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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Bowman" data-source="post: 7446473" data-attributes="member: 6925649">I would say that changes in the timeline do not propagate backwards in time to catch up with the time travellers, so they would know what changes the wrought and what mistakes they made. This is sort of what happens in the show Timeless. If someone goes back in time for a specific reason, such as to make a change which undoes the reason for making the trip in the first place, then that change cannot be made, something goes wrong which prevents that change from occurring, maybe another unsatisfactory result occurs thus necessitating the journey back in time in the first place Now what would happen if the time travellers were successful, the change in the timeline does not propagate backwards in time to the time travellers making the change. In the new timeline they have created, they have not gone back in time, as they have no reason to. So when the time travellers return to the present, they find duplicates of themselves and their time machine, and those duplicates wonder what the originals are doing there! Even worse, is they return to a completely different present with no one alive that they recognize, and nobody recognizes them either, they may have saved Kennedy, but the present they return to is completely unfamiliar, and they are strangers among them, but that would create a lot of work for the GM to fabricate a completely new timeline that begins where the PCs have made the change, where different people are born for example.I think most GMs would prefer a timeline that "heals" somewhat and returns to something resembling the original, that means the timeline resists change, and the PCs would find their own duplicates in the new timeline they created, if they create a change that undermines the reason for making that particular trip back in time in the first place.I would say that we not let such a change occur and so the PCs and their time machine is not duplicated, but other changes could occur during their trip that do not undermine their reason for making the trip in the first place. The PCs return to the present in the new timeline with memories of the original timeline. As for as the people in the new timeline are concerned, the people who returned from their mission are not quite the same people that they sent on their mission, and while their mission to make that specific change they intended to make was a failure, other changes to the timeline were inadvertently made during that trip. But to the inhabitants of the new timeline, as far as they are concerned, the timeline was always this way, it is only the time travellers they sent into the past who are different.That is how the show Timeless deals with time travel.<img src="https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.X-EPNO3hb-cDM2fB3o1ILgHaHa&w=189&h=184&c=7&o=5&pid=1.7" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

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