The World and Universe of Continuum FAQ

The Continuum roleplaying game has been in existence for about five years now officially, and there are many elements of the game system that have aspects to them that make the players, and GMs, think a little bit. This Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page is designed to answer some of the commonly asked questions about one of the more complex Continuum game elements - the World and Universe of Continuum.

World and Universe Frequently Asked Questions

What is Atlantis? Is it the government of the Continuum or a military base or what?

Atlantis is _not_ the government of the Continuum. The Atlantean Councils are, arguably, a governing body of _the Societies_, which is only one of a trillion-trillion Civilizations that make up the Continuum.

The Narcissist RPG book suggests that all the Inheritor Civilizations are just one big mass-mind, but even if this extreme generalization were true, it's not a "central" government as we understand it. It is the absence of anarchy. Atlantis certainly has no suzerainty over the Inheritors, and the Inheritors make their presence known only when their spanner Ancestors bungle up their everyday lives, and their own butts are threatened.

How frequent are known spanner Corners in the late Piscean Era?

Fraternal corners might be one per city or possibly state. It seems likely there would be a corner representing each Fraternity in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, etc.

Smaller corners are likely to occur in ratio to population... possibly over both time and space. NYC might have dozens (but not hundreds), or perhaps only a dozen total. Somewhere in that range makes sense to me.

Of course, there would be variations; maybe Washington D.C. has an abnormally large number of corners because of political significance. Maybe London lacks a Quicker corner in modern times, for no particularly good reason (less people joined the Quicker, they moved elsewhere, etc.). Or Paris has three Scribal corners, just because.

Europe might have less corners per population, since things are closer together (and therefore you can span to where you need to get easier).

In general, whatever the range you choose, I think that having variations is a good idea.

In terms of the Yet... What must the spanner know before placing something in his or her Yet? Firsthand knowledge is obvious, but what about second-hand information? Just because someone tells me about something I do in my Yet, how do I know they are not mistaken or even lying? What would stop an undercover Narcissist from screwing around with spanners by making up all sorts of false Yet activities for every spanner they meet?

Nothing, which is why the First Maxim is what it is, and why corners are organized as they are. Continuum spanners are there to counteract Narcissist falsehoods with the truth. Anthropologists have long known that gossip and the grapevine bind communities together with information and senses of propriety. And whose information will you trust, a stranger's or your closest friends? Finally, if you're still in grave doubt, hide nearby the event, and check it out for yourself. (Btw, such half-encounters at a distance do not constitute Geminis.)

Finally, the Continuum, and Scribes, etc. farther Up from any event "know all, see all". Somebody already has a complete dossier of your entire Age, from birth to death. But for the player, where's the fun in knowing all that? And for the character, where's the sanity in finding out (see "Automatonosis", page 139, and "Seeking Your Death" on page 143)?

I can see why the Continuum logic works, but if the Inheritors have to approach higher Span Continuum members to catch fleeing narcisists, then why do the characters have the option of becoming Quicker at Span Two? And why would it say that characters outgrow the fraternities at higher Spans? There's just something about the way the Continuum operates that makes it seem that those higher Span members, especially with their massive Mind scores, would catch on to what's going on here.

I think one error that most people make is in assuming that the Continuum rules are prescriptive. They're not. They're trying to *describe* what life is like in the Continuum. You don't spend most of your fraternal time at Span 2 because you're *supposed* to, you do it because that's when it's most natural to do so. When you reach Span 3, you've outgrown the responsibilities of ordinary fraternity work in the same way that a child outgrows its Fisher Price toys. Remember, with Continuum , the authors were trying to figure out how human beings naturally organize themselves, and what that would look like as time travellers.

You are granted higher spans when you prove that you are capable of handling the knowledge and power it gives you. They don't just happen. If you were going to use your new knowledge and span to take down the Continuum, or at least get into trouble, you wouldn't have gotten that span in the first place. Obviously, Narcissists occasionally manage to hide their true intentions well and make it to higher spans, and some otherwise loyal members of the Continuum may encounter something so traumatic that they turn to narcissism. But these are the exceptions. The Continuum continues because of its overwhelming force.

And just because some people claim to have visited alternate realities doesn't mean they really do exist. Consider: why do crashers enter pockets and loyal spanners don't? The crasher would say that he's experiencing what really happens, and the spanner is somehow secretly brainwashed by the Continuum to forget any pocket experiences he may have had. The spanner would say that there was no pocket, but that it was somehow necessary for the Continuum to brainwash the crasher into thinking that there *was* one. How can you say that only one of these is right? The other side can always say that its opponent is suffering from an induced delusion.

Do spanners of other Eras learn the Christian calendar? I find this hard to believe: I would guess that the Christian calendar is presented to us for all dates in the Continuum rulebooks for our own comprehension, but local spanners would use whatever system they're familiar with.

Introducing other calendars is always at the GM's discretion: the game doesn't foist them on players, since time travel is complex enough to learn.

There is a Societal calendar, which was mentioned somewhere in print or online, which counts the years from the arrival of Atlantis in 12969 BC to the Hour of the Inheritance in AD 2222. While spanner _characters_ can be said to use it, it would be of dubious use to the average _player_. The Julian Day is a better solution for long-spanning players, since it's widely available, and a standard tool in modern research.

How do chronies communicate across time and space?

Dreaming across spacetime is preferred by many, for its feel of immediacy - but true immediacy is what spanning is all about. Many messages are delivered by the Scribes Fraternity, as shown in this example of old penpals, posted recently at the Continuum List:

Karen "Hunter" Hafner sits in her study at her corner "Styx," at approximately 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, December 14, 1989 AD. Before her on her desk lie a stack of envelopes, all addressed to her, and numbered. The box they came in tells her who sends the letters: her former chrony John from the Wyoming 1880's lodge. A slip of paper inside the box indicates that John is a Three. Hunter knows this means he's busy mentoring his corner in early 1800's Ohio. The slip also says, "Mine is first."

Smiling with memories of her old corner, Hunter opens the letter marked #1. She reads from the unlined paper:

October 30, 1804

Dear Hunter,

Howdy! How's the mentoring going? Are the runts giving you a hard time? Give them a swift kick from me!

Anyway, I'm trying to track down that old hand gun I used to carry around. You remember, the one I gave to you as a birthday present? Do you still have it?

The letter stops abruptly at that point, no signature, nothing further written. And Hunter wasn't expecting anything else. She puts the letter to one side, takes a sheet of Snoopy and Woodstock stationery, and begins to write:

December 14, 1989

John,

Yes, I think I do. Or I can find it. What do you need it for?

Putting her pen down at this point, Hunter takes a fresh envelope, writes a #1 on it, stuffs her short message in, and licks it closed. She carefully sets it on her other side. Now she reaches for John's envelope #2. The letter inside says:

We've got a little problem with one of my novices. He's supposed to be shot with that gun.

Nothing more. Hunter puts this letter aside and writes a new one of her own.

Shot! Don't tell me you're going to hurt the poor kid!

She puts this letter into an envelope she marks #2, seals it, and puts it on top of her #1 envelope. Then she takes John's letter #3 and reads:

No, not me, a little narcissist mess we got in over here. I could arrange for a replica, but the kid got a good look at the weapon and I figured it'd be easier if you could just send it Down to me.

Hunter continues to read messages in order and write her own until John's pile is used up. In the final letter, he thanks her and wishes her well, and takes back what he said (jokingly) about kicking her novices for him. Hunter also writes one more letter, in farewell, and promising to send the gun along.

When she's done, Hunter has a pile of sealed envelopes containing her replies. She takes #1 and adds to it, "Yours is first." Then she rubber-bands them all together, puts them in a larger envelope, and labels them so that the next Scribe who comes by will know when and where to take the letters.

"Hey Hunter!" greets Alicia, one of Hunter's novices, as Hunter puts the envelope down on the kitchen table. "What's that?"

"Just talking to John. He says hi."

Can anyone give me a justification for the Continuum's behaviour in a universe where both games are "true"?

The viewpoints are irreconcilable.

The Continuum holds that there is only one universe. Continuum and Narcissist are just games that exist in the universe. The Continuum game, at least, is instructive, but please, let's be mature about this. In all your time gaming, enjoying media SF, reading, and exercising your imagination, have you ever *actually* experienced another *real* universe? Until somebody comes forward with proof otherwise, the Continuum has the last word on this.

Yrne and crashers insist that there is a multiverse. Indeed, Misplaced Dimensionals (one of the four major categories of crashers for the final release of Narcissist can literally scream that they've grown up in other worlds, and that the universe of the Swarm/Continuum is completely clue-free and frelled up. And you should see the alternate versions of Narcissist that are out there!!

The issue that always comes up is what do the Quicker think they're doing, if they can pursue crashers out to 100 proximities. I mean, duh, those are other verses, right?

There is a Continuum-friendly rational explanation, of course. Naturally this is a heady (and dangerous) concept, reserved for Quicker, Aquarians and Inheritors and explains a lot of what they're keeping secret from pre-Aquarian spanners:

The universe *has* multiple dimensions - the theory, after all, exists. But these dimensions are not habitable by humans; they are more alien in concept than the surface of the sun. So for the Quicker, their math tells them that crashers aren't entering other complete verses, but forcing habitable constructs onto the dimensional superstructure of The Universe. Kind of like building a house on the cables holding up a suspension bridge. Allowed to continue, the damage would be the dimensional equivalent of removing the Moon from Earth orbit. According to the Quicker. According to the Yrneans, countless verses have been destroyed, imploded, isolated, and what have you due to Quicker and Inheritor mischief.

A third viewpoint, that of the Dreamers, is that there are intangible realms (or verses, etc.) which are categorically more important than the physical world(s). The Continuum and Crashers will gladly use the powers gleaned from Dreamer experiences, but dismiss Dreaming itself as less vital than the realpolitik of a physical time war, or of a transversal empire.

How do you deal with the "economy of spanners"? By this, I mean, the bartering that goes on: favours traded and asked, services rendered, stuff like that.

Some people tend to wing it, but others tend to turn it into a scenario or an element of a scenario.

Look at it this way. If you were playing some other roleplaying game, you'd have encounters with NPCs who want things from the PCs. Money, favours, answers, and so on. It's no different in Continuum . There are all sorts of spanners out there, and some of them may need something from the PCs. Likewise, there are times when the PCs are going to need services from others.

In one game that David Trimboli ran, one of the PCs needed help in researching some obscure information. She took a train to New York City, and hooked up with some members of the Scribes fraternity at the New York Library. They helped her out in finding what she needed. Later, it would be a simple matter for them to show up and ask the PC for a favour in return. Sooner or later you're going to need an NPC who needs something from the PCs, so why not make it one you've used before?

One should let them accumulate responsibilities like this naturally as the game progresses. As the PCs use the resources available to them, more people will come to them for help with things. Some tasks may be too small to worry about in the game; these are best abstracted.

A GM should never force the matter, by having the player put the situation in their Yet. This is the Continuum version of "railroading" the player characters. They'll forever be playing catch-up with the GM, and can never get down to the business of actually living the spanner life.

Special thanks to Chris Adams, Dave Fooden, Barbara Manui, David Trimboli, and the folks on the Continuum Mailing List for their help in the compiling of this FAQ information.

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