Creating a Back To The Future type game.

[LeStew]

I've always wanted to run a Time Travel game. Similar to the Back To The Future trilogy. What things would I need:

First I'm thinking I'd need a static location. One of the things that makes BTTF work is Hill Valley. Even in 1885 the town is still relatively the same.

Secondly I'd need a way to get someone back and forward in time.

Lastly, what system could I run something like this in? I mean D&D doesn't feel right. I guess Savage Worlds or some other Universal system.

thoughts?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Smithsonian Institution. "America's Attic" gives you a real life Warehouse 13 full of intriguing artifacts to pursue and which lead to other adventures. The locale has been around for more than a century and has a somewhat odd origin (it was endowed by an Englishman who'd never been to America ... wha?) and, given the amount of stuff alleged to be socked away by the curators, finding HG Wells' time machine or the like is completely plausible.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As for rules, depending on how much simulation you'd want to do, I'd either go with a universal system like GURPS Time Travel or just the Dr. Who rules or whatever the recently re-released Pacesetter time travel game was. (Presumably, the time travel games will have accommodations for common time travel game issues already handled.)

 

[Nytmare]

I'd imagine that the "best" system would be totally dependent on what kind of story you wanted. Are you imagining a game full of hapless every day heroes gallivanting through time to make sure their ancestors/descendants end up on the right track, or maybe something like a more "Stargate" kind of story with a crack team of fixers bouncing back and forth righting more serious wrongs?

 

[LeStew]

I was trying to match the movie to a system. The only one i could come up with was Fate.

But in an answer to your question, I'd think some hapless chaps trying to right some wrongs would be best.

but a game of super dudes bouncing around time righting wrongs would be fun too!

 

[RobShanti]

I haven't played FATE yet, but from what I know about it and from the few perusals of the rulebook on my shelf, I'd say it'd probably be a good mechanic for it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Cinematic Unisystem also is built around that sort of character as well: Xander Harris and the like work well in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is still available in PDF form.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

For story and plot ideas I'd take a look at Chrono Trigger, originally for Super Nintendo and later ported to a range of other systems.

One thing that it has that works well is that there are set time periods that you can travel to, and as time advances in one period it also advances in the others. So you can go back four hundred years, but you cannot go back four hundred years and one day. This prevents to much craziness of PCs traveling back in time, failing, and then just traveling back to the same time again.

 

[sabrinathecat]

For "fast & loose", I have never run into a system more flexible than West End Games D6 system.
If you want more rigid, there was a Doctor Who RPG--don't know if it was any good or not, and the Chronoscape/chronoTrigger.
Also, specifically include a mechanic for the players not being able to redo events. If they meet themselves, one of them gets destroyed: the older one. The younger one has to live to become the older one.