Comments on: The Laws of Magic: Part 7 of 8 http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2007/08/31/the-laws-of-magic-part-7-of-8/ Bringing the World of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files to the Tabletop Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:33:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: HC http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2007/08/31/the-laws-of-magic-part-7-of-8/comment-page-1/#comment-2828 HC Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:49:32 +0000 http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2007/08/31/the-laws-of-magic-part-7-of-8/#comment-2828 From a game POV, you have to be careful with time travel, it represents nearly limitless potential power to change anything and everything...unless the flow of events is fixed and whatever the time traveller does is just part of what 'always was'. The Dresdenverse does not appear to work that way, though. Niven's Law of Time Travel should also be kept in mind by anyone discussing time travel, more or less it is: "If time travel into the past is possible, AND if altering the past is possible, then time travel will never be discovered in the universe in question." His argument is that if you can change the past, every trip into the past changes it at least a little, wiping out the 'former' present and creating a new time-line. Someone from that time-line will sooner or later discover time travel, use it, and thus wipe it out and create a third time line, and on and on, UNTIL by chance some time-line is formed in which time travel, though possible, happens never to be discovered. That time line doesn't get wiped out, and since the 'earlier' time lines have ceased to ever have existed...it's perfectly accurate to call this one the only one and time travel was never discovered. From a game POV, you have to be careful with time travel, it represents nearly limitless potential power to change anything and everything…unless the flow of events is fixed and whatever the time traveller does is just part of what ‘always was’. The Dresdenverse does not appear to work that way, though.

Niven’s Law of Time Travel should also be kept in mind by anyone discussing time travel, more or less it is:

“If time travel into the past is possible, AND if altering the past is possible, then time travel will never be discovered in the universe in question.”

His argument is that if you can change the past, every trip into the past changes it at least a little, wiping out the ‘former’ present and creating a new time-line. Someone from that time-line will sooner or later discover time travel, use it, and thus wipe it out and create a third time line, and on and on, UNTIL by chance some time-line is formed in which time travel, though possible, happens never to be discovered. That time line doesn’t get wiped out, and since the ‘earlier’ time lines have ceased to ever have existed…it’s perfectly accurate to call this one the only one and time travel was never discovered.

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