D&D Time Travelers?

[FriarRosing]

In my current game I'm considering having a possibility of traveling to the past in the near future (what a goofy statement). I'm concerned about the possible outcomes of what they may do, or if it's weird.

Has anyone else run any game with time travel? any horror stories of everything getting ruined? The main thing I thought would be cool was exploring the world a thousand years before the present, and seeing the now ruined empires as they once were.

 

[chronoplasm]

I did that once before for a dungeon crawl.
Earlier in a campaign, the players explored the ruined remains of an ancient temple. They found a bunch of magic items there and a large gate shaped like a clock.
Later on in the campaign the players found the key to the gate and returned to try it out.
The gate took them back to the temple as it was in the past.
The puzzles in the place required them to replace the magic items they took the first time around so that they could find the items in the future.
I rewarded them with better items though.

The players cleared the dungeon and went back to their own time. Oddly, they didn't think to go outside and explore the past a little more...

 

[fba827]

It can be neat if done right.

If you're talking "more recent history" then you have to very strategic about how long they'll stay in the past, and where they'll be... thus, minimizing how much they could change in the recent history. Things like "only in the past for 1 hour" or only in the past while in this ancient temple" etc...

If you're talking about a thousand years then you're pretty safe in terms of what you let them do. Just don't let them near a major political figure that they could potentially assassinate or something since that is a major change that would have dramtic effects and hard for you to cover over (unless you wanted a time change to be part of the campaign; and then say that they aren't personally affected because of the magic that transported them kept them shielded from the changes in the timeline, blah blah blah).

 

[Intrope]

The closest I can think of is the Dragonlance novels (The Twins Trilogy) that involved time travel (and some time alterations).

What I'd think would be the most important is to decide two things:
Can the PC's change the past (in any meaningful way)? In the first time travel segment of the Twins, they were in a city soon to be blown up by the gods--so it limited the scope of any changes.

Should the PC's change the past? This one's harder because you could end up with Candide's
"Best of All Possible Worlds!" business, wherein any change is always for the worst[1].

If you don't really know what the answers to these things are (and have a way to communicate them to the PC's!) then it's probably a good idea to steer clear of this. On the other hand, if you can set things up where these questions can be addressed it could be good fun!

Two other thoughts occur:

It's going to be very hard to do a time-travel campaign if the players aren't pretty firm on what the history *was*. This could be troublesome (a lot of people--me included!--have a pretty questionable grasp of a lot of real history we've heard about all our lives, so this could be quite difficult!)

The other thing: it's not a good idea to give the PC's the ability to go when and where they want; it could turn the campaign into Bill & Ted's sequel--every issue could be solved by returning later and having healing potions drop into your hand when you're down to 1 hp!

[1] I'm aware that in Candide the "Best of All Possilbe Worlds!" line is satire--but it applies here straight-up.

 

[Ydars]

You can make time travel work so that whatever the PCs do, it somehow leads to the actual events, as recorded. I like this type of time travel because it means that the Pcs can walk wound the past and do what they like, insulated by the idea that whatever happens, it has already happened and can't be changed. Then the PCs can just concentrate on their own small agenda in the past instead of trying to ransack it. This does not mean the PCs can't die because they are too small to have any real role in history.

e.g. if the Pcs assassinate a noble who was supposed to lead a nation to war, after he dies, the PCs discover it was a shapechanger they killed and that they have just saved the real noble etc.

You have to think on your feet with this but I have made it work several times. I even once pulled the Babylon 5 trick; the Pcs heard about a legendary figure in history, travelled back in time and found at the end of the adventure that the figure was in fact one of them. "By Valen" that was a good adventure!

 

[Thanael]

You can make time travel work so that whatever the PCs do, it somehow leads to the actual events, as recorded. I like this type of time travel because it means that the Pcs can walk wound the past and do what they like, insulated by the idea that whatever happens, it has already happened and can't be changed.

Or you do the above, but with a twist. They are not aware that they are in fact the cause for the events that they know from history lessons.

Maldin did this masterfully in his time-travel campaign, where his PCs in the end caused Greyhawk's Invoked Devastation.

Maldin's Greyhawk - Secrets of the Twin Cataclysms

Another interesting thread discussing campaigns like that: Near-Cataclysm (time travel) Campaign Help
A Greyhawk time travel adventure on canonfire: RR_001_Suel_Imperium_-_Age_of_Glory.pdf

 

[TwinBahamut]

The important thing for time travel adventures and campaigns is to lay down basic ground rules for yourself about how time travel works, so you can avoid the worst-case situations that can so easily occur if you are not careful (characters sending 100 copies of themselves to the same place and time in order to beat down the BBEG, the Butterfly effect, etc).

My favorite time travel rules are what I think of as the Chrono Trigger Rules.

1) Time is broken up into a series of steps, each of which is moving forward at the same rate. Time travel can only occur between these set steps. If you time travel backwards 500 years, and spend 15 days in that era, then 15 days will have passed in your original time.

2) Most of these time steps (time planes?) are significantly far apart, usually a few hundred years or more. It is incredibly rare for an individual to be able to go back or forwards in time to a place where his future or past self still exists.

3) Time is malleable, but it also resist change. In other words, there is a principle of "time inertia", in which the timeline wants to continue on the path it is currently traveling on. The difficulty of changing the timeline is entirely dependent on how big of a change is being attempted. It is easy to cause minor change, but it is difficult to affect great change.

The third rule is a bit tricky, but it is fairly important so I will give some examples...

For example, it is pretty easy to change something minor, like what a king's portrait looks like. If a group of time travelers go back and shave the king's beard right before he has a famous portrait done, then he won't have a beard in the portrait when they return. In fact, such a change may end up altering fashion styles for royalty for some time to come, since that is still a minor (and fun) change.

If a group of time travelers go back into history and participate in a major military battle that is significant to later history, then things become more complicated. If they turn what was a loss into a victory, then that change will be recorded, but a critical later battle may reverse it. If they saved the life of someone who was supposed to die, that person will still be saved, but that person's survival will probably not change the population of the modern era in the slightest. However, the characters may be recorded as the person who saved the life of a modern person's ancestor, which may have other benefits.

If a group of time travelers go back 500 years and try to prevent the collapse of a kingdom, and spend a lot of effort in doing so, including changing the tide of a number of major battles and taking down an evil demon lord who is manipulating events from the shadows, and perhaps even fulfilling their epic destinies in the process, then that kingdom should be spared destruction.

In other words, a group of time traveling PCs should get exactly the results and rewards that their actions have earned, and this reward should not be unduly exaggerated or mitigated just because of the flow of time.

And now, the final, and most important rule:

4) Time travelers are immune to paradox. Anyone who goes backwards or forwards in time will always remember the timeline as he experienced it, even if that timeline is later rewritten. If a time traveler goes back in time and changes something, he will remember exactly why he went back and what he changed, and what his modern era was like before it was changed as a consequence of the change to the past. This immunity may even apply to the actions of other time travelers.

 

[hbarsquared]

I'd like to reiterate the importance of planning and consistency. It does not really matter how time travel works in your campaign, as long as you know what can and cannot happen beforehand, and that you consistently apply those rules.