Psion
Adventurer
[imager]http://shop.enworld.org/images/engs/product129/tempcover_thumb.JPG[/imager]Temporality is a d20 system supplement by Dark Quest Games dealing with the topic of time travel. The book covers both d20 fantasy and modern rulesets. The book is written by Bret Boyd, author of Goodman’s Complete Guide to Dragonkin and contributor to numerous other d20 system product such as Mystic Eye’s Foul Locales: Behind the Gates and Sword & Sorcery’s Creature Collection III.
Reviewer bias warning: I am not a fan of the time travel subgenre in general, and feel that RPG products, lacking the author fiat required to pull the more interesting time travel stories off, face particular problems in emulating the subgenre.
A First Look
Temporality is distributed as a 159-page PDF file, and is available here at the ENWorld game store and other fine PDF outlets.
The cover of the book is a nice full color illustration by Tim Hibbetts. The illustration depicts four figures from different eras facing unseen assailants.
The interior is black and white. Interior art is by David Hamilton. The art appears somewhat primitive to me. The faces on many characters appear blocky, and body shapes and proportions seem wrong in many illustrations.
The layout is a special note. The copy I received says screen version, but my zip file does not have a print alternative. The gutter art is universally on the right side, which would make it awkward for printing, since half the page numbers would not be in the outside margin.
A Deeper Look
I recently issued a review on another time-travel themed product, Blood & Time. That book offered some theory and ground rules for how time travel works. Temporality also starts out with some grounding theory on how time travel works. So how do these products differ?
The answer lies in the target system of the two products. Though Temporality does not explicitly name D&D/D20 Fantasy as its D20 variant of choice, it is sort of a default. On the other hand Blood & Time is explicitly a d20 Modern book. Blood & Time’s theory is more grounded in modern scientific theory (with some obvious licenses), whereas Temporality’s basic time mechanics are based on D&D-like concepts such as planes of existence (e.g., a plane of time and associated planes.)
Also like Blood & Time, Temporality spends some time considering the so-called “butterfly effect”, which it calls divergences. The idea is that minor events it the past can lead to major changes in the future. Whereas Blood & Time provides some alternative approaches to handling the way that changes propagate but leaves it to the GM to determine the details, Temporality pick a somewhat middle of the road assumption about how drastic events change the future, and provides some somewhat mechanistic guidelines for determining potential effects. However, it then goes on to consider factors that a GM might consider when determining the overall effects of altering the past.
In keeping with the more fantasy-friendly tone of the book, Temporality also features guidelines and rules for handling the topic of reincarnation. The reincarnation section discusses how to handle this in the game, but this section is supported by a selection of reincarnation feats. These feats are generally of middling power, and mostly serve to shore up the concept. As is the case with many of these OGC-collection style of supplements, I often spy untapped sources that would have worked out nicely. In this case, I think the past life feats from AEG’s Secrets would have worked great as part of this concept.
Much of Temporality is new character options, principally time-related. There are new prestige classes, feats, skills, spells, and equipment necessary to support trips to a variety of time periods.
The prestige classes are the temporalist (a time-themed spell caster) and the fated. The fated is a particularly interesting character concept. It represents a character who has seen a vision of their death. They select elements of their vision upon taking the levels of the class. True or not, they accumulate bonuses when elements at hand being to resemble aspects of the vision.
The new skills are temporal navigation and perfect recall (from Denizens of Avadnu). I am conservative about new skills and am not sure these two are worth an exception. Of the two, temporal navigation is more compelling as it is very on theme for the setting and worked into several mechanics. However, the author has made the classic “new skill” blunder of not adding any support to it (such as providing classes or occupations with the skill.)
GMing section of the book provides a variety of support for time travel campaigns, including rules and guidelines for shifting the flow of time, adventure seeds, campaign models, and creatures. One particularly useful piece of OGC are the Modern/D&D adaptation notes that originally appeared in the Second World Sourcebook. This allows you to use classes and material from either with the other, which allows the GM to use either in construction a time or reality spanning campaign.
Conclusions
While time travel is not my favorite topic, I must say that Boyd really does a good job of pulling together a lot of decent support for the topic. One of the great benefits of the open game license is that when one author comes up with a good technique for doing something you need to do, it doesn’t need to stay squirreled away in some setting book or obscure supplement that you might never see. Most of the material Boyd has selected – and added to it – is top grade, and the overall is assembled into a useful package with an eye for what would be important in this type of game.
As mentioned, though, there are some odd birds, the temporal navigation skill being the standout. A somewhat troublesome one at that, since it is referenced several places in the rules.
I started this review with some minor contrasts with the competing product, Blood & Time. The most immediate deciding criteria if just choosing one would be the primary base system of each. Blood & Time is the more obvious choice if you were using D20 Modern, where Temporality is more targeted towards D&D. However, the inclusion of the adaptation rules from the Second World Sourcebook really makes it so you could use either. The more extensive mechanical support in Temporality and (presuming you are using real world history) the more extensive historical notes in Blood & Time make these two books complement each other nicely.
Overall Grade: B
-Alan D. Kohler
Reviewer bias warning: I am not a fan of the time travel subgenre in general, and feel that RPG products, lacking the author fiat required to pull the more interesting time travel stories off, face particular problems in emulating the subgenre.
A First Look
Temporality is distributed as a 159-page PDF file, and is available here at the ENWorld game store and other fine PDF outlets.
The cover of the book is a nice full color illustration by Tim Hibbetts. The illustration depicts four figures from different eras facing unseen assailants.
The interior is black and white. Interior art is by David Hamilton. The art appears somewhat primitive to me. The faces on many characters appear blocky, and body shapes and proportions seem wrong in many illustrations.
The layout is a special note. The copy I received says screen version, but my zip file does not have a print alternative. The gutter art is universally on the right side, which would make it awkward for printing, since half the page numbers would not be in the outside margin.
A Deeper Look
I recently issued a review on another time-travel themed product, Blood & Time. That book offered some theory and ground rules for how time travel works. Temporality also starts out with some grounding theory on how time travel works. So how do these products differ?
The answer lies in the target system of the two products. Though Temporality does not explicitly name D&D/D20 Fantasy as its D20 variant of choice, it is sort of a default. On the other hand Blood & Time is explicitly a d20 Modern book. Blood & Time’s theory is more grounded in modern scientific theory (with some obvious licenses), whereas Temporality’s basic time mechanics are based on D&D-like concepts such as planes of existence (e.g., a plane of time and associated planes.)
Also like Blood & Time, Temporality spends some time considering the so-called “butterfly effect”, which it calls divergences. The idea is that minor events it the past can lead to major changes in the future. Whereas Blood & Time provides some alternative approaches to handling the way that changes propagate but leaves it to the GM to determine the details, Temporality pick a somewhat middle of the road assumption about how drastic events change the future, and provides some somewhat mechanistic guidelines for determining potential effects. However, it then goes on to consider factors that a GM might consider when determining the overall effects of altering the past.
In keeping with the more fantasy-friendly tone of the book, Temporality also features guidelines and rules for handling the topic of reincarnation. The reincarnation section discusses how to handle this in the game, but this section is supported by a selection of reincarnation feats. These feats are generally of middling power, and mostly serve to shore up the concept. As is the case with many of these OGC-collection style of supplements, I often spy untapped sources that would have worked out nicely. In this case, I think the past life feats from AEG’s Secrets would have worked great as part of this concept.
Much of Temporality is new character options, principally time-related. There are new prestige classes, feats, skills, spells, and equipment necessary to support trips to a variety of time periods.
The prestige classes are the temporalist (a time-themed spell caster) and the fated. The fated is a particularly interesting character concept. It represents a character who has seen a vision of their death. They select elements of their vision upon taking the levels of the class. True or not, they accumulate bonuses when elements at hand being to resemble aspects of the vision.
The new skills are temporal navigation and perfect recall (from Denizens of Avadnu). I am conservative about new skills and am not sure these two are worth an exception. Of the two, temporal navigation is more compelling as it is very on theme for the setting and worked into several mechanics. However, the author has made the classic “new skill” blunder of not adding any support to it (such as providing classes or occupations with the skill.)
GMing section of the book provides a variety of support for time travel campaigns, including rules and guidelines for shifting the flow of time, adventure seeds, campaign models, and creatures. One particularly useful piece of OGC are the Modern/D&D adaptation notes that originally appeared in the Second World Sourcebook. This allows you to use classes and material from either with the other, which allows the GM to use either in construction a time or reality spanning campaign.
Conclusions
While time travel is not my favorite topic, I must say that Boyd really does a good job of pulling together a lot of decent support for the topic. One of the great benefits of the open game license is that when one author comes up with a good technique for doing something you need to do, it doesn’t need to stay squirreled away in some setting book or obscure supplement that you might never see. Most of the material Boyd has selected – and added to it – is top grade, and the overall is assembled into a useful package with an eye for what would be important in this type of game.
As mentioned, though, there are some odd birds, the temporal navigation skill being the standout. A somewhat troublesome one at that, since it is referenced several places in the rules.
I started this review with some minor contrasts with the competing product, Blood & Time. The most immediate deciding criteria if just choosing one would be the primary base system of each. Blood & Time is the more obvious choice if you were using D20 Modern, where Temporality is more targeted towards D&D. However, the inclusion of the adaptation rules from the Second World Sourcebook really makes it so you could use either. The more extensive mechanical support in Temporality and (presuming you are using real world history) the more extensive historical notes in Blood & Time make these two books complement each other nicely.
Overall Grade: B
-Alan D. Kohler
Last edited:
