Time Travel

Gwaihir · Apr 7, 2005

Does anyone have any success stories (or the opposite, I guess) dealing with time travel and how it was handled in a campaign? I'm thinking of including this as an element in my campaign. Thanks

reveal · Apr 7, 2005

Not really time "travel" but I have used "time-play" in my session. Check out this thread for more details: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=122581

Crothian · Apr 7, 2005

I used it once and ther players had a lot of fun, I set it up so they knew in the past how a person escpaed and what the escape route was. THey never learned the identity of who helped becasue it was them. They wernt back in time, planned on doing everything like they had discovered, then changed their mind. They went and did what needed to be done and lots more and totally changed the time line. I didn;'t care, they didn't care it was fun and in the end they were the heroes.

Rystil Arden · Apr 7, 2005

Gwaihir said:
Does anyone have any success stories (or the opposite, I guess) dealing with time travel and how it was handled in a campaign? I'm thinking of including this as an element in my campaign. Thanks

I have some success stories.

In one campaign, the characters encountered a ruined town full of ghosts, and they ran away from the powerful construct guardian who they awakened to a salvo of attack spells. I was fairly confident that I could control these guys without saying a word, so I sent them into the past. They met the creator of the artifact for which they were searching in the present, but I needed to have one PC, who I knew would go for such a thing, found the city. Sure enough, he got bored of all the mages chatting and went down from the floating city to the surface to found an Empire, all with no prompting (his capitol would become the ruined city). Then the PCs beat a lich and discovered a partially completed construct and a golem manual, so the arcanist completed Galatea, whom they had met in the future as the guardian of the ruined city. Now the PC who created the small kingdom wants to resurrect it in the future, but the problem is that the only followers he has now are ghosts in the one ruined city, and another nation claims sovereignty over the land, having legitimately held it for thousands of years.

In another campaign, widespread confusion occurred when the PC who is the hero that is supposed to seal away some power was beaten to the punch by someone else who was seemingly legitimate, several times. It turns out that his great-great-great-etc granddaughter was sent back 10,000 years while trying to do the same thing in the future, and she didn't realise it. Then the same effect transported the hero to the past when he had sealed 7 of the 8 seals, bringing to the time of the ancient race who created the gods as an experiment. That's where they are now.

der_kluge · Apr 7, 2005

I really liked the way Rowling handled it in Harry Potter _Prisoner of Azkaban_. I thought that was very clever, and I could see myself introducing a magic item not unlike the one Hermione had in that. And it'd be an artifact.

Rystil Arden · Apr 7, 2005

die_kluge said:
I really liked the way Rowling handled it in Harry Potter _Prisoner of Azkaban_. I thought that was very clever, and I could see myself introducing a magic item not unlike the one Hermione had in that. And it'd be an artifact.

Rowling's handling of time travel was actually a case of poor writing, one of her worst. Even were time travel possible, you cannot be saved from certain death by a future version of yourself who would never have existed had you died. Of course, Rowling pulls fallacies and deus ex machinas left and right, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by such a blunder.

Wombat · Apr 7, 2005

Time travel makes me twitchy -- it's that notion that Future Perfect Tense maybe isn't...

scriven · Apr 8, 2005

Rystil Arden said:
Rowling's handling of time travel was actually a case of poor writing, one of her worst. Even were time travel possible, you cannot be saved from certain death by a future version of yourself who would never have existed had you died. Of course, Rowling pulls fallacies and deus ex machinas left and right, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by such a blunder.

Actually, Rowling's depiction of time travel is very much in line with
current physics. This so impressed me when I saw the third
movie that I went and read the books.

Here's a link with some details about the physics of time travel:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys

Rystil Arden · Apr 8, 2005

scriven said:
Actually, Rowling's depiction of time travel is very much in line with
current physics. This so impressed me when I saw the third
movie that I went and read the books.

Here's a link with some details about the physics of time travel:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys

The link leads to a study on the time travel suicide that does not dispute my claim against Rowling. Overconstrained or underconstrained, the time travel cannot occur without the existence of a Harry-0 who survived without the aid of a future Harry and then went back in time.

Falkus · Apr 8, 2005

Here's a link with some details about the physics of time travel:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys

Of course, these physics assume a type one universe, in which history is predetermined. It makes no sense in a type two or three universe, and is not required for a type four universe.

The link leads to a study on the time travel suicide that does not dispute my claim against Rowling. Overconstrained or underconstrained, the time travel cannot occur without the existence of a Harry-0 who survived without the aid of a future Harry and then went back in time.

Actually, in a type one universe, a closed, casual loop paradox (going back to save your own life) is perfectly possible, and in fact, very handy for time travellers. You can get yourself godlike powers, open a bank account using the interest you collected from it, save your own life if you're in danger or build a time machine using plans your older self gave you to go back in time eventually and give the plans to yourself.

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/chrono.html