The rule could be anything, as funny or as serious as you want. The universe will progress in a similar way that it has up until this point, unless your changed rule prevented it from doing so.

Some examples might be:

  • The invention of currency is not allowed.
  • Iron is slightly less stable.
  • The Ancient Greeks are able to cultivate Silphium, which does not go extinct now.
  • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    4 months ago

    By all means, explain it to me! My best way so far was siting the chase in call of Cthulhu and really it’s not a great example.

    • frank
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      4 months ago

      Heck yeah, I’ll try my best!

      So on a euclidian chess board, moving your king one space left would be 1 space, one space up would be 1 space, and one space diagonally would be √2 spaces (some simple trig gets us there).

      Chess however, does not obey the laws of Euclidian geometry nor does its physical representation show us things to scale. A king’s move diagonally is the same amount of space as a move side to side, 1 space.

      It’s silly, because spaces weren’t directly supposed to represent distance or anything, but it’s funny that it works out this way

      • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        4 months ago

        This is a problem I’ve always had with Square grids in D&D and it never occured to me that from character perspective a character is warping space to move slightly further for the same amount of movement.

        • frank
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          4 months ago

          Also non Euclidian! Hexagons (the bestagons) also tesselate and fix that problem nicely