Timetravel for characters....

[tensen]

Hey, thanks Wraith Form. As for Temporality, it's coming out from Dark Quest Games sometime later this year in pdf and after that in print. So, you get the best of both worlds. There's been some discussion on this upcoming book on Necromancer Games' forums.

Officially the print product will be released in the 1st Quarter of 2006.

 

[The Shaman]

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.

We'll doing something similar to this in a Modern game that I'm running - two of the adventures will involve creating new characters who will visit places that will be featured in our 'normal' timeline, and may perhaps set up some interesting encounters as a result.

It seems like a great way to break up the routine of a long-term campaign, by allowing the players to explore different characters and settings but maintain the continuity of the regular game.

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

Timetravel by Spelljammer, anyone?

Planar travel: The PCs do a little plane hopping and somehow come back to a different time period. Maybe they stepped into the wrong color portal during astral travel or maybe a plane shift spell is miscast.

This is how I handled it in my 3.0 game - pass through the plane, return to a different time. Controlling when you come out was the particular challenge for the characters.

 

[Kryndal Levik]

Unmoveble Time Gates always worked best for me, they aren't portable so players can't get too wild.
A villian could be chased thru one, the player can't just destroy the gate because the villian will do his evil deeds posibly causing world changing events, so the pc's must persue.

This is the same way I've done it. Gates are "paired;" one goes forward, one goes back. It was a quest unto itself to find the gates. They're also "keyed," meaning that each individual needs a specific type of ring to enter the gate/portal.

One variation that I had was that using the gates actually put the characters into a slightly altered reality each time they were used (only two round trips in a whole campaign, in this case). Nothing huge, but things like NPC's eyes being a different color, an individual who had died previously being alive, an inkeeper recognizing the group as "big tippers," etc. Doing this made the group really wary about using them, as they didn't know how altered things could end up. One PC was so disturbed by these small changes that he refused to use the gates again (unless it could be determined how to fix or avoid the alterations).

 

[S'mon]

You know about the time gates at Tovag Baragu, right?

Edit: I see Henry got there first. Hm, I need to go back in time & insert my post before Henry's...

 

[grodog]

Dragon 65 features Lewis Pulsipher's Timelord NPC class; I've written extensive additions and changes to that class, since one of my brothers played one as a PC. They're an excellent option for introducing time travel in general into your games (GH or generic).

On the GH front, Lendor and Cyndor both manage/represent the time portfolios, so having them espouse more modern concepts of time like sundials, having specific hours in the day and night, etc. seems like a general approach that would work well for introducing different ideas about time into the campaign. Higher level clerics may also have access to time gates, the ability to summon time elementals (details in Dragon 69, and in one of the newer 3e MMs), etc.

I'll also second the suggestion of artifacts, in particular the stranger techo-like artifacts like the Machine of Lum the Mad, the Mighty Servant of Luek-O, and such.

 

[William Ronald]

Dragon 65 features Lewis Pulsipher's Timelord NPC class; I've written extensive additions and changes to that class, since one of my brothers played one as a PC. They're an excellent option for introducing time travel in general into your games (GH or generic).

On the GH front, Lendor and Cyndor both manage/represent the time portfolios, so having them espouse more modern concepts of time like sundials, having specific hours in the day and night, etc. seems like a general approach that would work well for introducing different ideas about time into the campaign. Higher level clerics may also have access to time gates, the ability to summon time elementals (details in Dragon 69, and in one of the newer 3e MMs), etc.

I'll also second the suggestion of artifacts, in particular the stranger techo-like artifacts like the Machine of Lum the Mad, the Mighty Servant of Luek-O, and such.

Other World of Greyhawk deities who might work well for access to time gates and summoning time elementals could be Istus, Lady of Fate (a Baklunish goddess, possibly here worshippers had something to do with Tovag Baragu) and Labelas Enoreth (elven god of time and longevity.) Also, I seem to remember that the old Chronomancer's handbook referred to a group of individuals who monitored the timelines of Oerth.

Also, there are various approaches of time travel. One is that any alteration in a timestream creates an alternate reality. This was scene in the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." Another approach is that attempts to alter the time stream prove futile, or that one may end up creating the future one seeks to prevent. This was scene on Babylon 5, when Sheridan -- tried to stop the Shadows by going to Zha'ha'dum to prevent the devastation he saw in the future on Centauri Prime. He ended up setting in motion the chain of events that lead to the future he experienced.

 

[sniffles]

How about a whole group of magic-users working together to bend the time stream? If you don't want it to happen often then it could require a ritual that takes a considerable length of time to complete and a large number of casters to successfully achieve.

I've been in a D&D campaign that involved time travel, although ours did include divine intervention of a sort - the PCs were sent back in time when a high-level wizard's spell "collided" with a blast from a deity.

 

[grodog]

Other World of Greyhawk deities who might work well for access to time gates and summoning time elementals could be Istus, Lady of Fate (a Baklunish goddess, possibly here worshippers had something to do with Tovag Baragu) and Labelas Enoreth (elven god of time and longevity.) Also, I seem to remember that the old Chronomancer's handbook referred to a group of individuals who monitored the timelines of Oerth.

Good points William Ronald. Dalt, as god of portals, could also have some influence on the ability for creatures to use gates to enter the time stream.

 

[sad_genius]

Tangential and brief, but I always toyed with the idea of the players, looking for magical aid to help their kingdom on the brink of war, hending into Beyong the Crystal Cave and coming out several years/decades later, when the war was lost and the kingdom destroyed - they then end up going through Castle Amber and come back to the real world with one more potion of time travel than the module suggests

 

[wedgeski]

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?

No, you're thinking of Day of the Tentacle.