A question about time travel

[MarkB]

Another interesting option is to use it for failure, as per Groundhog Day and Happy Death Day. If you travel into a timeline where you exist, you inhabit your body of the time. You use the time machine to attempt the change an event, only to fail. You then use the machine to return to the original starting point to attempt it again. The players slowly both gain levels (or whatever character improvement is used) and knowledge they need to succeed. If a character dies, they respawn as their last incarnation (you'll need to keep a copy each time they reset in case). An evil trick is to have another character also going back in time to a similar point that changes other things for their own reasons, keeping things subtly different each time.

Another example would be Steins;Gate, where timelines are mutable on the small scale, but larger events have a certain inertia to them, so attempting to push things onto an entirely new timeline requires a great deal of effort, applied very precisely.

 

[Nytmare]

Another example would be Steins;Gate, where timelines are mutable on the small scale, but larger events have a certain inertia to them, so attempting to push things onto an entirely new timeline requires a great deal of effort, applied very precisely.

I had a really spectacular time travel nightmare once that operated on a "the more often that events are repeated, the more likely you are to introduce a rut that stops you from being able to time travel back past it" The narrative was all about my friend and I going back to fix things and finally getting everything juuuuuust right and then discovering that a series of events bringing about a zombie apocalypse had been going on off camera and were now so heavily etched into the time stream that there was no time travelling back past it to fix it.

 

[Ulfgeir]

If timetravel is something that is to be a regular thing, then make sure you have the rules set up in advance. If it is a one-off, then you can let it have whatever consequences feel the best.

In Mage: the Awakening 2e, you could do a very short rewind (depended on how good you were with time-magic), and thus reset a scene and return to a save-point of sorts. It apparently became VERY tangled in the camapaign I played in when BOTH sides in a fight rewinded time multiple times, did some alterations and tried to beat the other side. I sadly missed that fight as I came late, as I were at an archery-competition.


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You had an interesting time-loop in the series "7 days". The premise was that they could send a person back 7 days in time to change something disastrous that had happened. The "pilot" of the time-travelling craft had some issues.. One was that he had the hots for the female psychologist attached to the project.

So in the loop-episode he goes back in time. meets the psychologists, and another man is hostile towards her. The pilots beats up the other man, and gets scolded by the psychologist who claimed that she could handle it herself. Du to this being a time-loop, he ends up in the same situation, this time he does not interfere, and gets scolded for not acting. He later gets back again, and gives her flowers (he had learned in the present time what her favourite type was). She realized in the past that he had gotten the info from the future and of course gets upset with him again..

 

[practicalm]

GURPS Time Travel covers a lot of the different possibilities.

I've always liked the recursive nature of "The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold.

So many different possibilities for time travel including jumping to different universes created from decision branches. Such as "The Coming of the Quantum Cats"

 

[Umbran]

So many different possibilities for time travel including jumping to different universes created from decision branches. Such as "The Coming of the Quantum Cats"

The problem with the many-worlds interpretation of time travel is... why bother? You don't actually change anything in the Many-worlds interpretation - you just jump to a timeline where what you wanted already happened. Similarly, there's no need to protect the timestream, as everything that can happen, already has.

Time travel, as a plot ceases to have tension in it.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I already posted an answer to this question. I did it tomorrow....

 

[Umbran]

I already posted an answer to this question. I did it tomorrow....

You are not following Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. For shame!

Spoiler: Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Ch 15, Douglas Adams

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the history of catering. It has been built on the fragmented remains of… it will be built on the fragmented… that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been—

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

To resume:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the history of catering.

It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe.

This is, many would say, impossible.

In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them.

This, many would say, is equally impossible.

You can arrive (mayan arrivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were, when you return to your own time (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome).

This is, many would not insist, absolutely impossible.

At the restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time.

This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

You can visit it as many times as you like (mayan on-visit re-onvisiting... and so on - for further tense correction consult Dr. Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.

 

[aramis erak]

The problem with the many-worlds interpretation of time travel is... why bother? You don't actually change anything in the Many-worlds interpretation - you just jump to a timeline where what you wanted already happened. Similarly, there's no need to protect the timestream, as everything that can happen, already has.

Time travel, as a plot ceases to have tension in it.

Only if the travel is up the timeline; parallel motion on the shared timefront makes for Sliders, rather than Quantum Leap or Time Tunnel. (See Pacesetter's Time Master for more on that.)

When I have run time travel episodes, I've used the "many but not infinite" timelines with major events being 1% of the living population. And I like my timelines neither too elastic nor too fragile.

 

[Umbran]

Only if the travel is up the timeline; parallel motion on the shared timefront makes for Sliders, rather than Quantum Leap or Time Tunnel. (See Pacesetter's Time Master for more on that.)

I haven't seem Time Tunnel, so I cannot comment there.

Quantum Leap is not a show where the time travel itself is the plot. The time travel is a setting in which to have episodic adventures - what you did in the last location does not impact the present location, and that will not impact the next. There is tension arising from the local situation, but not from how this period connects to others. As you say, it is like Sliders - alternate reality jumping. Time travel as setting, rather than plot.

This, as compared to, say, Timeless, where the impact of the past on the present and future really is the point, and strongly drives the character's need to act, and what decisions they make.

 

[aramis erak]

I haven't seem Time Tunnel, so I cannot comment there.

Quantum Leap is not a show where the time travel itself is the plot. The time travel is a setting in which to have episodic adventures - what you did in the last location does not impact the present location, and that will not impact the next. There is tension arising from the local situation, but not from how this period connects to others. As you say, it is like Sliders - alternate reality jumping. Time travel as setting, rather than plot.

This, as compared to, say, Timeless, where the impact of the past on the present and future really is the point, and strongly drives the character's need to act, and what decisions they make.

Actually, if one follows the whole series, yes, the actions in the various times are a singular metaplot - each little correction is needed before we can see the protagonist return home. It's very similar in basic concept to Voyagers... except that Voyagers has actual time wars referenced, while it's merely implied in Quantum Leap. We always know Sam has to figure out what's wrong, and then make it right, so he progresses onward. Likewise, Phineas and Jeffery have to figure out what's wrong, fix it, and move on... without Phineas' cheat book.

This gives the two a somewhat different feel, as we don't know (until the final episode) what Sam's been fixing.
Meanwhile, Voyagers is a more open conflict, much like the more recent Legends of Tomorrow. And LoT is even more blatant, in that they're actually pursuing inidividuals who are intentionally messing up the somewhat elastic limited multiverse timelines. (DC has at least 3 universes in the TV lineup... One has Both the Supes, one has Flash, Arrow, and a number of others, including the core of LoT, and then the Gotham Verse....)

In all three, the core conceit is history needs to be nudged back into shape, and the protagonists travel isn't entirely their choice nor entirely under their control. But it is the matrix in which their adventures happen. Essentially, they're timecop stories.

Not having seen Timeless, I can't speak to it..

I can say that if I were going to be doing a time travel campaign, timecop mode allows for the best balance of "Here's a situation, now go fix it." Quite literally, it makes the time travel the narrative framing, and the corrections can be provided via hints on the timeship... ala Legends of Tomorrow.