interesting star wars rp question

I have an interesting question to ask...
Does anyone have any thoughts of how to transport players from a few months bby, to several thousand years bby say around the beginning of the mandalorian wars? I'm asking about something that's completely plausible, with an equally plausible means to get back to their original time?

The Force connects all things: who's to say that it doesn't connect all things in all times? Perhaps there's a swirling Force vortex, or a cave like on Dagobah, or an immense explosion, that transports the PCs back?

Time travel - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki

I think the first twitch I get is to do something with Hyperspace. Hyperspace is another dimension, contemporaneous with real space, yes? Multi-dimensional? Time isn't a constant?

Mix a little Star Trek with your Star Wars, and I think you might have something plausible.

But, also remember that "Star Wars" is space opera. You don't need to go read a book on physics and come up with something that raises Stephen Hawking's eyebrow. You just need something that your players will buy.

So, the hyperdrive chrono-sequencer burned out right when you were making the transition to light speed. Play out some hairy moments during the bumpy ride in hyperspeed (make it unusual--either really long, where the players are running out of consumables like O2 and food, or make the trip a blink of an eye with lots of burn outs and smoke, when the PCs are expecting a trip that lasts 17 hours).

Then, have the PCs enter the Mandalorian era and have to figure out when they are.

Lena: "Where ARE we?"

Captain Burke: "I dunno. The chrono-sequencer is toast, and I've got half a dozen blinking emergency lights. We're going to have to find a place to set down and make repairs."

C-3X1: "Sir!"

Burke: "Not now, C-3X1. I'm busy."

C-3X1: "But, sir!"

Burke: (Ignoring the droid.) "Whaaa....my star charts are corrects...but..."

Lena: "But, what?"

Burke: "Here, look at this. The planets are right, but look at the orbits."

Lena: "The paths don't match."

C-3X1: "But...SIR!"

Lena: (continuing...ignoring the droid) "It's as if the satellite orbits have retrograded over a million years."

C-3X1: "Yes, SIR! That's correct."

Burke: "If you know something about this then spit it out."

C-3X1: "The Gamester's central control unit reports a postion of not where we are but when we are."

Burke: "You've been holdin' out info like that in an emergency?"

C-3X1: "I've been trying to tell you, sir. We are exactly where we are supposed to be, except that we are 7,285.0168 years before we are supposed to be there."

Lena: "That's impossible."

C-3X1: "Yes, ma'am. Yet, the readings remain."

Burke: "Hmm...and that explains the orbital shift." (Beat) "Threx, start a protocol with the Gamester to see what we need to do to degrade our systems to interact with what we know of this part of the universe, 7,285 years ago."

C-3X1: "7,285.068 years, sir."

Burke: "Right. 7,285.068 years. Lena, get on the langcom and see what kind of problems we're going to have communicating. I'm going to tear out that chrono-sequencer and try to figure out how the hell this happened."

C-3X1: "Sir?"

Burke: "Yes, Threx."

C-3X1: "I have more bad news. At this time, this section of space is contested during the Mandaloring War."

Lena: "You're kidding, right?"

C-3X1: "No ma'am. I am no longer programmed as an entertainment droi...."

GAMESTER'S BRIDGE SPEAKERS: "UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL. THIS IS THE MANDALORIAN WARSHIP CLAW. STAND BY TO BE BOARDED."

Burke: "Ok, guys. New plan..."

Stasis pods.

Wycen said:

Stasis pods.

Click to expand...

That'll get you to the future, but it seems he wants to go back in time and then return to the present.

There are a number of examples of characters going forward in time in Star Wars. Arden Lyn is the most famous example: she was from around the founding of the old Republic circa 25,000 BBY, but was in suspended animation for those many millennia.

The cases of people going back in time are extremely rare, and definitely not easily repeatable. The Bedlam Spirits near the Bedlam Pulsar might be able to send you back a few thousand years, but since they don't entirely comprehend the concept of time, or really of sentient corporeal life.

Now, there is the Force-power of Flow Walking, the most "mainstream" time effect in Star Wars, which is pretty rare even in the Legacy Era, but that's more of projecting your mind into another time to explore/investigate what happened or what it was like. You could have a time-travel like adventure with a Legacy Era Jedi PC learning the skill and learning to take his companions along with him on a vision of the past, but they don't physically go back and can't change how things "really" happened, since it's a Force vision, it's scrying into the past to put it in D&D terms.

Star Wars is not Star Trek, and time travel is really not part of the setting. No matter how grim, how dark things got for Luke et al, they never even considered for a moment trying to go back in time to fix things. No going back to save Alderaan, or warn the New Republic to take the Yuuzhan Vong seriously before it was too late, or to tell the Jedi Council that Palpatine was Darth Sidious. The Galactic Empire, with the entire scientific and engineering resources of the Galaxy never accomplished it or apparently even took it seriously.

It's your game, do as you will, but I'd leave backwards travel in time out of a SW game.

If you want to do something in the past that ties into a current campaign, I'd do a one-shot as a prequel to the campaign with different characters (maybe a couple of ancestors or such of later characters), or start with the campaign in the past and have characters end up in the later eras through various reasons such as suspended animation or hyperdrive malfunction.

Always got the classic black hole method theory.
Add in that Ice Pirates method where if you don't follow an exacting course, you are lost forever to time.

Thanx guys, I really liked your idea WB