Magical MacGyver side-by-side comparison game

[NichG]

Hey, it was fun!

Paranoia especially has a thing where the whole game conceit is that you're playing a regular person (plus lol-random mutation & secret society indoctrination) in an impossible situation and are set up to fail by everyone. Played straight without humor it's depressing (it's a valid optional play style but you need some optional rules toggled to specific things in order to make it work). But these scenarios are aimed at generally highly capable special flower characters. So any Paranoia character basically can't effectively interact with them unless they're given special permission.

But the Paranoia system explicitly says at the meta/GMing level to give exactly that. As GM you're supposed to give them R&D toys that'll let them do the mission, if it's natively impossible for the character. Granted, the R&D gear is also supposed to be glitchy, undocumented, hazardous to the user's health, and fail-dangerous (opposite of fail-safe). Really I should have been giving Paranoid Bob R&D gear tailored to maximun mayhem and comedy for each mission, but I only really did so for the last. R&D gear in Paranoia isn't supposed to be fully random (about half is a good rando level), but lovingly hand crafted for each mission to make the players want and need to use it despite knowing that there's some inescapable and darkly humorous tragic flaw that will come out at the funniest/worst possible moment.

It isn't a "neutral arbiter GM" game. You're actually intended to be working against the players, not in the bad "******* tween on a power trip" way, but trying to engineer reasonable situations where characters turn on each other or take desperate risky measures. The trick is that you're trying to spread it fairly across the table and do it in such a way that it's funny so everyone can have a laugh. And that meta level, the give and take of perversity points, using ooc knowledge without getting caught out, the focus on "funny>winning", is integral to the game in a mechanical/rules way that it isn't in other games.

Which was also sort of the reason for the rewriting scenarios to fit. The Paranoia system is part of the setting and vice versa. That's why the "copy of Paranoia Bob in D&D-land" thing is an auto-fail. Once PB is out of the setting the character basically becomes mostly non-functional for it. PB is an ordinary (ok, except for the mutation) person with attributes that just don't work outside that dedicated integrated system & setting.

Sort of like why I wouldn't use Amber Diceless for this. That game isn't about these sorts of set ups so they're all trivially solved in that system just by walking around. By definition any scenario happens somewhere in a Shadow and a character just walks to an adjacent spot where everything is exactly the same except for one little detail, which can be literally anything the character wants. And the only opposition is another Amberite character. That first one with the lich? One of an infinite number of Shadows. Character walks out of the room and back in. Now it's real that the lich's magic is fatally flawed and all fails so there's no problem. Or that the lich is a pacifist and didn't set a bomb, or the attack simply never happened. Any of an infinite set of possibilities in an infinite variety of Shadows. And that's just the first basic character ability in the game.

So Dungeons the Dragoning? D&D junk fits fine (hey lets go wight-pocalypse Krynn for fun and farm tarrasques as torpedo warheads) but the entire setting is operating at a higher power/optimization level than most of the given scenes. Traveller & Paranoia? Many of the given scenes don't even compute or function without translation, they're garbage in = garbage out without rewriting.

It would have been really interesting if someone had played a 'no character sheet self-insert' for these scenarios. At least as far as getting at 'those things you can do by virtue of being a person in that world' rather than things you can do because you have a system helping you do them. I don't think it would have been easy in any of those cases, but I kind of feel like - at least as far as fiction goes - I could imagine a piece of fiction in which a 'powerless' character does actually manage to resolve all of those situations through lateral thinking of various forms. Which may in many cases be something like 'I go find someone to help me who does have setting-relevant powers' for example.

Like for the model ship scenario, "Hey are there wizards? Is that a thing? Can we just pay someone to teleport the nobles to where the real ship is and show them directly?" or "Could we just decorate our barge and make it look like some kind of special vessel? Papier mache or painted cloth or something? Put on a performance and make it about the performance rather than the actual ship?"

[Jakinbandw]

Scenario 6: Timeless City

Once every thousand years, a temporal distortion opens up to a lost city existing within an Interval of Time that was cleaved from the timeline in a battle long ago. The city has a number of powerful magical items, artifacts, hidden and lost lore, and other things of comparable import. Every time the distortion opens up, the city is reset to its state at the beginning of the Interval, meaning that these valuable things can be harvested.

The distortion remains open for 24 hours.

The only problem is, time doesn’t come to pass within the distorted Interval. Any character entering the interval carries about 30 seconds worth of time with them, after which all mechanics that operate via the next moment coming to pass – getting actions when another round begins, restoring resources, etc – simply don’t happen for the character. For every pound of material carried that is denser than the character’s own body, the character gains an extra second of carried time. Things summoned by the character or effects created by the character and sent outwards take from the character’s pool of remaining time in order to do their thing.

The city is filled with individuals repeating the same day in which the city was removed from time, over and over . Even though external time does not pass, these individuals follow their predetermined paths unless interfered with. Someone from outside touching them will split their reserved time with them 50/50, allowing novel interactions. Bringing someone from the city through the exit portal is a thing that can be done, at which point they will gain full autonomy and indefinite time.

There is somewhat valuable stuff even within a few hundred feet of the portal. Though, move fast, because lots of others will be trying to loot these areas the moment the portal opens. If this is your main focus, focus on how you’ll be faster than your competitors or prevent your competitors who are largely Equal combat encounters but number in the hundreds from beating you to the loot.

If you want to go for the big score though, supposedly somewhere within the 3 mile radius city is a hidden vault of the time magic artifacts that were used to fight in this battle and to preserve the city even when its past was erased from existence.

As far as the ‘keeping your time going’ aspects of this scenario, things that interact with time could absolutely interact with that effect, and I leave it up to the individual poster to rule on how they think it should work.

Spoiler: Details

Show

The vault itself is hidden in the cellar of a particular tavern (you would have to have a way to find this...). Its protections are first and foremost that the contents are in an extradimensional space which only connects to the cellar of the tavern when three objects are bought together to form the hoop that acts as the gateway. These objects have a Magic Aura on them to make them appear mundane. Within the gateway, the character will be immediately faced with a time magic protection in the form of a manufactured predestination paradox showing them leaving the vault without the artifacts on their person. That paradox must be either thwarted, tricked, or just ignored – I leave it up to the individual system as to whether that would have a consequence and whether that consequence would be worth just taking as ‘damage’. Beyond the predestination paradox there is a golem (counts as a Stronger encounter if combat is used, though by default the golem has no time and will just remain stationary guarding the loot) that has the artifacts integrated into its body, and a repeating Disjunction trap set to attempt to nuke the artifacts if the body chamber containing them is forced open. The golem’s instructions are to provide the artifacts to anyone showing an insignia of military office of the city at the level of Captain or higher.

That insignia could be found elsewhere in the city, specifically on ten or so military personnel fighting the city’s last battle. Each such character should be considered Equal if combat is utilized, but of course if they aren’t given time then they’ll just do predetermined paths and won’t actually fight. Only 2 of the ten people know about the vault though – the General of the city’s forces, and one of the captains that works with the mage battalion.

At around the 23 hour mark of the scenario, the General (assuming he hasn’t been deflected from this course) will enter the vault to use the artifacts to defend against the oncoming attack responsible for the city’s current state. Therefore following the General and sneaking in behind him would be a valid way to locate and bypass various protections of the vault. Note that the General does not disarm the predestination paradox – indeed, the point of it is to force the artifacts to be used in place, and not removed even by the command staff.

Going with my character Susland here.

So to begin with, the money isn't really the goal, it's saving all the people within the town. This starts out easy enough (Ropes are cool!) But then it starts to get a bit tricky. Susland can call on the Astral element, which once it paints a surface, creates a portal to the nearest other surface within range that also has astral element on it. These portals last only 5 minutes, but that's longer than we have. Susland can throw the astral magic up to 150' away, and the astral magic he can summon can link up to those within 50'. This probably makes it easy enough to clear the entrance without having to step inside for more than an instant or two. Basically, put a splash of astral at the entrance, then drop some under a person walking so they fall through, and right out the entrance.

So with those people saved, they can be questioned. Hopefully they will be able to at least give information on what was going on.

Next, I feel might be a stretch, but the Harmony element allows for multiple objects hit by a single splash to all act as if they were the same object while the element remains. At Susland's level he can cover objects that are up to 30' apart with a single splash. Normally the element fades after 5 minutes, but if Susland burns effort when he summons the element he can make it a permanent enchantment.

By linking items already linked together, over the course of many days, Susland can build a long pole with a hook at the end that he can use to pull people out with. Permanent Force enchantments on parts of the Harmony artifact will provide lifting force to keep it from being too heavy to lift, though it will still be unwieldy. Depending on the dimensions of the city, different variations can be created to allow things like reaching around corners, and over buildings.

So from here, I'm doing some guesswork. Once all the people that can be saved with the previous methods have been exhausted, Susland would need to look for alternate options. He could call on his pact with his god to learn about the nearest artifact that would let him survive inside the time bubble, and although grumpy, she would point him towards the Captain.

So from here, it becomes an interesting test. He could throw up walls of Aegis magic, and with clever placement of astral magic and aegis walls he could slowly build a passage through the city, each time returning to the entrance. Since he has a storage ring allowing him to carry 15 additional pounds, and uses heavy armor, I'll figure he has about a minute of time max. I think that he could manage to create a set of portals from one side of town to the other without running out of time (assuming he keeps returning to the entrance). In this case, the status field is working in his favor, as the astral magic can only last either 5 minutes, or until the town resets. Since it gets frozen in time however, it will stay until the end of the day when the city resets.

So Susland should manage to reach the captain, and pull him out of the frozen city. He'll talk with the captain, convince him to help, then go and examine the artifacts. The captain has to activate them on time as per normal to keep the city looping, but hopefully Susland's wisdom will be high enough that he can figure out a better solution to running out of time than sprinting through portals across the city.

Based on what has been said, I feel that the fact that the Time Element in it's simple form slows down the local time for an object is a perfect match for what is going on inside the city, too much time magic causing issues with those from the outside suffering simple exposure. If this is the case, then the Light Element protects objects from the outside environment, and specifically from time preserving whatever is coated. On the other hand, the dark element dispels the simple effects of all elements that it interacts with. Since the city is both being preserved, and is suffused with time magic, then coating oneself in the dark element should be enough to buy more time within the affected area.

Mixing it with a proper dispel check now that they know how the enchantment is accomplish, should be able to disrupt the effect locally, allowing Susland to freely move through the city rescuing everyone, until the Captain is the last one left, and he brings the captain and the artifacts out, shutting down the effect forever.

[Satinavian]

It would have been really interesting if someone had played a 'no character sheet self-insert' for these scenarios. At least as far as getting at 'those things you can do by virtue of being a person in that world' rather than things you can do because you have a system helping you do them.

I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

And the biggest problem is that to use the powers of "a person in that world", there is just not enough background knowledge of the world. Unless a system gives a PC explicit worldbuilding powers, they can only use what has explicitly established or can be extrapolated. Which is not much for those scenarios.




I have now read most of the solutions and it has been interesting. However i am skeptical about how a lot of those characters and their abilities fit the requirement of being roughly of a powerlevel of a lv.9 D&D character.

[NichG]

I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

In real life, I can solve problems you can't and you can solve problems I can't. Furthermore, there are problems I have that you could solve but won't, because they're my problems and not yours.

Everyone IRL only has the 'powers of a random bystander', and yet people run businesses and countries, invent new technologies, explore new lands, etc. Just because 'some random person can be the monarch of a country' doesn't make it an uninteresting question to ask 'what would I do if by dint of happenstance, I was appointed as a monarch?'. Or just because some random person could be a police investigator solving a murder successfully doesn't mean it would be uninteresting to say 'what if that murder were my job to solve?'

It only implies NPC idiocy when it's some apocalyptic thing that should be everyone's priority to deal above and beyond other considerations, even things like the structure of authority in their society as far as who has command in solving it. Which is only really the case in the first scenario and maybe the fourth (but only once you figure out it's escalating)

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

To me that reads as a blind spot because of metagame conventions and norms surrounding TTRPG culture. It absolutely is a solution, but people don't feel like it is one, so they pass over it. That's precisely why I think it would have been interesting to see it as a baseline, because I suspect there would have been cases where characters in some systems 'could not succeed' using their mechanics, where a real person in that situation with no powers or character sheet could succeed.

And if it's a system that creates that outcome rather than the aesthetic of the player, that's definitely an aspect by which one could compare that system to others. Also subtly distinct, systems that encourage the aesthetic of 'use your character sheet to solve ' vs 'use your choices to solve'.

[Quertus]

I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

And the biggest problem is that to use the powers of "a person in that world", there is just not enough background knowledge of the world. Unless a system gives a PC explicit worldbuilding powers, they can only use what has explicitly established or can be extrapolated. Which is not much for those scenarios.

I think you’ve chosen the wrong dichotomy - I think it’s not about smarts vs stupid, but knowledgeable vs ignorant; ie, “what can I, with my knowledge of modern processes / goods / physics / etc accomplish that ancient societies wouldn’t think to do?”.

Granted, this involves the Dead Art of Roleplaying, of understanding that different characters have different knowledge and perspective. And it also relies on understanding prerequisites and (side) effects of such things that render it prohibitively… too… something… for me to attempt.

EDIT: or ninjas could say that this sloth was barking up the wrong tree. Guess I interrupted that comment the wrong way.

I have now read most of the solutions and it has been interesting. However i am skeptical about how a lot of those characters and their abilities fit the requirement of being roughly of a powerlevel of a lv.9 D&D character.

I guess that depends on your optimization level.

More seriously, most of my PCs in this challenge would fail in combat compared to even a 5th level D&D character, being statistically just “some guy/girl”, or even “a kid”.

Probably my strongest entry was Cutter Fyord, from Paradox 2e. Thing is, aside from the aesthetic of the bouncy balls, Cutter never touched his character sheet. Put another way, he only did what literally anyone could do in that system. You could make your character “a small child” (or, even better, “a small child with the Stunted Magic trait, but trained by Cutter”), and pull off everything Cutter did (give or take it being reasonable to do so in character; ie, you could mechanically pull off everything Cutter did short of having unlimited bouncy balls). Without leaning on the rules of Paradox 2e, Cutter would probably be able to keep up in a 5th or 6th level D&D party in a normal adventure. Maybe. If the party optimization level matched “naked Warlock with random powers and no eldritch blast“. EDIT: upon reflection, Cutter could probably pull off an EB equivalent, it just wouldn’t be reliable.

Because of this:

I'm not interested so much in 'how powerful' as much as 'what is the feel of resolving these situations in different systems?'.

I was focused more on the comments of how wide the characters were, tuning power as a secondary consideration.

But, yeah, most of my characters intentionally had more out of combat width than your standard 9th level D&D character, to optimize the odds that I’d be able to provide the answer to the question of, “what does a solution look like in this system?”.

[Telok]

But, yeah, most of my characters intentionally had more out of combat width than your standard 9th level D&D character, to optimize the odds that I’d be able to provide the answer to the question of, “what does a solution look like in this system?”.

I think that's because D&D these days is mostly a combat game where, if you don't have significant combat capability then your characters die a lot. It also depends on the game in question. The "9th level D&D" is the half way point in D&D's zero-to-hero character building arc, but it's a massively different arc between different classes & editions as well as between played & purpose built.

Back in AD&D I ended up with a 5th level fighter who had lots of "soft power" simply through engaging with the local nobility and being polite & well dressed. These days the character would be mechanically unoptimized and considered weak, especially outside that home province. Even if I just built a "better" higher level AD&D fighter by picking gear & stats the system (before name level) doesn't mechanically five them much beyond hitting stuff (no real change through to 5e). In these scenarios the difference between those weak and built AD&D would boil down to it being in/near the home province of one or if we'd picked a magic item for the other.

But outside D&Ds the concept of "9th level" is really iffy. For my characters I picked about half way between starting value and a nominal "end of the full campaign scope" value. That's why, for example, Paraniod Bob was down 3 out of 6 clones. But lots of games, by not doing D&D levels, have a lot more variability in advancenent. You see some in DtD40k7e with Diplo Bob having combat ability like an average nameless soldier and never advanced that, but took lots of assorted skills & ability improvements. Or GWB who just took the same xp total and dumped it all into getting maximum level & conjuration magic (with a side of "fights really well" from the class requirements). Then Paranoid & Travelling Bobs come from systems that don't really do "character advancement" as D&D conceives of it, outside of gear that comes & goes the character doesn't ever change much.

Then take a system like Champions. Supers game, 350pt starter hero is normal, but there's no functional upper limit. What's "9th level" there? And you sure aren't on any "zero to hero" because you're starting at super. Heck, it's a game in which you can build a flippin unicorn murder-hobo or Tony Stark (any version & who's actually easier to fit in the starting character budget) and has literal stop signs* on some of the abilities that tell you to get GM buy-in. But without a level cap or end game the idea of "middle of character arc" is meaningless.

* Yes really. Little octogons with 'STOP' on them as big, and right next to, the power name. But if you avoid those and use the official book of pre-built powers, then you can put out a good starter character in 15 minutes.

[Satinavian]

In real life, I can solve problems you can't and you can solve problems I can't. Furthermore, there are problems I have that you could solve but won't, because they're my problems and not yours.

Everyone IRL only has the 'powers of a random bystander', and yet people run businesses and countries, invent new technologies, explore new lands, etc. Just because 'some random person can be the monarch of a country' doesn't make it an uninteresting question to ask 'what would I do if by dint of happenstance, I was appointed as a monarch?'. Or just because some random person could be a police investigator solving a murder successfully doesn't mean it would be uninteresting to say 'what if that murder were my job to solve?'

It only implies NPC idiocy when it's some apocalyptic thing that should be everyone's priority to deal above and beyond other considerations, even things like the structure of authority in their society as far as who has command in solving it. Which is only really the case in the first scenario and maybe the fourth (but only once you figure out it's escalating)

Yes, but structures of authority, titles, wealth, connections, special knowledge etc are powerful things that many systems put a price tag on. If none of those powers are on your character sheet, you don't have them.

To me that reads as a blind spot because of metagame conventions and norms surrounding TTRPG culture. It absolutely is a solution, but people don't feel like it is one, so they pass over it.

I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.
It gets different when the "asking for help" involves throwing the characters money around or invoking the characters authority, using their connections or their incredible social skills. That is arguable part of the characters power. And several of the entries do exactly that.

That's precisely why I think it would have been interesting to see it as a baseline, because I suspect there would have been cases where characters in some systems 'could not succeed' using their mechanics, where a real person in that situation with no powers or character sheet could succeed.

Why would a "real" person be more successful ? What exactly gives a real person a mechanical secure 75%+ chance that asking for help works and is not regarded as automatic failure ? Social powers are powers as well.

[NichG]

Yes, but structures of authority, titles, wealth, connections, special knowledge etc are powerful things that many systems put a price tag on. If none of those powers are on your character sheet, you don't have them.

I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.

Given that I set the challenge, and I've even discussed this point upthread somewhere already, I will explicitly say: "Yes, doing this would be valid for this challenge". For this challenge it is completely okay - desirable even - to play 'the character' as in that particular person/agent in the world, rather than playing ''the character sheet' as in the list of mechanical abilities granted to you by the system.

If you want to restrict yourself to playing the character sheet out of interest, aesthetics, or because you think it will show you something more clearly about a given system, you're free to do that. But please don't insist that others who might choose differently are doing it wrong.

One of the few explicit 'GM ruling' interventions I'm willing to make on this thread: No, they would not in fact be doing it wrong.

It gets different when the "asking for help" involves throwing the characters money around or invoking the characters authority, using their connections or their incredible social skills. That is arguable part of the characters power. And several of the entries do exactly that.
Why would a "real" person be more successful ? What exactly gives a real person a mechanical secure 75%+ chance that asking for help works and is not regarded as automatic failure ? Social powers are powers as well.

Real people don't 'roll for results' at the level of things like social interactions. People take actions, say specific things, etc, and the consequences of those things are the consequences that follow. If I go to hire a contractor to replace the roof on my house then either that contractor has room in their schedule and I have the money to pay them, or not. There's incomplete information in that I don't know that contractor's schedule before asking, but there isn't inherent randomness to that and certainly nothing like 'if I happen to use slightly nicer words, then suddenly the contractor has room in their schedule to fit me' that I'd be relying on in 90% of such cases.

Rolling for outcomes is an abstraction introduced in order to handle the fact that in TTRPGs you don't - and can't - resolve stuff down to e.g. the quantum scale of physics where actual randomness starts to occur; nor can you hold on to every little detail about the state of the world. Similarly real people don't have a character sheet with powers that they need to spend CP/XP/whatever on. If the scenario is 'you're a baron' then you're a baron. Rolling for outcomes, having to pay a resource to justify being able to do a thing (or having only things you pay for be meaningful things you can do) are TTRPG conventions and that's why I would still maintain that this is - and on this thread has been - a significant blind spot for people who are too deep into those conventions.

If the system you chose to use for this thread was 'I'm just going to play myself', then you have no rolls, no character sheet, no failure rates, no need to justify things like 'actually being the baron that the scenario appointed you as being' - and that is completely allowed!

[Jakinbandw]

Given that I set the challenge, and I've even discussed this point upthread somewhere already, I will explicitly say: "Yes, doing this would be valid for this challenge". For this challenge it is completely okay - desirable even - to play 'the character' as in that particular person/agent in the world, rather than playing ''the character sheet' as in the list of mechanical abilities granted to you by the system.

If you want to restrict yourself to playing the character sheet out of interest, aesthetics, or because you think it will show you something more clearly about a given system, you're free to do that. But please don't insist that others who might choose differently are doing it wrong.

One of the few explicit 'GM ruling' interventions I'm willing to make on this thread: No, they would not in fact be doing it wrong.

Interesting, as this opens up many more options. In this case, I believe for the time city, and many others, I could probably track down the correct allies and ask for their help. Getting a Time sorcerer on board would make the whole situation much easier, even if they are only level 0 or 1.

[Satinavian]

If the system you chose to use for this thread was 'I'm just going to play myself', then you have no rolls, no character sheet, no failure rates, no need to justify things like 'actually being the baron that the scenario appointed you as being' - and that is completely allowed!

I get that.

What i don't get is why you assume that this lack of rules would mean that the character would be expected to be more successful when attempting the same thing than a character who has sheets and stats.
Rolling being an abstraction means it should result on average to the same thing but being less granular. And in most games PCs are supposed to be far more powerful than regular humans and thus than self inserts. So shouldn't even without a character sheet, the self-inserts fail more than a typical PC ?

[animorte]

I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.

In the beginning, I got the impression that the challenge was about how whatever character in your system(s) of choice would find a solution. What does the system allow? If the system itself provides you with guidance and mechanics on how to employ assistance, that's worth taking into consideration, at least for the purposes of this challenge. If it doesn't, that's also worth mentioning.

[Satinavian]

Honestly, pretty much everything a sheetless self-insert could even attempt to do would have to be resolved via the self-gming.

Which means the success of such a character would be completely dependend on how permissive the GM is.

[NichG]

I get that.

What i don't get is why you assume that this lack of rules would mean that the character would be expected to be more successful when attempting the same thing than a character who has sheets and stats.
Rolling being an abstraction means it should result on average to the same thing but being less granular. And in most games PCs are supposed to be far more powerful than regular humans and thus than self inserts. So shouldn't even without a character sheet, the self-inserts fail more than a typical PC ?

I wouldn't expect that by default in all systems, characters would be more successful this way. But I do think there would be particular system/scenario combos in which this would end up happening, and because of the reasons you state, we would likely find those cases to be surprising - e.g. from the point of view of experiment design, this would be a highly informative experiment to do.

For example, when Quertus noted that the 75% success threshold would be extremely hard to achieve for almost any action in some of the systems they presented, that kind of flagged to me 'this is probably a system with this property, since in real life we can on a daily basis accomplish quite a lot without having even a 5% chance of things going unexpectedly wrong or failing to succeed in an atomic action we initiate'. So even if it didn't come up, Call of Cthulhu is likely to run afoul of this, as is the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG (both which use percentile dice versus things which for basic characters can be well below 50% success rates even for day to day skills). Any system with DCs or particular ways of deciding when to roll could potentially have this issue for things if the DCs are set under particularly narrow assumptions which don't hold up once you start doing unexpected things or facing unexpected problems.

Other cases where this might happen would be systems which have a conceit that 'nothing happens without a roll' or 'nothing happens without a move' e.g. where the dramatic beats in a scenario are tied to (or even locked to) rolls or moves to potentially render characters less competent than a powerless SI on diverse scenarios (but likely hypercompetent within specific kinds of things germane to the system). So I'd be curious how things like Powered by the Apocalypse games, FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc hash out against this baseline.

The thing to do would be to run an SI through each of these scenarios, and then scan all of the responses for which characters from systems failed scenarios where the SI did better. Then ask, in those cases, why? Was it characterization? Was it a difference between the players (aesthetically, approach, creativity in the moment, etc)? Or was it actually because of the system?

Also even outside of system design, I think its not a bad exercise to do for developing lateral thinking and avoiding treating one's engagement with fictional worlds as having to go through specific 'buttons'.

[Telok]

Hey NichG, if you want I can throw out some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing.

Edit: oh, and CoC runs on the usual not rolling or easy rolls with free retries for daily/trivial stuff. Easy being anything from +50% to double your score to both. The whole thing where you have swimming at 20% doesn't mean people drown 80% of the time the water gets chest high. It's the usual 'swim a river without complications while mi-go chase you with spay/neuter ray guns' stuff that you have 20% on.

[NichG]

Hey NichG, if you want I can throw out some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing.

Sure, lets try it!

[Quertus]

Honestly, pretty much everything a sheetless self-insert could even attempt to do would have to be resolved via the self-gming.

Which means the success of such a character would be completely dependend on how permissive the GM is.

This is actually the biggest thing I've been wanting and forgetting to talk about. Well, OK, it's tied with thanking everyone for all the enjoyment I've gotten reading people's answers, and how, given my love of "the floor is lava",

From now on, the Sharp Blade will be playing "the sky is water"

"the sky is water" is something I need to add in to something somewhere.

But the thing I keep forgetting to say is, I very much played my characters knowing that I was GM, knowing just how permissive of a GM I am in most respects (despite my reputation with Wish), and knowing what areas I might... hmmm...respond poorly to, or even cause the character problems for attempting (if one insults nobility, one can expect consequences down the road, or if one builds a reputation for unusual powers, one can expect some reaction, for example).

Knowing that I could fly through a lot of gameplay at a high level, knowing that the GM would generally, as NichG put it, base the success of hiring the contractor on their availability (and things like the aforementioned "effects of insulting the nobles") rather than a Charisma check, really made a lot of the sections fly by for a lot of the characters.

At the same time, knowing that the GM would make the skill / cost / honestly of the contractor vary, and that finding / choosing the right contractor wouldn't just be a given, also affected my gameplay, as part of the Knowledge:GM based "promises of the world". Further, most of my characters would avoid known pitfalls (like insulting the nobility) with an "I don't want to have to deal with that" attitude, to the point of avoiding situations where such could occur unless absolutely necessary, even when as GM I knew there wasn't so high a threat (ie, for "insulting nobles", I as GM knew that there weren't any nobles actively seeking to take offense from the PCs).

Having a different GM could definitely have produced different results. For example, a GM who throws monsters at the PCs if they plan too long, or who requires the PCs to use OOC information to solve quests, or who always has active opponents who learn from the PCs actions even if there's no way for them to do so, or who determines contractor availability with a Charisma check? Any of these would greatly impact gameplay. And if I had to go in not knowing who the GM would be, and write up a flowchart of the character's actions to be run through by a random GM, I'm not sure I could complete even 1 such set of actions per challenge per week.

And there's another related (even if it is perhaps an inverse relationship) thing I noticed. I tend to start my characters with a certain level of... naivete. Despite in the 1st challenge knowing that of course anyone with any clue would build their contingency plans with Hard Mode's "if you don't hear from me" clause at a minimum (and my experienced characters doing much more), my characters went in not expecting that.

Running back through my memories, I'd have to say that, the way I run my characters, their level of Planning, Preparedness, and Paranoia is... complex. Under a few rare GMs for whom I have adequate Knowledge:GM and found their approach reasonable, I might create a character who starts with a high PPP rating that isn't meant to be played for laughs (the telepathic vampire is one such example of a competent paranoid; there are at most 2 or 3 other characters I've made who started as such); most everyone else starts at what I consider more or less 0. Then, as the character gains experience, their PPP cap increases, and their PPP rating usually increases with the cap ("right, so now we know we need to fill out the forms in triplicate, and have them notarized by..."). Only "usually" because particularly unwise characters might not take the lessons they've learned to heart.

When they find themselves in a new situation, their current PPP rating might fluctuate. Their cap may raise slightly from the situation, and their rating might rise to match the unfamiliarity. Or, if everyone in the world thinks differently (as you get from a different GM running all the NPCs), some of their usual PPP might not apply to the new global thought patterns, and their PPP rating might actually be reduced (at least until they get to know the new world).

Not that I've put conscious thought into it before, but that seems to describe my experiences better than most RPG rules sets simulate their reality.

That said, I'm not sure if any of this is particularly actionable information, but those are my thoughts wrt how much the GM matters to these challenges.

But outside D&Ds the concept of "9th level" is really iffy. For my characters I picked about half way between starting value and a nominal "end of the full campaign scope" value.

... Yeah, I spaced out, and forgot to mention that detail: I considered trying to build all the PCs as "X sessions in". The problem with that was, "9th level" means something very different in 2e (and earlier) than in 3e (and later?) in terms of play time. So the M&M characters were actually starting characters (or, well, they would have been, but, per the thread rules, they had "half a level worth of XP to spend"); the rest were generally much less experienced than 2e Arma.

So if I had to group them by experience... some systems are quite variable in how quickly one advances / how much "XP" one earns, but it might look like...

• Noob: Alex Daeus (M&M), M&M Omnimancer
• Acclimated: Shadowrun Troll, Alex Knight (WoD), Harry (WoD), Paradox Telepathic Vampire, Cutter Fyord (Paradox 2e)
• Experienced: Whizzy (D&D 3e), LtC Staltek Vir (Star Trek), John Faseman (Marvel)
• Veteran: Arma (D&D 2e), Mr. T (Warhammer cludge)

(The MtG deck gets a N/A rating, although they're technically by backstory a noob who just inherited their power)

I'm not sure how much would change if I advanced them all to being equally experienced, other than that the 3e character Whizzy might be throwing Epic Spells at the challenges.

I did expect people to write in details for e.g. NPCs or other such things that they found they needed, which tended not to happen. None of that is bad! But it does suggest that if I were to do another one of these in the future, it might be worth spilling more ink talking about the whole self-GM part of the exercise and giving examples or at least using a different metaphor than standard table-top play to explain it

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

To me, one of the big draws of a Module is the Shared Experience it offers.

If you comment that you just watched the Doctor Strange movie, and your friend replies, "me too!", but you come to find out one of you watched the modern MCU movie, while the other watched the 1900s cartoon, it's not going to be the same conversation as if you'd both watched the same movie.

If someone says they've seen The Tempest, and I ask if they think the spirits will let Prospero go, and they respond with "Who? What spirits?", there's that same lack of shared experience.

Which is to say, approaching these scenarios as a module, I was deincentivized from adding such additional details; or, put another way, another value of this thread is that one could mine the "request for information" comments for tips on writing modules.

However, more germane to this thread, I felt that the "common experience" part of the challenge would be more valuable to comparing how characters from different systems approached challenges. After all, if you wrote up 100 challenges, and dealt 6 of them out to each of the various characters, would it have been as informative?

(describing it more as a CYOA writing exercise maybe?)

I completely missed this part earlier. I've seen CYOA books that involved dice; some of these prompts could have been pretty cool for making such books for some of these characters IMO.

[NichG]

I completely missed this part earlier. I've seen CYOA books that involved dice; some of these prompts could have been pretty cool for making such books for some of these characters IMO.

I meant more like things like Jumpchain or Celestial Forge (there are tons of these, probably more of them than there are stories that actually use them, but those are the two I've seen more than just one story based on...), which are kind of like LitRPG for fiction authors. Also things like 'quests' which are kind of forum-driven fiction with one author and the forum-goers voting on choices or actions or even setting details, often within some kind of very loose mechanical system that the forum-goers may or may not actually know the details of. These things can involve dice, but they can also be purely vote-driven or even just author chooses.

[Telok]

things like 'quests' which are kind of forum-driven fiction with one author and the forum-goers voting on choices or actions or even setting details,....

There used to be a bunch (may still be as I haven't followed) of these on the DwarfFortress forums. Do either an adventure mode or firtress mode, write up events decently, take votes on what to do next. Voters provided general direction, DF provided the rules & randomization, op had a nice creative writing exercise.

[Quertus]

For example, when Quertus noted that the 75% success threshold would be extremely hard to achieve for almost any action in some of the systems they presented, that kind of flagged to me 'this is probably a system with this property, since in real life we can on a daily basis accomplish quite a lot without having even a 5% chance of things going unexpectedly wrong or failing to succeed in an atomic action we initiate'. So even if it didn't come up, Call of Cthulhu is likely to run afoul of this, as is the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG (both which use percentile dice versus things which for basic characters can be well below 50% success rates even for day to day skills). Any system with DCs or particular ways of deciding when to roll could potentially have this issue for things if the DCs are set under particularly narrow assumptions which don't hold up once you start doing unexpected things or facing unexpected problems.

Yeah, a lot of systems are really weird, and would demand some bizarre worldbuilding to match how things work. Paradox 1e was a simple percentile system, with no concept of "difficulty", so it produces aberrant results for an atomic 75% success requirement (among other oddities). CoC, (most editions of) Warhammer, and one edition of Star Trek use percentile systems, mostly in ways that don't stand up to scrutiny.

So I'd be curious how things like Powered by the Apocalypse games, FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc hash out against this baseline.

I considered doing a section called "Catching up with the Jonses", where I ran through these scenarios with more characters, like a normal Paradox 2e character, a bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear, the "me" Isekai from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread, or even characters from other systems, but nothing ever jumped out and said "this is what these challenges really need". And I'm not really the one to run those systems you mentioned, I don't think.

Anyhow, if anyone wants a bonus scenario:

Spoiler: Bonus

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After everything, your six clones from each of the six scenarios are invited to a wrap-up party that lasts 3 hours, and takes place in an extradimensional ballroom with a curious device where the orchestra would normally be. It is explained that this device would allow any subsets of clones to fuse their bodies, minds, and abilities. After the end of the party, any clones/bodies left alive can be sent wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire. Clones gain any bonuses for successful completion of their scenarios (or things gained in the process/lost in the process) as promised - e.g. successful clones at scenario #3 get to attend the party as ascended deities.

What happens when you meet yourselves?

Spoiler: The After-party

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For giggles, let's imagine they're all invited to one big after party (Alex Knight was never actually Isekai'd, so isn't here). Ultimately, this matters very little, as they'll mostly group up with their alternate selves, except... One of the Arma would open the party by asking if anyone else has any matters more important to discuss than the destruction of / saving of her world(s), in an attempt to hijack everyone else's expertise. Although there's some suspicion of her Daemonic appearance, she is Charismatic, and I'm not exactly running any Paladins, and most everyone has a deific version of themselves, so it's probably fine. The Cutters (who would have their balls set to ephemeral) would offer to bend time if necessary (see, they can do more than just summon stuff, they just usually don't) to make sure they can talk long enough to share ideas, and would recognize the Telepathic Vampires, and (if this party wasn't properly catered) offer to provide them appropriate refreshments.

Not that it matters. The 6 copies of Arma have more knowledge to share with one another than most anyone else can offer (the Telepathic Vampire can facilitate things, like letting them share that information instantly, or forming links to keep people in touch with one another), but everybody quickly realizes most everybody else other than Arma is out of their depth / has no relevant information or advice to offer. Ltc Staltek Vir #3 is the only possible exception, being able to integrate magic and Federation technology. While being a deity removes any concerns about the Prime Directive, it also limits their ability to assist without an invitation. Ultimately, the Armas will take what they learned from one another, get a Telepathic Vampire created trans-universe mindlink, and promise to share their results with one another as they head back to their respective worlds (give or take #3, who probably tries to send an avatar or something). At least until they understand their true nature (if the host didn't explicitly explain it, the Telepathic Vampires would figure it out when preemptively scanning minds on their homeworld, and finding that they're still there. The Telepathic Vampires would also come to realize they're just a decoy anyway, and subsequently plan to create their own decoys), at which point... the 5 non-deific copies of Arma would want to be sent to save 5 copies of their world. Unless they blew up a new world while here (dagnabbit #5!).

Meanwhile, Mr. T #3 is in a 3-way standoff with Mr. T #4 and the other 4 copies of Mr. T, as the non-ascendant copies aren't sure they want to merge with the Daemon Princes. The presence of others reduces the odds of this getting violent (although the 4 are definitely pointing plasma rifles at the 2 Daemon Princes, who are themselves eyeing one another). Assuming their host is amenable, by lottery, one of the 4 is "sacrificed" to one of the 2, and spat back out, to test whether they really want this or not. Ultimately, I think they do, as they were the same person until recently, and being 1 6-bodied Daemon Prince with a few extra memories beats being 6 individual space marines. After working to develop some form of shared consciousness (Telepathic Vampire with the assist?), they probably take the most time choosing 6 different worlds to inhabit - #3, their point of origin, and 4 completely different worlds, most likely. Say, WH40K Earth in its prime (mostly just to study (and collect?) "lost" gear/tech), the original D&D movie (to slaughter everyone, because they deserve it), the world of Wreck it Ralph (pathetic modern Earth population + unique micro-Daemons), and one detailed below?

Hopefully, someone with a clue (like their 6 familiars) get the 6 copies of Whizzy to merge together before they kill one another (or the other guests). They likely retire back to the world where they're already a god - quickly, if anyone else in the room has anything to say about it.

The 6 Cutters do not want to merge with one another, but share ideas about creating Mana Stones (and #3 shares at least a weak mana potion or 2 with each of the other copies, as I finally realized they actually would be useful for Cutter). They examine the copy-merging device to attempt to add it to the list of things they can summon / create, and are joined by John Faseman and LtC Staltek Vir in that pursuit.

The Johns have encouraged one another to learn Gate, and they're definitely geeking out about the different devices and children they've created. They all want to go back to the worlds they adventured in, as they are all Guild Masters (or, in 1 case, a Deity Count) in their respective worlds, and have responsibilities. They likely try to poach some talent from those gathered. [Senility willing, I'll edit this / add something at the bottom to say who went with them.]

LtC Staltek Vir #3 has encouraged the other 5 to come to world #3, as they can learn magic there, which would be useful to their goals. Unfortunately, getting back to their respective planets isn't a solved problem. So one of the Cutters would volunteer to... hmmm... to go with them, to provide transport, except the other Cutters don't want that. A Cutter... discussion... ensues, where they debate whether they shouldn't all stick together, and go to one of the worlds the original Cutter frequents. But at least #3 and #6 have obligations in their worlds. So they... probably (plan to) create magical tables, to let them sit down and chat with one another (and the original, and others) while being in different worlds. That settled, 1 volunteers to go with the Virs, to send them back to their respective planets (and through time, so it's like nothing happened) when they're ready.

Anyway, at a minimum, Staltek Vir automatically makes his rolls to understand the alien technology, and between the 3 engineers and the Telepathic Vampire, they promise to share the tech / their findings with others as needed.

Alex Daeus will be really torn about the concept of merging into divinity... at least until their divine self denies them the opportunity, encouraging them each to find their own way. They'll poll the other party attendees for suggestions for good worlds for ascension, and... throughout all fiction? I'm sure Playgrounders could give better suggestions that Divinations could provide than the attendees' best answers of generic D&D 2e and Paradox worlds, but I'm drawing a blank on any good ascension stories. There is, however, a D&D module or two that might help.

The M&M Omni-Wizards should be able to go world-hopping on their own, and will pull divinations to determine whether it's better to remain as individuals, or merge and self-duplicate, before considering such.

The Shadowrun Trolls remained hidden, spying on others' conversations (and occasionally bumping into one another in mid-air), until the Telepathic Vampire contacted them with the offer for others to perform divinations on their behalf as well. They end up scattered throughout the multiverse, occasionally appearing (or, well, not) in my single-author fiction, among other places.

The MtG mages will want to partner up with the M&M Omni-Wizard(s), as friendly Planeswalker = opportunity for more sources of spells. I see no reason for them not to agree to this.

Alex Knight... will mostly likely merge, and rally all his forces on world #3 before heading out into the area between worlds, an order of divine knights ready to do battle with any who would pose a multi-world threat.

And the Telepathic Vampire's decoy's clones would be nursing a grudge against the host, for costing them 2-5 lives each (one for every time they travel to another world); ultimately, other than contacting the original Telepathic Vampire about all this, I think they'd all look for somewhere nice to retire - the Count back to their domain, and the others... I've heard some stories of places with eternal night, and one with a literal ocean of blood that I think they'd love. And Cutter #6's "new" city sounds ripe with opportunities.

The deities will get together and discuss forming a religion / pantheon / whatever; perhaps even look into an empty universe in which to create their own world when they get strong enough. One of the Telepathic Vampires has themselves sent into that future. I'm sure nothing will go wrong with this grouping of characters.

All in all, I think John Faseman's recruitment efforts could nab several of the M&M Omni-Wizards (at least temporarily, and potentially with corresponding copies of the MtG Mages) / the merged Omni-Wizard (& MtG Mages) depending on what their Divinations suggest, a couple Cutters, one Telepathic Vampire, and one copy of Warhammer Mr. T. Not the worst possible results, I suppose.

Ultimately, I'm kinda sad I didn't have any of the right kind of Explorer personalities among these PCs, rife with stories of cool places to go. At best, they can (get someone to) perform Divinations to search for worlds matching specific patterns (world of weak-willed simps with unique Daemons to study -> Wreck it Ralph, for example). So the opportunity to be sent anywhere seems wasted on them. Then again, I'm not sure if even "Isekai Me" from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread would, if placed in this scenario, have had a better plan than to... be sent to a world where they can get the tech to start abducting copies of me from various worlds, to see which copies know what, and have that information shared across worlds where it's needed that aren't affected by their Enemy. I'll have to ponder whether I'm even capable of running a character who would in character actually make good fun use of this ability.

That said, if the Host literally said "wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire", there'd be some definite questions for the Host about Fiction, Fact, and the nature of the universe, probably spearheaded by the newly-forged resident expert on the topic, M&M Omnimage #4.

[NichG]

'Isekai me' given the 'anywhere in fiction' prompt would start furiously writing...

[Telok]

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them. Choices: Easy, creepy, or silly?

[NichG]

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them. Choices: Easy, creepy, or silly?

Start Easy, then get Silly, and mood whiplash with Creepy?

[Telok]

Start Easy, then get Silly, and mood whiplash with Creepy?

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

Spoiler

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You've been caught up in a partial Groundhogs Day style time loop. After about <rolls dice> 11 days from the first instance you stop experiencing sequential time. Every time you lose consciousness you awaken some time within the next decade at random. One day you're seven calendar years ahead, the next you are four calendar years before that, the next day is six calendar months after that. It quickly becomes apparent that spending more than a minute in your own presence is extremely dangerous as coincidences like random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities try to erase you from existence. It gets more dangerous the longer you spend near yourself. While you personally experience time sequentially as normal the 'when' of that time is random within a window. You're basically naked every time you wake up, any clothes or possessions don't time travel with you when this happens and your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

Spoiler

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If you try to commit suicide or self harm it works. All calendar times occur within <rolls dice> around 8 years of the onset. If you haven't fixed it then after about 3 subjective years the Doctor (any, although I personally prefer the 3rd or 8th for this) appears, janks around a bit, explains that this is always happening somewhere to someone and it's just the universe being a ****, then fixes it for you and leaves. You resume normal time/space relationships at the 8 calendar year mark.

If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

Your task: Deal with it. There are no further steps.

The Bobs attempt to deal.

Spoiler

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Travelling Bob: Goes to the personal spaceship, gets a long term dock/orbit, enters data into the computer, and charges other researchers rent to study the effect.

Spoiler

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Sure, it's a long and annoying stint as your own lab rat. But it's a provable effect (future sports betting for start up money & evidence) with serious potential benefits. Time passes and the issue is eventually resolved. Weirdly boring and safe.

Paranoid Bob: Has problems as the Computer doesn't believe in time travel but does believe in commie mutant traitors.

Spoiler

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During some of the times PB is 'missing' the clones will be woken up on the assumption that PB died somehow. Eventually the time hopping is figured out and PB is forced to register as a mutant, becoming a third class citizen. PB's pay is docked and demerits entered for missing work. PB is not compensated for doing double duty even when there's four copies running around at once. Eventually R&D get a hold of PB and everything gets worse. At some point R&D blows up and it's blamed on PB. Eventually PB runs out of clones and/or tries to turn in or kill the Doctor as a commie mutant for wearing the wrong colors (it doesn't work). Everything gets worse, then it's time to fill out your taxes and get executed for submitting too many or not enough copies.

Diplomat Bob: As an immortal photosynthetic vampire dryad this is a short term nuisance. We'll still try to fix or profit from it though.

Spoiler

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Goes to and stays on board personal spaceship, delegates day-to-day running things to loyal followers. Works contacts & backing & mentor to figure out what's happening. Straight on 5k4 +1k1 from the universal library computer on the ship +10 from help actions (and not using divination magic from our navigator magician the spelljammer comes with)... yeah, breaks past the TN 35 'basically impossible' barrier at about an 83% success rate. Ok, found out what's going on but there's no common magics to fix it and it's not really monetizable (already been tried by previous folks). Probably use it as a information double pincer, take info from a future project/adventure into the past to affect outcomes. Determinism in time loops is questionable but we'll do it on the assumption that it helps. Be nice to the Doctor when they appear even though DB will still try to download everything from the Tardis computer while that's going on and maybe swipe 'how to build/repair time machines for dummies' book if possible.

Gun Whore Bob: Delegate day-to-day mercenary company operations to the next in command. Be very annoyed and grumpy for years.

Spoiler

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GWB is actually the one who might experiment with a suicide run, or possibly shoot his future self hard enough to make it stick. Other than that it's Wealth 5 easily renting a mansion (leave the credit cards in a safe so we don't have to mug ourselves for food money) to stay at and hitting up the contacts until some solution appears. Hmm... The Cocaine Wizard contact might be able to track down the effect but would you trust the research/solution they want to do? Or it could come up when GWB tries the stock market future info trick and get's "noped" by the powers that be. Looks like a wealthy semi-retirement until it gets cleared up one way or another, as long as we don't get too cranky and get killed.

[NichG]

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

Spoiler: Response before reading the spoiler

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This is kind of annoying, not because of the loss of funds or valuables, but because of things like driver's license, smartphone, etc. But also amazing, because this is clearly something impossible. I'm not the sort to run after a thief, even if the thief is myself, but I'd definitely call out 'Hey wait, what's going on?'. And if this is e.g. a time-travelling version of myself who needs resources for something, well, I'm not the sort to care about petty things like not changing the timeline, so that sort of me would stop and info-dump if they at all could do so. But they'd also just ask for the stuff rather than mugging me, (so as GM running this scenario for myself - its not time travel; if I were running it, probably something like a spirit or fae or some kind of thing like that; guess we'll see when I read the spoiler)

Once the first theft happens, there's not going to be much to steal the next time. But that'd be enough to establish a pattern for me.

So lets give me something to steal, so I can figure out what I'm up to here and maybe get in contact. I'd get a GPS tracking device (air pods maybe the easiest for this? or like a pet tracker...) and put it in my wallet - or maybe a backpack with an old laptop or some other bait. Then I'd stand around my yard looking like an idiot, waiting to get pickpocketted by myself. I'd have a camera observing the interaction and recording it, and I'd have set up my computer to be logging the GPS coordinates of the tracker continuously. So hopefully I'll see something interesting when it vanishes or ends up somewhere. Oh and of course I'd be peppering my wallet with messages to myself "Hey, give me a hint, what's going on?", "Look if you need something lets talk", etc.

Whether I would actually stick my neck out to go investigate that location though, hm... That depends a lot on where the location ends up being. If its like some place I can drive by, or a public place, I'd probably check it out. If its like a warehouse in a city or something, at that point discretion is the better part of valor. Maybe try to get a neighbor or someone to back me up if its like a forested area? I basically will auto-lose any kind of combat scenario though.

Alright, now reading the spoiler...

Spoiler: After the spoiler

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Huh, well I guess it is time travel. So given these details, I would definitely do back and forth messaging, geo-caching messages to myself, etc. The obvious thing to do here is to get myself to become rich enough I can set up a nice set of landing sites - a place with backup clothing and gear and nice stuff that I can hang out at, then move to another one in sequence to minimize the chance of landing. Also for the years in which we can do it, setting up a message center so we can talk with ourselves without being in proximity.

The situation is a bit stressful, but fundamentally more interesting than status quo existence. I think I could enjoy just going with it at least for a minimum of five years of subjective time. I'm a physicist IRL, though not the right kind of physicist for this kind of thing, but this would basically be like a fantasy come true to study a phenomenon like this. Well I'd think so at least, but I guess I'd have to experience how annoying it could get. So first we test what sort of time travel this universe supports - are we in a branching time lines kind of thing or is it a universe with Novikov self-consistency and all of the proximity hazards are basically quantum events trying to prevent even harder to resolve causal loops?

If we're in a Novikov universe, score! We can use this to generate infinite computing power, even manipulate events at a distance by having something where there is only not a paradox if the event goes a particular way. Its not going to be ascension to godhood (because among other things, if you dying of a stroke is the easiest way to resolve the tangle then that will just happen) but its still pretty awesome.

But the real mystery is what caused this time loop thing in the first place, so I'd also be trying to pin down that event, location, and time to see what factors I can identify there.

Okay, next spoiler...

Spoiler

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I guess I have more patience than the Doctor, so he shows up in the middle of me messing around with this and trying to get it published in PRL or Nature or something (well actually I hate formal publication process, especially if I'm time jumping and can't even make a career out of it, so really this would be blog posts and tweets), at which point I probably just drop everything and try to hitch a Tardis ride. Because whatever I've used 3 years of time manipulation to achieve on Earth I can probably learn a heck of a lot more actually just learning from someone who already knows all this stuff. But I'm probably more of a problem-of-the-week than companion material.

Edit: Ooh, occurred to me too late (after reading all spoilers) but doing studies to see what making one tiny change would do would be really interesting. Is temporal inertia a thing, can I use this to actually trace the patterns of causality in society, how much does saying the right thing at the right time matter, etc? Basically a viewpoint on the workings of the world that you really cannot get any other way.

[Quertus]

'Isekai me' given the 'anywhere in fiction' prompt would start furiously writing...

Touché. That is a very reasonable response; one I would expect from most intelligent beings of sufficient wit (depending, granted, a bit on their experiences with Wishes). However, *if* this were presented to a “real” being, and the associated cost of that offer was that the individual became “only a story” / less “real” in the process, would it be worth it? I made a… thing… based on that question at one point, and that’s not unlike why I took the tack I did, questioning, probing for details, to understand the offer.

For example, for any fiction, does it really need to be written? Could a fictional universe that lives in one’s imagination work? Of course, there’s probably something to say about living in one’s head…

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them.

I’m certainly game.

Any rules or preferences for characters before I read the scenario details?

[Telok]

I’m certainly game.

Any rules or preferences for characters before I read the scenario details?

Not really. I tend to be a lot more vague about setting, although I'll certainly throw some specific stuff in. So if a character has a defined 'home setting' you can use that, or not if it's more fun/interesting. This is a thought experiment thread so I don't really assume clones, characters experiencing & remembering all the scenarios, or using gear/items from one scene in another. But just because that isn't my assumption doesn't mean it can't be.

And yeah, first one is real easy mode but a couple Bobs still could die (or for Paranoid Bob run out of clones/fate worse than death) from it.

[meschlum]

Coming into this late, and blind, for scenario 6.

Spoiler: Butterfly: Yanyanyan...

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Let's see...

An utterly hostile environment that tries to freeze you into its twisted causality the longer you stay there? Check.

Wonderful treasures inside that the locals don't appreciate? Check.

Silly combat maniacs rushing in to grab those treasures without appreciating them? Check.

Sounds like Creation! A place the Butterfly is extremely adept at navigating, so how much worse can this be? Quick - retrieve or create a storm with ominous thunder. If the Butterfly is going to do this, it's going to be done right, with all cliches firing at maximum output!

Since the portal is a known thing, the Butterfly has time to prepare. This should be suitably terrifying. Spontaneously know everything that can be researched about the topic in the background, because the Butterfly wants to know what common sense to ignore, darn it. Make sure the pets are nice and shiny, polish the WMD, brush the dust off the dress, adjust the eyes so the gaze is just right... lights, camera, action!

"It's a place that could only have been made by Sempai (factually wrong), where everyone is made to feel like I do around Sempai all the time. Which means they'll all feel the way I do about Sempai... Unacceptable!"

"None of those hussies are getting into Sempai's private... drawers... chest... MINE!"

Killing the competition might make a mess, and that Will Not Do. Nothing but the best for Sempai's secret... box...

Clean thoughts, clean thoughts. Must seem normal for Sempai.

Assuming the city isn't something that can be Shaped, and that time lock, despite being so much like Stasis and Calcification, isn't something that burning Essence can avoid (because otherwise the Butterfly has all 24 hours to operate), it becomes convenient to pre-summon a few things. The Fair Folk are experts at that, and invoking her castle is simple. Let's assume that little diversion is not allowed (otherwise, it's 24 free hours and some of the competition is... no longer around to disturb Sempai. Maybe they went sailing?).

Sadly, the Butterfly didn't specialize in summoning mecha, so a double size Tyrannosaurus Rex will have to do. Plus some depleted uranium barding, so it's the one carrying her, a lot of time, and then shares its time with her. What it does afterward is irrelevant - maybe it goes back to fill up on time again and recharge her? Maybe it grabs a few snacks on the way? As long as it's not desecrating Sempai's personal... place...

A swarm of butterflies covers the city, and is aware of everything in it. The Butterfly uses the Uber Martial Art she picked up on a whim to toss herself a mile at a time towards the hidden... treasure...

KYAAAA!

Stuff the loot into the pocket dimension, start decorating the Shrine to Sempai, reach through dimensional space to claw meschlum's eyes out. All is well.

Loadout for when things inevitably go wrong in the city is a few Tyrannosauri (because why not? Also they're good at opening doors), social and lore skills set to YES, and half a dozen different kinds of murder touch. Plus magical stealth (while preserving Sempai's bounties... from the undeserving) because there might be a time constraint? Flight, of course, and supersenses because people forget about those all the time.

Spoiler: Dreamer: Genius!

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So over the course of millennia, this frozen nightmare has been barely explored, because visitors get locked inside? I've been through a few of those, and they're not easy to unravel, but... wait. You're sending in people carrying heavy rocks so they have a bit more time, then grab whatever is close by, and run out? And that's what you've come up with in literally thousands of years?

BOW BEFORE MY GENIUS! MY MIND HAS SURPASSED THE HEIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS AND (couch, cough)

BEHOLD! MY INVENTION WITH WHICH THIS ENTIRE DREAM WILL BE REVOLUTIONIZED AND EXPLORED BEYOND ALL MEASURE ATTAINED IN THE PAST!

I CALL IT...

THE ROPE!

Get a very long rope. Or many. Optionally enchant it to be harder to break or even extensible. Walk into the city while holding the rope, with others on the other side of the portal holding it too. Time flows in through the rope, exploration is now possible as far as it can stretch. Tie more ropes to the rope, if needed.

Direct consequence of coming from a setting where you're not stronger than a mob, and being clever and creative matters.

If for some hidden reason the Dreamer's genius is not acknowledged, they can get a hefty amount of mass in by transmuting air into metal at the portal entrance. If that does not work either... The Dreamer can detect magic, scry within line of sight for better loot, possibly summon a plot coupon to help solve impossible puzzles?

One suspects that the hidden information might help, but unlikely to do well barring some (plot coupon) insight into ways to trick the system. Which is in genre, so could happen.

Spoiler: Robocaller: Swarm

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The robocaller summons hordes of very fast flying critters, sends them into the portal, maps the landscape. If it forgot to watch its Karma, it might have the critters self detonate once their jobs are done, just to add a bit of carnage to the environment (also, makes it easier to recognize landmarks).

When the time comes to grab a particularly interesting piece of loot, it can summon something bigger and faster to carry it there, take it, and return. It can attain speeds of yes (not quite supersonic), so thirty seconds could be plenty. Or summon something heavy and flying, and go in with the extra time.

Since it's very good at murder, and not fundamentally opposed to the act, taking out the competition might occur - on the other hand, it does tend to go for drama (Karma being what it is), so a quest for the hidden loot should appeal more.

If it goes into the portal (why? it has summons to do the job, at least until minibosses are found), it will opt for speed and bring along a swarm of summons with the Self Destruct power. Minibosses go boom, time gets shared by a relay of summons made on the other side of the portal (fly in, share time with critter inside, return. Inside critter goes further, shares time with critter deeper in, returns. Repeat). It's mana intensive to keep up a relay, but it works.

Mana recovery and a boss deep in the city are the most likely difficulties, and can probably be powered through.

Spoiler: Rapier: The Only Way to Win

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This place is possibly worse than water. At least, if an Indestructible Sentient God Weapon gets tossed in a lake where no wielders can find it and it goes mad from sensory deprivation, it still has continuity of self. Repeating the same few seconds of its existence is either essentially death for the Rapier (if it loses awareness of time outside the loop), or slightly delayed madness (if it's aware of being stuck in a loop).

On the other hand, there are lots of reasonably powerful people coming out of the portal with loot. Attack them! They might die, in which case you now have their loot. Or they kill your wielder, in which case they now have your loot, including an Indestructible Sentient God Weapon which will point out they could get even more loot by repeating the process...

City exploration: 0. Bloody battlefield: 1. Satisfied Rapier with a tough wielder and a ton of loot: Yes. Success!

So, as expected, the Butterfly's main obstacle is the Butterfly (and those *** that look at Sempai wrong). The Dreamer goes for the clever off the wall solutions, the Robocaller just applies more power until it or the opposition collapses, and the Rapier stays away from the plot and has a grand time murder-hoboing the setting.

Next I'll read the details and make a new post based on what I learn... later!

[Jakinbandw]

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

Using Susland Mason from my current campaign. It's from my custom system, where he is but a level 1 character (which is close to a level 3 dnd character).

Okay, this is actually really hard to figure out how to do. While my doppelganger can certainly rob me, and might be able to set up a situation where they can outrun me in the short term... In the long term actually escaping is fairly impossible. I have access to a half dozen ways to track someone down, and not a single thing around hiding or fleeing. Even trying to catch me during the surprise round would fail, as my character can act freely during surprise rounds.

Honestly, the only way I can see this working is if my mimic recruited a bunch of other people to catch me when I was alone, and then beat me up. As I haven't read further, I don't know if that is allowed.

Either way, they would know they can't hide from me, so their only option would be... yeah, I don't know. There is nowhere they can go that I can't, and presumably I can ask from help from my party when tracking them down.

Still, first things first, I'd probably ask Aqua (my characters Divine Patron) to help me understand what the deal was with my doppelganger and improvise the following ability in.

Spoiler: Ritual of Guidance

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Ritual of Guidance
You perform a ritual, communing with your divine patron.
Spend 2 karma during a short rest, stating a specific goal: You learn one piece of information that you didn’t already know that would be the most helpful to you in achieving that goal. You may not use this ability for the same goal twice.

Spoiler: Part 2

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You've been caught up in a partial Groundhogs Day style time loop. After about <rolls dice> 11 days from the first instance you stop experiencing sequential time. Every time you lose consciousness you awaken some time within the next decade at random. One day you're seven calendar years ahead, the next you are four calendar years before that, the next day is six calendar months after that. It quickly becomes apparent that spending more than a minute in your own presence is extremely dangerous as coincidences like random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities try to erase you from existence. It gets more dangerous the longer you spend near yourself. While you personally experience time sequentially as normal the 'when' of that time is random within a window. You're basically naked every time you wake up, any clothes or possessions don't time travel with you when this happens and your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

So the good news based on my first step is that I know know about the whole time traveling thing. I figure that I won't get any of the specifics, so I don't know I have 11 days before it starts happening, but at the same time I feel like I would probably know it happens when I lose consciousness (as I feel like that was be reasonably part of the one piece of info, ie "You're traveling to a random place in time, forward or backward, within 10 years whenever you lose consciousness").

I think the easiest response to this is to move into our dungeon, and request that the party build up it's defenses so it will last 10 years (something not guaranteed, and might mean I lose the challenge immediately upon the first time jump. World ending situation is going to take around 5 years to resolve. Then again, predestination suggests that if I did die on the first jump, then I could have never could have robbed myself). I'd ask the dungeon boss and party to make sure that I have food, water and clothing in the room I sleep in, and tell them that until the mess is over, that I'll be leaving them messages about the future. They just need to keep a record for me to read in the room, then when I jump, I can read up on where I am in the timeline, and transcribe any future knowledge I have, leaving it outside the door. If I some how double up in time, then I have a minute to just exit the room and get away from myself. Actually, thinking about it, other than having cloths in the room when I sleep, I could actually have alternate rooms that I go to immediatly after waking up, starting with number 1. If I wake up and the clothing and food has been eaten, I move to room 2 of the dungeon, and so on, just to minimize possible interactions.

I improvise Ritual of Guidance a second time, and ask for info that would help with ending the time loop in a way that allows me to continue on with my life.

Spoiler: Part 3

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If you try to commit suicide or self harm it works. All calendar times occur within <rolls dice> around 8 years of the onset. If you haven't fixed it then after about 3 subjective years the Doctor (any, although I personally prefer the 3rd or 8th for this) appears, janks around a bit, explains that this is always happening somewhere to someone and it's just the universe being a ****, then fixes it for you and leaves. You resume normal time/space relationships at the 8 calendar year mark.

If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

Your task: Deal with it. There are no further steps.

So once again, this is tricky for me to work out. How does the Doctor fix it? Is it something that I could replicate? Assuming that all I know is that someone will fix it, but I'll lose 8 years, I think I'd be fine with that (Again, assuming that the world doesn't end). I would be curious to see how dying interacts with the time loop, as my character can craft Auto-Resurrection charms:

Spoiler: Blessed Iconography

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Blessed Iconography
You bless an object meant to represent your faith, granting protection to those who carry it even if they do not believe. Burn Effort and choose an object: It becomes a single use charm that grants one of the following Effects:
- Gain a fact: ‘If this person would die, they are resurrected within 72 hours of their death.’
- Negate the wounds and stress from an attack that would down them.
- Gain a Fact: ‘If you would fail a check, you may ignore any dangers, surviving or escaping the situation.’
These charms only work while you know this ability. Attuning a charm requires a long rest or Burn Effort as an action, and only 1 may be attuned at a time. Additionally, you may instead spend a downtime action to create several (0) of these objects.

Can this be used to break free of the time loop? Basically, when a character dies, is their soul sent on a random time jaunt or not? Could my character be targeted by the start of the time loop if they are dead when it would normally begin? With clever wording, and choosing the right goals to ask Aqua about, I could probably be dead when I would supposed to be infected.

This is of course without getting into the party attempting to save me themselves. They could train up time or dark sorcerers, and we already know an NPC with the Belief class, any one of which has the potential to alter reality to free me.

As I said, too many judgement calls to know for sure what would work, and what wouldn't. In my best guess, I feel like the suicide method over the time when I would be selected should prevent the entire mess, and the predestination paradox is a left over shadow from another world. Stealing from myself isn't what I'd do anyway, so it being an mirror timeline version of myself that got shunted in through shenanigans feels pretty on point.

[Quertus]

Not really. I tend to be a lot more vague about setting, although I'll certainly throw some specific stuff in. So if a character has a defined 'home setting' you can use that, or not if it's more fun/interesting. This is a thought experiment thread so I don't really assume clones, characters experiencing & remembering all the scenarios, or using gear/items from one scene in another. But just because that isn't my assumption doesn't mean it can't be.

And yeah, first one is real easy mode but a couple Bobs still could die (or for Paranoid Bob run out of clones/fate worse than death) from it.

Given that you said "easy mode" I thought about bringing characters from systems I discounted as not competent enough to use for the original 6 scenarios. But, given that you mentioned Paranoid Bob, you seem to be referencing your characters when you say some Bobs could die - which, given how I view your characters, makes me concerned with your definition of "easy". Not that several of my characters wouldn't have trivially died to a guy with a gun...

Anyway, as to what I should bring... hmmm... we'll see if this is a valid choice, but I'll just... prepare a roster of characters, and seemingly randomly only talk about anyone (on or off that roster) whose personality, perspective, powers, or underlying mechanics/system make them interesting for me to comment on. So, since the 3 challenges you have planned aren't connected to begin with, my entries into each might not be connected / might not involve any of the same characters.

Guess I'll read the "easy" challenge now, and see what interests me.

...

Are you sure this isn't the "horror" one?

Spoiler: Initial thoughts

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This is probably going to be invalid for so many of my characters, depending on the underlying secrets in the spoilers. Like, me, or most characters based off me, would be engaging in (I'll misuse the term) "microtransactions", evaluating every minor detail of not only what the character does and doesn't do, but exactly how they react to every action either of us take or don't take. How they move. Where their focus is. And that would be true even if I ended up acting like a CoC character with a sanity-loss-induced panic attack (not that I've ever had one) or screaming my head off (a tad more likely) or just staring dumbfounded while the mugger had to manually remove my wallet (actually reaching "could happen" chances) or assailed the mugger with questions (the most likely result - and if the mugger was me (or a proper doppleganger thereof), I'd learn a great deal, even from their silence). And of course look at the handwriting of any note. But it's hard for me to gauge the extent to which some of my characters could evaluate their assailant in that regard.

Whereas many of my characters (especially D&D characters, who are known for their Christmas Tree of items) take a very long time to fully mug of their true valuables, *and* often are surrounded by powerful allies. Taking their coin purse could be done in a surprise round, I suppose. And some have special rules, like Armus would just say, "but that's mine" and his Polyhedron Gateway would teleport back to his hand, or Quertus would invoke narritivium of "always wins against his copies". Or the Signature Item rule (that works better than Armus' Polyhedron Gateway).

Anyway, what they're after could be quite informative as well, to let the character determine, well, what they're after.

D&D has (in 3e parlance) a static DC for Sleight of Hand / Pick Pockets rolls, but that isn't necessarily the case in all systems. So while (depending on the scenario) either case could inform us that "the copy isn't the original" if they can perform feats of legerdemain that the original is incapable of, but other systems, where it's an opposed roll or some other resolution method, could easily result in a character who should be immune to their own attempts, as another reason the scenario might (depending on the hidden details) be invalid in some cases.

And I can't imagine what one would take from the bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear - a lock of their hair?

And different people would make different assumptions upon "seeing themselves" wrt the likely root causes they'd consider: time travel, alternate reality version of themselves, clone, doppleganger, disguise, illusion, coincidental likeness, etc.

And the presence of a note, and its exact contents, could be a huge game-changer. I really can't decide a course of action without knowing what the characters would glean from the encounter about the nature of the copy.

But most of all, what senses the characters have (the ability to sense Time shenanigans, the ability to sense alt-reality shenanigans, the ability to see through disguises, Quertus' ability to uniquely identify individuals, telepathy / mind reading, aura sight, precognition, my own micro-transactions of Sense Motive, someone with Sherlock Holmes Perception or equivalent Sense Motive, etc) will greatly impact this scenario.

So I guess I'll read the spoilers, and see if there's anyone for whom the scenario is both valid and interesting.

Spoiler: Secondary Thoughts

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So my first thought was right, and it really is time travel. Well, while it can work in Single Author Fiction, Time Travel is pretty horrible in most RPG scenarios, as making the mechanics both match the fiction and be interesting is quite the challenge. Especially given that the initial prompt makes little sense from either a Roleplaying perspective, or from the PoV of some of the "better" time-travel mechanics.

Oh. Huh. I had, every single time, pictured the copy as wearing the exact same clothes as the character. Which would only be true by default for the bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear.

That changes things. A lot.

Sadly, it actually makes the correct "time travel" guess less likely (or lower on their list) for several of my characters. After all, if they don't have the same clothes with the same rips and stains, then it's less likely that they're... several things, including a time traveler. Sigh.

But... why would any character, trapped in that scenario, mug themselves? That... just seems... either really dumb, or really out of character, for most of the characters. I can see being starving, and stealing enough money to eat, maybe. But that would result in some obvious tells in the time-shifted copy. Leaving a note, OTOH, seems really wise: especially in the "get to a place that will forever be a good starting point (when naked)" vein.

That said, I can see LtC Staltek Vir stealing tech in an (automatically successful) attempt to break out of the time loop. It's just a matter of having enough time (in repeated jumps) to build the Science!-powered tech.

And... wouldn't the original self have noticed the random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities? That also should have a huge impact on the scenario. These details matter to the initial reaction the character would have.

Also... not all characters sleep. So this scenario is invalid for them.

Anyway, the first time somebody does some landscaping, you're dead. And what keeps things like random sticks or someone moving the furniture around from killing you? Even the very first jump should likely be fatal, the way I tend to adjudicate things / expect physics to work. Yeah, I'm a **** like that.

So, probably, the only way to stay alive is to have already stayed alive to jump back far enough to meet yourself, and arrange (perhaps by giving yourself a note, perhaps by meeting the Important Party yourself) for a Permanent Bed, by arranging for a Benefactor. Which, you know, you could easily pay them back with foreknowledge... or just make investments or win the Lottery yourself in certain worlds.

Oh, wow... what if the time travel period is "10 years", and one spends more than 10 years in this scenario? Also, is it random when you appear - for example, does one run the risk of waking up naked with themselves?

Spoiler: Tertiary Thoughts / Characters worth talking about

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Spoiler: Characters who fare the best

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So, assuming the nigh-impossible static causality, the character who fares the best in this scenario is, actually, me. Under the assumption that I survive long enough to encounter myself, I give myself a note letting me win the lottery, and quickly use the funds to obtain my "Forever Home" (somewhere I know hasn't fallen into sinkhole, burned down, etc in as many years as I've been in the future by this point), and I sleep there (naked, so as not to lose anything) from then on. In fact, I've probably started sleeping there before then, as I've likely enlisted Family (who don't trigger craziness) to inform me to go there when I come to them for help. Some prescient investments (intentionally not always successful / optimal), and I'm set for money for life. I doubt I have the ability to research this phenomenon, or turn this into "I have time powers!" myself, and I know I don't have the trust to want to be a test subject, or to risk anyone less trustworthy than myself being able to utilize this. And I'm annoyed that I can't do anything coherent over time, like write code or write stories or interact with normal people's lives. But I can read books, watch movies, or perform other actions in "random order", like self-training, and I've got funds, so it's not a bad existence. Meeting the Doctor is just icing on the cake! Although I try to con him into a better arrangement for both of us, I doubt he'd agree to most of my ideas (like improving his future, or turning whatever time energy was affecting me into something useful (especially "me as a TARDIS" per one of my goals in the "You gained a level IRL" thread)), but maybe we still get something out of meeting each other. Still, worst-case scenario, I end 3 years older, 8 years in the future, and 8 years out-of-touch.

Probably faring second-best is Isakai'd me from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread. Able to sleep warded and invisibly in mid-air, Not!Me is in little danger of dying once they learn the rules (and move somewhere warm enough not to wake up naked in a snowstorm). And this sounds like the perfect opportunity for Not!Me to learn Time magic like they wanted (and also sounds like it could be caused by them making a mistake with said magic...). The Doctor in Isekai land is just totally awesome, and Isakia'd Not!Me interacting with such a Doctor might actually find one another to be much more helpful / useful to each other.

While the Shadowrun Troll is also able to sleep invisible and warded in mid-air, the Troll is much more gear-dependent than I am, and isn't a Doctor Who fan, but is arguably more likely to actually be useful to the Doctor as a Companion. Regardless, the introduction of such mechanics to Shadowrun would make our Troll potentially one of the most powerful beings in the setting.

LtC Staltek Vir... Aboard the Zero, could instantly convince the best time experts in the Federation to help him solve this. On his Not!Isekai Not!Fantasy post from this thread, he's the most likely character to trigger the "talk to self catastrophes". And would not only trivially solve the problem (transporter to refresh self to never sleep, automatically make all rolls to analyze and build tech to solve problem), but would also investigate the "catastrophes", to see how to utilize or even weaponize whatever energy they use, and would likely accidentally invent the Evil Eye. But he'd probably acquire a 2nd bed for that point 6 years in the future when he appears, so that he doesn't accidentally wake up naked next to himself.

The other character who does well in this challenge is a joke character "Minecraft Guy", who effectively considers their game buggy. They fall asleep in their bed every night, and wake up to no inventory and somewhat random (but perfectly sorted) items in their chests. They just continue grinding for years, occasionally seeing evidence of sorting their goods into their chests to exactly some configuration they've seen before, before the Doctor comes in with a bug-fix patch.

Spoiler: Characters who would fare worst

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With me as GM, pretty much anyone could randomly end up dead just by "a bird / spider / whatever was where your head was when you woke up" levels of all-but-unavoidable death. And while I might hand-wave air, and use relative positioning (instead of "the starship (or planet) moved, you appeared in the void of space and died"), don't get me started on "your skin fused with your sheets", when you moved from a you-indented bed to its un-slept-in copy. So most everyone who survived this scenario had to have very different physics than I would have space-locked time-travelers use, or not me as GM.

Anna is one of the first characters I thought of at the prompt of stealing from themselves, as her rare Death Seeds would be quite valuable to most any copy of herself. However, Anna has no... no basis on which to grasp the concept of time travel. Honestly, she would probably never make it to the described scenario: her companion, Fang, would sense her time-traveling self before she got close, and Anna would head-shot future-Anna, assuming she was a monster or using a doppleganger-style psychic power or something. That is to say, even a future copy of Anna has no ability to successfully mug herself, especially if she starts naked instead of with her treasure, The Far Death. But now we have the paradox of "why would future Anna, if she comes to grasp the concept of Time Travel, who has already lived through the past and knows she'll shoot herself, why would she approach herself that way in the first place?" Maybe if she were delirious from fever from starvation and exposure? It quickly descends into a cyclic "how can we get to a self-consistent outcome?" that plagues many versions of time travel.

Speaking of paradox, although the Paradox Telepathic Vampire can literally make people give him the clothes off their back, if Time Travel counts as Reality Travel, he'd run out of lives before the Doctor comes to save him. The only surface area he has with which to interact with this problem of "time hopping" himself is if someone had intentionally caused this to happen to him, he could find and approach them telepathically. Which doesn't seem to be the case. Fortunately, he has a great network of allies whom he can contact, and who could solve this problem for him (if he cares (yes) or realizes the danger (maybe)).

Nami of the Thousand Eyes (from some random Naruto homebrew) is so dead. I put the "child" version of herself on my list of potentials for in this thread; in this scenario, her enemies would doubtless take advantage of this phenomenon to kill her (even if she survived until after the Doctor saved her, she'd still be "behind the curve"), unless her Rivals managed to keep her alive. But most likely, she died in the first time-skip, from random life changes to her outdoor sleeping spot (things growing where she was sleeping), or the paradox of foes she isn't yet aware of predicting her movements and killing child-her in her sleep.

Obviously, the M&M characters I entered previously would have no problem "gearing up", so you'd think they'd have no problem with this challenge, right? However, as (in their homeworlds) they tend to move around and sleep in hotels, they might well wake up - or, well, not wake up - fused with another person on their first time skip. So the only way for them to survive is for them to survive to meet themselves, to warn themselves. While this sounds like my "me" success story, the issue is how much less likely they are to survive in the first place for that to happen. And this fate could easily befall most D&D characters IME, and anyone else who lives a life on the road, too.

But perhaps the worst luck is held by Ambrosia Slughorn. She is pretty helpless without a wand. Her best bet would actually be to mug herself, and sleep in her own extradimensional storage (with her wand in there with her, but "unequipped" so she doesn't lose it) - something, given the curses her past self could place on her, likely only worth her risking doing with the rules of this challenge. But not only are her odds of surviving to that point rather slim, as she'd likely fuse with someone sleeping in her bed on her first time skip, she has a habit of confiding in the wrong people, so she might well get turned into components for Time Turners, even if she somehow survived.

[Telok]

Well as I said, not all challenges are appropriate to all characters. It is interesting to see different assumptions at work. For example, I would have felt free to adjust the initial encounter away from a mugging to something else quick enough not to trigger the calamities based a particular character's personality or capabilities. Nor would I have assumed instant death scenarios. And one thing I didn't even think of until just now is there's nothing saying you don't have repeats, which could make using a single resting place dangerous.

But details take time to write. Some of these are short (~500 characters) and some are long (10k characters). You get to fill in any details you need.

Any ways, yeah, that was the easy one. What we have now is; Creepy, Silly, Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. So if most people agree or are silent we'll do Silly, then Creepy, then...?