How would you build a time/space Superphone?

[Great Beyond]

(First: for the record - I had a cell phone that could call anywhere in time and space LONG before the Doctor gave Rose one in the 05 series of Doctor Who, thank you very much. )

So I was inputting the numbers from an old character into hero designer who had a cellular phone that could call any point in time or space - basically Radio receive/transmit with the extradimensional advantage added on. Well, imagine my shock that it wouldn't let me do it, that I've been playing against the rules for years (or ignorant of a recent rules change). Hero Designer claims that Trans-D can only be applied to powers that target others.

So - the big money question is, how would you go about building this now.

[gojira]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Liberal amounts of the hard to find mineral, Plotdevicium.

[David Johnston]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Extradimensional Cyber-Telepathy. Fits the rules by changing it to a power that targets. You don't need a lot of dice because telephone switchboards aren't very resistant to being communicated with.

[transmetahuman]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

My first thought was Mind Link, but first, how exactly does the cell phone work? Can it call any other cell phone, or only other Time Phones? Assuming the latter, are all the Time Phones, umm, moving through time together (individual timelines broken up but congruent in some other dimension... if you call Jake up, then call him 5 minutes later, he'll have experienced five minutes even though he's in the Jurrassic and you're in the 18th century)? Or can you hear Jake screaming "Oh &^%$#!" then a sploorch noise, hang up, and call him back a minute earlier his time to warn him? Or something else entirely? I haven't watched Dr. Who since he was curly haired and wore a long long scarf.

[Great Beyond]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

It was just a normal phone that was supercharged, so you could order a pizza from Pizza Hut half an hour ago and have it show up 30 seconds after you hang up - provided that you had the right "area code". So anyone could use it to call any phone, but it really needed a PHD in temporal physics to use it (or knowing what speed dial went to what number. )

 

And yeah, we occasionaly did have the relitive physics come into play - like when we had characters stuck waiting in the middle ages for an event of somesort. It was "Look, if I dont get off the phone now, you'll have to wait 6 months until you can come get us. So hang up and get us now, will ya?"

[CBikle]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

I suppose by buying Radio transmit and receive and buying advantages like transdimensional.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Extradimensional Cyber-Telepathy. Fits the rules by changing it to a power that targets. You don't need a lot of dice because telephone switchboards aren't very resistant to being communicated with.

 

And also add what ever advantages and disadvantages to creat the feel you want.

 

Repped David.

[transmetahuman]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

It was just a normal phone that was supercharged, so you could order a pizza from Pizza Hut half an hour ago and have it show up 30 seconds after you hang up - provided that you had the right "area code". So anyone could use it to call any phone, but it really needed a PHD in temporal physics to use it (or knowing what speed dial went to what number. )

 

And yeah, we occasionaly did have the relitive physics come into play - like when we had characters stuck waiting in the middle ages for an event of somesort. It was "Look, if I dont get off the phone now, you'll have to wait 6 months until you can come get us. So hang up and get us now, will ya?"

 

Yikes. I think I'd chew my arm off before I let someone have that in a game (unless the "need to be a genius to really use it" thing translates to "this is just some fun fluff that the GM can and will clamp down on whenever it gets used anywhere near its actual potential"). My brain is spinning with all the cool, godlike things *I* would do with it.

 

Back on topic, if you only use the "speed dial", I'd still use Mind Link. What kind of Mind Scan would you need to be able to target Telepathy on anyone with a cell phone, anywhere, anytime? That's a lotta points. Or is this Cyber-Telepathy dealie something completely different that I don't have the book for?

 

If this is just fluff/color, used for pizza and keeping in touch when half the team is on a time jaunt, I'd just ignore that particular limitation on Transdimensional and plunk it on Radio trans/ceive. You get what you pay for, so you should only pay for what you get, benefits-wise.

 

If it's as powerful as it looks, well, I might let you take it if you, the player, act as my abject slave for ten years first. But then, I hate time travel/reliable precog in a game. Hate, hate, HATE.

[Lucius]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Any campaign I run will conform to Alexander's Laws of Time.

 

Alexander's First Law of Time: The Past may be known, but not changed.

 

(Retrocognition is possible, but actually traveling to the past creates an alternate universe - when you return to your own timeline, it's as if anything you did in the past never happenned.)

 

Alexander's Second Law of Time: The Future may be changed, but not known.

 

(Precognition is unreliable at best, but you can accelerate your travel to the future beyond the normal one second per second rate if you want.)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary prefers Cole's Law.

[OddHat]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Radio Perception and Transmission

Perceive into a Related Group of Dimensions: Any Point in Time (10 Point Adder)

Transmit into a Related Group of Dimensions: Any Point in Time (10 Point Custom Adder)

 

Add limitations to taste.

 

If you actually wanted to pull something like ordering objects from the past so that they'll arive now, I'd ask you to build a VPP with OAF:Cell Phone on the control cost and a Limited Class of Powers(-1/2). The VPP would then be used to build your ordered pizzas (LS:Need Not Eat, usable by up to 8 others simultaneously, 1 charge lasting 6 hours), mail order flak jackets, Taxis, etc.

 

I had a character whose schtick was that he could wander freely through time and space, buy almost anything so long as it was reasonably available to the public at some point in history, and return. His VPP was called the S-Mart Effect.

[Kenn]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

I'd look up the cost of the Transdimensional advantage. Then if entering it into Hero Designer, I would use the "Custom Advantage" to attach a custom advantage named "Transdimensional."

 

There are some rules that are meant to be circumvented.

[transmetahuman]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

Any campaign I run will conform to Alexander's Laws of Time.

 

Alexander's First Law of Time: The Past may be known, but not changed.

 

(Retrocognition is possible, but actually traveling to the past creates an alternate universe - when you return to your own timeline, it's as if anything you did in the past never happenned.)

 

Alexander's Second Law of Time: The Future may be changed, but not known.

 

(Precognition is unreliable at best, but you can accelerate your travel to the future beyond the normal one second per second rate if you want.)

 

Lucius Alexander

Exactly. I extrapolate a bit from this: every parallel universe (of the normal physical sort) was created this way (by travel to the past). Each can only be accessed from the universe which spawned it, or from those which it, itself spawned (that's an add-on, not extrapolation). There is one moving "present" shared by all, though of course the point in history varies from timeline to timeline. So there's a complicated network of parallel universes, all connecting, directly or indirectly, to an "original" universe, the one with the most history so far. Not an original setup, but I like how it lets you do "historical time travel" trips, or even trips to the (actually "a") future, without all that paradox PITA.

 

I guess this could even justify a kind of precog: clairsentience of a connected timeline "further ahead" than the one you're in (unless you're in the original), but since the differences between 'lines are usually pretty big, and I don't like to cheat the players who spent points for it, I don't like PCs to have it.

 

I allow retrocognition despite the Observer Effect by positing a vast Akasic (sp?) Memory type deal - all information is eternally stored; retrocogs aren't seeing (thus interacting with) the past, they're getting infodumps from the Cosmic Databank.

 

(Sorry for the derail!)

 

The palindromedary prefers Cole's Law.

Argh.

[Chimpira]

Re: How would you build a time/space Superphone?

 

I did something similiar but it was not a phone for placing calls thorugh time. I just wanted to place calls from any dimension. Even as a player I would never go for the ability to place calls throughout Space AND time. Too much potential for abuse. As for your question I think the other people here have put forth better ideas than I could, but I was taking notes.