Alternate or Parallel Dimension?

[Trinity Zeldis]

Khyber, if you are still around, I'd be interested in hearing about this one.

I once ran an alternate timeline game in which Britain won the insert politically correct term for American Revolution here so that though the starships were the same, they were H.M.S. whatevers and the officers' standard uniform included a saber as well as those pointy hats (as seen on the holodeck in Star Trek: Generations).

Officers were expected to be wealthy (we never went into how) and some actually had their own vessels attached to the ship they were stationed on. My step daughter actually played the captain's daughter, complete with parasol and wrist gloves. Even to the point where she (my step daughter was 8 at the time) effected a slight British accent.

Alien races were conquered and made to join Her Majesty's Empirial Federation. Yet, after years of being a colony, the world would become a member of the Commonwealth. After years of that, they were considered to be "Britain amongst the stars."

All the tried and true races were there, as well as some new ones. The Skosians and the Eirians were two races evolved from a single race. They were parallel to Earth's Scotts and Irish. Jang Ko were a "combination" of Klingons and Vulcans based mostly on China just prior to World War II. And of course, there were the Ah-Mreens, a race of warrior mystics who plotted the paths of the stars to divine the "True Home," based very very loosely on American Indians.

Has anyone else done parallel games?

[Balok]

I generally follow the convention that a "parallel" has many of the same characters, possibly not in the same roles, while an "alternate" does not.

So the Mirror Universe would be a parallel, while the place the Traveller took the Enterprise in "Where No One Has Gone Before" would be an alternate.

Years ago, Pacesetter produced a game called "Timemaster" which had a system wherein discovered parallels were designated with letters and numbers based on their similarity to "T-0", the Terrestial Parallel where the Timecorps first formed. There were "T", "M", and "A" parallels; the "A" parallels were those that were very strange, sometimes with different physical laws (in was from such a parallel that the shapeshifting Demoreans, the game's chief villains, hailed).

[AslanC]

Wow this thread is back from the past!

I love the idea of the babylon 5 Captain Kirk of the EarthForce Destroyer Enterprise.

Man I can't believe I missed that the first time

[Cochrane]

What if there's a law of nature that brings universes back to being as similar as possible after a change? Like if the Preservers and Progenitors seeded different worlds with the same DNA varieties, so when you have been using one size of Federation and The Powers That Be introduce a new set of star maps, and go into a lot of detail, and you like it, and you send your series into an alternate using the new star maps. Could be useful regarding the Prime Directive universe.

[Trinity Zeldis]

Now that's an interesting thought, Cochrane.

Starfleet General Order One
Timefleet General Order One
Parachronic/Quantum/Multiversalfleet General Order One

What would then be next for the various fleets? And how would Ryker's actions in (dammit, I don't remember this episode, but it's the one with the dimension hopping Worf) be considered by the Parachronic/Quantum/Multiversalfleet?

[khyber]

I just finished a seven game campaign ("The Dark Intentions Saga") where my PCs discovered an alternate universe via the Gateway where the only galactic government was the Union. No Federation, Romulan Empire, etc. Although Romulans and Klingons did exist, they just played a different role.

This Union was a utopia created by a group of individuals nearly 600 years before after the destruction of the Dark Ones bringing an end to a 2400 year galactic struggle known as the Dark War. However, as my PCs soon discovered, the leader of the Union was hiding a terrible secret. In his youth, he had travelled back in time nearly 3000 years where he inadvertantly caused the creation of the Dark Ones. When he returned to his own time, an alternate timeline existed : The Dark War.

The PCs also discovered with the help of a Union historian that a Dark One had escaped into their universe some 2000 years ago. Before they could return to their own universe, they were forced to deal with several ADOs (Agents of the Dark Ones) who traveled from their universe to the Union in search of any Dark Ones still alive. After they were killed by the PCs, they discovered another ADO came to this universe with a mission to secure the biological fornula that created the Dark Ones. The PCs tried to thwart his plans but failed.

The PCs, the leader of the Union, and several other Union citizens traveled back to the PC's universe to locate the Dark One before he could use the formula to create more.

Back in their own universe, the PCs discovered the Dark One had been in stasis for nearly 1985 years until he was accidentally released. This Dark One using ADOs manipulated the interstellar governments of the Romulan Star Empire and the Fafvid Order to start a war in order to weaken the Romulan Empire so the Dark One could take it over more easily.

When the Dark One secured the formula which had created him, he began growing more Dark Ones. The PCs managed to convince the leader of the Fafvid Order that the Dark Ones had manipulated them into war. With the PC's help, the Dark One was located at its base of operations, an old Nor station that had been towed to a nebula in Romulan space and was being used by the Tal'Shiar. The PC's boarded the station while a Fafvid fleet waited to attack. Once the Dark One was destroyed, the Fafvid Fleet move into to destroy the station but were ambushed by cloaked Tal'Shiar vessels. The PCs managed to make it out alive and return to their base of operations, but the death of the Dark Ones did not end the Romulan-Fafvid War.

I liked doing these kinds of campaigns but it takes too much planning to do all the time. Will now go back to one or two part games with story arcs thrown in.

[AslanC]

Wow that sounds really cool khyber!

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

Both sets of dimensions allow GMs and players to explore stories or situations that would dramatically affect the known universe without worrying so much about throwing it completely off the canon track.

For myself, my primary campaign is a parallel dimension and the Star Trek Universe we all know and share is another dimension that some PCs know is out there but have rarely ever visited. One PC, though has it in his background that he was serving aboard the Enterprise during "Parallels".

We played that out in a flashback sequence that was quite amusing for all.

Regards,
CKV.

[Cut]

I am thinking of doing an adventure where I send my PCs to another dimension similiar yet dis-similiar to our Star Trek dimension. So I could use some ideas.

What I would like is a consensus as to what is an alternate dimension as opposed to a parallel dimension. In the past I've used these two terms inter-changeably.

Are they the same or are there differences?

It seems Khyber had the basic ideas that turned out to be used for Star Trek XI some 8 years ago! Respect, man!