So I stumbled upon this video on youtube that explains the game 5D Chess (with Multi–dimensional Time Travel).
When you think of dimensional hopping in fiction, it gets pretty BS, pretty fast. The user (usually the villain) escapes into a parallel dimension just as he's about to lose, with really no repercussion to him, and no way to be chased. The only way to stop him is to intercept his method/requirement for dimension hopping (e.g.: he has to thanos snap his fingers to actually dimension travel).
In this 5D chess apparently, (I'm not sure 'cause I haven't played it), you
don't travel or escape to a different dimension, you
create one. For example, a normal game progresses like in actual western chess. Your opponent starts losing so he uses the dimension travel mechanic. He sends his Queen back to the past, to
"alter the timeline" so to speak...
In the "present" board, his Queen suddenly disappears and now he has no Queen. In the "past" board, a Queen comes out of nowhere and now the opponent has two Queens. Uh-oh...
But the interesting mechanic here is that all boards have to be played simultaneously. There is no "true" timeline that determines the winner. So when his Queen "escaped" into another dimension, what he did was really multiply the battlefield into two. In one board (the past), he has a huge advantage because of the extra Queens. In the present board though, he's down one Queen, and you're the one who's dominating. Now both players will make two moves per turn, one on each board; your goal is to try and checkmate the opponent asap in the present board, while simultaneously staving off his onslaught in the past board.
This is very interesting. Because both boards have to be played simultaneously, whenever you transfer to another dimension, you severely weaken your current board (which you still have to play, it doesn't disappear just because you thanos snapped out of it). Even if you make two Queens in an alternate timeline, it's not overpowered 'cause you're dead meat in the original battlefield. Even if you escape your King into a new timeline, there'll now be "two targets" for the enemy in that timeline. Either one of your Kings dies, it's game over.
And you can't just keep escaping either. The more universes you create, the more "Kings" you'll end up with, and the opponent only has to kill one to end the game.
If this were translated into an actual story, probably it would go like this. Heroes overpower villain's side. The Aether user main villain, does not "escape" into a parallel universe but instead simply "creates" one. Now there are two worlds, stacked on top of each other. The alternate reality heroes become aware of the original heroes, and same for the villain's henchmen if he/she has some. All characters consciousnesses are intertwined and they know what's happening in both battlefields simultaneously. They have to work together to defeat the opposing team.
The portal remains open, and will let people from both sides enter at regular intervals. Winning condition for the heroes is to kill atleast one of the two Aether users. If main villain escapes into another universe, there will now be three realities stacked on top of each other, and three targets that the heroes and alternate heroes have to beat. Spell ends when one of them is killed/incapacitated. Not sure what the villains' winning condition should be tho...
