I was thinking the game could keep track and repeat certain major events that the previous player character did, even outside the reality bubble. A nuclear explosion could be one such event, whether because of a silo nuke or a mininuke.
And perhaps the new post-jump player could receive a random short list of things that the pre-jump player did, a list such as “Started a car at [coordinates], 2nd of Spring, 2138hrs” or “Penetrated lab at [coordinates], 3rd of spring, 2341hrs” or “Killed zombie hulk at [coordinates], 4th of spring, 0155hrs” and so on.
I think it’d be uniquely entertaining to play a time travel scenario a year or two later (of realtime) with a short list of clues what the previous character did. Depending on the player’s personal memory of events, of course. Perhaps the goal could be to stop that guy. Or just watch and follow him and… reminisce.
But first, we’d have to introduce a player character copy (NPC) that follows the player around at a distance in the first pre-jump game… It would drive any new player mad, until truth is revealed. That copycat would sometimes leave the player notes that say things such as “Don’t look me up” or “You don’t want to know” or “The hardest thing for a cat to do is to resist curiosity”.
In the post-jump games, the player would have a set of choices regarding the notes to leave for the pre-jump copy character. But these notes would be different, and meant to manipulate the actions of the pre-jump copy character - notes such as “There’s food at [coordinates]” or “There are medical supplies at [coordinates]”, and depending on the status of the pre-jump copy character, he might or might not divert path and choose a new destination, potentially getting himself killed in the process… unless the player intervenes, assuming intervention by player is made possible.
Am I making sense? This time travel / causality crap makes my head spin, and it’s even more difficult to express the related ideas. I’m not crazy, I swear.
