Timetravel for characters....

[Herobizkit]

I would also go with the Time Gates, but also give them a Time Key that can only be used under specific conditions (location, time of day/month/year, sun/moonlight, star/moon/planet alignment, dipped in the blood of a dragon, what have you). This assures that other beings cannot use the same gates and covers your butt if PC's get curious.

 

[Napftor]

Where's Napftor?

I'm here now.

Not much to add as there's already a lot of great ideas here. I wonder how the original poster's campaign went.

The one way to throw PCs around the timestream that hasn't been mentioned yet is the old "energize them with temporal magics that, when certain conditions are encountered, send them through time."

Let's say the low-level PCs enter a wizard's laboratory just as an experiment he's working on backfires and blows up. The now-distorted temporal magics wash over and through the PCs and the wizard, causing some disorientation but no damage. From that point on in the campaign, whenever a certain condition (or set of conditions) is met, the chronoparticles within these characters (PCs and wizard) are activated and throw them back or forward in time. The condition(s) could be simple or complicated as the DM desires and distance is no factor for the affected--if one character is exposed to the triggering condition(s), then all the original characters are moved through time.

This conforms to the original poster's no deity/artifact directive nicely without being heavy-handed. The temporal shunting lasts as long as the DM needs, for there appears to be little rhyme or reason (at least to the PCs) why it occurs in the first place. This method can nicely spice up a campaign and, if the players are observant, perhaps can one day be controlled if they recall what was happening before each of the time jumps. This could even be the point of the campaign--figuring out why the jumps are happening and put a stop to it. The DM might even "reboot" the campaign if the PCs do manage to shed themselves of the temporal particles inside them. Heck, maybe the whole campaign comes full circle when one of the later time jumps, now with high-level PCs, pits them against an assassin trying to kill a certain wizard--at the same time their past selves were going to visit him on that fateful day! The assassin's, or maybe even the PCs', actions, caused the original explosion that suffused the group with temporal magics.

Well, something to think about. [cheap plug]And remember, for more timely rules and discussion, watch for Temporality coming later this year from Dark Quest Games. [/cheap plug]

 

[sensate]

Here are a couple ideas...

Planar travel: The PCs do a little plane hopping and somehow come back to a different time period. Maybe they stepped into the wrong color portal during astral travel or maybe a plane shift spell is miscast.

Psychic memories: An item with strong pschic impressions can be used to create a virtual recreation of a past event.

Time worms: The world becomes plagued by an extra dimensional worms that eat the very fabric of reality. This createc rifts in time that allow the PCs to time travel. The PCs could try to stop the time worms from destroying reality.

 

[Corbert]

The one way to throw PCs around the timestream that hasn't been mentioned yet is the old "energize them with temporal magics that, when certain conditions are encountered, send them through time.

Cool idea. I had planned something similar for my PCs in my last campaign. It was a closed sphere like Darksun, so nothing goes in, nothing goes out, but while destroying a majorly powerful device that opened 'rips' to other universes, the PCs got hit with and absorbed the energy that opened 'rips' to other universes. Rips that items and people could come through. I had all sorts of weird stuff and people come through; the USS Enterprise, Bruce Banner (of several types), Zaphod Beeblebrox, all sorts of high tech and alternate magic system stuff they didn't know how to use.

 

[Wraith Form]

The one way to throw PCs around the timestream that hasn't been mentioned yet is the old "energize them with temporal magics that, when certain conditions are encountered, send them through time."
** SNIP **
Well, something to think about. [cheap plug]And remember, for more timely rules and discussion, watch for Temporality coming later this year from Dark Quest Games. [/cheap plug]

God, your idea RULES. *yoink*

And I will be buying this Temporality that you speak of--is it PDF or dead tree?

 

[Turanil]

Do any of you great people out there have any good ways of creating timetravel in D & D... I DM a Greyhawk campaign and want to have characters travel to different time periods and am looking to have a "feasable" way to timetravel.

I plan on throwing them into the timestream at various levels from very low to epic so I really dont want them to have access to an artifact. Any ideas and help would be great.

I suggest to get a look at the FREE Netbook of Time that you will find following the link in my signature.

 

[Napftor]

God, your idea RULES. *yoink*

And I will be buying this Temporality that you speak of--is it PDF or dead tree?

Hey, thanks Wraith Form. As for Temporality, it's coming out from Dark Quest Games sometime later this year in pdf and after that in print. So, you get the best of both worlds. There's been some discussion on this upcoming book on Necromancer Games' forums.

For the newer thread, see here:
http://p096.ezboard.com/fnecromancergamesfrm26.showMessage?topicID=872.topic

For the older thread, which has more info, see here:
http://p096.ezboard.com/fnecromancergamesfrm26.showMessage?topicID=854.topic

Thanks for the interest!

 

[Silver Moon]

I've used it successfully in our game, the key is to have the characters use the item only for the module and not keep it. We've used an artifact that is essentially a six-sided dice that can only be rolled one a day and each side represents a different time period.

 

[Sledge]

Wow! Another three year old thread! Someone's trudging through the old posts!

Nonsense, it just travelled through time. However I have come to strongly dislike any usage of time travel in a game, because time travel has serious mechanical problems. Nonetheless there are ways to do this, but they have to be big things. One of the best I think is that vortex where time is "damaged" For a literary write up of this check out the Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson.

 

[Rabelais]

Thread Necromancy

Now I want to know how this story turned out.

I was a player in a game that had some time travel in it. I was given a ring of three wishes, I blew two of the wishes on getting back to an event that had occured a week previous. Basically, I had 24 hours to stop my character from killing a bad guy. The death of the baddie had triggered an event that had would cause the END OF THE WORLD!!!! (Underlined three times)

I succeeded, but only barely.

Then the DM railroaded the end, saying that the EOTW occured anyway. Bah.