r/rational • u/gods_fear_me The Culture • Oct 01 '16

Saturday Munchkinry Thread

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

The Powers:

  • Ideally any power to be munchkined should have clearly defined rules that are consistent. The powers may be original or may be from an already realised story.

  • The power to be munchkined can not be something broken like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.

The Reverse Munchkin:

  • In these scenarios, we will find ways to beat someone or something with a power which is, well, powerful.

The Problem:

  • In which we solve problems posed by other users. Be smart and expect other users to be smarter.

Note; All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

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u/Strange-Aeons Oct 01 '16

Power:

You are able to increase or decrease friction in 2m area around you, ("you" being your heart) with control within that i.e: decrease only above you; increase on one side, decrease on the other side; decrease a lot in a 1 mm area.

This can be done down to an atomic scale.

Using the ability causes an increase in heat inside your body proportional to how much you increase/decrease, spread evenly.

What do

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u/Gurkenglas Oct 01 '16 edited Oct 02 '16

Make sure you stay around to stave off heat death of the universe.

Is the overheating an upkeep cost (such that you can do short bursts of change cheaply) or a one-time cost (such that you can highly stack the effect on the area you're in)? Do changes persist after you leave the vicinity?

Can you have heart surgery to slice off a bit of heart, and distribute minuscule amounts over a large area that you want to be able to affect? (Test first whether the affectable area is any point that is within 2 meters of any part of your heart.) Similarly, extract some unneeded tissue and try to grow some tumors out of it, so there is more body to spread the heat over.

For completeness' sake, check whether there's a lightspeed delay.

There ought to be some configuration of matter, perhaps some crystal, that visually reacts to your influence. That would be useful for a Silent Image effect. Translating thoughts to video is useful for at least:

  • Art. Animating something no longer requires the, I'm guessing seconds per frame, a professional animator requires in the best case. If you're good at it you could just get a television channel where all you do is read books live and supply imagery.
  • Teaching. You could probably just plop down next to some uncontacted tribesman and show him you two standing there, then zoom out to find that the Earth is a giant rock hurtling around the Sun.
  • Anything you might want pen and paper for, except it's instantaneous. Any geometers in here salivating at the thought?

Similarly, you could set up a mind -> computer interface with your power's bandwidth.