Feng Shui Time Travel and Communication
From: Wordmaker01 Posted on: 4/1/2004 1:11 pm
To: ALL
Message: 347.1
This is probably a stupid question, but would (or rather, should) things like cell phones work in the Netherworld and in other junctures outside the Contemporary or 2056?

Common sense says they shouldn't, because I doubt many phone companies have coverage across the mystical boundaries of time, but just imagine the scene: You're in 69AD, creeping through a sorceror's mansion to retrieve a powerful artifact, and suddenly your phone starts ringins, alerting the guards!

Or: Although you're involved in the Secret War, you're trying to keep your loved ones out of it. In the middle of fighting some Guiding Hand warrior monks in 1850, your wife (or other loved one or friend) calls you to remind you to pick the kids up from school (or pick up some beer on the way home, discuss where your relationship is going, etc.)

Any thoughts?

From: prophet118 Posted on: 4/1/2004 2:46 pm
To: Wordmaker01
Message: 347.2
in reply to: 347.1
or perhaps the mystical baddies behind FS have bellsouth, AT&T and a few others in their back pocket.... after all the mooks have to mayday their boss somehow


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From: Bob the Dancing Monkey Posted on: 4/1/2004 2:51 pm
To: prophet118
Message: 347.3
in reply to: 347.2
I'd say that the Ascended probably have a few towers set up here and there (well hidden) in 1850 for emergencies. Otherwise, CB or walkie-talkies would certainly be used.
From: Wordmaker01 Posted on: 4/1/2004 4:11 pm
To: Bob the Dancing Monkey
Message: 347.4
in reply to: 347.3
What I'm primarily interested in is cross-juncture communication. Has anyone used it? Well-organised PCs could find any number of uses for co-ordinating actions across time, and can't you just imagine the Ascended or the Architects having temporal Ops Centres monitoring agents across the junctures and in the Netherworld?
From: prophet118 Posted on: 4/1/2004 4:23 pm
To: Wordmaker01
Message: 347.5
in reply to: 347.4

Satellite phones may well be used... all the groups would have to do is have the satellites up in the appropriate juncture they are in, and calling to..lol

 

no one on the ground would see the satellites as anything more than an odd star



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From: Bob the Dancing Monkey Posted on: 4/1/2004 4:45 pm
To: Wordmaker01
Message: 347.6
in reply to: 347.4
It's actually brought up in the Architect sourcebook. The simple, canonical answer is 'no', although the Buro have a couple of ways to circumvent this - the Bat-Out-Of-Hell courier service and the cross-juncture telecom system that they are trying to set up (think landline from the Netherworld, through portals, to satellite arrays.)

The problem? Portals have an annoying tendency to shut down. And people have an annoying tendency to trip over CAT-5 (and burn through it) in the Netherworld tunnels.

From: dsprag Posted on: 4/1/2004 8:56 pm
To: Bob the Dancing Monkey
Message: 347.7
in reply to: 347.6
Actually on pg. 75 in the main book mention is made of a cross-time cell phone worked up by the Prof. Though based on the description it doesn't sound very reliable.
From: Queex Posted on: 4/2/2004 4:39 am
To: dsprag
Message: 347.8
in reply to: 347.7
Bascially, any McGuffin works. I generally have Pui Ti call a member ofthe party on a cell-phone when she has a job for them. There is often 'intersting' interference.

You could even base a plot aorund mysterious calls received by cell-phones brought into the netherworld.

I'm guessing that magic can manage to communictae between junctures (After all, it can reach the Underworld), so Arcanotech can manage it also. The Ascended probably have a harder time of it.

From: Wordmaker01 Posted on: 4/2/2004 8:33 am
To: Queex
Message: 347.9
in reply to: 347.8
I just had a really funny image of PCs getting calls from market-survey groups trying to find the most popular drink from each juncture, or telesales company offering time-shares in Netherworld real estate!
From: Sensei Posted on: 4/2/2004 6:18 pm
To: Bob the Dancing Monkey
Message: 347.10
in reply to: 347.6
Yeah, it's the Netherworld that screws with broadcasts, but that's the way it should be. Shouldn't be too easy to communicate across nearly two millenia of time and space, after all.

I would imagine that by this time, the Buro has all sorts of small radio nests scattered about all the junctures, tho, and placing one just on each side of stable Netherworld portals would make for a fairly reliable, if more complex, inter-juncture message-relay system.

From: Queex Posted on: 4/5/2004 5:28 am
To: Sensei
Message: 347.11
in reply to: 347.10
At least until the jammers stumble over one.
From: Sensei Posted on: 4/5/2004 5:40 pm
To: Queex
Message: 347.12
in reply to: 347.11
"Hey, Bob, I gotta call you back... yeah, there's a giant cybernetic monkey attaching some C4 to the phone booth..."
From: Queex Posted on: 4/6/2004 5:08 am
To: Sensei
Message: 347.13
in reply to: 347.12
"You too, huh Bob? Funny old world, eh."
From: DarrinBright Posted on: 4/14/2004 4:14 pm
To: Wordmaker01
Message: 347.14
in reply to: 347.1
Seeds of the New Flesh has some details on what the Architects are doing to provide cross-juncture telecommunications... I forget what it was called, but they are laying cable throughout the Netherworld. Currenly it only works inside the Netherworld itself, and even then pretty sporadically. As someone has already mentioned, the portals are unreliable and Netherworld denizens like to cut cables.

The cellphone thing did come up a few sessions ago, though... I decided that cellphones in the Netherworld work pretty much randomly or purely as a plot device... the player in question was only able to call her mother, who demaned to know what she was doing with her life and why she didn't have any grandchildren yet. If I don't want the player to use the cellphone, then it either doesn't work or they get the "Exclusive Spock/Kirk TrekPorn Phone Sex Network" in Cantonese.

From: Bob the Dancing Monkey Posted on: 4/14/2004 6:33 pm
To: DarrinBright
Message: 347.15
in reply to: 347.14
Early on, I came up with a Pledged gadget that attaches to Shaped material and acts as a crank phone from old war movies.
From: Abrams47 Posted on: 5/3/2004 10:35 am
To: Wordmaker01
Message: 347.16
in reply to: 347.1
Well, what i did in my campaign is there is a Socerer in the group with a specialization in Divination. he rolls on who he wants ot contact an I set the modifiers accordingly to where the target is that he wants ot call by phone.

Woe to him when he botches and the intedimentional Telecom system comes ot collect for hte phone bill