(originally brought up in this post)

I had some new ideas today at lunch, in regards to the "reality paradox, everyone is a variant of the same person" game idea.

• Focus on both cooperative and competitive play. Cooperate to solve the issue regarding the messed-up nature of reality, but compete so their character can, in the end, remain as the "true self" of the person of whom they are all echoes.
• Part of the character creation process involves creating multiple points of disjunction. Each point is an event or decision that branched into multiple outcomes. Each future point is not only that, but also a point where all of those realities crossed again - a moment of reality-changing Deja-Vu.
• Focus on the idea of "deja vu" as a feeling which happens at those moments where divergent realities meet again.
• Characters don't have attributes of their own, per se, but instead have numbers that are specifically relative to the other characters in the game. If there are six characters (or "echoes"), then each character will have five sets of "Congruences" (one set for each additional character).
• The number of characters in the game also determines the number of divergent realities in this paradox situation. Affecting elements (object, people, places, etc) which bleed through from another character's version of reality will be easier the more congruent you are with that other character.
• Congruences are defined during the character creation session. Each time you and another player choose the same decision about a moment of Disjunction, you gain a Congruence with that character.
• Currently considering two ideas for the creation process. The first is a free-form tree-like structure. The group works on developing a person together until they clash over the outcome of an action or event. At that point, the tree begins and branches off in different paths, and they continue developing those paths, and so on.
• The other involves pre-set Disjunction moments. Maybe five of them. The group again works from the ground up, until they come up with the first moment. Define two-to-four possible outcomes, then have each person secretly choose their preferred result. Reveal the choices, and those who matched the results pair up for a moment and define where the character goes from then on. All paths must somehow meet at the next Disjunction, and the cycle repeats. On the sheet, next to each disjunction write a quick note about the choice or event, like "Failed to save woman's life" or "graduated med school" or "became junkie in Paris" or the like. Each time you choose the same result as another character, you gain a Congruence with them.
• Yet another idea involves five pre-set Disjunction themes. One for Love, one for Career, one for Morality, etc. Set them up in any order, and apply that order to the above idea.
• Another idea is, instead of secret ballot, an optional die roll to choose the path.