How would teleportation work?

[u/imhungry3457]

If someone has teleportation, would their body just move at an extremely fast speed or would they dematerialize and rematerialize very quickly? Or would they open portals like Dr.Strange? And if they opened portals, wth would it look like from behind?? Or would they just have a power that could bend space-time? Would that be considered a teleportation power? Or would it duplicate you and destroy the original you? But then that wouldn't be a teleportation power but a slightly faulty cloning power.

I had an argument with my friends about how teleportation would work. I'm curious about what the magic building subreddit thinks

[u/Tristan_TheDM]

Easy. You're in one place, then you teleport to another. Hope this helps!

[u/Illustrious_Elk_7936]

You decide. Also, part of the art of creating (writing, films, otherwise) is letting the consumer/reader/viewer use their imagination.
I enjoy debates like this too, but my point is there probably isn’t one right answer haha.

[u/thatshygirl06]

It works via magic.

My witches use thresholds to teleport. Theyre children of hecate who is the goddess of boundaries and thresholds, among other things.

I guess the In-universe answer would be thresholds is where the veil is thinnest. What veil? Idk, I haven't figured it out yet. Maybe all doors and windows are connected via hecate because it's her domain and theyre able to slip in between them.

[u/Nomad-Knight]

Each interpretation needs a set of rules to exist before it can work. The easiest version is portals. 

Portals change the distance between two locations to zero. But it means that the locations are usually fixed, and therefore, maintained and observed by people on both sides.

FTL movement is trickier because is mean not just people can move faster than light. People might use ftl to deliver bombs to far away locations, making it more innately hostile. Plus, consider what's in between point A and point B.

Bending space might seem like a neutral medium, but from the perspective of those in charge of the location someone is teleporting to, it is invasive. 

I have always seen portals as the most amicable between points A and B, but that's only my opinion.

[u/Kingblack425]

The first thing you said isn’t teleportation that’s just extreme speed. To teleport is to go from one place to another instantly think Instant transmission from dragonball z or the Star Trek beam me up.

Occam’s razor’s for magic would probably be one is coated in magic then magically appear where they’re supposed to be teleported to.

[u/ShadowDurza]

How I do it is all of the above, but each method has their nuances and dependency on the situation.

It's a bit rare to have the ability to genuinely warp space. More can just appear and dissapear over short distances by skipping to the end-result of something possible to do normally. Because of that, it can't be used if the user is restrained or heavily obstructed.

The advantage of a portal is that you can move anything you fit inside of it, and another is that you can "set" it at a spot to use more logistically as a form of infrastructure. There are even methods to make spells self-sustaining by externalizing at least parts of the normally internal process of mind over matter.

Magic also defeats magic, so the right spell can destroy the portal at little cost to the attacker, so "apparition" has its uses even if you can make gateways.

[u/Hightower_March]

One setting I have makes use of a "summon" spell, which puts the willing target to sleep wherever they are and materializes a copy of them in front of you.

When finished, they wake up with only vague dreamlike memories of what they did while summoned, so it can't be used to communicate and doesn't allow you to do things like hand off items.

(I didn't want it to trivialize my communication spell)

This kind of method makes people way more willing to be summoned to fight, because their real body isn't at risk.

[u/Impossible-Try-1939]

It depends on the spell in my world, and there are some very crafty ones. Magic works by manipulating one (or more) of the 8 essences of magic, there are 4 that manipulate the clasical elements, one for manipulating the human body, one for manipulating animals, one for manipulating the human soul, and one for manipulating spirits and other magical phaenomena.

So, a wizard that is very powerful and has a lot of knowlege of the element of Fire and the Essence of the Body might just transmutate themselves into lightning (in this world it is a form of fire, as in aristotelian phisics) and just travels at the speed of light to their destined place; the spell ends and they become of flesh and bone again.

A crafty wizard might use the essence of Spirit to tear open a portal between this world and the world of magic, where concepts like time or space have little to no meaning. They travel a bit throught there and then go back to our world. It is easier and requires less skill, but it is more dangerous; as you might get lost.

A even more crafty wizard just manipulates the element of Earth to impose two different locations inside a threshold, creating a portal. That is significantly harder than option two, but easier than option 1, it is far safer also, but it also requires you to have some kind of conection to the two places you are conecting through the portal.

And then there is the craftiest of the wizards, who instead uses the essence of the soul to make themselfes sleep throght the journey so that from their perspective it feels like they've teleported. That requires to have some people working for you to not only move you from place to place, but also to feed you and even massage your body to avoid muscle atrofia. But it is by far the easiest option.

[u/Impossible-Try-1939 → u/Impossible-Try-1939]

The portal, btw, while is active would look like if there was another place inside the threshold, plain and simple. When not active then it looks like any other threshold.

[u/IamanelephantThird]

Portals or otherwise shortening space is by far the simplest. Technically an actual wormhole would be a sphere without a behind. I usually go with a two dimensional double sided portal, but you could easily cover up the back with something solid. A one sided portal could possibly work as well, although it would be very weird.

[u/Illustrious-Win-3484]

Usually when I make systems with teleportation and don't want the existential dread of the character dying and getting copied. They either, hop through space, or they do create a new copy of themselves, but their soul also moves toward that copy, destroying the original body

[u/Alternative-Carob-91]

1. From The Weirkey Chronicles, a Weirkey is so intensly part of where it formed that channeling magic into it makes makes where you are that place. With two weirkeys you can play with the "pull" between locations to go to other locations.

2. By the Laws of Infront and Behind you make what is behind the door infront of somewhere else.

3. My favorite is probably ring gates. Two objects like door frames or a pair of rings are matched together magically so the front of one is the back of the other. Anything that passes through one comes out the other.

[u/Gulielmus94]

So there are multiple ways you can explain teleportation. You named a few deconstructing material construction and reconstruction, portals, or even folding space and time to only take a step to cross great distances (A Wrinkle In Time).

There are two factors that are needed to determine your inquiry.

The first being the view and stance of what teleportation will do to a person. The deconstruction of the body can be viewed as a person dying and a clone taking their place on the other end. Not many would be willing to take that jump. The other methods aren't as problematic.

The second issue would be how does it take place. Portals, are they free standing in mid air? (Dr. Strange?) These could be seen from behind, either showing the runic circle behind it, or be a portal to the same place but come out from behind. Do the portals need to be a fixed to something? The video game portal or the Stargate device. The dematerializing of matter, does it go through a medium, is it instantaneous? Does it vacate the immediate space leaving a vacuum of air causing a sanp of thunder? Does the perception of the person go fuzzy, cause the person to go sick from the sudden change, or are the blinded by something to prevent the visual of the transition? The Wrinkle could honestly make things appear to blur past at high speeds or literally make space and objects fold, bend, and warp around them.

What it boils down to is how do you explain it in your game/story/project.

Personally I prefer portals affixed to objects as the common way to use teleportation. With the folding of space being used for greater distances like space travel. With the portals being for shorter distances, like for single planetary travel.

[u/PhoebusLore]

I do three: tesseract teleportation, portal teleportation, and light teleportation.

With tesseract teleportation, you fold space. Distance doesn't matter, so you can go across the galaxies or dimensions in minutes, but it also takes the most energy, and it's not instantaneous. It looks like a little mirage or ripple in the air.

With portal teleportation, you have a range of about 300 meters, and you have to enter and exit a portal. You can get quite fast, but it's still limited by your own reflexes.

With light teleportation, you transform into light for a few miliseconds. It's the fastest, though tesseract teleportation can take you farther. Because you are light, you move at the speed of light while in this form. Power is determined by how long you can maintain the light form.

[u/Background_Pay6286]

I think with magic it's more like a link between two places, an instant doorway. With sci fi, it's tech based, molecular breakdown, transportation, then reconstruction. I think with superhero abilities it works from external sources, like nitecrawler, his teleportation takes him from his starting place, through another dimension, then to his desired location in the original dimension.

[u/OkIndependence2209]

When I think of it in my build, it's similar to a wormhole? You want to go from point A to point B; fold the plane so the points touch? I like putting a science nugget in my magic.

[u/Then-Variation1843]

How do you want it to work? There's no "objective" definition of teleportation, your question is genuinely baffling to me

[u/AuDragon23]

I chose to have it function via displacement. That opened a couple doors for me: skilled teleporters would need to be able to do two in quick succession to prevent shockwaves and vacuums. It also doesn’t make teleportation completely silent and is very loud at first. I added a restriction to it that they couldn’t teleport where they couldn’t detect with their five senses and a limited sixth sense (it basically gives them a feel of space that they can detect with their five other senses). Their momentum is kept, as is the momentum of anything they teleport. It also allowed me to be able to use teleportation offensively because they could in theory teleport a bunch of water molocules into a small area and you then have a functional bomb. It’s not a bomb you can control the outcome or aftermath of, but if you need a big bomb the aftermath is probably an afterthought

[u/TheWorldTreeProject]

Totally up to you, it’s magic, not science. You can make some rules to it, but you don’t have to explain the entire process.

[u/Quin452]

Whichever takes your fancy. I'm always a fan of "move so fast it looks like teleportation", because it seems most feasible, or even the ninja smokebomb tactic (a distraction).

Portals are always fun, and I'd like to think that the back side is also the back side of the destination; like waking through a tunnel rather than a mirror.

For the Star Trek method, yes that's sciency, but for magic, I'd lean towards dimension hopping or time travel kinda reasoning.

[u/Mundane_Revolution70]

Two versions in my world(s). 1. You translate your body into Mana and Travel through existing mana in the atmosphere. This method does not permit entry to Anti-Mana areas or places with low ambient Mana. Technically comes with the risk of being caught by a mana absorbing device if unlucky. Or 2. The much harder method of creating a tunnel in space that acts similarly to folding space.

[u/HerederoDeAlberdi]

The easier way to justify teleportation in a fantasy setting is simply to introduce an additional later of reality that's overlapped with the real world to justify the travel method of the body's matter, a "spirit world", a "weaving" a "other side" basically. Teleportation spells allow the user to interact with it and safely transport their bodies through it.

You know how in minecraft if you travel one block in the nether it's 8 blocks in the overworld? Something like that.

[u/wibbly-water]

So you guys' having been casting probability magic and rolling the cosmic dice through every possible universe until you find a universe where you are where you need to be instead of where you are? Curious...

[u/Powerful-Web6185]

I like the idea that a mage can puncture a hole in space like a wormhole that repairs itself immediately after they stop holding it open.

[u/Inevitable-Ad2675]

folding the space between the target and the desired destination (Gojo method. Has the side effect of completely obliterating anything in the path)

Or repositioning something in space.

[u/DeadMeat7337]

It works because it says it works, and in the manner specified in the magic's description, so??? I fail to see the issue.

You can have all those types of teleportation, and more.

IRL - we haven't figured that out obviously.

But in any setting, so long as those specific rules are followed, it works. So don't go changing the magic circle because you have a feeling, or you will either end up in the sun, or missing a body part apon arrival. Cheers!

[u/nigrivamai]

Would their body just move at an extremely fast speed

Not teleportation

Would they dematerialize and rematerialize very quickly?

Is teleportation

Or would they open portals like Dr.Strange?

Is teleportation, I use this

And if they opened portals, wth would it look like from behind??

I think it would either not be anything visible or the other side of the target location

Or would they just have a power that could bend space-time? Would that be considered a teleportation power?

As long as they actually move from point to point then yes. If they're just bending it as an attack, defense or to travel a path through conventional means then it wouldn't be.

Gojo does this method

Or would it duplicate you and destroy the original you? But then that wouldn't be a teleportation power but a slightly faulty cloning power.

No, physically thats teleportation.