D&D 5E Time Travel and forced time paradoxes

[MichaelArkAngel]

Well was the paladin a member of a long existing order in the time where he came from ?

If so when he returns to his original time and becomes more important within his order he might be allouwed in on the secrets of the order, and discovering the order was funded becouse of the things they did in the past.
So the mass of folowers he hoped for is there in a way, just that it is the order he was already a part of.

Basicly try to loop things, so things they did in the past led to the world being the way it was when they left.

Actually he was a part of the order of the Gauntlet, but decided he didn't like some of the politics, so he decided he wanted to try to start his own order.

But it might merge with other stories, or a new King or ascendant religion might get jiggy with the proper nouns to insert an ancestor or saint or something into one of the PC's spots in the story...

Of course, that's more a post-modern way to look at history & legends.

I kind of like this idea, of the corrupt king stealing the paladins "thunder" per se' !

When the PCs return they find that the cult exists, but it is currently being run by the father of one of the PCs (because the father looked just like the PC of legend so mistakes were made). Further, because of the temporal shenanigans, the father left the PC's mother and married one (or more) of the cult members and sired a half-brother to the PC. It turns out, the father has chosen the half-brother as the cult's future leader.

This sounds like a blast as well, as I do like to mess with the player characters, and throw that occasional "twist" in there!

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Actually he was a part of the order of the Gauntlet, but decided he didn't like some of the politics, so he decided he wanted to try to start his own order.

I kind of like this idea, of the corrupt king stealing the paladins "thunder" per se' !

Maybe the order originaly started with the intentions the PC had but got corrupted along the way.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I kind of like this idea, of the corrupt king stealing the paladins "thunder" per se' !

"All hail Casiodorus Rex, dragonslayer!"

 

[MichaelArkAngel]

"All hail Casiodorus Rex, dragonslayer!"

Wow! Digging deep(1981) for that one! Sad thing, I'm old enough to remember when this came out in the theaters!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wow! Digging deep(1981) for that one! Sad thing, I'm old enough to remember when this came out in the theaters!

Oh yeah, I started playing D&D in 1980, so that one made a big impression.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've ran a time travel adventure as a capstone of a campaign. In the end, the world they left was no longer their world, but it was similar. Their characters existed, but all were slain before the PCs arrived in the current time (to prevent them from meeting themselves). Since 2E had come out, I used it as a transition to 2E, and I recently reintroduced the characters as NPCs to my current group (with the change being to 5E).

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I'd have each meddling player roll a d12 (why not?...it looks cool). On an ODD result, their efforts in the past had a negative effect, on an EVEN result, their efforts in the past had a positive effect. On a natural 1 it is a catastrophically negative effect, and on a natural 12 is is a catastrophically positive effect.

Then I'd just use the ol' bean and imaginate something cool and really unexpected. Entire countries being devoted/opposed to their 'side/god', their religion being required/forced on everyone ("Convert or die!"!), history where their religion/god is now seen as a saviour or as a great evil. For example, a formerly LE society is changed by "The Great Realization of Self" movement where the people rose up to fight off their LE oppressors, re-wrote the laws, and set up means for people to get out of poverty if they work hard (eg, a "CG" type society). Or maybe the opposite, where the LE society is now TN because of "The Slaughter of Law" decade where followers of the PC's god/religion indiscriminately slaughtered any who they thought was "oppressing them"...resulting the the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands in a brutal civil war lasting 11 years.

What I most definitely wouldn't do is have everything be 'the same', but with just more followers of the PC's religion or more 'power' for the PC's religion. Any major changes like what the PC's seem to be doing is going to have MAJOR and PROFOUND effects on the world stage, as it were. Imagine what the world would be like if someone traveled back in time and opposed/removed major factions or political/religious people in our world? No more Hitler? What would be the outcome? No Ghandi? No George Washington? No Hudsons Bay Company? ... ... ... a completely different world stage.

Option #2: You could always have a MAJOR change be waiting for them, and when they've squirmed enough at just how f'ed up they made things some form of Time Elemental of the god/dess of Time shows up and says "You dun bad, kids, reeeaaaal bad! But The God of Time is allowing you ONE chance to fix this. Here's the deal..." And now they have to actively avoid messing things up doing certain other things that will balance stuff back to "mostly normal". Then when they come 'back' to their own time line, things are mostly the same...mostly... (see the TV series Flash, currently running, to see how 'mostly').

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[hawkeyefan]

Oh yeah, I started playing D&D in 1980, so that one made a big impression.

We constantly use that at our table whenever one PC steals a kill from another.

Regarding the thread topic, though, I'd introduce some kind of rival time travellers, or some kind of dark organization as a balance to whatever the PCs have accomplished with their time shenanigans.

Perhaps someone learned of the group and realized what they were doing and then was able to capitalize on it. So when the PCs arrive back in the present, they find that this rival group has also flourished. Then they have to decide if what they've accomplished is worth whatever the rivals have done.

I've been using time travel and chronomancy in my longstanding campaign, so I've messed around with a lot of ideas in this area. It opens up a lot of cool aspects for play.

 

[marcelvdpol]

Does it? OP didn't mention the PCs needing to use Comprehend Languages everywhere they went. Or Tongues.

Well, i would expect them to need Tongues to speak the language properly if you go back a long time (more than 200-500 years) as well as needing Comprehend Languages to read a written language of that time. Of course, you can hand-wave it as DM as it is rather annoying to have to finish a ritual each time you speak to someone. Even if the language didn't change all that much, the exact spelling of names could change over time as names have a LOT more possible combinations of characters and there is no context sensitivity to help out with the meaning of the name.

PCs going politicking wouldn't add up to much. PCs who have god-like features going politicking wouldn't add up to much. PCs who have god-like features who go politicking who also save a village, slay a dragon, or make off with the emperor's wife, well, THAT would carry on over the years.

Sure, but what exactly would carry on over the years? The story of slaying a dragon (which might become a whole roost of Dragons over time) will carry over but the interpretation might change; WHY did the characters slay the dragon? Perhaps the story twists the intent to say that Genocide (the characters killed ALL Purple Dragons in the world according to the story) is good.

I would let the characters roll for it. If they have a Bard in the party writing down the story, perhaps roll with Advantage. Roll high enough and the players can make up the story; roll low enough and the DM will twist the story into something which could be a good side-quest activity to fix OR something which has completely changed the world as the characters knew it.

Time travel and changing things in the past are always nice twists; one interpretation is that of the alternative time line resolution (ie the way Back to the Future envisions it). Another is that since the events have already happened, you cannot actually change things at all (perhaps the party traveling back in the past will trigger the event that they are trying to prevent in the first place OR they find that the stories about them are stories they already knew in their own world (the stories got twisted and warped to turn into the stories they already knew).

 

[Horwath]

Could be great, but

personaly, I wouldn't touch time travel with a 11 foot pole.


Too much grandfather paradoxes and cause and effect loops.

It could be good ig going with multiverse theory when you go back in time you create a whole new reality that co exist with infinite others, similar but all diferent in small details.