More ideas from Tricky's brain...

[Tricky]

Ok, this idea isn't as fleshed out as some of my other ideas have been, mostly because I'm super tired from work. I was thinking about a quantum fissure; which according to at least one TNG episode can lead to alternate realities. I was wondering what the FED would do if they found a fissure that was acting more like the Bajoran Wormhole: permanent and acting like a doorway. One random part of the idea was that it started out an anomaly on a survey mission, and a ship was tasked to study it. As they studied it, it seemed to get stronger (was it their ship opening up the fissure, or was it something else?). Pretty soon it's letting small bits of other universes into the Trek one.

Fast forward a bit, and it now opens much bigger. A station has been placed nearby, to study it better, meet explorers from the other side, help out entities that have been lost in the Fissure, and above all, protect their home universe.

[Owen E Oulton]

...Moved to Narrator's Ready Rom, as this is more along the theme of an adventure or series idea...

Owen E Oulton

[C5]

I like this one, especially for its possibilities (I take it that the anomaly allows access to different universes, not just one).

I guess the UFP could be very cautious about this. If Starfleet captains filled their reports correctly, it knows most parallel universes are very unpleasant places to be (starting with the Mirror Universe), and that leaving such an anomaly opened could be dangerous, possibly leading up to invasions of Borgified Species 8472 for all we know.

One possibility would be to leave the anomaly small enough that only a single ship can go through at a time. This would allow Starfleet not be too afraid of this becoming a portal for a full scale invasion while leaving room for the PCs to explore it, and for the occasional ship to slip through and leave the characters wondering if they have to trust the Borg ship begging for asylum after its narrow escape from the Tribble Imperium.
The anomaly can still be expanding, of course, which makes understanding its causes a necessity.
And thing could get even more interesting if the occasional laws of physics get imported from another universes.

Of course, this also brings the possibility of inter universes cross-overs, which can allow for the most serious to the most silly games.

[Tricky]

Tribble Imperium. Nice.

Sometimes I think that the station near the Fissure should be like DS9, with people from around the FED and beyond coming to study, and perhaps enter the Fissure to discover other worlds, while new comers to the Trek universe come to do the same and sell other worldly wares.

But then it occurs to me that all of that is a bit too fantasy-ish for Trek; they don't let you give a developing civilization medical aid, how the heck would they let anyone and anything go willy-nilly in and out of a rift in space? So then I think it's more like SG-1, with the military keeping a firm hand on everything. But that doesn't sound like Trek either.

Guess it's a good thing I'm not getting ready to turn this into a campaign. Oh, and sometimes there's a reoccurring character who travels various universes and is highly eccentric and not at all like the Doctor....

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Tribble Imperium. Nice.

To take this seriously for a moment, I think it would be cool if there were more Deep Time alternates. Given that humanoid life was seeded by a specific species, there could be an alternate in which the scale of the original seeding species was different. Instead of planet-bound humanoids, maybe the dominant galactic lifeforms were spaceborne life like the Space Amoeba or the Cloud from 'The Cloud.'

[C5]

To take this seriously for a moment, I think it would be cool if there were more Deep Time alternates. Given that humanoid life was seeded by a specific species, there could be an alternate in which the scale of the original seeding species was different. Instead of planet-bound humanoids, maybe the dominant galactic lifeforms were spaceborne life like the Space Amoeba or the Cloud from 'The Cloud.'

This is actually another question I had in mind: do we keep the parallel universes as "rubber-foreheaded" version of the "Prime" universe (what-if universes, mirror universes, or cross-franchise universes), or allow for something really different (only a few planets evolved the same lifeforms as in the Prime universe) or utterly alien (sentient space clouds, civilisations at the nanometer scale, no planets...).

To be honest the problem I have with the "really different" option is that there is no need to invoke parallel universes to use it: a wormhole to the Andromeda galaxy would to the trick. Parallel universes offer unique opportunities, including deadly serious ones, such as the ones in the TNG episode Parallels ("There are Borgs everywhere!").
And even meeting the last survivor of Krypton escaping in the TARDIS with her Force-sensitive companion attempting to resist his Go'auld symbiote influence can lead to serious scenarii.

[Tricky]

I think the "rubber forehead" realities are done more often to give a sense of context or familiarity. The Mirror Universe is so compelling because it takes heroic characters we know and makes them antiheroes at best, base scoundrels and true villains at worst. The same goes for a 'what if' universe: If a 4th Reich Starship comes out of the Fissure, you know what you're going to get: Future Nazis building a better world for the Aryan people on the backs of "undesirables" i.e. everyone else.

The way I usually explain away why most realities encountered by most interdimensional travelers are so similar is that they are branches on the same "tree": that the multiverse is like a giant forest, and the reality you're in is but one leaf stem on one branch on one tree in that forest. The reality where you're a diehard stamp collector is just a few leaves away. The reality where you're an evolved dinosaur is on another branch, and the reality where we're all sentient line segments is on some other tree. It's easy(relatively) to go from leaf to leaf, but going to a whole other tree is very difficult.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

This is actually another question I had in mind: do we keep the parallel universes as "rubber-foreheaded" version of the "Prime" universe (what-if universes, mirror universes, or cross-franchise universes), or allow for something really different (only a few planets evolved the same lifeforms as in the Prime universe) or utterly alien (sentient space clouds, civilisations at the nanometer scale, no planets...).

The more extreme the alternate and thus the earlier the divergence point, the farther it would be (4-dimensionally) from the timeline you're moving away from, and thus the more energy it would take to get there. The alts in Parallels were all constrained to the lifetime of Worf, thus they would be way easier to get to than travelling to a Nazis Win alt. Think of it in the same context you would physical distance: Is it like transporting, moving across the solar system, sector, Federation, galaxy, transgalactic, trans-galactic-group? So a stable wormhole to an alt with a divergence point centuries ago would be about as a big a deal as a wormhole that moves you 200+ ly. A wormhole that brings you to a universe where the divergence point was 4 BYA would be like one that dumps you on the other side of the universe.

[C5]

Actually I was not arguing about the "distance" of the parallel universes (for the record, I came up with similar theories, and at one time used "hyper-years" as a to measure the distance to another universe based on the point of divergence), but merely pondering as to what would make for the most interesting and original stories.

My feeling was that using extremely alien parallel universes might miss the part of the potential alternate universes offer, as the same result could be obtained with a wormhole to another galaxy.
That being said, an interesting way of using such alien parallel universes would be to access worlds with very different laws of physics. This would translate as technologies not working or working too well, or for more dangerous effects, life as we know it (or even thoughts...) being simply impossible.
Such a setting may fit more in a Starfleet campaign, as exploring on the other side is possibly very dangerous while potential incursions may turn very fast into rescue mission.

The possibility that I'm rambling is not to be discarded either. It has been an extremely tough week.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

My feeling was that using extremely alien parallel universes might miss the part of the potential alternate universes offer, as the same result could be obtained with a wormhole to another galaxy.

I think extreme alternates would probably be best used in campaigns which feature time-travel or 'natural' alternates frequently, like a Timefleet or Guardian of Forever campaign, making things like the Nazi Raumreich and the Romulan Stellar Republic seem nice and negotiable in comparison.

That being said, an interesting way of using such alien parallel universes would be to access worlds with very different laws of physics. This would translate as technologies not working or working too well, or for more dangerous effects, life as we know it (or even thoughts...) being simply impossible.

[Owen E Oulton]

I tend to draw a line between "Alternate" universes, which have a divergence point from ours, and "Parallel" universes, which like a parallel line, have no intersection point with the main universe. The Mirror Universe is a true parallel, with no definable divergence. Thus, you can have such oddities as a hologram in the "Prime" universe being a flesh'n'blood entity in the Mirror Universe. I envision that the MU has its own Alternates, giving rise to a MU where the Terran Empire fell and others where it is still a going concern.

The TNG episode Parallels (which I refer to as "Quantum Worf") should therefore have been called Alternates, since the quantum alternates (all 285,000 of them) seem to all have had definable divergences.

Your mileage, however, may differ, but I believe that somewhere there is an alternate you who agrees.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Yeah, the Mirror Universe's rules are so specific and weird that they almost have to be the result of the interference of the Q or some similar thing.

[Nuclear Fridge]

Hmm. All very valid (and intriguing) possibilities here!

I did have problems with the DS9 Mirror Universe stories after the first one (where Kira and Bashir "slip through" while transiting the wormhole). It was like the writers started to try out-doing one another... and it didn't quite work. Oh well... I digress...

If I were to try this idea out, I probably would want to have two or three "alternities" sketched out beforehand. A reality where Cochrane's Phoenix blew up at launch, so humanity never met the Vulcans. Another 'verse where Sulu and the Excelsior failed to help Kirk at the Khitomer Conference due to engine sabotage... so a massive (and one-sided) war broke out in 2293.

I wouldn't even try to go into great detail about these settings, but having them handy before I started running sessions would be a help.

[JALU3]

Here's another idea, what if World War III never occurred on Earth in the 21st century? It was an event that changed the course of history, and being the background of Cochrane's ability to get a ICBM which he was able to modify into the Phoenix, as well as the ashes which the United Earth was created in. Would nation-states or IGOs of different factions of nation-states become the standard? How would that effect the creation of the Federation?

[C5]

I knew we had such a discussion before...

I was trying to come up with an idea where the Preservers decided to much more pro active, essentially leading to an universe where the main races have been protected from any harm outside potential interspecies war, but it led me nowhere.