Time Travel #1: Introduction
As a physicist, time travel has always fascinated me. I don't even know where to start discussing it. I could get into Einstein's laws or the Kill-Your-Own-Grandfather paradox, but at the moment, I'd prefer to focus on integrating time travel into an RPG campaign.
What I'm going to outline can be integrated into any RPG. Things get complicated if you're dealing with a multiplanar setting or a setting that follows real-world laws. I'm going to assume that the campaign setting covers one world that behaves with common sense, minus the elves and fireballs and such.
As far as I know, a serious effort at time travel in RPGs has not been done before. Video games, TV shows, movies, definitely. RPGs, not so much. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I know GURPS has a book on time travel, but that's all that comes to mind. Maybe I'll pick it up for inspiration.
Most sci-fi and fantasy settings that feature time travel can be categorized by how it is actually achieved.
1: There exist portals or wormholes that transport characters through two defined points in space and time. Chrono Trigger is the most well-known example. Star Trek did this a couple times too.
2: The characters have access to a vehicle or device that can travel through time. Examples include The Time Machine, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and Chrono Trigger (again).
3: One or more characters can travel through space and time at will. The only example that comes to mind is Heroes. Except for adding arbitrary restrictions, I really can't think of any way of incorporating this into an RPG. Heroes depends heavily on the fact that any character's intelligence is inversely proportional to the usefulness of his power. If you have any players capable of rubbing two neurons together, and you gave one of them Hiro Nakamura's power, you'd set the world record for the fastest derailed campaign ever. (Yeah yeah, this rant's been done a million times before.) I think a psionicist in 2nd edition D&D can time travel at will, but I have not met anybody who can actually figure out how AD&D psionics work.
Another important distinction is how precisely the characters can travel. Can the characters travel to any point in time and space they choose, or can they travel only to distinct points in space-time? I believe either can be done well in an RPG environment, although the latter is much easier to deal with.
So once you give your players the ability to travel through time, you are trusting them with a lot of power. For example, the players may be able to:
Travel back in time and kill the villain's parents
Travel back in time and kill their own parents
Travel 6 seconds back whenever a player fails a skill check
Travel 5 minutes back, over and over again, until the players have formed an army of time clones
Travel into the future and purchase nukes and antimatter rifles
Travel into the past, deposit their pocket change into a bank, then collect on interest in the future
You also need to be make sure that introducing time travel really spices up the game. If you do things right, you can give your players a truly unique experience and keep them coming back for more. If you do things wrong, you can force a pointless gimmick on your players, give them far too much power, or make the setting too convoluted.
Here is an example campaign setting I want to tinker with. Hopefully it can be developed into a full-fledged campaign. I'm going to talk in 4e D&D terms, but you're welcome to adapt my ideas into any game you want.
The World (I'll come up with a better name later) exists on a lone plane. I am ignoring any D&D cosmology, such as the Feywild or the Abyss. Anything that exists exists on this one planet. There may be other planets with alien life on them, but I didn't plan on sending my players that far into the future. If I were DMing, I would allow most 4e material, except anything that dealt with extraplanar stuff or anything extremely weird.
In my next article, I will propose a clear, consistent set of rules that will allow your players to really enjoy the tools you give them, while still enabling you to tell a good story. Feel free to leave suggestions, compliments, criticisms, complaints that this has been done before, questions about my parentage, or a list of typos. I'll get the next blog post up as soon as possible.
What I'm going to outline can be integrated into any RPG. Things get complicated if you're dealing with a multiplanar setting or a setting that follows real-world laws. I'm going to assume that the campaign setting covers one world that behaves with common sense, minus the elves and fireballs and such.
As far as I know, a serious effort at time travel in RPGs has not been done before. Video games, TV shows, movies, definitely. RPGs, not so much. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I know GURPS has a book on time travel, but that's all that comes to mind. Maybe I'll pick it up for inspiration.
Most sci-fi and fantasy settings that feature time travel can be categorized by how it is actually achieved.
1: There exist portals or wormholes that transport characters through two defined points in space and time. Chrono Trigger is the most well-known example. Star Trek did this a couple times too.
2: The characters have access to a vehicle or device that can travel through time. Examples include The Time Machine, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and Chrono Trigger (again).
3: One or more characters can travel through space and time at will. The only example that comes to mind is Heroes. Except for adding arbitrary restrictions, I really can't think of any way of incorporating this into an RPG. Heroes depends heavily on the fact that any character's intelligence is inversely proportional to the usefulness of his power. If you have any players capable of rubbing two neurons together, and you gave one of them Hiro Nakamura's power, you'd set the world record for the fastest derailed campaign ever. (Yeah yeah, this rant's been done a million times before.) I think a psionicist in 2nd edition D&D can time travel at will, but I have not met anybody who can actually figure out how AD&D psionics work.
Another important distinction is how precisely the characters can travel. Can the characters travel to any point in time and space they choose, or can they travel only to distinct points in space-time? I believe either can be done well in an RPG environment, although the latter is much easier to deal with.
So once you give your players the ability to travel through time, you are trusting them with a lot of power. For example, the players may be able to:
Travel back in time and kill the villain's parents
Travel back in time and kill their own parents
Travel 6 seconds back whenever a player fails a skill check
Travel 5 minutes back, over and over again, until the players have formed an army of time clones
Travel into the future and purchase nukes and antimatter rifles
Travel into the past, deposit their pocket change into a bank, then collect on interest in the future
You also need to be make sure that introducing time travel really spices up the game. If you do things right, you can give your players a truly unique experience and keep them coming back for more. If you do things wrong, you can force a pointless gimmick on your players, give them far too much power, or make the setting too convoluted.
Here is an example campaign setting I want to tinker with. Hopefully it can be developed into a full-fledged campaign. I'm going to talk in 4e D&D terms, but you're welcome to adapt my ideas into any game you want.
The World (I'll come up with a better name later) exists on a lone plane. I am ignoring any D&D cosmology, such as the Feywild or the Abyss. Anything that exists exists on this one planet. There may be other planets with alien life on them, but I didn't plan on sending my players that far into the future. If I were DMing, I would allow most 4e material, except anything that dealt with extraplanar stuff or anything extremely weird.
In my next article, I will propose a clear, consistent set of rules that will allow your players to really enjoy the tools you give them, while still enabling you to tell a good story. Feel free to leave suggestions, compliments, criticisms, complaints that this has been done before, questions about my parentage, or a list of typos. I'll get the next blog post up as soon as possible.
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Comments
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This looks very interesting Blalien!
I've been thinking of doing something inspired by the current series of Lost based on an Earthmote in which the P.C.s are stuck in a timeloop and a Ontological / Predestination paradox.
I'm only in the preliminary stages and at the moment it seems very daunting! By putting them on effectively an island from which they cannot escape it limits the area however I don't want to railroad them with choices. The paradoxes need to be either open ended or fairly flexible so that they have some feeling of free will.
There are similarities to what you are doing but instead of allowing the PCs choice of where they go in time it will be either determined randomly by dice rolls or by the DM if needs be.
I'm anticipating your next article on this subject...Posted 18th February 2009 at 06:44 PM by xortam
- Thanks for commenting! I put a hiatus on updating this blog because I'm actually running the campaign at the moment. When I find out from personal experience what works and what doesn't, I'll update.
I've never seen Lost, but I think I get what you mean. The simplest solution to your island problem is to set the time periods far enough that each jump in time is a completely different environment. If you develop the island over, say, ten thousand years, you'll have as much work to do and as much variety as if you were building an entire world.
If you mean something more like Groundhog's Day, where the players are repeating the same events over and over again, you'll have quite a challenge. First of all, what's stopping the players from just waltzing over to the level 30 monsters? You'll also need to meticulously plan out every single contingency. If you could pull it off, then kudos to you.
Whatever you end up doing, good luck. Let me know how it goes.Posted 18th February 2009 at 10:10 PM by blalien
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