Time Travel!! (2 reviews inside!!)

[Crothian]

I always enjoy time traveland the headache's of a paradoxes. But while time travel is a great topic for RPGS, it doesn't seem to be one many RPG writers want to tackle. I have Gurp's Time Travel, the second edition Chronomany, Mongoose's d20 time travel magic book, as well as the two new PDFs on the subject Blood and Time and Temperality. THere is a RPG that is fairly new called Timestream but I have only seen it and don't own that one. I'm curious as if there are any time travel books I've missed.

So, anyone else use time travel in their games or have experience with any of the books I've mentioned or others? I'm finishing up reviews on both new PDFs and I'll post and tell people about them later in this thread.

 

[Turanil]

I'm curious as if there are any time travel books I've missed.

See in my link below, there is a Netbook of Time. It's free, rather well done for a free product (and look at the cover!), and also deals with paradoxes. It could be updated to 3.5 though, but as it is can be used with but slight adjustments. I am also one of the authors.

 

[Crothian]

Is it aimed at the fantasy game or the modern game?

 

[Turanil]

D20 Fantasy

 

[Crothian]

Blood and Time

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.

 

[Vigilance]

Awesome.

Thanks Crothian

Chuck

 

[Psion]

So, anyone else use time travel in their games or have experience with any of the books I've mentioned or others? I'm finishing up reviews on both new PDFs and I'll post and tell people about them later in this thread.

I tend to be a bit skittish around time travel scenarios, and paradoxes, well, though it was an otherwise good adventure, this struck me wrong in
[sblock]Demon God's Fane[/sblock]

Guess I am a beleiver in Niven's theory of Time Travel.

The best I could muster myself was a Groundhog Day scenario with a sinister twist (See Here. Mostly, I let that work because it occurred in a demiplane that was "sutured" off from the rest of reality.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I know this will probably not be one easily found: but the entire Feng Shui game system is set against the backdrop of a war across time.

The biggest principal in Feng Shui time travel is that individuals barely matter. You can go back in time, kill off your great-great-great-grandfather, only to discover that you are still there, because your g-g-g-gramma married some other guy, still had a boy who strongly resembles your g-g-grandad, who still met and married your g-g-gramma, etc.

What changes history is actually control over specific locations and structures. Anyone who has control over these key feng shui sites (see where it gets it's name?) controls the flow of chi, positive energy, which provides all manner of good fortune and prosperity.

SO for an example: go back in time, get your grandad hitched to the richest girl in the world. travel forewards in time and you'll find the fortune gone and nothing special about your life aside from a few nice (but worthless) antiques you inherited.

Conversely, travel back in time, and hitch your grandad up with a feng shui site, and make sure it's adequitely protected... Step foreward and find your situation in life greatly improved, possibly grandpa left that site to you when he passed on. suddenly, your life has improved fourtyfold.

---

In Feng Shui, time travel is done by traveling through the timeless Netherworld, which is a palce between places, and a time out of time... as such, there are portals to the netherworld that open and close periodicly in four major junctures: 69 AD, 1850 AD, the contemporary era, and 2056 AD. The netherworld itself is a special place, it acts as a dumping ground for people, places and things that have been erased during revisions of history. If you can find a TV in the netherworld (which is unlikely, most TV's that are there are cobbled-together from other, more questionable devices, like the Apple Mona (followup to the Lisa), you'll find that the airwaves are alive with Netherworld TV, between reruns of My Mother The Car (it's a brilliant series actually.), they run news of recent revisions to history that may have gone unnoticed by the majority of the population. The netherworld itsels if almost run by four monarchs... four all-powerful arch-sorcerous rulers whose history was so thuroughly erased from the timeline by forces that opposed them, that their entire planet-spanning empire makes up a good chunk of the netherworld.

Once you've found a portal to the past, you can change history, either by aquiring Feng Shui sites, preventing other people from aquiring them, or by destroying them, and a lot of mooks along the way.

 

[Crothian]

I have Feng Shui but the time travel elements are just not what I think of when I think of that game. Though the best game of it I played Piratecat had us deal wit an invasion from the future.

But of course from that I mostly remember glaring endlessly at Steve Jung.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I know this will probably not be one easily found: but the entire Feng Shui game system is set against the backdrop of a war across time.

The biggest principal in Feng Shui time travel is that individuals barely matter. You can go back in time, kill off your great-great-great-grandfather, only to discover that you are still there, because your g-g-g-gramma married some other guy, still had a boy who strongly resembles your g-g-grandad, who still met and married your g-g-gramma, etc.

Oh? So what happens if you go back and shoot your infant self in the head with a .44 magnum? Short of creating a new timeline every time someone or something goes back in time, there just isn't any way to eliminate the possibility of creating paradoxes.