It’s becoming more common in RPGs.

One of my favorite comics of all time is Crisis on Infinite Earths because I read a lot of the comics before and after the big change happened in the 1980’s and I’ve tried to follow most of the DC reality shifts since. There have been many. More recently Marvel has gotten into the act with all the Infinity Gauntlet business. Okay, so it’s been a few decades. Anyway…

I used to bemoan Star Trek for their reality/time screw plots. The only true reality mix-up of the Star Trek: Next Generation series that I truly enjoyed was All Good Things Parts 1 and 2 and that was the end of the series. Dr Who was a different story because monkeying with the timestream and reality is the Doctor’s main thing. Yet Star Trek is a far easier game to run for me.

But I see this coming up more and more in RPGs these days. Power Rangers RPG from Renegade Studios actively encourages players and GMs to change the canon storyline and mess with major villains. Power Rangers has alternate realities built into its canon. My first campaign takes place on Earth 129, where Rita and Zed won’t be making an appearance right away.

If you’re interested in this sort of thing in the real world, it’s not just science fiction.

My wife thinks I’m nuts, but at least I’m harmless.

I promise, my coffee isn’t spiked and the mushrooms on my pizza are very normal. In the spiritual community especially, we talk about higher timelines. Try to imagine an Earth where the dinosaurs never became extinct. Or maybe a certain US president was never assassinated. Or maybe an Earth where the alternate version of you insists on eating toast for breakfast every day.

If this sort of thing appeals, please look up The Mandela Effect. Some of us remember certain products having a different label. The Berenstain Bears had a different spelling. Nelson Mandela died in prison following a hunger strike. Basically, some of us get certain history facts “wrong” because we remember it differently. I experienced one of these shifts directly once and it was brief, but incredibly intense. Deja vu is another example of this effect.

Another similar theory is parallel to the movie The Matrix. If you look up David Icke, he explains it well. Basically our reality is a simulation from an extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings, or possibly humans from the future trying to prevent global catastrophe. It’s a bit deep for some. Whenever you hear someone talk about “a glitch in the Matrix,” alternate reality theory is what they are referring to.

Back to RPGs for now.

A good friend of mine once ran a Star Wars campaign where the PCs killed Darth Vader and stopped the Emperor in his tracks after the first Death Star was destroyed. Reality shifts can be fun in some RPGs because it makes the PC’s actions matter much more to the overall story, which is ultimately what we all want as role players.

The same GM and I were also building a Mutants & Masterminds game where a city was leveled by a nuclear blast. A terrorist supervillain went supernova and wiped out a sizeable number of mainline story characters, so the PCs were going to have really big shoes to fill. Picture something akin to Marvel’s New Mutants taking over for the Avengers. Like I said in the beginning, this kind of thing happens in comic multiverses all the time.

More later. Or at least in my current reality timeline. (Wink wink.) Have a good week.