Time travel is a always a tough part of a game. There has been a few different attempts at time travel games and products with a wide variety of success. Most deal with travel in our own world’s history though a few have made the attempt at incorporating it into a fantasy world. Both of these seem tough to do and I am always interesting at seeing the attempts people put forth. I was surprised a few weeks back when two new time travel book hit the market and this review covers the first I got, the other one will follow.
RPGObject’s time travel book is called Blood and Time. It is written by Charles Rice and makes a good add on to d20 Modern or d20 Future games. The PDF is eighty one pages long and the lay out and art all of the good quality RPGObject’s PDF s usually has. The PDF is well book marked and easy to use.
Blood and Time is a sourcebook that needs to be added to d20 Modern Future or past. It is written under the assumption that Earth’s history up till now is as it is. And it really does not predict or imagine what the future holds out side of the general descriptions of the different PLs like one can find in d20 Future. The book has a nice if small bibliography of sources that have time travel elements that can be used for inspiration. There are movies, books of fiction, and some really enjoyable episode of Star Trek the original series.
The PDF starts with three new advanced classes specifically designed for use in a time travel campaign. The first is called the Anomaly. This is a person that can sense time travel and interact with time in a unique fashion. The temporal historian is an expert on the past and is able to identify if things in time have been changed. Then there is the temporal soldier. He is here to enforce temporal laws, conquer in other times, preserve the time line or try to change it.
The book then goes into the different Progression Levels (PLs) and explains briefly what each is about. While the information is good here it would be very interesting to see examples of each ones especially the futuristic ones. There are some very general feats then that allow someone to become familiar with the basic levels of technology of different groups of PLs. The book also has lots of equipment for the lower PL areas.
The book is about time travel and it does give different ways to make that happen. Specific time devices are not mentioned but discussion on power sources and accuracy is. The book then goes into changing history with the ideas of hot spots. Hotspots are specific places in time that significant things happened. There are different kinds of hot spots like single individual, economical instances, cultural places, and other types. Next the book covers different types of temporal stability. There is the Butterfly Effect where any minute change can have drastic effects on the future. The other extreme is elastic time where it really does not matter what a time travel doe history somehow basically stays the same.
The book ends with a rather large and complete time line of history. It does not cover everything and just gives one the barest of information. But it makes a very good jumping off point to see what and where a group’s players will end up.
The book is a nice if simple way to use time travel. It does a not cover complex things like how time travel can change a civilization and what actions can have on future events. That is all left to the DM to determine themselves.
