@druagnar Not really, if the time they came from was the reason they were taken. But maybe they could all be ancestors of the antagonist's line? So he takes his own family for his sick trip.

anyways, I'm out for a couple hours, time for a CompSci club meeting.

First, let me say that I love time travel, so I think this will be a lot of fun.

If I may, I'd like to propose the general method of time travel. IMHO, nothing ruins a story more than Time Travel Rules that aren't self-consistent, especially when it's used to deus ex machina your way out of a conflict.

The device is an isolated self-sufficient box which is able to unanchor itself from time. While active, the device is non-temporal, so it relies on dead reckoning to get to it's destination. Occasionally, it momentarily anchors itself to get it's bearing (similar to ancient sailors with the stars). While anchored, it unknowingly tethers itself to others, picking up people as it pops in and out of time. All passengers (intended and accidental) are then dropped off at the final location.

Explain that again abge the part about picking people up. I don't follow.

The device unanchors from time.

Occasionally, it anchors to get it's bearing (If you're unanchored from time, you don't know how "long" you've been gone.)

Somehow (tbd), every time it anchors, it unanchors someone else from time.

So, if it anchored 50 times between leaving and getting to it's destination, you may have accidentally unanchored 50 other people from time. This is how they all get to the same place.

Think of it exactly as a ship in water. Every time it drops its anchor, it drags sand, coral, trash, w/e along with it. It's the same, only it's a time anchor. A chranchor, if you will.

yeah I get that I just dont really understand how you can accidentally pick people up like that.

Let me explain : )

Let's say the device exhibits some sort of EM field that activates the anchor.

I'm standing in a phone booth, or an other Faraday cage, when the device happens to anchor "next" to me. The EM field turns my phone booth into an uncontrolled time machine that is tethered to the main chronoship.

Obviously, this is all bullshit, but I think it makes a fun story.

I mean, sure, sure. But having it all be accidental makes it a real pain to get all the characters together and have a coherent plot whereas if it was the villain's master plan you don't really need to explain anything. You don't even need to know how the time travel occurs.

Yeah, but...a villain...with a "plot"...isn't that really...boring...?

What evil plot involves grabbing a bunch of people from history and throwing them in medieval europe? I think that will be very forced and dull.

IMHO, it would be much more fun to have a bunch of just random people get stuck in medieval europe and mess up history trying to get back. We can then have fun with how the present is different from all their antics.

I mean, did you ever see Star Trek TNG?

You know Q?

And how he just fucks with the crew for fun and sets them up in ridiculous games with frustrating objectives? Like that.

I mean sure it sounds dumb on paper but think about the Dark Knight and the Joker. That seems stupid on paper too but it approaches profound.

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Q is awesome...don't really know the context of all this. One day at school and I miss the whole thread. Oh well, at least Yellowjacket will be satisfied that I'm unable to post the hell out of this site anymore.

So what exactly did we decide on?

So have we decided on the device bringing people from different times by accident or the evil mastermind who sent them all back from different periods for some plot or ludicrous fun? I'm a little confused which way we've decided thus far.

So am I...

My vote:

'Accident' that wasn't completely an accident. Motive of evil scientist is to change something about his past but it was a little too strong and pulled people in from various timestreams. People can be more random that way. And until the chronoshift is stopped, it will continue to pull people and things across the timestreams and threaten earth and the entire space-time continuum.

@Draugnar - Personally I REALLY like that idea. It has so many possibilities where we can go with it. That's my vote.

Maybe his motive was that his family HAD huge land holdings (ie a kingship) that was lost in the past so he wanted to avoid the situation that made them lose it in hopes that he might hold some 'major power' in the present (future) day. That's a possibility for a motive anyway.

I was thinking along similar lines. That or he was distraught over the loss of a love to someone more evil and decided that person's entire family should be wiped from existence.

MAYBE it's a combination of the two. He lost his love to someone more powerful in his time, something like a duel between the families that has gone on for centuries. There was a time in Medieval Europe where that family took OVER his family's holdings and thus his family fell out of power and the other took over so he wants to return to stop that from happening and wipe out the family all together AND regain his power in the future.

I like it.

We'll hold off to see what Thucy, Warden and Abge have to say but I think we're on to something here.

Oh! I have some additonal ideas! We could split it into chronoframes. Have some take place in one timeline and some in another ala Back to the Future II where old Biff from the future screws up the timeline by taking the sports book back to young Biff in the past.

Set some in the screwed up future and some in the past. Have a chronodio (like a radio but across time) and have two teams on either side of the rift trying to solve the problem.

Wow, that's definitely a thought... but it might be hard to coordinate between us. Still, very intriguing indeed.

Speaking of coordinating, i'm thinking that once we start doing submissions, we'll use a different thread that will ONLY have the submissions (so they'll stay in order) and we'll continue this thread for discussions of the submissions, etc. What do you think?

I was thinking we might try a restricted Google doc so only we authors could post. but yeah keep this thread for discussions.

But if only we authors can post, then how is the rest of WebDip going to read our story? LOL

I think if people in different time periods could communicate it would become too complicated too fast. I like the idea of the guy going back in time, (are we set on medieval?) and unexpectedly(or not) pulling others with him. But if we do want to put in something like a Roman era character, then we would need his time machine to be imprecise, and miss its intended destination in order to pull the people from further in the past than he wanted to go. Unless he completely dislodged a set of people from time entirely, and they got stuck in his leap through space time.

But I vote for the basic idea of the guy from the future wanting to change some significant event in the distant past, and as a side effect of the travel, he snags on some other people and they arrive with him. At that point, some could side with him and the change, perhaps for a promise of being returned home. And others may try to stop him.

can you set up a google doc that's public to view but has special permissions to edit?