Time Travel..

Recently I've begun constructing several plots based around a feature on the wizards website.. one of the FR perilous gateway features. This particular one dealt with a portal constructed by the Netherse that enabled travel back through time. While these plot lines are going very well in both campaigns I am running it, worries me a bit. Time travel is a touchy subject in any setting, especially in a Fantasy one. It opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to consequences and that sort of thing. Now, keep in mind this particular gateway only allows for travel back in time, so that helps a bit.. but it can still lead to serious problems and just plain confusing stuff, as is the case when it comes to time travel in general. Paradox's and that sort of thing could be common and become a real pain and perhaps even cause more trouble in the plot then they do enrich it.

My question is this: Have any of you ran or played in games involving time travel as a heavy element in the story? If so, how was it run? how did it turn out? and can you give me any pointers?

My little brother did it and I thought it was handled very well.

1. He built a high level world history - Country, cities, roads, myth.

2. He destoryed it! Overlaying it with current maps of countries, cities, and roads BUT not all MYTH.

3. He helped build the characters, working with background and history.

4. He then built and reworked MYTH about the fall of the prior world.

5. He ran games in current time building history of for the players as they went on, keeping notes.

6. He then took them back into time to just before the fall, running the players at that point. The fall was going to happen, it was a set event, the player then realized that they were the myths, names were different from changes in langauge.

It was complex and I don't recomend it to everyone. You have to do a lot of what ifs and built to them.

My character in FR was involved in an adventure which used time travel as an element. The PCs traveled back in the past and in the future ( Dragonstar world). Because of some really big mistake of one PC (she spoke to her former self) we had many problems. We got back to our time but now from each PC was an evil double

The only solution for many of our problems was casting a wish out of a ring of three wishes (containing only one wish), which the group bought. This was several adventures later. The wish was that the PC does not have talked to her former self. Now the GM had to talk to all player which events from which adventure changed....

I do not recommend adventures with time travel, because the PC can change and destroy too much.

Just my 2 cents
yennico

Aye - time travel is the proverbial can of worms.

Four possible suggestions:

a) If you are able to have a sage tell the adventurers that there are an infinate number of parrallel universes where different choices/actions are playing out, then when they travel through time they are really traveling to a specific parallel universe. They are changing the time stream on that alternate universe where the changes are happening. THus, when they return, they will still have the current "fate" of the world but the other one is the one that has changed.
(Yes, that's a bit weak and may not be satisfying to the players because "thier" world is still in the same previous state)

b) time travel -- but always to the future to chance future events written in fate

c) time travel -- but always to some remote area/something or else somehwere where the changes would be minor. (this was sort of how Quantum Leap did it (an old show in the US for those not familiar) Sam was always changing generally "minor" things. Helping a specific single person, etc. There were a couple times that he interacted with his parents or sister but no one really believed that he was from the future. This of course worked because the time travel was back far enough that there wasn't a chance of meeting himself.

d) Have a GOOD event in history (example: the kingdom won a war against the orc invaders - something large enough for it to make a difference and yet the specifics are unknown enough for just about anything to be the reason - i.e. could be any number of deciding battles that turned the tide in the war example given) - some event the PCs already know of or is considered common knowledge (i.e. "the kingdom won that war against the orc hordes"). Unexpectedly, the PCs are asked (or told or end up) in the past at said event. They know in thier history that the event ended good (kingdom won). But while there in the past they find out their team (the kingdom) is about to really lose. Once they make the connection that they can not let the bad side (orcs) win, they will/may help. In the end, presuming the PCs were successful, the event ends up good. Thus, everything is how they remember it and the world continues as they know it to. You remove the possibility of paradox because you essentially give the background that they were successful and then they go back and find it's going poorly making it "good" thus _making_ the history that they and everyone knows/remembers.

(this last one may be the most satisfying of the time travel options i list here but it requires that the DM ensures that the PCs get themselves involved to fix things*)

*Even if the PCs don't win, maybe they could go back to the present. See all that is wrong (they remember the other history because they were traveling through time when the world "reset"). Maybe have an adventure or two in this "alternate" world. Then go back in time again to try and correct what they were unable to fix the first time.

Basically: Rather than stopping a bad thing from happening, they are going back to ensure a good thing (that they remember) does happen.

I'm really bad at explaining things like this so sorry if this sounds unclear...

I did do #d before. When the players saw that the "good guys" were losing, they kept assuming that they somehow disrupted the event (thus furthering their desire to make things right). It was only towards the end were they able to realize that the event was not suddenly being lost because they came (it would have lost in the original timeline if they didn't come back) it was won because they came....


editing: adding some clarification here and there to my post

The RPG known as Continuum from Aetherco does some excellent work on presenting a viable Time-travel RPG, and it is possible that some of their concepts could help you. Another resource is GURPS TIme-travel, a much more generic resource for including Time-travel as a focus in any RPG.

But the two main things to note are

1) Ensure there is an escape valve, such as parallel universes, or

2) Ensure that the adventure happens in such a way that certain key events DO happen.

I was able to hammer out the details to how I'll deal with the time travel. A solid set of events to work around seems to be the best choice. Seems solid as far as I can tell in every way. I fed it to some friends and asked if they could find some holes in it. So far its fine.. Other than the fact that its a loop of sorts. Oh well, my players will have to deal with that.

Bodah said:

Recently I've begun constructing several plots based around a feature on the wizards website.. one of the FR perilous gateway features. This particular one dealt with a portal constructed by the Netherse that enabled travel back through time. While these plot lines are going very well in both campaigns I am running it, worries me a bit. Time travel is a touchy subject in any setting, especially in a Fantasy one. It opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to consequences and that sort of thing. Now, keep in mind this particular gateway only allows for travel back in time, so that helps a bit.. but it can still lead to serious problems and just plain confusing stuff, as is the case when it comes to time travel in general. Paradox's and that sort of thing could be common and become a real pain and perhaps even cause more trouble in the plot then they do enrich it.

My question is this: Have any of you ran or played in games involving time travel as a heavy element in the story? If so, how was it run? how did it turn out? and can you give me any pointers?

Click to expand...

The Theroys of using time travel if you want to make an adventure doing that by going to the past were you want to stop someone trying change the future of all of Farun then try that idea.

I used to have Transdimensional Turtles for the TMNT game, and it had a pretty neat system for dealing w/time travel. Basically you could only travel in 100 year jumps, never short term time travel that would cause crazy role-playing paradoxes (like traveling back in time three days ago to help yourself out in a fight that's already happened). Time moved the same at all the jump points, so if you went back in time, spent three days catching dinosaurs, and then returned, it would be three days later when you got home. If you changed history, then went back to the future, reality would slowly begin editing out the paradoxes; first little things would disappear, then people, then civilizations, etc. Or you might notice reality was changing itself and then have to go back in time to see what messing it up...

My wife DM'ed an excellent time travel storyline set on an island during different eras. The party was given a six-sided die with symbols on each side to bring you to the different times. Four sides were for specific time periods, the other two sent you to either "the one prior" or "two prior". We didn't know this, so could never figure out how it worked (why is the "Ice Age" the Butterfly this time, the Butterfly was the "Subtropics" last time?)

What was most interesting was how the island itself changed over time. In only one of the four eras was there a native population.

Someone mentioned the idea above, but having the PC going back to try and change (or stop something from changing) history and failing is usually a good way to do it. Then you send them forward to Adventure in the Apocalyptic (or just different) world, before coming back to defeat the high-level big bad which they were too low level to have had any chance of beating before.

Using an UberBBEG means that there's no chance of the PCs screwing with the timeline, since they can't win and are supposed to lose. Then they gain enough levels so that they can't lose, and the Timeline is hunky-dory.