Teleportation rules?

[dreamsofnever]

So I currently have a character who has the ability of teleportation. He's not a main character, but he definitely has a pretty big part in the story. Anyways, I'm a stickler for creating abilities that feel plausible. Or, as plausible as "special powers" can feel.

So I like to create rules. Teleportation is something I'm really enjoying having, but I'm not sure if I'm making him too powerful. (though given its his only ability, he's definitely got weaknesses then.)

Right now I have that he can teleport anywhere, as long as he pictures the destination in his mind. He doesn't need to have been there. He can also bring up to two people at a time. It hurts a bit, and definitely hurts the tag-alongs. (they sort of feel like they're being crushed and then expanded)

And if he goes long distances (i.e. US to Africa), it wears him out more.

So... what types of teleporting characters have you seen? and what bugs you/feels too powerful?

[Ervin]

One thing that always annoyed me in Harry Potter, was the way people could have so easily apparated (AKA teleported) anywhere during a fight, basically kicked the other person's ass if he/she didn't do the same. But nobody has thought of that. You need to consider how often, how quickly, and how far he can do it.

The Firefox spell checker doesn't have teleport for some reason...

[small axe]

I think someone really has to put some interesting limits or twists into Teleportation, or it just sounds TOO much.

How about if every time your character teleports, there is some obvious damage done to him/her? Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's like a mini-stroke that erases some of his knowledge or memory? It's a great POWER but at a terrible PRICE.

Another angle might be: whether he seems to teleport "instantaneously" to an outside observer, for him it's some terrible lengthy ordeal (which you describe or don't, according to your needs)?

There's some SCI-FI story about that (I can't recall the title ... ever since I jumped out of that Saudi prince's Harem) where people who make objective jumps thru hyperspace go thru terrible subjective eternities.

Anyway, just two ideas.

[dreamsofnever]

Excellent point, Ervin. As I'm writing this, I'm careful to give him a reason to stay in a dangerous situation. But I find that it annoyed my own inner fact checker when one of his friends was in trouble. I had to figure out a way for him to not be able to get her out of there.

And small_axe, I like those ideas! I think any of those could add dimension to the story which is awesome. Now I need to ponder on that!

[Hummingbird]

One of Small_axe's reminds me of 'Butterfly Effect' movie. Everytime he changed something in the past, he'd get a bloody nose because of his brain taking in too much data at once and his body was in worse shape each time. It was cool. Lol. I love that movie.

Anyway, I think that Small_axe's ideas would be cool in teleporting.
Being physically damaged or drained of energy, like really tired to the point of passing out if it's done too much, is cool!

You could also try something like, when he teleports it weakens the balance of some energy or the like around the spot he teleported from. That way if he does it too much the world may look like swiss cheese. ^_~

[Colin McHale]

Ah, yes. This is always an interesting issue. Here's some ideas I've come up with for my own story.

Teleportation is divided into two categories: physical and portal.

Physical teleportation is the kind we all know. A magic user pictures a place in his or her mind and teleports to that spot.

Portal teleportation is the act of traveling to a location through "wormhole" generated by a beginning and end-portal.

Both forms of teleportation have pros and cons.

Physical
Pros

Depending on skill, a magic user can cast a physical teleport almost instantaneously.
Travel time through a physical teleport is faster.
Much harder to “trace” someone who has teleported physically.
Impossible to stop someone in the midst of physical teleportation.
Cannot detect where or when someone will physically teleport.Cons

In general: the longer the distance of the teleportation, the greater the strain on the magic user. An inexperienced user can be weakened even by short jumps; long jumps can result in a coma. An experienced user can be weakened for days or weeks by a long jump.
Magic user must have a clear picture of his/her destination before a physical teleport. You cannot teleport to a place you’ve never seen.
Physical teleportation is confined only to individuals; you cannot bring someone with you (unless they also know how to physically teleport).
If stealth is your aim, physical teleportation is out of the question; the user’s sudden appearance in a new location causes a burst of magic, resulting in a sound not unlike that of a sonic boom.
No matter how experienced the user, arrival at a new location will cause him or her several seconds disorientation and possible loss of balance. This might negate the advantage of surprise/fear granted by the sudden blast of the sonic boom upon entry.Portals
Pros

Though the initial concepts can be difficult, the concepts of portal teleportation are easier to learn than physical teleportation.
No limit on distance.
Traveling through a portal does not weaken the user (unless they’ve never had exposure of magic). The only possible side-effect is drowsiness.
Arrival at the end-point portal does not cause a sonic boom.
A portal, depending on its size and complexity, can simultaneously teleport anywhere from 1 to 20 people. Larger creatures need larger portals.
As long as a portal exists (and it has no magical access code) anyone can use it.
Portal openings can be masked by illusion spells.Cons

Travel through portals is slower than physical teleportation. The longer the distance, the longer the travel-time is.
Though portals are (kind of) easy to learn in concept, creating them is quite challenging, and they take time to set up.
A hastily made portal can have disastrous consequences such as: dropping someone in mid-port (who knows where they wind up), porting someone in a loop, bringing them back to the beginning portal without dropping them off at the end, or simply porting someone to the wrong place. Also, an improper portal can sometimes open rifts that teleport other things to you, like demons, which you probably don’t want to meet.
A powerful magic user can detect and physically “rip” someone out of a portal who is in the midst of traveling through it.
Unless under an illusion spell, portals are easy to spot. They are also easy to detect magically (the more powerful a portal gets, the easier it becomes to detect).
A magic user of enough skill can collapse a portal before or while it is being used.
Prolonged exposure to portal openings/endings is not pleasant. Over time they can cause headaches and nausea.
Powerful portals can create a state of weightlessness on the ending side. The greater the strength of the portal, the wider this effect will be.I'll probably add to this list over time, but you get the idea. Teleportation is powerful, but can have nasty consequences.

[IdiotsRUs]

There's some SCI-FI story about that (I can't recall the title ... ever since I jumped out of that Saudi prince's Harem) where people who make objective jumps thru hyperspace go thru terrible subjective eternities.



Wasn't that The Jaunt? Stephen King, In Skeleton Crew. To teleport you had to be drugged because although it was instant for your body, it was thousands of years for your brain and you went mad. So some kid decides not to take the drug, and turns up after teleporting, madder than a bucket of frogs.

'Longer than you think Dad!'

And Colin has just described my teleport / portal system down to the last detail. Have you been peeking? And the cons make for great fun when I really need to screw with my characters.

Teleporting works, but it has to cost.

[Paichka]

Wasn't that The Jaunt?

'Longer than you think Dad!'


*shudder*

That SS f-ed with my brain hardcore. It's one of those that stuck with me long after I put the book down. I can see the kid tearing his eyes out, scream/laughing "long jaunt, dad! long jaunt!"

*shudder*

carry on.

[yappo]

If there is one, there should be more of them. As long as you can locate the teleporter you can jump after him/her.

Make use of them, and make demands. Costs don't have to be attached to the act of magic in itself. Finally a solution to the postage problems. He/she has to work half of each year as a postman. The rest is mostly as a military resource, where he/she teleports INTO danger rather than out of it.

If you screw up the spell during duress no-one knows where you end up. In the middle of a mountain for example. Heard that's bad for your health. Also heard not all students graduate...

Think hot-landings with helicopter crews.

Sten

[Tom Johnson]

Many of the early sf writers experimented with teleportation, from P.K. Dick to A.E. Van Vogt. Van Vogt's Null-A novels were some of the best: "Worlds of Null-A", "Pawns of Null-A", and "Null-A Three". "Pawns of Null-A" was one of the first sf novels I ever read, and I was hooked at age 12! I later crerated my own character in the "likeness" of Van Vogt's main character, in "The Tomorrow Man", who has the ability to teleport great distances. Short distances are no problem, but long distances can create a number of problems for him. He may complete his "jump" and suffer from temporary amnesia, and always naked.

[hammerklavier]

It would be really cool if he had to have been there, or if not, then had to be holding some object (or person) who had been there.

[Plot Device]

I have a race of fantasy creatures who have two abilities that LOOK like they are identical or that they somehow overlap, but they're really not:

1) They can walk through solid objects (like walls, etc) at will,
and
2) Can teleport. And when they teleport, they can pick up another person etc and take him/her/it with them.

HOWEVER ...

They can't COMBINE the two powers. What I mean is that if one of my fanatsy creatures wanted to teleport from the Brooklyne Bridge to the outside of the Sphynx, he could do that in a seoncd. BUT .... if he wanted to teleport from the Brooklyn Bridge to the INSIDE of the Sphynx, he would need to complete one act of teleportation to a spot somewhere on the ground outside the Sphynx, and then engage in an act of walking through the outer wall. So he can't teleport through solid objects.


And here's the REAL twist: he can only walk HIMSELF through the solid wall, but not anybody else. If he tried to take someone else with him through the wall, they'd just bounce off the outside (and maybe get hurt in the process). And depending on how fast he's going through that wall, that other person might get reduced to nothing but a huge splat of blood on the bricks.

[Colin McHale]

And Colin has just described my teleport / portal system down to the last detail. Have you been peeking? And the cons make for great fun when I really need to screw with my characters.

Teleporting works, but it has to cost.

:tongue

Haha, see? No matter how different you think your ideas are, somebody else will always have thought of them!

Do you have rifts in your story too? I wasn't entirely honest when I said there were only two types of teleportation.

Rifts are basically a combo of physical teleportation and portals.

Rifts
Pros
Depending on skill, a magic user can cast a series of rifts nearly as fast as he or she could cast a physical teleport.
Travel time is nearly as fast as normal physical teleportation.
Although someone could be stopped in the midst of casting a rift or traveling through it, both tend to go so fast, it would be very difficult to do so.
A magic user can cast rifts and bring others along. But he/she must be physically holding or touching the person(s) or creature(s) he/she wants to take with.
Rifts, essentially miniature portals, do not cause sonic booms when people travel through to the other end.
Rifts do not require the magic user to have a clear picture of where he/she is going; instead the user must determine the direction and distance he/she wants to teleport. However, if you’re not aware of your surroundings, you could wind up opening a rift over a 500-foot drop, for instance. Cons:
Rifts are harder to learn than either portals or physical teleportation. Not many have the skill to use rifts.
Rifts technically have no limit on distance, but the physical strain on the magic user increases so quickly, long distance rifts are impractical. Unless the magic user enjoys being unconscious for months. For all intents and purposes, rifts are only viable over short distances, and even then they are physically draining.
The more people a magic user brings through a rift, the greater the effort it takes.
Rifts can produce a significant magical “signature”; it’s relatively easy to track where someone teleported to through a rift (although the “signature” vanishes the instant the rift closes, which happens soon after people have traveled through it).
Since rifts are opened and closed with haste, they cannot be masked with illusion spells.
Like physical teleportation, arrival at the end of a rift will cause several seconds of disorientation.
Rifts have been known to strip people of clothing and items.
Rifts are still considered experimental magic; not all side effects are known. Frequent use of rifts is strongly cautioned against.

[Plot Device]

BTW--I am convinced I have the Sphynx on the brain here today simply because of the recent movie Jumper which is still out in theatres, if anyone is interested. It's not a bad film. It has its problems, for sure, but it's an interesting concept.

If anything Jumper is a mid-grade comic book concept with shades of The Highlander and The Fugitive in it. It has potential to become a TV series just like Highlander did, and if it does, they will then be afforded the opportunity to refine the details of their world (much the way Highlander refined the details of their own world). I think their world DEFINITELY needs some refining, but the potential for three or more years of good story fodder is very rich.

[Sassee]

Here's some of the rules I've picked up from other sources -

X-Men (movie):
Nitecrawler could only teleport to places he had already seen. Doing anything else meant he risked materializing in the middle of a wall or desk or <insert other object here>. Not good for the body, as you can imagine.

Heroes:
Hiro *sort of* teleported. In all actuality he froze time and walked to where he wanted to go, then unfroze time again, so it just *looked* like he teleported. The only actual teleporting he did in the sense you mean is a jump through time, but he couldn't control that for a long while and still can't always control it (where the series stands now, anyway).

I like the rule mentioned above where one cannot teleport through solid objects. That's a pretty good limit.

I also like the idea that there is a limit to how many times one can teleport without incuring some sort of bodily injury (a nose bleed, lack of energy, etc).

Whatever rules you decide to go with, just stay consistent, and make the limits believable.

[bluejester12]

Here's some of the rules I've picked up from other sources -

X-Men (movie):
Nitecrawler could only teleport to places he had already seen. Doing anything else meant he risked materializing in the middle of a wall or desk or <insert other object here>. Not good for the body, as you can imagine.


Actiually it was places he could see at the time. He'd look behind an enemy then teleport there. Plus he left the scent of brimstone behind whenever he teleported. Not much of a quality, but other characters utilized that fact to detect illusions and imposters.


The Harry Potter Apparating did have it's drawbacks. It could make one feel sick and there was the danger of splinching (ie, body parts materializing separating)

[NicoleMD]

Maybe have a recharge period of say six hours, during which time addtional teleportation would be extremely dangerous to the body, or it'll dump him somewhere unpredictable. That might keep him in the face of danger without the reader wondering why he won't just jump away.

Nicole

[Smiling Ted]

Let's not reinvent the wheel.

The classic teleport story is Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. He creates an entire society shaped by personal teleportation (which, by the way, he calls jaunting, some decades before Stevie King does his thing) and teleportation isn't even the crux of the story.

Larry Niven included an essay on teleportation in his collection The Shape of Space.

You might want to check out both of those. Or Steve Gould's Jumper, for that matter.

[Sage]

Restrictions I've used on teleporting (over the course of two different worlds with two separate sets of rules):

The person can only teleport somewhere they've been before.

The person can take someone along who hasn't been there or who can't teleport, but it becomes more difficult and can go wrong (wrong place, separation, etc.)

If a person is distracted during the teleport, they can end up somewhere else.

You can't teleport an unconscious person.

Person can only teleport between one plane and another, not from place to place on, say, Earth.

Heroes:
Hiro *sort of* teleported. In all actuality he froze time and walked to where he wanted to go, then unfroze time again, so it just *looked* like he teleported. The only actual teleporting he did in the sense you mean is a jump through time, but he couldn't control that for a long while and still can't always control it (where the series stands now, anyway).I don't think that's really what the series is saying he's doing all the time. He teleported from Japan to New York in the first ep, IIRC. He travels through space as well as time at many points in the show. And I don't think we've seen proof that times when we don't see him move are always a matter of him stopping time and walking away, although some certainly are.

[dreamsofnever]

BTW--I am convinced I have the Sphynx on the brain here today simply because of the recent movie Jumper which is still out in theatres, if anyone is interested. It's not a bad film. It has its problems, for sure, but it's an interesting concept.


Yeah, I liked Jumper, so I bought the book. And holy wow did they completely change almost everything for the movie!

Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for all the thoughtful responses to this thread. I love the creative input and now I have a few things to mull over as I decide the fate of my teleportation character's ability. Can you hear him cowering in fear?

Seriously though, thanks so much guys! I don't know why I didn't think of posting here sooner!

[JimmyB27]

I never really understood why having seen a place before was important for teleporting. The distance/direction of your teleporting is going to change enormously depending on where you are now, plus places can change a lot if you've not been there in a while. And what if someone creates an exact replica of where you're aiming for with the aim of capturing you?
I would think that more important would be an immensely good sense of direction and spacial awareness to allow you to triangulate where you are now and how far, and in what direction you need to teleport. Or perhaps some kind of sixth sense that can detect obstacles at a distance.

[ChaosTitan]

I never really understood why having seen a place before was important for teleporting.

As others have said, it's a handy way of assigning a limitation to the power. I haven't seen Jumper yet, so I have no idea how or if their jumping ability is limited. But it's rarely any fun (for me, at least) to see a character use a power that has no side effects/limitations.

Nightcrawler is a great example. If he didn't need to know where he was going first, he could go anywhere and do anything. Same with the sulphurous smell he leaves behind. Good limitations.

I've fiddled with teleportation briefly in one book, and I hope to be able to use the ability again. It's a learned skill, rather than a given gift. It leaves the teleporter with horrible headaches, it hurts like hell if she's going through solid objects, and can be unpredictable in its use because accessing that ability requires emotional manipulation.

It wouldn't be nearly as fun if she could snap her fingers and save the day.

[JimmyB27]

As others have said, it's a handy way of assigning a limitation to the power.
I understand that, I just don't think it's all that logical as a limitation.

[IdiotsRUs]

Well if you haven't seen the place, how do you know you won't appear inside a wall or something?

If your teleporting mechanism means you have to visualise where you want to go ( and I can't think of any other way of steering it off the top of my head. Sat Nav?) then obviously you need an image to visialise. A photo is two dimensional, so won't really do when you are travelling 3 dimensionally ( you'll be part of the wall again)

For me it's not a arbitrary 'oh I must have a limitation' it's a logical nessecity for my version of teleporting.

[JimmyB27]

Well if you haven't seen the place, how do you know you won't appear inside a wall or something?

If your teleporting mechanism means you have to visualise where you want to go ( and I can't think of any other way of steering it off the top of my head. Sat Nav?) then obviously you need an image to visialise. A photo is two dimensional, so won't really do when you are travelling 3 dimensionally ( you'll be part of the wall again)

For me it's not a arbitrary 'oh I must have a limitation' it's a logical nessecity for my version of teleporting.
But visualising it still doesn't tell you where it is in relation to you - and that, to me, is the important bit. If you were dumped in the middle of a forest, you wouldn't be able to find your way home on foot just by picturing your house, why should teleporting be any different?

[IdiotsRUs]

Because teleporting misses out all the bits inbetween?

It depends on how you've defined your porting.

This thing if you've been there, and you have a reasonable sense of direction, you should know where you're going.

If I know where I am, and where I need to get to, then the rest is easy, even with more mundane transport. If you are lost, it might get tricky, but that applies to cars / walking etc. too

[Dale Emery]

The further you jump, the faster you're moving on arrival.

Departure and arrival cause thunderclaps or whip cracks, because the air must suddenly fill in/vacate the space occupied by the jumper. So there's no way to do this quietly.

Dale

[Histry Nerd]

I remember a book I read in high school (Armor, by John Steakley) in which soldiers were transported onto a hostile planet by teleportation. Their first jump dropped them into the middle of a swarm of giant bugs. The survivors had a hard time jumping back, as I recall, because the bugs would fire rockets at the return beacons. So the good guys had to be fast (to reach the beacon before the bad guys hit it) and lucky (to have a beacon close enough to get to it).

One option might be for the bad guys/authorities/forces of chaos/whatever to be able to trace and attack the start and/or end point of a teleport. This forces the good guy to move fast, adding uncertainty and suspense to what could otherwise become a mundane act if the limitations are all internal to the good guy. A jump that merely tires or sickens the jumper is merely stressful; a jump where he knows somebody is going to try to kill him at one end or the other is a high-pucker-factor operation. And it limits his ability to use teleportation to escape danger.

For what it's worth.
HN

[Ruv Draba]

The original poster's need might be well past, but here are some ideas for teleportation limits for anyone else who might be interested. My personal preference is to always make powerful things like teleportation quirky, unusual and potentially risky. I also like special abilities to tie in somehow to the mood of the place and the themes of the story. Limitations can help do this. The ideas below can support many kinds of teleportation, from technological through to ceremonial magics, projection and divine appearances.

Hope there might be some use here for someone. :)

Location: You can only teleport to a place that

You have seen/recorded
Has been prepared in some way - e.g. putting a beacon or booth
Is within line of sight of your starting point
Is along the path of some particular medium - e.g. telephone line, fibre cable, laser beam, ley line, water course
Has some physical property - e.g. in the light, in darkness, where it's raining, is a particular colour, has some particular music playing, or a scent, or a particular plant
Has some metaphysical property - e.g the site of a grave, or a hole in some wood, or bears a symbol, or from a pregnant woman, or whereever blood has been shed, or where a brave hero has given a life..., or where your name has been spokenPreparation: Teleportation requires:

Use of physical consumables - e.g. electricity, incense
Use of metaphysical components - e.g. a winding-sheet, a conflagration
Ceremony - e.g. songs, meditation or some complex sequence of keypunches
Absolute privacy
You to abandon your body and acquire another one
You to make someone pregnant and send them to where you want to goTravel Duration: Teleportation time is:

Instantaneous
Identical to the of some other form of transport or communication - e.g. telephone, sailing ship, horse, train, word of mouth
Slower than you could travel yourself - but has the advantage that you don't have to physically travel
At the speed of word-of-mouth
At the speed of battle, or flood, or some other occurrence
The time it takes to gestate an infant
Only into the past
Only into the distant futureReliability: Teleportation is

Reliable and safe
Unreliable but safe - you can't get hurt, but may not get where you want to, or when you want to
Reliable but unsafe - for reasons beyond your control you may suffer injury, incapacity or death
Unreliable and unsafe - only to be used in dire emergenciesPossessions and companions: You can bring

Whatever you think about
Whatever you see
Whatever you can touch
Whatever you can touch if it's dead
Whatever you can touch if it's alive
Whatever you can carry
Only what you wear
Anything that can fit inside your body
Just your body
Just your brain
Just your thoughts and memories
Just your soulVisit duration: Your visit time is:

Indefinite
Only as long as you adhere to certain rules
Until a certain event occurs
Up to a maximum fixed duration
Not less than a minimum duration
Permanent - you cannot return

[Dommo]

Typically whenever I've used teleportation in any sort of RPG that I hosted, for the sake of being "balanced" I did several things.

1. A waypoint can be set in advance, and it's safe and fast to teleport to this specific location. However, only one waypoint can be active at a given time and it can only be used by the caster(however multiple mages can use the same waypoint). The only other real limitation is the range, which is a maximum of about 100km. A new waypoint can be created at anytime however.
2. Teleportation without a waypoint is DANGEROUS, and should only be attempted when you are truly up shit creek. This is due to margin of error in teleportation. This margin of error increases linearly based on the distance. Typically in my circumstances it was 1 meter for every kilometer teleported. Typically a mage would aim to be appear a bit high above the ground(as to not teleport partially into the ground), however this is impractical when teleporting into buildings or forests. Thus teleportation is typically only used to teleport short distances, on open ground.
3. Teleportation of multiple people could only be done through the use of powerful artifice called "gateways". These were similar to stargates, in that they could be tuned to specific gate on the other side. Of course the drawback, is that you can typically only go to specific area, and destination gates cannot be activated from the entering gate. Thus if a gate is shut off, there is NO way to use another gate to go to that location.
4. One use artifacts do exist that allow for the teleportation of a small group to a waypoint, however after the use the item is destroyed.
5. Certain artifice prevent teleportation(typically by making it so unreliable that teleporting a 1km has an error of about 100 meter).
6. Exceptions do exist. Teleportation is much more viable when you are teleporting over water, however teleports should be done in short hops for safety reasons.
7. Teleportation is not something that is quick or easy to pull off. It takes about 30 seconds to cast the spell, and it's a serious drain on the casters energy. However, one can sacrifice accuracy for distance or vice versa. This is proportional, so for every 10% accuracy given up, gave 10% distance, also doing this trade off can also reduce the energy required.
8. One crazy mage(in a campaign), used a parachute and tended to launch himself high into the sky to avoid contact with solid objects. This allows him to go much farther, with considerably greater safety, as he could essentially give up a km of accuracy and still not have to fear hitting a solid object. This allowed him to teleport across CONTINENTS by himself.

[jbryson]

Maybe have a recharge period of say six hours, during which time addtional teleportation would be extremely dangerous to the body, or it'll dump him somewhere unpredictable. That might keep him in the face of danger without the reader wondering why he won't just jump away.

Nicole

Or, the limit could be that mental/magical preparation is required before the jump. So, it's hard to do in the middle of a fight or a calculus test; or if you're scared to jabbers.

[jbryson]

A possibility for an advanced civilization would be a tube, say, ten meters across X a hundred long. pedestrian walkways and a couple of railroad tracks, plus utilities in the bottom round part under a flat floor.

Then you stretch the tube, along with the space inside it, to about a hundred km. It's still a hundred X ten meters inside, but outside, it's ten mm wide in the middle, and a hundred km. long. Each end is in a great lobby with several such tunnel ends, plus a door to the local outside.

What happens if a tube should be severed in the middle, I leave as an exercise for the writer.

[Bmwhtly]

There's some SCI-FI story about that (I can't recall the title ... ever since I jumped out of that Saudi prince's Harem) where people who make objective jumps thru hyperspace go thru terrible subjective eternities.
The one that springs to mind is one of the stories in I, Robot (or maybe Rest of the Robots). The pilots of the first hyperspace (or something) ship appear to go to hell when the ship jumps and then back into reality when it pops back into normal space.

[hammerklavier]

This would not be as powerful (which can be very good when writing novels), but the teleporter could perhaps only bring things to him. He has to get inside the castle walls as it were, then, bam! he starts bringing people & equipment inside.

[benbradley]

The original poster's need might be well past, but here are some ideas for teleportation limits for anyone else who might be interested. My personal preference is to always make powerful things like teleportation quirky, unusual and potentially risky.
...
Reliability: Teleportation is
Reliable and safe
Unreliable but safe - you can't get hurt, but may not get where you want to, or when you want to I have a nit to pick here, but "safe" here to me only means the teleportation itself won't hurt you - you could still be indirectly unsafe by, for example, teleporting directly into the path of an oncoming train. Unless the teleportation process is controlled by an intelligent and benevolent entity, or an advanced computer that can sense such dangers, I'd presume teleportation has all the inherent problems as one would have, for example, traveling into a bad part of town. If you're going to see (throwing in time travel as well for a moment) the shootout at the OK Corrall, you could still be killed by a stray bullet. And this is yet another point, your destiination could be "safe when you get there" as determined by the entity or computer, but still turn ugly fast.

I read an older (circa 1950's-1970's) novel, forget the name, maybe someone can identify it for me... it was NOT "The Stars My Destination" but it used teleportation similarly:
The MC gets involved with these "listening" sessions promoted by wild claims of psychic powers where everyone in the room has what looks like a transistor radio and an earpiece - what one hears is actually the amplified noise from a transistor (or some cosmic equivalent). If you listen right, and you're in the right state of mind, your body supposedly goes elsewhere. The man next to the MC disappeared with a big 'pop'. This was explained later in the story with the "rules" - you can only transport to a place that has the same gravitational force as where you are now, but such a point could be in outer space, a distance from a planet with greater than Earth's gravity. An inexperienced "jaunter" (not sure if it used that term from "The Stars My Destination" or not) would know instantly to come back to where he started, but a new person is liable to panic, and stay there in outer space, freezing and unable to breathe because there's no air, and die quickly. Also, whatever's in the space your body moves into (hopefully air) is sent back to replace the space where your body was, so if you transport into a vacuum, the place where you were is "filled" with the vacuum, and of course the air will collapse around it.

If no one here knows the title of this, I'm sure I can get an answer on Usenet (posting a "YASID" on rec.arts.sf.written).

[Βοανηργες83]

So I currently have a character who has the ability of teleportation. He's not a main character, but he definitely has a pretty big part in the story. Anyways, I'm a stickler for creating abilities that feel plausible. Or, as plausible as "special powers" can feel.

So I like to create rules. Teleportation is something I'm really enjoying having, but I'm not sure if I'm making him too powerful. (though given its his only ability, he's definitely got weaknesses then.)

Right now I have that he can teleport anywhere, as long as he pictures the destination in his mind. He doesn't need to have been there. He can also bring up to two people at a time. It hurts a bit, and definitely hurts the tag-alongs. (they sort of feel like they're being crushed and then expanded)

And if he goes long distances (i.e. US to Africa), it wears him out more.

So... what types of teleporting characters have you seen? and what bugs you/feels too powerful?

There is a character in Marvel Comics named Cloak; like many of the other teleporters in Marvel he has access to a dimension called the Darkforce Dimension. He can teleport vast distances like most of them but he's different. His entire body is actually an aperture to a pocket realm of that dimension ruled by a demonic being called the Predator. His presence causes Cloak to have to "feed" him by actually sucking living people into the Darkforce Dimension through himself!!! This weakness takes away from him being too powerful with his teleportation...because he kills who he consumes...and those that he doesn't kill they turn into invalids afraid of their own shadow. Something to think about I guess...his teleportation could have dire consequences in some way, shape, or form!?!?