Timetravel for characters....

[Tom Cashel]

Use an artifact that no one can "have."

What I mean is: how about if someone very powerful tried to destroy an evil artifact by dropping it into some lava pit (or whatever) and then wishing that all the evil it had ever propagated were undone;

But because this thing has had such a great influence on past times, the moment of it's "destruction" causes a paradoxical effect: the extent of the past evils stop it from being destroyed and stopping it from being destroyed causes the past evils not to be undone... of course this paradox also creates a temporal vortex that sucks in the wishing wizard and all his cohorts and scatters them across the timestream...

Enter the inexperienced PCs: if they get too close to this artifact (trying to touch it, grab it, keep it, sell it, use it, etc.), they get sucked into the vortex as well. Voila! They are sent to time after time, always trying to find the manifestation of the artifact in that time period (because, being paradoxical, the artifact exists in all time periods upon which it had an effect, with the same vortex around it...).

They could meet up with members of that original group who tried to destroy the thing, now insanely old and barely remembering what they did (but to the PCs it only happened a few weeks ago...); when they finally find the wishing wizard he could explain what he did and clue the (now higher level) PCs in about what they should do to restore time--

--undo that wish and just destroy the damn thing. After it's caused so many problems, no one will want to keep it.

I love time travel.

 

[Henry]

Two words - Tovag Baragu.

It has previous references to being a gateway to other worlds and times, it cannot be "Taken along for the ride" by the characters, and the DM has total control over where and when it works. It has been around AT LEAST from the time of the Suel Imperium, and you could even link it to phases of the two moons Luna and Celene, or to any other astronomical or terrestrial event you wish.

Would this match what you aer looking for?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I've never seen it handled well in D&D.

I stronly suggest you pick up the out of print Pacesetter game "Timemaster" along with the player's compendium (the name of which escapes me). That was a ruleset designed around time travel, but you will find it easy to adapt to your d20 game.

The one rule that I can remember off the top of my head was the skill "Paranormal Memory" which required a check to see if you could remember original timelines that have been changed by your own or other's actions.

 

[Piratecat]

Wasn't there a few old 1e and 2e modules that dealt with time travel? One cool one was a boxed set for Ravenloft, that had the PCs switching back and forth through three time periods as they explored a ruined castle. I forget the name, though; was it Castle Forlorn?

Also, did the Fourth Tower of Inverness deal with time travel, or was the other tower just extraplanar? Man, too long since I've gone back and read those.

 

[WanderingMonster]

Maybe not quite what you're looking for...

I'm sure you're looking for ways to take the current PCs back through time, but I've used a time travel technique for one-shots that enriches my regular campaign.

Run a one-shot that serves as a backdrop for the main campaign. For example, the PCs are going to explore a haunted keep. The session prior to the game, run a one-shot where the players play the living residents of the keep as they are killed and transformed into the restless spirits that will occupy the present-day keep. Trust me that the knowledge they gain will only serve you--the DM--in that it sets a great mood, brings the players into the game, and makes the rewards much more gratifying.

As for your question, I say go the artifact route. Alternately fey creatures are known for their tricks with time. Perhaps a magic grotto whisks PCs to elsewhen as they sleep.

Then there's always the slingshot around the Sun at warp speed...

 

[Daedalus]

>Wasn't there a few old 1e and 2e modules that dealt with time >travel? One cool one was a boxed set for Ravenloft, that had >the PCs switching back and forth through three time periods as >they explored a ruined castle. I forget the name, though; was it >Castle Forlorn?

Yeah, it was Castles Forlorn...with lord Tristan something-or-other. Probably one of, if not the best 2e Ravenloft supplement out there IMHO =)

 

[Corbert]

In my game there is a large 'temple' hidden in the mountains of the southern frozen waste lands. It's very hard to reach and can't be scried for. The only way they found it was an item they were sent to retrieve was stored near the entrance by NPCs. Inside the temple is a large stone pedestal with a hand sized disk that slides in a groove. The groove is labeled 100, 500, 1000, 5000 and 10000, meaning thats how many years forward or back the group can travel. The walls have a spiral groove with symbols every so often, there is also a disk in that groove. The symbols stand for however many years the main pedestal is set for. It works like this, set you main control for how many years you want to travel, then move the disk on the wall. Forward, you move into the future, backward, you move into the past.

I set the minimum length of time travel at 100 years because I use a concept I read about called not crossing your own time line. If you do, your future self just ceases to exist, no save, no warning. I will lets the PCs find this out through the actions of a long lived NPC just to be fair.

 

[IronWolf]

Wow! Another three year old thread! Someone's trudging through the old posts!

 

[Wycen]

Where's Napftor?

 

[Threedub]

The DM I play with loves time-travel, and he's done it different ways--but the mechanic I enjoyed the most was non-movable gates as mentioned above. His gates happened to be at the top of a number of towers spaced through the world. The gates were made up of (4) mirrors, which when turned in a certain pattern, on a certain day, would allow those inside the center of the mirror "circle" to transport to another time. I can't remember how it all worked but I remember it being fairly difficult to puzzle out the first time.

At the end of the transport you were still in the tower, but if you jumped very far it was usually with a different owner. We did try to use one tower to jump ahead and it didn't work, later we figured out it was destroyed. I'm 90% sure he stole the idea from some fiction, but it worked well, was interesting for the players, and allowed him to control the action without leaving us feeling it was heavy handed.