lot) but I feel like they would lose on account of having negligible offensive capabilities compared to a lot of the alternatives. Though I suppose those silver bug aliens would perform better in that regard but as impressive as tearing a planet to pieces for spare parts is, their method of doing so is very slow and inefficent compared to something like the Death Star.

JoeJ
2020-11-03, 03:53 PM
The Earth Prime universe (Green Ronin) not only has time travel, it has superpowered Time Keepers and Guardians of Time to protect it's "proper" history from outside interference.

LibraryOgre
2020-11-03, 04:31 PM
It's an interesting choice (and I like that series a lot) but I feel like they would lose on account of having negligible offensive capabilities compared to a lot of the alternatives. Though I suppose those silver bug aliens would perform better in that regard but as impressive as tearing a planet to pieces for spare parts is, their method of doing so is very slow and inefficent compared to something like the Death Star.

There is the reality that devours other realities, though.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-03, 04:34 PM
Going back to tabletop, I bring two artifacts from Lamentations of the Flame Princess:

First is the Monolith (from The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time). It allows travel across times and universes. It can be made to not exist, but given a co-operative character, this is a defensive feature more than a weakness. Pretty hard for other universes to destroy something that doesn't exist.

Second is the Book (from The God That Crawls). It is a spellbook that, once assembled, destroys all information other than itself. All. Information. Starting with other writing, ending with natural constants. The Monolith would allow a relatively safe and easy way to take its pages, one by one, to a target universe. Once assembled, it would make a potent weapon against them. Notably, nearly all sci-fi universes would be suspectible, because if they can't neutralize it near-instantly, all high-tech solutions for locating it are ruined. Sadly, the Book is destructible, though it renews itself (on the pages of other books, which must be recollected and reassembled).

Jason
2020-11-03, 04:42 PM
Lensmen would win.
There was a GURPS sourcebook during 3rd edition.

The only thing they don't have in that universe is time travel, and the Arisians are able to perfectly forecast the future, so they almost have that. Aside from tossing antimatter planets at each other through dimensional portals by the end of the war, the children of the lens who ended the billions-year-long war between Eddore and the Arisians were basically psionic gods capable of anything. No other universe could compete.

Quertus
2020-11-03, 04:45 PM
The Earth Prime universe (Green Ronin) not only has time travel, it has superpowered Time Keepers and Guardians of Time to protect it's "proper" history from outside interference.

Having a force already in place to fight a proper time war is, of course, an advantage, of the same type as having a military already in place to fight a ground / air / space war; however, what exactly are these groups capabilities?


Second is the Book (from The God That Crawls). It is a spellbook that, once assembled, destroys all information other than itself. All. Information. Starting with other writing, ending with natural constants. The Monolith would allow a relatively safe and easy way to take its pages, one by one, to a target universe. Once assembled, it would make a potent weapon against them. Notably, nearly all sci-fi universes would be suspectible, because if they can't neutralize it near-instantly, all high-tech solutions for locating it are ruined. Sadly, the Book is destructible, though it renews itself (on the pages of other books, which must be recollected and reassembled).

Effects? Timeframe? Reasons sci-fi would be more vulnerable?

Batcathat
2020-11-03, 05:01 PM
There is the reality that devours other realities, though.

I don't really remember everything, was that what First Person Singularis was part of?


Lensmen would win.
There was a GURPS sourcebook during 3rd edition.

The only thing they don't have in that universe is time travel, and the Arisians are able to perfectly forecast the future, so they almost have that. Aside from tossing antimatter planets at each other through dimensional portals by the end of the war, the children of the lens who ended the billions-year-long war between Eddore and the Arisians were basically psionic gods capable of anything. No other universe could compete.

Not having time travel seems like it would be a brutal handicap, though. No matter how impressive their tech is, a universe with time travel could just go back to before they developed it and wipe it out (and that's without going into the reality destroying time travel shenanigans discussed earlier).

Jason
2020-11-03, 05:20 PM
Well if time travel is allowed then the winner is Q, from Star Trek. He can do stuff with a wave of his hand that it takes the Doctor a whole episode to do.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-03, 05:23 PM
Effects? Timeframe? Reasons sci-fi would be more vulnerable?

Anything resembling science requires exacting measurements, which become increasingly difficult in a rapidly progressing yet hard to quantify timeframe, because the very existence of the Book makes quantifying things increasingly impossible. To be exact, starting immediately from the Book being completed, all written and electronic memory storages, mundane or magical, in an universe fail. In 24 hours, mathematics fail. In 48 hours, which no-one can reliably count at this point, last vestiges of living memory fail. Immeasurable time after that, immeasurable both because measuring it is impossible and because no-one can be around to measure it, everything that is not the Book collapses into Nothing.

For example, Planet Mercenary (Schlock Mercenary RPG) universe is relatively hard sci-fi. All of those amazing things they can do depend on natural constants being, well, constant. Immediately upon completion of the book, all electronic memories of all the AIs, no matter how advanced, are wiped out. In 24 hours, all the math they require to function ceases to apply. There are and can be no AIs, no Allstars, no Teraport and no Long Guns after that period until the Book is destroyed. In 48 hours, even the sharpest biological minds of the setting and their nanobiological failsafe back-ups are completely gone.

LibraryOgre
2020-11-03, 06:03 PM
I don't really remember everything, was that what First Person Singularis was part of?


That's what I was thinking of.

Quertus
2020-11-03, 06:08 PM
Well if time travel is allowed then the winner is Q, from Star Trek. He can do stuff with a wave of his hand that it takes the Doctor a whole episode to do.

Q would need to be demonstrably finite in capabilities. At which point, yes, Star Trek gets a lot more muscle (since there's a whole Q Continuum).

That said, the Federation has Time Travel ability (usable intentionally in the future, at least); other species seem to be better at it (maybe?), just like other species are better at almost everything than the pathetic Federation (which is also seemingly incapable of learning from its betters).


Anything resembling science requires exacting measurements, which become increasingly difficult in a rapidly progressing yet hard to quantify timeframe, because the very existence of the Book makes quantifying things increasingly impossible. To be exact, starting immediately from the Book being completed, all written and electronic memory storages, mundane or magical, in an universe fail. In 24 hours, mathematics fail. In 48 hours, which no-one can reliably count at this point, last vestiges of living memory fail. Immeasurable time after that, immeasurable both because measuring it is impossible and because no-one can be around to measure it, everything that is not the Book collapses into Nothing.

For example, Planet Mercenary (Schlock Mercenary RPG) universe is relatively hard sci-fi. All of those amazing things they can do depend on natural constants being, well, constant. Immediately upon completion of the book, all electronic memories of all the AIs, no matter how advanced, are wiped out. In 24 hours, all the math they require to function ceases to apply. There are and can be no AIs, no Allstars, no Teraport and no Long Guns after that period until the Book is destroyed. In 48 hours, even the sharpest biological minds of the setting and their nanobiological failsafe back-ups are completely gone.

Time necessary to get the book operational? Presumably, the book is the tool of the module's antagonists, and the expected end state of the module is "the PCs destroyed the book". How long would it take the denizens of the universe to put the book back together again / how long did it take the antagonists in the module? Is the (sentient, book-wielding) source universe just one world?

All written, electronic, and magical memory storage failing is... pretty horrific: no navigational computers, no spell books, no phone contacts. Is the scope of the book's effects "one planet", "one galaxy", "one universe", "one set of dimensions (ie, if opened on the Prime, Boccob wouldn't care)", or "all connected dimensions"?

I don't think that there's many universes that couldn't deal with the book in 24 hours that somehow could if given 48, so I won't worry about trying to parse the whole "math stops working" insanity, and just pretend that they just lose after 24 hours.

D&D could respond to the Book with divinations/wishes to know what is going on, where the source is, Teleport there, destroy it, and be sad that Spellbooks are gone - assuming that they don't just come back, right? Um... speaking of: if all the books are destroyed, and *remain* destroyed, then just *where* does the Book reappear when destroyed? Inside otherwise empty books? :smallconfused:

TeChameleon
2020-11-03, 06:18 PM
And, for a while, a significant portion of the galaxy* was clones of a single human. There were 950 million of him. (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-07-14)

*Small, but significant. With 10 trillion sophonts, 950m is a tiny fraction... but bigger than the other tiny fractions.

It should be noted that these 950 million clones in the Shclockverse were made with F'sherl Gaani gate tech, from a buuthandi that was already partially destroyed. In other words, with five surviving buuthandi, the F'sherl Gaani can instantly make about 5 billion of anything they happen to feel like, as often as they like until their stars have been completely converted into whatever they're making (the gates can handle up to about city bus size, roughly, if we stay strictly with what's been shown on panel). If you send a pallet of terapedoes through, you could be slinging 60 billion gigatons of 'boom' wherever you happened to feel like as often as you could shove the pallet through the gate.


Going back to tabletop, I bring two artifacts from Lamentations of the Flame Princess:

First is the Monolith (from The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time). It allows travel across times and universes. It can be made to not exist, but given a co-operative character, this is a defensive feature more than a weakness. Pretty hard for other universes to destroy something that doesn't exist.

Second is the Book (from The God That Crawls). It is a spellbook that, once assembled, destroys all information other than itself. All. Information. Starting with other writing, ending with natural constants. The Monolith would allow a relatively safe and easy way to take its pages, one by one, to a target universe. Once assembled, it would make a potent weapon against them. Notably, nearly all sci-fi universes would be suspectible, because if they can't neutralize it near-instantly, all high-tech solutions for locating it are ruined. Sadly, the Book is destructible, though it renews itself (on the pages of other books, which must be recollected and reassembled).

... this sounds like a rather good episode of Doctor Who, honestly.


If we split things off into time-travel and non-time-travel universes, for non-time-travel, I think that Schlock Mercenary and the Lensmen are our two top contenders..?

Lensmen for obvious reasons, and Schlock Mercenary wins out over Star Wars, for example, because Death Star-level firepower is commonplace enough to be done by accident (three total-conversion bombs temporarily contained in a small warship's inverted shield bubble).

Oddly enough, because of their widespread wormhole-based tech, the Schlockverse is one of the few in a position to deal with the Lensmen's FTL planet outta nowhere, since that's also wormhole-based. And their gravity weaponry is one of the very, very few things I'm aware of that could get through the Lensmen's inertialess absolute defense. Not gonna say that the Schlockverse is going to win, given how nuts the Lensmen 'verse gets, but the first few battles are going to be some very harsh lessons for the Lensmen.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-03, 06:49 PM
Time necessary to get the book operational?

With full co-operation of the Monolith? Holders of the pages can be slotted into any era, after which the Monolith can be closed from the inside and made non-existent. All that's left is assembly, which may be measured in minutes. I'll recheck later to see if there's a specific rule, but for now, assume "operational in10 minutes at arbitrary point of history" .


Presumably, the book is the tool of the module's antagonists, and the expected end state of the module is "the PCs destroyed the book". How long would it take the denizens of the universe to put the book back together again / how long did it take the antagonists in the module? Is the (sentient, book-wielding) source universe just one world?

The Book is actually divided into 16 parts, only few of which are in the same geographic area. In normal conditions, finding all the parts is a serious feat, though the Book becomes (maliciously) sentient partway through and starts actively directing people to remaining parts. It starts having severe but localized (planet-wide) effects before its complete. The Book is situated in England of alternate Earth history, and normally threatens the entire Cosmos, that is, the universe Earth is in.

The real threat is, again, combining it with the Monolith, because the inhabitants of the Monolith, if co-operating with humans, can abuse the Monolith's time travelling and universe travelling powers to gather the pages in no time - literal no time, in eyes of outside observers.


All written, electronic, and magical memory storage failing is... pretty horrific: no navigational computers, no spell books, no phone contacts. Is the scope of the book's effects "one planet", "one galaxy", "one universe", "one set of dimensions (ie, if opened on the Prime, Boccob wouldn't care)", or "all connected dimensions"?

The Cosmos, including any magical and spiritual layers of the Cosmos. I'm simplifying that to an universe. The only thing I can be sure it wouldn't affect is a closed Monolith, because the Monolith would not exist when closed. (But if the Book was assembled inside the Monolith, it would probably annihilate it too...)


I don't think that there's many universes that couldn't deal with the book in 24 hours that somehow could if given 48, so I won't worry about trying to parse the whole "math stops working" insanity, and just pretend that they just lose after 24 hours.

Those universes that have access to time travel, divination, teleport etc. in total absence of all mundane and magical writing and all electronical memory storage, can find and destroy the Book. This said...


D&D could respond to the Book with divinations/wishes to know what is going on, where the source is, Teleport there, destroy it, and be sad that Spellbooks are gone - assuming that they don't just come back, right? Um... speaking of: if all the books are destroyed, and *remain* destroyed, then just *where* does the Book reappear when destroyed? Inside otherwise empty books? :smallconfused:

LotFP is an OSR game and a fully co-operating Monolith would give LotFP character access to pretty much every type of D&D magic. And spells have everlasting duration inside the Monolith unless dispelled.

And yes, the Book can reproduce parts of itself inside empty books. Or new books made after its destruction. It's not picky. Information destroyed by the Book doesn't come back upon its destruction.

Remember: LotFP is what D&D would be if it was played for full horror. The only reason why LotFP settings are only potentially doomed instead of absolutely certainly doomed, is because these horrifying things do-not co-operate and the players will have to purposefully and royally screw up to bring all these deletorious artefacts together.

awa
2020-11-03, 07:40 PM
on the other hand even though the book could destroy the scifi universe the serious contenders can destroy whole planets with ease so at best you have mutually assured destruction.

Though the Pa'anuri of schlock mercenary are a space capable species that could destroy all life on a planet with ease just by virtue of their size without requiring any technology at all. They are also invisible, and invulnerable to conventional weapons. Gravity weapons of extreme power and wormholes are the only things that can harm them.

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2020-03-28

Vahnavoi
2020-11-03, 07:55 PM
I know, I've read the entire comic, some parts of it multiple times.

The issue for Pa'anuri, specifically, is that they are very big and the Book is (for them) very, very small. Without extensive help from baryonic matter creatures, Pa'anuri would have no way to actually tell where the Book is, what the Book is, nevermind why the Book does anything. So while they could trivially destroy it, it would be near-impossible for them to detect and pin-point, before it would annihilate them too.

awa
2020-11-03, 08:15 PM
Feel like a universe destroying book would trigger that no infinite clause but even if it doesn't
then we're back to MAD you can destroy their universe but you cant stop a Pa'anuri that gets into yours.

Except its not quite an even MAD, it takes longer to assemble the book then to fire a long gun, so if they know where you are before you do you just lose. If you do assemble the book you destroy their universe but you cant stop any of them that crosses over, so I guess they just steal your universe?

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-03, 08:21 PM
I'm giving it to the Doctor Who universe. They have paradox-resistant time travel, so timeframes don't matter. The Daleks can design weapons capable of literally eradicating multiverse, the Time Lords can go back to the start of the universe and unmake their enemies, and the Cybermen built an army that required the destruction of two galaxies to stop. And all three are non-infinite species that have been utterly eradicated, mostly by each other. If they join forces to wipe out everyone else, that's curtains.

The Whoniverse's power level is highly erratic, but it's potential is pretty much insane.

If the Time Lords were still at their height they'd be able to mass produce demat weaponry, which IIRC unmakes and then remakes the universe exactly how it was, except that the matter that composed you doesn't exist anymore (which is probably one of the things the Moment can do). That's not getting into Gallifrey's timeback buffers (I think that's the name) nullifying any attempt to change the Time Lord's history, Null Zones to turn off time travel in areas measured by galactic features, or whatever the Celestial Integration Agency has cooked up. Or that slow time thing from The War Games

And of course the Time Lords have the ability to set up their technology so that their support kicks in at exactly t=0. Even without Daleks piloting battle TARDISes suddenly the parts of time you wish to change aren't accessible, until the timeline of Gallifrey advances to the point that they want to mess around in that place and time.

The Whoniverse isn't unbeatable, but it's pretty hard even if we throw out beings beyond the Time Lords (*cough* new series *cough*). It benefits from poor understanding of science in the early days caused it to feature galaxies when it meant to feature solar systems, and the new series is sometoimes legitimately universal in scope.


Well if time travel is allowed then the winner is Q, from Star Trek. He can do stuff with a wave of his hand that it takes the Doctor a whole episode to do.

Bah, if we're allowing the Qs we're allowing both the Eternals (beings who are to the Time Lords as the Tine Lords are to us), as well as the Guardians.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-04, 04:25 AM
Feel like a universe destroying book would trigger that no infinite clause but even if it doesn't
then we're back to MAD you can destroy their universe but you cant stop a Pa'anuri that gets into yours.

If you presume the Cosmos (as in, the one you inhabit right now) is infinite, then yes, the Book is infinite and shouldn't be considered. I'm treating it as finite in the sense of "only affects one of the warring universes at a time". If you ban the Book, you ought to ban the Monolith too.

As for whether LotFP would be able to combat Pa'anuri, the Monolith is not baryonic matter, but neither is it dark matter. It, and everything in it, would likely be able to survive a Pa'anuri. And if a Pa'anuri was able to enter the Monolith (by strict reading of game rules, they can't) , it would have to play by the same rules of fabricated mental space as others. At best, it would be like those scenes in Schlock Mercenary where two AIs duke it out in a virtual space. Who would win is an open question.


Except its not quite an even MAD, it takes longer to assemble the book then to fire a long gun, so if they know where you are before you do you just lose. If you do assemble the book you destroy their universe but you cant stop any of them that crosses over, so I guess they just steal your universe?

Long Guns need precise targeting data to hit their target, and even before the Book is completed, the Monolith itself interferes with that. The distance from the Monolith to the edge of its effect is variable. How variable? From few feet to several Astronomical Units. You can aim directly at the Monolith and still miss by half the width of Earth's solar system. That's after you've found out where this thing (which doesn't exist part of the time) even is.

Just stealing the LotFP universe is possible after they destroy yours. I'm not going to discuss how well LotFP could resist, because that would require invoking additional LotFP nonsense. Talking about just the Book and the Monolith is nonsense enough.

Quertus
2020-11-04, 06:26 PM
As the comments about "at the height of Time Lord power" might hint, *when* you pick for your universe can certainly matter. Choose wisely :smallwink:

The Book from Lot… wherever… would, IMO, defeat many contenders, but suffers from several problems:

Someone with a more consistent definition of "infinite" than mine would probably say that it should be banned.

---or---

Its source universe is finite, and it only affects a finite area (leading to the hilarious fight where it gets chucked into, say, the Star Wars universe, but only affects *our* galaxy - and its side doesn't even consider the possibility of this type of failure, and are baffled at the opposing universe's "immunity").

Also, it's kinda a one-shot - if the trick fails, it's unlikely to succeed on subsequent attempts; if it succeeds, it cannot really be recovered to be used again (important against infinite-sized universes, and multiple engagements).

And, hilariously, if the other side jumps entirely into the Book source universe, it could technically fully work, yet ultimately cause zero casualties.

-----

Reading comprehension has never been my strong suit, but here's the factors I remember hearing that it sounds like people think would be important in determining who would likely win:

Time Travel
(Temporal defenses)

If the enemy can go back in time to destroy you before you know that you're fighting, or just break your universe's concept of time, are there any universes that can defend against this kind of attack without Time Travel of their own?

FTL Travel
(FTL attacks, attack while FTL, FTL defenses, FTL senses)

If your foe is moving and attacking at relativistic speeds, can you win if you are not?

WMD
(Divinations, defenses, size does matter)

If your foe is destroying things at the planetary scale, can you win if you are not? How many worlds does each side have, and how fast can they destroy them?

-----

Personally, I hope that the final answer isn't so boring as to obviously fall along such lines (plus things like universe size vs movement rates or range of senses / attack range).

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-04, 07:17 PM
Time Travel
(Temporal defenses)

If the enemy can go back in time to destroy you before you know that you're fighting, or just break your universe's concept of time, are there any universes that can defend against this kind of attack without Time Travel of their own?

Really depends on the universe, but we can theorise that time travel defences work on the same principles as time travel, so you probably have to be theoretically capable of it to actively defend against it (but universes with splitting timelines have pretty good inbuilt defences).


FTL Travel
(FTL attacks, attack while FTL, FTL defenses, FTL senses)

If your foe is moving and attacking at relativistic speeds, can you win if you are not?

First off, relativistic is not FTL. But for either case, it depends on the speed of your sensors, FTL sensors might allow you to avoid attacks, and sufficiently powerful force screens could absorb impact.

But as any ship moving relativistic relative to you experiences you moving at a relativistic velocity the increased speeds mainly makes engagements much shorter with more energyn being delivered. Assuming ships aren't accelerating, then we might have to factor in time dilation.

For FTL stuff it really depends on the system being used, it can be anywhere from totally meaningless to requiring us to deal with infinite or negative energy.


WMD
(Divinations, defenses, size does matter)

If your foe is destroying things at the planetary scale, can you win if you are not? How many worlds does each side have, and how fast can they destroy them?

Short answer: no. Long answer: while you were preparing to fight back the enemy took apart your planet for precious materials.

Well, kind of. The Death Star is impractical and beatable, exterminatus probably isn't in the long term. The real problem is closing of the possibly quite broad technological gap, and destroying things is anywhere from glassing them, to taking them apart for resources, to just blowing them up.


Personally, I hope that the final answer isn't so boring as to obviously fall along such lines (plus things like universe size vs movement rates or range of senses / attack range).

It basically comes down to four things: the numbers a universe can field, the power of the weapons they can practically field, the strength of the armour they can put on things, and their ability to deal with outliers on the opposing side.

The first qualifier might as well be 'can they control orbitals', to get rid of rods from orbit being a problem. Time travel defences are a good second qualifier. Once that's done it's mainly going to come down to who can keep their man on the objective the longest.

Quertus
2020-11-04, 09:22 PM
Really depends on the universe, but we can theorise that time travel defences work on the same principles as time travel, so you probably have to be theoretically capable of it to actively defend against it (but universes with splitting timelines have pretty good inbuilt defences).

Point - Marvel is completely immune to Time Travel attacks, as such "attacks" just generate a new universe. if one rules the order of precedence that way…


First off, relativistic is not FTL.

Agreed. Copy pasta error (wanted to include both in this section, as I figured that they would pose similar problems). :smallredface:


But for either case, it depends on the speed of your sensors, FTL sensors might allow you to avoid attacks, and sufficiently powerful force screens could absorb impact.

But as any ship moving relativistic relative to you experiences you moving at a relativistic velocity the increased speeds mainly makes engagements much shorter with more energyn being delivered. Assuming ships aren't accelerating, then we might have to factor in time dilation.

For FTL stuff it really depends on the system being used, it can be anywhere from totally meaningless to requiring us to deal with infinite or negative energy.

Hmmm… processing…


Short answer: no. Long answer: while you were preparing to fight back the enemy took apart your planet for precious materials.

Well, kind of. The Death Star is impractical and beatable, exterminatus probably isn't in the long term. The real problem is closing of the possibly quite broad technological gap, and destroying things is anywhere from glassing them, to taking them apart for resources, to just blowing them up.



It basically comes down to four things: the numbers a universe can field, the power of the weapons they can practically field, the strength of the armour they can put on things, and their ability to deal with outliers on the opposing side.

The first qualifier might as well be 'can they control orbitals', to get rid of rods from orbit being a problem. Time travel defences are a good second qualifier. Once that's done it's mainly going to come down to who can keep their man on the objective the longest.

I guess "number of planets" is technically "numbers"… and Marvel immunity to Time Travel attacks is… "armor" for that attack vector?

I think that the *number*, *type*, and *repeatability* of attack vectors is gonna be big. Followed/paralleled by the ability to *detect* and *defend against* each vector.

Cluedrew
2020-11-04, 09:52 PM
Doomguy, from Doom.

Batcathat
2020-11-05, 03:11 AM
Point - Marvel is completely immune to Time Travel attacks, as such "attacks" just generate a new universe. if one rules the order of precedence that way…

I might be misremembering but wasn't Age of Apocalypse an actual change to the present of the main universe caused by time travel? If so, there are apparently exceptions to their time travel "immunity".

Vahnavoi
2020-11-05, 03:53 AM
@Quertus: see, the funny thing about the Book is that if you rule it as non-infinite and less than universe-sized, that generates the possibility of destroying it and recovering it from beyond its range of effect! And since it is explicitly at least planetary in effect and stated to effect the world it is on, this turns it from a single-use universal WMD to multi-use planetary+ WMD. (It is also a D&D style spellbook with 9 9th level spells in it, so...) :smallwink:

Same applies to the Monolith. You can rule it as conceptually non-infinite... it still remains a setting-hopping time-hopping piece of crap, equivalent to TARDIS from Doctor Who. (Not a comparison invented by me; I've seen it in multiple third party reviews.)

TeChameleon
2020-11-05, 06:59 AM
I might be misremembering but wasn't Age of Apocalypse an actual change to the present of the main universe caused by time travel? If so, there are apparently exceptions to their time travel "immunity".

Both Age of Apocalypse and House of M were changes to the 'main' (616) Marvel Universe, although House of M was reality warping rather than time travel... but I'm pretty sure it was still considered a separate timeline..? And AoA ended up having its own universe number when later writers wanted to revisit it (Earth 295), but that was a retcon.

As far as I can tell, the rules are slightly different when either psychic time travel is involved, or else when reality warpers are mucking around with things (given that David Haller/Legion, who caused AoA, was both a psychic-powered time traveller and a reality warper, things get a little muddied).

If we're talking time-travellers in the superhero universes, let's see if I can throw out some of the main ones from the big two...

Marvel:

- Kang the Conqueror and his various incarnations (Iron Lad, the Scarlet Centurion, Pharaoh Rama-Tut, and Immortus) seems to be the most accomplished time-traveller, able to consistently mess with whichever universe he wants, rather than just splitting off parallel timestreams.

- Cable seems to be able to wander the timestream with relative impunity, and also seems to be able to have at least modest effects on things without causing parallel universes. Blaquesmith and Rachel Grey-Summers/Phoenix II/Mother Askani also seem to have that ability, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent, or at least they haven't shown it as much.

- The Time Variance Authority seems to be more or less competent at patrolling the timestream, and can lay out enough future-tech firepower for a single agent to believably challenge Thor, so there's that.

There are a ton of other time travellers in Marvel, but they seem to be more prone to spinning off parallel timestreams, or else are close enough to the 'no infinites' clause (like Franklin Richards or Agamotto) to not really be under consideration.

DC:
Basically anyone who does the superhero gig long enough ends up time travelling at one point or another, but these are the ones for whom time travel is their primary gig, or for whom it happens often enough to be, maybe not their main thing, but definitely a thing.

- The Linear Men. Rip Hunter (the Time Master), Liri Lee, Waverider, and Booster Gold are their primaries. Waverider is made out of pure temporal energy (... superhero physics, everyone!), so that's a thing. I suspect even the Doctor would be a little nonplussed by that.

- Metron, he of the Mobius Chair. Goes anywhere in time or space, without any appreciable limitations. Mostly just observes stuff, but has been shown to be able to change things if the mood takes him. Comes with a (literally) godlike intellect and immense reality-warping abilities.

- The Legion of Superheroes; the various Brainiac 5s (I hate that that's a sentence that makes perfect sense in context. Yay, comics.) pretty much inevitably invent a time bubble, and the Time Beacon (to be able to find their way back to their home reality), making time travel range from 'sorta difficult, but doable' to 'utterly trivial'.

- The Flash, both Barry and Wally, along with Impulse/Kid Flash II. While they occasionally have difficulty with controlling where they end up, contact with the Speed Force basically lets them flip both physics and causality the bird with an 'I do what I want'.

- Hourman III. A sentient machine-colony android from the 853rd Century, he could time travel (and control time) with enough power that Metron was grooming him as his successor. Packs enough of a punch to compete with Waverider in the 'mess with time' game.

- Green Lantern. Any Green Lantern- it's a base feature on their rings, to the point that a group of them has taken a reality revision to the face without any more harm than brief disorientation. Not necessarily something they all have a lot of experience with, but it's something they can do.

- Dr. Fate; with him it mostly just seems to be part of the magic gig, although his tower does exist outside of space and time.

And then there's the villains. Hoo, boy. Just gonna list them off, because bloody hell, there's a lot of them.

Per Degaton, Reverse-Flash, Abra Kadabra, the Legion of Super-Villains, Extant/Monarch (same guy, different points in his own timestream), Epoch, Time Commander, Black Barax, Gloriana Tenebrae, Glorith, Time Trapper (... several of him? His/her existence is a little unclear), Inertia, Harvest, Knodar, and Chronos, and probably others I'm forgetting.

So while 'time war' isn't something that the superhero 'verses are really set up for, they're not exactly helpless on that front.

Porcupinata
2020-11-05, 07:22 AM
Q would need to be demonstrably finite in capabilities.

The thing with the Star Trek universe is that it doesn't just have the Q continuum.

It has the Organians, the Prophets, the Douwd, the unnamed species that became the Greek gods, the Thasians, the Iconians, whatever species Trelane is, the planet-eating matter-energy cloud, the Cytherians, whatever species Gorgan is, whatever species the being at the centre of the galaxy that claimed to be "God" is, and dozens more ultra-powerful aliens.

Wherever you draw the line between finite and infinite, there's bound to be a Star Trek species that butts right up against it.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-11-05, 02:34 PM
The thing with the Star Trek universe is that it doesn't just have the Q continuum.

It has the Organians, the Prophets, the Douwd, the unnamed species that became the Greek gods, the Thasians, the Iconians, whatever species Trelane is, the planet-eating matter-energy cloud, the Cytherians, whatever species Gorgan is, whatever species the being at the centre of the galaxy that claimed to be "God" is, and dozens more ultra-powerful aliens.

Wherever you draw the line between finite and infinite, there's bound to be a Star Trek species that butts right up against it.
If you include the novels, Trelane's also a member of the Q Continuum (Q-Squared by Peter David).

Quertus
2020-11-05, 06:31 PM
I might be misremembering but wasn't Age of Apocalypse an actual change to the present of the main universe caused by time travel? If so, there are apparently exceptions to their time travel "immunity".

Shrug. My personal head canon is that which universe we're watching / others "connect" to changes. One comic long ago seemed to indicate that Marvel had (effectively) a "universe recycling mechanism", that, in effect, destroyed "uninteresting" universes, restoring their matter / energy / space for more Marvel universes to spawn.


@Quertus: see, the funny thing about the Book is that if you rule it as non-infinite and less than universe-sized, that generates the possibility of destroying it and recovering it from beyond its range of effect! And since it is explicitly at least planetary in effect and stated to effect the world it is on, this turns it from a single-use universal WMD to multi-use planetary+ WMD. (It is also a D&D style spellbook with 9 9th level spells in it, so...) :smallwink:

Same applies to the Monolith. You can rule it as conceptually non-infinite... it still remains a setting-hopping time-hopping piece of crap, equivalent to TARDIS from Doctor Who. (Not a comparison invented by me; I've seen it in multiple third party reviews.)

Well, the Book *could* reappear outside its AoE… if it has a longer "rebuild" range than its AoE… and it *somehow* got destroyed. Not really sure how anyone would accomplish that last bit.


If you include the novels, Trelane's also a member of the Q Continuum (Q-Squared by Peter David).

If she's a crazy cat lady (young puppy love girl? Something like that…) then wasn't it a televised episode?

Khedrac
2020-11-06, 05:29 AM
Even if one ignores Time Travel the Dr Who universe is going to be hard to beat. For one thing, it's a full universe - large numbers of populated galaxies, something (in my experience) very rare in both games and novels. Also, they too have a few immensely powerful races e.g. the ancient Orisians (if I have that right - them from the Pyramids of Mars) plus the Black and White Guardians.

The forces of the Lensman Universe are immensely powerful (especially if we take it before the conclusion of the war so both the Arisians and Eddorians are still around). High-tech combatants lead by powerful and skilled psionicists with the assistance of beings not killable by physical force. However, there are only two populated galaxies. An explicit point of the universe is that most galaxies have less than 10 stars with planets, only those were galaxies have passed through each other get more (lots more). This means even quite weak forces in large enough numbers are likely to be able to reduce their numbers to just the most powerful individuals who may not be at an advantage against their opponent's leaders.

The Marvel universe appears to have a load of immensely powerful beings, but it's worth double checking. We know that those of the Marvel Universe find them very hard to kill, but also we know that Adam Warlock only had to explode 3? populated planets to tear a breach in the universe - which suggests that the actual offensive capabilities of the inhabitants are not that great when compared with many science fiction universes.

So, to throw another name in the ring - but one that is probably disqualified for not being an RPG setting - let's stick with EE Doc Smith and go to the Skylark universe.
OK, we have now gone from lots of powerful beings to just a handful, but this handful were able to go through an inhabited galaxy chucking half the occupied plates into suns while moving the other half to orbit suns in a different galaxy in a matter of minutes - and they did it from a long way outside the galaxy in question (the hostile inhabitants could have killed them if they stayed in there).
The have a weapon range against arisian-type beings that is probably about as big as the observable universe (one ship either side they create a field of force to enclose them and then shrink it down to about that of a pea trapping all non-material beings in the process. Their big factor is the range at which they can beat people - it's pretty much anywhere in the universe. Their only lack is time travel, and they have a small amount of access to that through extra dimensions.

I3igAl
2020-11-06, 09:55 AM
This no-infinite rules is weird since most fictional universes are infinite and would be able to mount infinite armies. Even something like DnD has layered infinity with multiple infinite plains.


The Marvel universe appears to have a load of immensely powerful beings, but it's worth double checking. We know that those of the Marvel Universe find them very hard to kill, but also we know that Adam Warlock only had to explode 3? populated planets to tear a breach in the universe - which suggests that the actual offensive capabilities of the inhabitants are not that great when compared with many science fiction universes.

Marvel has been around for 80 years. It has had dozens if not hundreds of different writers many of whom did not know what the others did. And even many writers do not really care about consistency in that regard.
When it comes to their upper limits in power, Marvel superheroes are probably the most inconsistent characters one can find.
If you look at Thor, you can find comics, where he crosses the universe in less than a second easily moving 1000s if not more times the speed of light. You can also find comics, where he is to slow too even hit Wolverine. There are comics where he fights in the center of the sun and then there are comics, where he nearly fries to death flying to close by it.

In any case, Marvel has the problem of character approaching some form of infinity quite early. Characters like Thor, Hulk and Silver Surfer are already described to have incalculable strength and skyfathers seem to already be able to reality warp basically everything so it depends what exactly OP means by having infinite characters.

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-11-06, 11:34 AM
I've never read anything from Heir to the Stars/the Suggsverse, but from what I know of it it was specifically written to be the most OP thing to ever OP (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Suggsverse). Unless we cut them off because even the most mundane characters are apparently omnipotent and omnipotent is another word for infinite they should at the very least have any superhero setting or other universe that relies on the incredible power of a few individuals beaten. And there are apparently officially 330^googolplex of those super mundane omnipotent god characters (which is not infinite), so they should have any setting that relies on having a whole galaxy full of inhabited planets beaten as well.

The bane of these discussions is usually that it's not very hard to make up super powerfull stuff. See also the Doctor Who example: the stuff they make up for the for laughs episodes is probably often more powerful than stuff they take a little more seriously, ones you think it all the way through.

If we stick to the slightly more internally consistent and well known universes I agree that both WH40K and Schlock Mercenary probably stand a decent chance. Schlock has instant teleportation against which the only known defense is another in-universe invention and wisecracking megapowerful AI's popping up at a pace of about one per month, Warhammer has nothing super conventionally powerful in its own right, but most planets in their universe are home to either a billion feral orcs or even more tyrannids. Sometimes both. And chaos pretty much only gets stronger the more you fight it, or the more you foght anything else for that matter.

Grim Portent
2020-11-06, 02:08 PM
Dunno, most 40k tech is pretty tame compared to a lot of sci-fi.

High end necron, eldar and dark age human tech is scary, being able to move stars, destroy worlds, time travel and so on. Plus there's various random xenotech world killer devices which can be very cheap to use and nigh indestructible. But the conventional stuff, starships, soldiers and so on aren't really any better than the things Marvel throws around, or are worse. Schlock mercenary armies would probably flatten most 40k factions.

I think 40k would need to abuse it's ability to violate causality to have a chance against a lot of other settings. Various events take place only because the Chaos Gods sent people back in time to bring about the events that led to them being sent back in time. In theory they can snuff out any problem with time travel, but then you come down to questions of whose time travel takes precedence when they come up against the time travellers from other settings.

Quertus
2020-11-06, 02:12 PM
I've played 2 different Marvel RPGs; granted, technically, I suppose, Marvel is a *comic* reality (or, as in a recent case, a movie reality) with attached RPG rather than an "RPG reality".

Still, "has an RPG" was my really low bar.

(And I'm not actually sure that all of the entries qualify…)

(Also, "the real world™" is a bonus entry, for calibration purposes)

-----

As for infinity…

Although I can see the arguments, Infinite universe size isn't enough to disqualify a submission: it's only if the *population* is infinite that *that portion* of the population is disqualified.

For example, in D&D, the outer planes are infinite in size. Yet many / most of the outsider populations are explicitly finite. If, however, there are an infinite number of Shadows on the plane of Shadow, or an infinite number of Lesser Demons in the Abyss, then those particular infinite numbers of creatures are not able to participate.

As for an infinitely powered creature? My criteria has been "demonstrably finite". So if it is clear - especially to the other inhabitants of the universe - that a being's (or object's) power has limits / is measurable, then it should be fine.

Yes, the Death Star can blow up planets… but only at a certain rate, at a certain range, and (IIRC) the blast does not penetrate the planet to potentially hit a planet behind it. So clearly finite power.

Whereas an Epic spell could affect an entire infinite plane… in a finite and resistable way. The Book could *maybe* affect an infinite plane in an infinite and unresisted way. Curiously, when dealing with things in the scale of "blow up a planet", considerations of "measurable amount of power in terms of ability to resist" has been less an issue for me than Babylon 5's catch phrase of "it's off the scale". That phrase means that, in B5, all those beings / tech would be disqualified, because the source universe tried and failed to quantify them.

So, yeah, I recognize that my definition is a bit… sketchy. But "no infinite" is kinda a Playground standard, and I'm really not interested in comparing infinities anyway.

Personally, I was kinda hoping that the Star Destroyer / Storm Trooper / infrastructure levels would factor more into the answer than it seems likely to, given "ranged/teleported antimatter planets" and "Time Travel: I defeat you before you even know that we are fighting" are on the table.

EDIT: yes, "omnipotent" beings are clearly unable to participate. How does slugs fare without them?

Tvtyrant
2020-11-06, 02:16 PM
If we stick into the realm of western widely-consumed media, it usually comes down to Star Wars or Warhammer 40k or something like that where the writers like to add zeros to every number and don't really understand what it means.

If we expand the realm to the really crazy, there's a couple of animes were giant robots use galaxies as weapons, so I think that probably wins.



Basically, the less the writers pretend to understand reality, and thus the crazier the feats and more zeros are attached to every number, the more powerful the combined forces of the setting are. It doesn't really have anything to do with strategy, tactics, logistics, or technology.

Except troop numbers which are hilariously small. Somewhat justified in that ships are expensive and troops take food and precious missile space.

GloatingSwine
2020-11-06, 05:33 PM
The Warp can spawn demons, gods, etc. Individually, those are each of finite power. Are their numbers theoretically infinite? Maybe. But it feels to me like the warp, in toto, is actually only of finite power, just like D&D's infinite planes have only a finite population.

So, I think that you *could* mode anything from the warp's play-dough; I just don't think that you have an infinite supply of play-dough with which to manifest all the possible demons at the same time.

If I'm wrong, then WH40K does not get its demons. But that doesn't invalidate the *rest* of WH40K in this challenge / thought experiment.

There are infinite Daemons in the Warp because they can never truly be killed and everything there is controlled by the whim of the chaos gods. But the number that can leave the Warp and act in the Materium is very limited. It requires people to act in certain ways, do things for certain reasons, or intentionally try to call them. The scale and intensity of whatever calls them forth determines how many and how powerful the incursion.

Cluedrew
2020-11-07, 08:30 AM
Ah no one picked up the Doomguy joke, oh well. It is kind of a joke about "what about the settings that don't even make sense?" Doomguy is a regular solider who fought off (and then took the fight to) all the forces of hell. Pit of Kid Icarus canonically has infinite lives/retries so can never be killed permanently. And of course there are the extensive comic book stories with absurd beings and powers yet somehow it never actually effects daily life on earth.

Thinking about the interactions between settings is fun though, but I like the weird ones for this. Like Dark Ocean which is a multiverse separated by an endless night filed with monsters and rock. The rocks (and the fact there is air here) stop most spaceships and even if you can get ground forces deployed the monsters will probably tare your apart before you reach any of the settled areas. And even if you start at one getting to the next is getting to the next is going to be a chore and the locals... well they are prepared. I mean they started breeding 10 headed dragons because the old 6 headed dragon breeds just weren't doing enough damage. Also the incredibly terrifying warriors these things are designed to fight tend to also be artists and politicians who are comfortable working on a centuries long time scale. So forget military might, against most other settings they will probably just force a stand-still and then assimilate the attacking universe.

Martin Greywolf
2020-11-07, 05:40 PM
For reasonable universes that are thought out in depth, I'd have to go with Schlock Mercenary crowd, the galaxy there is outrageously powerful, more so than the Lensman even. This is mostly because Lensman is older in real world time and doesn't have the AI capabilities the Schlock does, but still.

For the dumb but fun universes, it's a tie between all those that have beings that encompass all reality - so, SCP foundation, Lovecraft verse, Sandman and so on. There are no winners when Yog Sottoth, Pattern Screamers, Scarlet King and Destiny decide to have a team deathmatch.

Quertus
2020-11-08, 11:29 AM
OK, from what I've heard, I think I'm prepared to draw up a tentative stat sheet, so that we can get to the dirty business of tearing it apart. :smallwink:

The stats we will need for "Alpha 1" will be as follows:

Time Travel

Does the universe have Time Travel (ie, we kill your ancestors before you know that we're at war)?

Does the universe have defense against Time Travel? (ie, sure you killed our ancestors, but we exist nonetheless)?

Does the universe have the ability to fix Time (ie, if you killed our anestors, we can see what changed, go back in time, and change it back)?

WMD

Does the universe have the ability to destroy things on at least a planetary scale?

What defenses does the universe have against things attacking on that scale?

FTL / Space Combat

Can the beings in the universe move at FTL speeds?

Can they fight at those speeds?

Can they detect things at those speeds?

-----

Real World™

Possesses no time travel, WMD, or FTL. Could potentially nuke a planet or two into sadness.

Star Wars

Time Travel: No known time travel, although "The Force" could potentially predict and actively manipulate events against such meddling, on a universal, deterministic scale. Results unclear.

WMD: Several WMD (depending on universe and time frame); all are single-planet or single-system scale, with limited range, limited RoF and/or limited ammo. Uncertain if any exist in parallel with "Jedi can teleport entire fleets" timeline. Despite planetary shields, no ability to defend against their own WMD, let alone more advanced WMD (except that, as it occurs long ago in a galaxy far, far away, exterminating the "us" of the past may prove difficult for some).

FTL: Able to move FTL, covering galactic distances in a matter of hours or days (or instantly teleport with Jedi assistance), but combat (and sensors) are much more limited to "standard" speeds. Able to pull objects out of FTL speeds.

Note: Predictive abilities granted by The Force may make this universe perform better than anticipated.

Star Trek

Time Travel: Numerous races possess time travel; a few have the technology (or even the inborn innate ability) to sense timeline changes.

WMD: No known WMD. The Federation is able to explode its ships to make an entire... parsec(?) uninhabitable. The Borg and Crystalline Entity can slowly strip an entire planet of its population... but that hardly seems applicable.

FTL: Varies. Standard FTL covers galactic distances in a matter of years; Borg Subspace and Traveler speeds are *much* higher; if of demonstrably finite power, Q appears to simply teleport galactic distances.

Note: Lots and lots of species whose capabilities need only be proven demonstrably finite that are capable of completely outclassing the "standard" races.

Marvel

Time Travel: Numerous individuals possess time-travel capability; questionable whether any would be more effective than Homer Simpson sneezing in dinosaurs. Marvel potentially possesses a strange defense against Time Travel of simply spawning alternate realities instead of changing the source reality.

WMD: No known demonstrably finite WMD? Phoenix can eat stars; Galactus can eat planets. Both are singular entities, fairly slow effects, and close-range.

FTL: Numerous FTL and teleporting entities and races; some predictive and long-range senses; no known FTL combat.

Traveler

Time Travel: No known time travel?

WMD: No known WMD?

FTL: Presumably?

Warhammer 40K

Time Travel: Tzeentch willing, they can, at least, time travel within their own universe... ("High end necron, eldar and dark age human tech is scary, being able to move stars, destroy worlds, time travel"?)

WMD: The "bugs" will slowly consume the biomass of a planet; the Orks will infest a planet to become an Ork world; Chaos will convert entire planets into demon worlds; the Imperium will blow up planets with Exterminatus; etc. Few universes have this many different WMD.

FTL: Only by traveling "the Warp" (a separate dimension), or the "walkways" therein. Nekrons... ?

Stargate

Time Travel: Time manipulation, but no known time travel?

WMD: ??? Population spread out over multiple galaxies, requiring more effort than usual to exterminate.

FTL: Near-instantaneously transport possible through created Gates. Population spread out over multiple galaxies, requiring greater travel capacities than usual to attack. ???

"D&D 3.5"

Time Travel: Teleport Through Time allows some potential here. Unbounded Wishes, Miracles, and deities may also show potential. Limited data exists detailing D&D timbat afaik.

WMD: Sketchy what qualifies without hitting the "no infinite" limits. Certainly, one could create an epic spell to rain fire down on a planet for months without crossing that limit... if epic spells / epic spellcasters weren't disqualified for being able to hit entire planes instead.

FTL: Lots and lots of teleportation, divinations, etc, allowing instantaneous movement and precognitive reaction.

MtG

Time Travel: ??? (only the silver of Karn? otherwise limited "success" - nothing weaponized?)

WMD: Most weapons seem to have a single battlefield in scope?

FTL: Lots of teleporting, but even that is poorly utilized.

Lensmen

Time Travel: None.

WMD: FTL Antimatter Planets, oh my! (Range, RoF, ammo?)

FTL: ?????

schlock mercenary

Time Travel: ???

WMD: Long-Gun galactic-range teleporting plasma (or "anti-proton plasma") cannons, generally aimed "inside the target". Incorporeal (dark matter) Pa'anuri throw planets and detonate stars as a diversion tactic. Can "near-instantly" "digitize" entire planetary population to safety as a defense against loss of life when planets are destroyed; Infrastructure damage???

FTL: galactic-ranged teleport, with defenses, and defense-bypasses...

Doctor Who

Time Travel: Yes, lots. Multiple entire races have militarized time travel, including insulating their species / assets from temporal manipulation. Doing this to other universes while in a fight may well "unhinge" the other universe to boot.

WMD: *lots* of populated galaxies. Also... apparently, "the Cybermen built an army that required the destruction of two galaxies to stop", meaning that destroying multiple galaxies is within their capabilities.

FTL: Lots, plus teleportation. No known battles occurring at FTL speeds, however.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Time Travel: the Monolith (sounds 100% like a Tardis to me).

WMD: the Book (destroy all writing and computer-recorded data instantly, effectively ends math & reality within 24-48 hours; world+ AoE)

FTL: Presumably lots of teleportation effects.

DC

Time Travel: lots of individuals who can time travel; a few beings / places that exist outside time.

WMD: ???

FTL: ???

World of Darkness

Time Travel: Sometimes. They can detect and predict temporal disturbances; not sure if they can place themselves outside of time.

WMD: Not... really?

FTL: Teleportation, by the few. Otherwise, no.

D&D 2e (cheaters' edition)

Time Travel: Change time, exist outside time, sense temporal disturbances, divinations - check.

WMD: No? Individual worlds solar systems exist inside individual bubbles, providing a strong defense against most WMD.

FTL: Lots of teleportation, no FTL. But individual worlds solar systems exist inside individual bubbles, making enemy FTL of somewhat less use.

More with even less information

Rifts (I think that they're separate universes; not sure about their capabilities)

Paradox (AKA, "Rifts, but better"). (Many theoretically possible things, but... should lose to most universes with "real" time travel / FTL).

Lovecraft / Call of Cthulhu

Cthulhutech

Loony Toons

Dragonball

Things which might not be RPGs

Culture Universe

Skylark

Super Robot Wars

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Getter Emperor

Demonbane

Xeelee universe (cool weaponized time (including sending tactical data back in time, and spaces outside time)

The Long Earth series

"The Earth Prime universe (Green Ronin) not only has time travel, it has superpowered Time Keepers and Guardians of Time to protect it's "proper" history from outside interference."

First Person Singularis / universe that eats universes

Heir to the Stars/the Suggsverse

Pit of Kid Icarus

Dark Ocean

SCP foundation

Sandman

InvisibleBison
2020-11-08, 01:34 PM
Star Wars

Time Travel: No known time travel, although "The Force" could potentially predict and actively manipulate events against such meddling, on a universal, deterministic scale. Results unclear.

Star Wars does have something time travel-like (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Flow-walking), though it's unclear whether this technique can be used to change the past.


WMD: Several WMD (depending on universe and time frame); all are single-planet or single-system scale, with limited range, limited RoF and/or limited ammo. Uncertain if any exist in parallel with "Jedi can teleport entire fleets" timeline. Despite planetary shields, no ability to defend against their own WMD, let alone more advanced WMD (except that, as it occurs long ago in a galaxy far, far away, exterminating the "us" of the past may prove difficult for some).

A sufficiently powerful Sith can, in theory, kill everything in a galaxy (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_Emperor%27s_ritual).


Stargate

Time Travel: Time manipulation, but no known time travel?

Stargate has multiple methods of time travel (https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Time_travel).


WMD: ??? Population spread out over multiple galaxies, requiring more effort than usual to exterminate.

There are a few large-scale WMDs in Stargate, such as the star-detonation (https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Vorash%27s_sun) technique, Anubis's superweapon (https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Anubis%27_superweapon) and the Dakara superweapon (https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Anubis%27_superweapon).

TeChameleon
2020-11-09, 01:24 AM
Limiting myself to those universes I consider myself... respectably knowledgeable... about.


Marvel
WMD: No known demonstrably finite WMD? Phoenix can eat stars; Galactus can eat planets. Both are singular entities, fairly slow effects, and close-range.

Hoo, boy.

WMDs:
- Nega-bombs. Planetary-system-sterilizing 'death light(?)'
- Kree Anti-Matter Bomb. Damages/'devastates' planets on a system-wide scale.
- Ultimate Nullifier. Removes target from existence. No exceptions, no limit on scale (has erased entire multiversal branches), violates conservation of mass. Effectiveness varies wildly depending on user's concentration, knowledge, and mindset.
- Annihilation Wave. Massed trans-dimensional invaders with planetary destruction capabilities and intergalactic range.
- Destroyer Armour. Virtually indestructible humanoid armour, animated by life-force and capable of a wide range of matter manipulation, from transmutation to 'planet go boom'.
... long story short, if a space empire exists, it has star- and/or planetary-system-destroying capabilities.

Also, just about any character past a certain power level (Hulk/Thor-ish) can single-handedly destroy a planet, and others have blown up stars (Dr. Strange, for example). And Galactus' planet-destroying is only slow when he's eating the planet- otherwise, it's just 'zap, boom'. There's also guys like Surtur the Fire Giant, who blew up a galaxy to forge his blade in its dying embers, and if said blade got dunked in the Eternal Flame of Asgard, universe go bye-bye.


Lensmen
WMD: FTL Antimatter Planets, oh my! (Range, RoF, ammo?)

FTL: ?????

WMD:
Range on just about everything seems to be galactic to intergalactic.
- RoF on the FTL Antimatter Planets isn't great (if memory serves, it took several months of dedicated work to prepare two shots), but frankly, if you're fighting something that takes more than one FTL Antimatter Planet to kill, you've got bigger problems. Although they apparently figured out a way to mass-produce those eventually (going by a wiki for that, memory is unclear).
- There's also the cheerily-named 'Sunbeam', which is... basically a supernova channelled into a death ray.
- Relativistic antimatter planetoids were also a fairly casual thing, along with relativistic planets as projectiles.

FTL:
- Kind of an odd case here, they use an 'intertialess drive' which also acts as an absolute defense; no inertia = anything that touches you just knocks you out of the way without causing damage. This has the effect of making FTL combat functionally impossible, so nobody really bothers try.



schlock mercenary

Time Travel: ???

WMD: Long-Gun galactic-range teleporting plasma (or "anti-proton plasma") cannons, generally aimed "inside the target". Incorporeal (dark matter) Pa'anuri throw planets and detonate stars as a diversion tactic. Can "near-instantly" "digitize" entire planetary population to safety as a defense against loss of life when planets are destroyed; Infrastructure damage???

FTL: galactic-ranged teleport, with defenses, and defense-bypasses...


Time Travel: Nope. There's precisely one case of time-travel in the Schlockverse, and it only worked because a new universe had been created inside the current one, which was playing merry hell with physics.

Speaking of, the Schlockverse has galactic-level weaponry (with, obviously, intergalactic range), since creating a new universe inside the old one does all kinds of unpleasant things to the old one. Takes a buttload of power to do, though.


DC

Time Travel: lots of individuals who can time travel; a few beings / places that exist outside time.

WMD: ???

FTL: ???

WMD:
Oddly, tends to be less tech-driven than Marvel's planet- and star-busters. That being said, there's no shortage of people running around that can snuff out stars and chuck planets. Tends to be limited to personal-scale stuff, but when the people in question can move at FTL speeds and rip planets in half with their bare hands, it tends to be enough.

FTL:
Hahahahaha...

Yeah, the DCU has people that can go FTL on foot. And yes, those people can give physics a wedgie and take its lunch money. The two fastest of those nearly ripped reality apart just by racing (back and forth across the universe. Multiple times.)

Barring superspeed insanity, there are a lot of alien races running around with their own variants on FTL drives, to the point that the comics themselves have gently poked fun at it ("Did they go to hyperspeed or warp? I can never keep those straight...").

A standout would be the Boom Tubes, standard travel tech of the New Gods of the Fourth World. Instantaneous transport to... basically anywhere. Any distance, any dimension. As an added bonus, those are typically generated by Mother Boxes, semi-sentient supercomputers with limited reality-warping capabilities. And are about as common as smartphones for Fourth-World denizens.

Satinavian
2020-11-09, 06:14 AM
I am not sure how usefull those comparisons actually are.

Sure, timetravel is powerful. But there are a lot of settings that do nonlinear time at least in parts of the setting. Often for contrast or plot device. And the ability to travel to the past can be quite meaningless when there is not really a past or a future.
Also most settings with time travel don't have a logically consistent version which makes it pretty difficult to judge how it would interact with time options of other universes.

The whole WMD stuff is fine. But when we consider more of the fantasy settings and less of the scifi ones, we get a load of option where "planet" is not even a thing. Or interplanetar space. How do you judge a planet buster superweapon spacesstation when attacking a universe without space or planets ?

Similar is true when asking about FTL travel, combat and defenses. Those questions only make sense if relativistic physics even exist, when the speed of light is a thing and also a meaningfull barrier. Which does not have to be the case.

Batcathat
2020-11-09, 09:48 AM
The whole WMD stuff is fine. But when we consider more of the fantasy settings and less of the scifi ones, we get a load of option where "planet" is not even a thing. Or interplanetar space. How do you judge a planet buster superweapon spacesstation when attacking a universe without space or planets ?

Similar is true when asking about FTL travel, combat and defenses. Those questions only make sense if relativistic physics even exist, when the speed of light is a thing and also a meaningfull barrier. Which does not have to be the case.

That is true, but most fantasy and sci-fi settings seem to run on a "like reality unless otherwise specificed" principle so if a setting didn't specifically mention (not) being on a planet or the speed of light I would assume it's the same as IRL. Probably not a perfect method, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.

Quertus
2020-11-09, 11:27 AM
Well, I'm clearly going to need to update my stat sheet. :smallwink:


Sure, timetravel is powerful. But there are a lot of settings that do nonlinear time at least in parts of the setting. Often for contrast or plot device. And the ability to travel to the past can be quite meaningless when there is not really a past or a future.
Also most settings with time travel don't have a logically consistent version which makes it pretty difficult to judge how it would interact with time options of other universes.

Clearly, I'm going to need to remember to start that thread on Time.

But what do you mean, "no past or future"? :smallconfused:


The whole WMD stuff is fine. But when we consider more of the fantasy settings and less of the scifi ones, we get a load of option where "planet" is not even a thing. Or interplanetar space. How do you judge a planet buster superweapon spacesstation when attacking a universe without space or planets ?


That is true, but most fantasy and sci-fi settings seem to run on a "like reality unless otherwise specificed" principle so if a setting didn't specifically mention (not) being on a planet or the speed of light I would assume it's the same as IRL. Probably not a perfect method, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.

Citations on "planet is not a thing"?

But, yes, universes without "space" will be rather interestingly protected from some starships. It's an interesting game.


Similar is true when asking about FTL travel, combat and defenses. Those questions only make sense if relativistic physics even exist, when the speed of light is a thing and also a meaningfull barrier. Which does not have to be the case.

Really, I could be talking about "horse-back archery" or "cars with guns vs having to get out of the car before you shoot", as what I am discussing is "moving really fast and shooting".

I don't really care if, say, D&D has no concept of "speed of light", any more than I care whether the world has horses, archery, cars, or guns, only that the star ships move so fast, D&D beings (and other non-FTL cultures) cannot see / track them.


I am not sure how usefull those comparisons actually are.

How fast can you travel?

How fast can you fight?

How fast of an object can you track?

How far can you shoot?

How far can you sense?

How much damage do you do?

These sound like comparisons one makes all the time to me. Not seeing why they would not be useful.

Satinavian
2020-11-10, 05:52 AM
Clearly, I'm going to need to remember to start that thread on Time.

But what do you mean, "no past or future"? :smallconfused:To take an example you are probably familiar with consider the prophets in the wormhole from DS9. And how much they have a problem with recognizing that events happen in an order to outsiders and that those care about this order.
That is not really a rare idea. Many settings have introduced beings or areas where the flow of time does not exist in the way we know it. It is an easy way to make stuff exotic and strange or to introduce plot devices.

One other example would be that a lot of fiction took some real world esoteric and religious ideas and postulated circular events. Evenerything that happens, already happened and will happen. If you want to know the future, you just have to dig to find the past. If you want to see an event that happened yesterday, you could just freeze yourself and observe it later.

Most authors just use that for strangeness and mindscrew but all those things and many more can be set up completely logical and without paradoxa or contradictions. Not that people really care.



Citations on "planet is not a thing"?

But, yes, universes without "space" will be rather interestingly protected from some starships. It's an interesting game.Have you never seen a flat earth RPG ? Or one that takes any of the thousands of mythical cosmologies and declares it real ? Never played a system where earth and heaven are just bodies of gods and certainly not round or where stars are only lights moving on a wall and beyond is just a sea of divine tears or a place where nothing corporal can exist, only ideas ?

Or we could take a shortcut to the very popular isekai genre which nowadays has spawned RPGs as well and visit a setting that works on video game logic and never bothered with planets. Or physics. Where breathing or athmosphere is not a thing unless underwater when you get a timer, where monsters are not born, but spawn with their treasure as feature of the environment




How fast can you travel?

How fast can you fight?

How fast of an object can you track?

How far can you shoot?

How far can you sense?

How much damage do you do?
Ok. One of the things about FTL is that most people writing about it never understood even special relativity. There can be no slower or faster FTL. Every FTL speed is mathematically the same and only depends on perspective. If you can build one, you can build all. That is because there are events where you cant say what is earlier or later or how much time is between them in a relativistic universe.

But settings that are not relativistic tend to do Euclidian spacetime and have instantanious transport (commonly teleportation) and detection (think contingency or similar stuff) as upper speed limit. Something that has no meaning in a relativistic universe.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-10, 07:43 AM
The whole WMD stuff is fine. But when we consider more of the fantasy settings and less of the scifi ones, we get a load of option where "planet" is not even a thing. Or interplanetar space. How do you judge a planet buster superweapon spacesstation when attacking a universe without space or planets ?

That's, generally speaking, easy, because even universes without space or planets often use human measures of distance and time. So if, say, you can shoot a Death Star laser through a Ring Gate and hit something on infinite Plane of Earth, we can gauge how big of a chunk of that plane is now gone.

Continuing on that thought, a lot fantasy without space and planets is so small scale that sci-fi weapons could obliterate entire known settings. The hard part is lining up the shot. For example, whether using AD&D or Amber rules for cross-universal travel, technology and magic just stop working in universes where laws of nature don't support those things. So no matter how big a boom your fancy sci-fi laser would do, it can't deliver that effect to all corners of the multiverse.

caden_varn
2020-11-10, 11:03 AM
Although technically invalid as it is a multiverse (kinda?) instead of a universe, I wonder how the Torg cosmverse would fare?

On the face of it, probably laughably poorly, but the High Lords defining power is imposing their reality on you - and if their technological axiom is too low for your superweapon/superpower to work - sorry, it just doesn't (unless the bearer transcends & becomes reality-rated themselves. Although in that case they become a stormer, which is specific to Torg - does that mean they join team Torg by the original 'everyone working together' rules?).
Of course, getting the stelae in place & dropping the maelstrom bridge, required to impose reality, may be tricky. You'd have some issues getting stone-age lizard-men onto the deathstar to prep for that particular activity might be interesting.

Even if you can, it only imposes your reality for a relatively small area (triangles 200 miles to a side I think, although it is pretty easy to add more) - so not really competing on a galactic scale, let alone universal.

Quertus
2020-11-10, 02:20 PM
So, I see several factors which can change the answers here.

One is if it isn't a 1-on-1 scenario. If, instead, it is a series of "universe brawls", or even a free for all, that changes things. But I'm hoping to just look at single fights for the moment.

The other is how rules conflicts are handled. If Marvel says all Time Travel just spawns alternate realities, or D&D says all tech becomes artifacts, it impacts how others interact with them (and, presumably, gives Torg an advantage). Speaking of, can a *single* Torg universe actually be a contender? Care to describe the one(s) you feel would fare best?

Batcathat
2020-11-10, 02:58 PM
The other is how rules conflicts are handled. If Marvel says all Time Travel just spawns alternate realities, or D&D says all tech becomes artifacts, it impacts how others interact with them (and, presumably, gives Torg an advantage). Speaking of, can a *single* Torg universe actually be a contender? Care to describe the one(s) you feel would fare best?

The easiest (using the word very loosly) way to handle it might be to just say that the laws of reality are dependent on the universe the action is taking place in rather than on the person who's doing it, so if a Terminator time travels in the Marvel universe the time travel works by Marvel rules but if Cable time travels in the Terminator universe it works by Terminator rules.

EDIT: Though now that I think about it that might give an unfair advantage to the universes where time travel can't change history, since they could retroactively wipe out their enemies but their enemies couldn't do the same to them. Suggestion withdrawn.