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Post by Mighty Darci on Aug 4, 2018 18:59:26 GMT -5
A campaign set during the age of dinosaurs where a team travels back in time, knowing that it is almost certainly a one way trip and they go prepared as best they can. First of all, what do they take? If they can take 20 people and 20 tons of equipment, what do they take?
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Post by randyb on Aug 5, 2018 8:03:18 GMT -5
A campaign set during the age of dinosaurs where a team travels back in time, knowing that it is almost certainly a one way trip and they go prepared as best they can. First of all, what do they take? If they can take 20 people and 20 tons of equipment, what do they take? Something to prevent a genetic bottleneck among their descendants? I haven't looked recently; what is the minimum size group to preserve sufficient genetic diversity for an indefinite population? |
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Post by El Borak on Aug 5, 2018 18:15:31 GMT -5
A campaign set during the age of dinosaurs where a team travels back in time, knowing that it is almost certainly a one way trip and they go prepared as best they can. First of all, what do they take? If they can take 20 people and 20 tons of equipment, what do they take? Something to prevent a genetic bottleneck among their descendants? I haven't looked recently; what is the minimum size group to preserve sufficient genetic diversity for an indefinite population? I think the minimum I read was something like 160 but I think that was based on about 5-6 generations. That might be better for a longer period of time, even indefinite, if really good gene screening for bad recessive was done. Even the basics of good teeth, vision and hearing would make a big difference in this scenario. |
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Post by El Borak on Aug 5, 2018 18:17:40 GMT -5
Another biggie would be to screen for both the men and women who have a family history of "easy" "no complications" natural childbirth. Especially since you are going to want to have a high birth rate for the first few generations.
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Post by El Borak on Aug 5, 2018 18:21:20 GMT -5
This also brings up another touchy subject. If the women having several children is crucial to the genetic diversity and long term survival of the group they aren't going to want to "allow" women to leave camp and assume risk of death until she has had those children. Also under true frontier hard work conditions and the wildlife hazards the life spans will be shorter. Also for that first few generations you are going to want to be careful of the men's lives as well so you want ammo and other advantages until you can build up numbers.
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Post by El Borak on Aug 5, 2018 18:49:22 GMT -5
So I think you might be talking about 200 people minimum for the party size and more like 2000 tons of equipment tightly focused on necessities, no fluff.
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Post by Admin Pete on Aug 6, 2018 9:40:40 GMT -5
I split this off into its own thread.
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Post by Q Man on Aug 6, 2018 17:04:16 GMT -5
So I think you might be talking about 200 people minimum for the party size and more like 2000 tons of equipment tightly focused on necessities, no fluff. That would be a major expedition, and you have a definite limited pool for the PC's for the first 20-25 years (yeah that 1st born here generation has to breed before too many go off into the wilds). It would be interesting to see if the players could get the group safely through 8-10 generations. But here is another question for you how much, if any, of the plants and critters back then are edible by modern day humans? What do they do if dinosaur is not digestible or if they are allergic to some weird protein in the meat? How about if the plants are not digestible? Do they take any plants/seeds with them? Will modern plants/seeds grow in the soil back then without the microscopic flora and fauna they currently co-exist with so that the nutrients are available to the plants? Will they need to take soil cultures to inoculate the soil? They will only get one chance, what if it fails? Which plants/seeds will they take? If there are no bees will that create a problem? Do they need to take bees with them? And thousands of other questions that would need to be considered (or at least should be considered) before making such an attempt. |
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Post by simrion on Aug 7, 2018 5:03:07 GMT -5
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 7, 2018 9:14:41 GMT -5
You can't go back a populate the earth with yourself, that breaks the laws of nature. We'd evolve into something else, not to mention that you can't plug a lamp into a solar cell and get free energy. This is the same principle. Can you imagine how advanced the illnesses that we'd take back with us would be now? Besides, whatever killed the dinosaurs would kill us too.
I listen to a lot of late-night radio, one of my favourite discussions is the question of How long would it take? Say we load up a ship and crash land on another planet with all of our fancy gizmos and doo dads. How long before all of this stuff is forgotten? All of these advancements in technology, higher levels of thinking, the original language itself would be lost. If some catastrophe happened that took out 75% our the world population, our culture would be dead. All of our technological advances would be lost. If this happened tomorrow, how many generations would it take before our way of life is just a jumbled up myth? And then, nothing. Totally lost. To be replaced by technology that goes into directions that we can't even contemplate.
I suppose that it wouldn't take long for our batteries to die, and all of our plastic junk to be lost because it is pointless. Our Great Great Grandchildren would look at that stuff and not know what it was ever used for. I don't think that it would take long before Survival of the Fittest kicks in, and by that point, we'd be shivering in caves just glad enough that we can still make a fire.
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Aug 7, 2018 12:43:50 GMT -5
You can't go back a populate the earth with yourself, that breaks the laws of nature. We'd evolve into something else, not to mention that you can't plug a lamp into a solar cell and get free energy. This is the same principle. Can you imagine how advanced the illnesses that we'd take back with us would be now? Besides, whatever killed the dinosaurs would kill us too. I listen to a lot of late-night radio, one of my favourite discussions is the question of How long would it take? Say we load up a ship and crash land on another planet with all of our fancy gizmos and doo dads. How long before all of this stuff is forgotten? All of these advancements in technology, higher levels of thinking, the original language itself would be lost. If some catastrophe happened that took out 75% our the world population, our culture would be dead. All of our technological advances would be lost. If this happened tomorrow, how many generations would it take before our way of life is just a jumbled up myth? And then, nothing. Totally lost. To be replaced by technology that goes into directions that we can't even contemplate. I suppose that it wouldn't take long for our batteries to die, and all of our plastic junk to be lost because it is pointless. Our Great Great Grandchildren would look at that stuff and not know what it was ever used for. I don't think that it would take long before Survival of the Fittest kicks in, and by that point, we'd be shivering in caves just glad enough that we can still make a fire. This a great post ripx187, it does point to a disconnect you find some post-apocalyptic games vs. reality. Even in the Mad Max film series you see this happen. Take the first film just a few years after things the cataclysmic event that triggered the fall you still have stuff but eventually infrastructure will fall apart, you still have law and order but it is losing its grip. By the Road Warrior film is released things have fully fallen apart with roving tribes of vehicle driving barbarians plaguing the wastes. Then you have Mad Max Thunderdome which puts things in stark contrast new societies are developing though you only glimpse at a primitive society of lost children who have their own myth cycle and Barter Town with its queen giving people an illusion of civilization producing fuel and power and a relativity safe place to gather if you can afford to or have skills that are needed. Slavery via indentured servitude is back. In Mad max Fury Road you now have a family that controls water distribution under one member who has a harem, another who produces fuel and yet another produces ammunition and weapons. Plus you have a matriarchal society that has nearly gone extinct and ceases to exist by the end of the film. Only the eldest members of the various communities and survivors even remember the world that has come before & you can see that eventually what technology they do still have will be lost as those with the skills and knowledge die from a variety of causes. Eventually new tribes, civilized nations will develop and knew technologies will be developed, some based on newly discovered lore of the past while others will be developed naturally as needs arise and innovation prompts their development. How these will manifest is the intriguing thing which is why I prefer my Post-Apocalyptic settings to be set shortly after the fall only as far as one generation removed at most. I think that such a setting could birth an interesting long term campaign, with each new campaign building off the other which leads to the setting organically growing as the campaign progresses. This has got me wanting to finish reading the Wasteland comic, Battle Angel Alita manga & the Wake GN to help inspire my creativity. |
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Post by El Borak on Aug 7, 2018 21:41:56 GMT -5
You can't go back a populate the earth with yourself, that breaks the laws of nature. We'd evolve into something else, not to mention that you can't plug a lamp into a solar cell and get free energy. This is the same principle. Can you imagine how advanced the illnesses that we'd take back with us would be now? Besides, whatever killed the dinosaurs would kill us too. I listen to a lot of late-night radio, one of my favourite discussions is the question of How long would it take? Say we load up a ship and crash land on another planet with all of our fancy gizmos and doo dads. How long before all of this stuff is forgotten? All of these advancements in technology, higher levels of thinking, the original language itself would be lost. If some catastrophe happened that took out 75% our the world population, our culture would be dead. All of our technological advances would be lost. If this happened tomorrow, how many generations would it take before our way of life is just a jumbled up myth? And then, nothing. Totally lost. To be replaced by technology that goes into directions that we can't even contemplate. I suppose that it wouldn't take long for our batteries to die, and all of our plastic junk to be lost because it is pointless. Our Great Great Grandchildren would look at that stuff and not know what it was ever used for. I don't think that it would take long before Survival of the Fittest kicks in, and by that point, we'd be shivering in caves just glad enough that we can still make a fire. I am going to disagree with you here.  If you could do it, it would not be breaking the laws of nature.  In your first example we can use and do use solar cells to generate electricity and power lamps and other appliances. One of the big differences in this is that it is not a disaster or catastrophe, it is a well planned and equipped focused mission. That IMO would make a huge difference. Illnesses, yes we would want to send back the healthiest group we possibly could and they would want to be isolated from the world for at least a year before they were sent. The biggest thing would be to work to retain knowledge of wound care and sanitation. We would want to design a culture that would withstand the first hundred or so years so that we wouldn't sink all the way to the stone age. Books with large print on acid free paper. Focus on technology for an age prior to electricity. Blacksmithing, sword making and those technologies, take back machines that relied on human and animal muscle power, water power and wind power. So really very little in the way of fancy gizmos would go. Take guns and ammo, but also swords, spears, bow and arrow, crossbows. Take durable long lasting things, but also the means to make versions from the materials at hand. Take certain tree species along, and many other things. Horses, we would want to take a good breeding population of horses and dogs, we would want dogs as well. The biggest limiting factor is how much equipment could we take back. We would need to clear and area and keep it relatively dinosaur free, so we would need to look for a valley that has bottleneck in and out so that once it is cleared it would be easy to keep cleared. Most of the party would need to be under 25 years old and get the population up as quickly as possible. If by the time the party reaches 40 years old the target would be 800 children or average 8 kids per family with a good survival rate. Looking at around 6000 grandchildren when the original party is about 50 and with luck about 30,000 great grandchildren by the time the original party are 60+. You would have to build things into the culture where the blacksmith, the miller, the teacher and other crucial skills were honored. Reading and writing would have to be used in a systematic way to improve and enhance so that there would be value placed on those original books with the acid free paper and the making of copies from the best paper they could make. I think given the pressures that a lot of pre-industrial tech advances could be made that didn't happen hear because we passed through the stage very rapidly. Plus don't forget that we would be taking back information tailored to the tech level we would have and machines that could be built over and over with that tech level. When we are going makes a difference. So let's look at the time frame, about 247 million years ago dinosaurs appeared and were dominant until about 65.5 million years ago when it appears that an extinction event wiped out all but the avian dinosaurs. Dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic period, where there through the Jurassic period and the Cretaceous period. Flowering plants appeared in the early Cretaceous period and grasses appeared in the late Cretaceous period so if we traveled back earlier than that we would need to take the plants that we needed and bees as well. From the start we would not be relying on batteries, electricity or fuel powered engines. The pre-electrical age skills of using bronze, iron, cast iron and steel would be doable. Water power with water driven mills to grind grain and do a lot of other things. Most of the mammals and the avian dinosaurs survived the extinction and I believe we would too. |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 7, 2018 22:15:23 GMT -5
I can see this ending with th3 DM asking you if you are sure that that is your plan, and chuckling a bit too joyfully for your comfort. 😈
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Post by El Borak on Aug 8, 2018 5:03:40 GMT -5
I can see this ending with the DM asking you if you are sure that that is your plan, and chuckling a bit too joyfully for your comfort. 😈 Why are you so certain that they could not survive with a preindustrial tech level? |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 8, 2018 5:41:11 GMT -5
An unhealthy obsession with monster movies.☺
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Post by El Borak on Aug 8, 2018 8:12:46 GMT -5
An unhealthy obsession with monster movies.☺ OK I see now, the monsters are bulletproof trope that the movies adopt right along with the most shots miss trope that movies also adopt. I think this would be a lot of fun to play out. Another thing to do would be to study the maps as the tectonic plates moved during these time periods and figure out where you could go so that the area would not be in a rift zone nor would it be flooded by rising water levels. |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 8, 2018 10:37:59 GMT -5
I agree, it would be lots of fun. Since I was a kid I'd race home from school in time to catch Dr. Who on PBS. The budget and special effects weren't always the best, but the ideas which were presented just blew my mind! Time travel is definitely mind-candy for me.
The film Millenium (I think that it was called) was a good time travel film, they would take passengers who were doomed to die in plane crashes and transport them to some beginning of time. Though '12 Monkeys' is my favourite time-travel film, just so many twists and turns in that movie.
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Post by Mighty Darci on Aug 8, 2018 22:59:39 GMT -5
Eight kids, no thank you, I'd play a guy then.
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Post by Q Man on Aug 12, 2018 16:41:48 GMT -5
I've read those and I liked a lot of things in the stories, I did not like the stories themselves. Full of good ideas to take and use in a game or a different story, but I could never get into the story that was being told. |
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Post by Q Man on Aug 12, 2018 16:54:05 GMT -5
So I think you might be talking about 200 people minimum for the party size and more like 2000 tons of equipment tightly focused on necessities, no fluff. I think 200-300 people is good, but I think the equipment, all geared to the blacksmith level of production, should be 10 to 100 times the 2000 tons. You want to be able to setup the blacksmith and other occupations and have enough stuff on hand to setup at least a dozen more of everything as the population expands. I also think you need to have enough food on hand to get you through creating a human friendly plant and animal food chain just in case you can't eat enough of what is available, if it turns out you can eat enough of the available plants and animals then you just have your old favorites with you. The biggest thing is getting the year (time period) and location right. Do you arrive while Pangaea is intact? Or do you arrive after it has fully split apart? If your transplanted humanity survives long enough, you might just ensure that your extinction leads to no humans at any point in the future. This could go so many different ways long term. Although none of that would matter playing at the first 100-200 years of the new colony. |
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If you could do it, it would not be breaking the laws of nature. 
In your first example we can use and do use solar cells to generate electricity and power lamps and other appliances.