Psion
Adventurer
[imager]http://www.rpgobjects.com/images/RPO3300.jpg[/imager]Blood and Time is RPG Objects’ time-travel sourcebook for the d20 modern system. The book is written by Charles Rice, on of RPG Objects’ most prolific in-house authors. The book is part of the “Blood” series of books for d20 Modern.
Time travel has always been one of the most daunting prospects for emulations in RPGs. The issues of causality and determinism have resulted in many prior RPG products reducing the topic to flavor text and never really sinking their teeth in it, or opening up possibilities of time travel and never really considering the implications. As such, it should be interesting to see how the author takes on this holy grail of RPG topics.
A First Look
Blood and Time is available as a PDF product through RPGnow, Drivethru RPG, and RPG Objects own website at a nominal price of $8.95 US. As is SOP for RPG Objects, the book is distributed with a landscape on-screen version and a printer friendly portrait version. This review is based principally on the landscape version, which runs 81 pages in that format.
The cover image is an abstract thematic collage, as is common for RPG Objects. This particular collage has a pocket watch and scenes from various historically important sites, linked with boxes with “computer style” text commenting on the locations.
Interior art is by Joseph Wigfield, whose style has come to define RPG Objects’ “Blood” line.
A Deeper Look
The organization of the doc is fairly straight forward, consisting of 3 chapters. The chapters cover characters (including equipment), temporal mechanics, and history, respectively.
Most typical d20 style character options are condensed into the first chapter. By way of comparison with d20 Modern campaign products, the selection of advanced classes and feats is relatively brief. There are a mere 3 advanced classes:
There is a brief overview of the d20 Future progress levels (Pls), with an eye towards its significance to time travelers. Further, it divides the PLs into three categories (ancient, modern, and futuristic), and assigns each two feats. If a character is operating with weapons of or with cultures that are part of one of these time periods other than their own, they suffer a penalty to attack and skill checks (similar to the standard non-proficiency penalty). The technology feat for each era removes half of the attack and skill check penalties, whereas the “technology expert” feat removes all of it.
The bulk of the characters chapter is actually equipment. As there are plenty of weapon descriptions for modern and futuristic weapons in the D20 Modern and D20 Future materials, this chapter aims to address the need for more archaic weapons. One could resort to using D&D or related d20 books, but as D20 Modern fans know, the nature of weapons statistics is slightly different in D20 Modern. Further, a wider array of ancient periods is covered in the equipment section here, taking into account such factors as different manufacture materials.
The second chapter, temporal mechanics, is more informational in the beginning, and waxes a bit mechanical towards the end. The book never set about defining exactly HOW one is to time travel, though some examples are given.
Instead, the author spends the first half of the chapter examining options that the GM may wish to consider when running a time travel game. This includes and examination of aspects such as how easy it is to change the course of time, and how to deal with paradoxes. Those who are familiar with time travel fiction and games will recognize many of the concepts herein, such as the common time travel conjecture known as “the butterfly effect” that posits a small change in the past will result in huge changes in the future. (I found it odd that one of the first instances of this in fiction, Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder was absent from the bibliography. However, it’s such an influential story in time travel yarns that it’s quite possible the author came across this theory through other stories, such as the fantastic Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever.)
Some of this advice addresses sticky issues with time travel gaming. The author posits an “observer effect” stemming from the Schroedinger cat example of quantum theory that suggests that the PCs only really get once chance to alter a given event.
In addition to the considerable food for thought provided for GMs of time travel games, a sample campaign model is provided, positing a sort of time traveling police force, a common and compelling theme for protagonists in time travel adventures. In addition to setting the details of the time travel technology, many statistics are provided.
The third and final chapter of the book is a summary history of the world. The history only covers up to 1900; the book sites the need to cut it short due to there being too high a frequency of potentially significant events to cover in this book. RPG Objects has already started publication of “timeline” companion volumes to fill the need for anyone who is interested in time travel jaunts.
In addition to the brief summary of events, there are a series of sidebars throughout the chapter that take a closer look at many watershed events, highlighting the significance of certain events that might be tampered with by temporal ne’er-do-wells, such as the Battle of Tours. There is a nice selection of these, certainly enough to wrap a time travel campaign around.
Conclusions
Blood & Time is the best treatment of time travel campaigning I have seen for the d20 system. It is not merely a collection of time themed spells. It tries to provide support for things you will need in time travelling campaign, but avoids mechanically defining the nature of time travel effect.
This, I think, is probably the best route the book could have taken. Any explicitly mechanical treatment of time travel would need to be gutted and loaded down with so many restrictions to make it boring lest the players exploit the inherent paradoxes of the concept. Keeping control of time travel effects in the GMs list is probably as good a solution as could be asked for.
The real shining starz of Blood & Fists are the second and third chapters. The GM advice and timeline are a nice distillation of needed information and ideas for running a time travel game. Though the first chapter is largely aimed at D20, I feel that the last 2 chapters could be compellingly used for other systems.
Overall Grade: B+
-Alan D. Kohler
Time travel has always been one of the most daunting prospects for emulations in RPGs. The issues of causality and determinism have resulted in many prior RPG products reducing the topic to flavor text and never really sinking their teeth in it, or opening up possibilities of time travel and never really considering the implications. As such, it should be interesting to see how the author takes on this holy grail of RPG topics.
A First Look
Blood and Time is available as a PDF product through RPGnow, Drivethru RPG, and RPG Objects own website at a nominal price of $8.95 US. As is SOP for RPG Objects, the book is distributed with a landscape on-screen version and a printer friendly portrait version. This review is based principally on the landscape version, which runs 81 pages in that format.
The cover image is an abstract thematic collage, as is common for RPG Objects. This particular collage has a pocket watch and scenes from various historically important sites, linked with boxes with “computer style” text commenting on the locations.
Interior art is by Joseph Wigfield, whose style has come to define RPG Objects’ “Blood” line.
A Deeper Look
The organization of the doc is fairly straight forward, consisting of 3 chapters. The chapters cover characters (including equipment), temporal mechanics, and history, respectively.
Most typical d20 style character options are condensed into the first chapter. By way of comparison with d20 Modern campaign products, the selection of advanced classes and feats is relatively brief. There are a mere 3 advanced classes:
- The anomaly is the most exotic of the classes. Though not capable of time travel itself, the anomaly is rare individual with a connection to time, and gains senses and abilities similar to those time themed abilities you might see in other d20 products, such as retrying rolls or slowing their perception of time (granting dodge bonuses.)
- The temporal historian is sort of a sage of a time travel campaign. In addition to an array of knowledge skills, the temporal historian gets a few class abilities that enhance and apply their knowledge useful ways, such as a superstition ability that allows them to exploit superstitions of a culture in the time period they may be visiting.
- The time enforcer is a combatant type character with many of the standard combat type abilities of such characters, and a few specialized abilities that are of particular use to time travelling characters, such as bonuses with tactics of different eras.
There is a brief overview of the d20 Future progress levels (Pls), with an eye towards its significance to time travelers. Further, it divides the PLs into three categories (ancient, modern, and futuristic), and assigns each two feats. If a character is operating with weapons of or with cultures that are part of one of these time periods other than their own, they suffer a penalty to attack and skill checks (similar to the standard non-proficiency penalty). The technology feat for each era removes half of the attack and skill check penalties, whereas the “technology expert” feat removes all of it.
The bulk of the characters chapter is actually equipment. As there are plenty of weapon descriptions for modern and futuristic weapons in the D20 Modern and D20 Future materials, this chapter aims to address the need for more archaic weapons. One could resort to using D&D or related d20 books, but as D20 Modern fans know, the nature of weapons statistics is slightly different in D20 Modern. Further, a wider array of ancient periods is covered in the equipment section here, taking into account such factors as different manufacture materials.
The second chapter, temporal mechanics, is more informational in the beginning, and waxes a bit mechanical towards the end. The book never set about defining exactly HOW one is to time travel, though some examples are given.
Instead, the author spends the first half of the chapter examining options that the GM may wish to consider when running a time travel game. This includes and examination of aspects such as how easy it is to change the course of time, and how to deal with paradoxes. Those who are familiar with time travel fiction and games will recognize many of the concepts herein, such as the common time travel conjecture known as “the butterfly effect” that posits a small change in the past will result in huge changes in the future. (I found it odd that one of the first instances of this in fiction, Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder was absent from the bibliography. However, it’s such an influential story in time travel yarns that it’s quite possible the author came across this theory through other stories, such as the fantastic Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever.)
Some of this advice addresses sticky issues with time travel gaming. The author posits an “observer effect” stemming from the Schroedinger cat example of quantum theory that suggests that the PCs only really get once chance to alter a given event.
In addition to the considerable food for thought provided for GMs of time travel games, a sample campaign model is provided, positing a sort of time traveling police force, a common and compelling theme for protagonists in time travel adventures. In addition to setting the details of the time travel technology, many statistics are provided.
The third and final chapter of the book is a summary history of the world. The history only covers up to 1900; the book sites the need to cut it short due to there being too high a frequency of potentially significant events to cover in this book. RPG Objects has already started publication of “timeline” companion volumes to fill the need for anyone who is interested in time travel jaunts.
In addition to the brief summary of events, there are a series of sidebars throughout the chapter that take a closer look at many watershed events, highlighting the significance of certain events that might be tampered with by temporal ne’er-do-wells, such as the Battle of Tours. There is a nice selection of these, certainly enough to wrap a time travel campaign around.
Conclusions
Blood & Time is the best treatment of time travel campaigning I have seen for the d20 system. It is not merely a collection of time themed spells. It tries to provide support for things you will need in time travelling campaign, but avoids mechanically defining the nature of time travel effect.
This, I think, is probably the best route the book could have taken. Any explicitly mechanical treatment of time travel would need to be gutted and loaded down with so many restrictions to make it boring lest the players exploit the inherent paradoxes of the concept. Keeping control of time travel effects in the GMs list is probably as good a solution as could be asked for.
The real shining starz of Blood & Fists are the second and third chapters. The GM advice and timeline are a nice distillation of needed information and ideas for running a time travel game. Though the first chapter is largely aimed at D20, I feel that the last 2 chapters could be compellingly used for other systems.
Overall Grade: B+
-Alan D. Kohler
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