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I don't know if anyone ever brought this up before, but what does everyone think about time travel in a game? Have you tried it? If so, would you do it again? Etc. Etc....
I recall the Ravenloft Boxed Set Castles Forlorn, which dealt with time travel. Basically, there were three different versions of the bad guy (Tristan the Dark Lord of the Land) and the castle he was trapped in, each of which corresponded to a different time period. As the PCs moved in and out of the different rooms, the whole castle could suddenly shift to a different time. I thought it was cool. There was even a scenario where the PCs could inadvertantly free Tristan from his Castle, which caused all kinds of havoc.
Anyway, thoughts, comments, suggestions?
I don't know if anyone ever brought this up before, but what does everyone think about time travel in a game? Have you tried it? If so, would you do it again? Etc. Etc....
I recall the Ravenloft Boxed Set Castles Forlorn, which dealt with time travel. Basically, there were three different versions of the bad guy (Tristan the Dark Lord of the Land) and the castle he was trapped in, each of which corresponded to a different time period. As the PCs moved in and out of the different rooms, the whole castle could suddenly shift to a different time. I thought it was cool. There was even a scenario where the PCs could inadvertantly free Tristan from his Castle, which caused all kinds of havoc.
Anyway, thoughts, comments, suggestions?
Waaay back in 2ed there was a suppliment for a variant magic user called the chronomancer which I read cover to cover and still have on one of my D&D shelves. There was also a Boxed set about the time of Netheril (set in the FR) that you could adventure in and interact with, but not change if I remember correctly. Anyway, I DM'd from these increadible resources for about 4 or 5 sessions and then my gaming group - who only met infrequently anyway - disbanded for good. It was interesting to say the least, but the amount of History that was available about the FR at the time was so much less than the histories that have been published since then, that I shudder to think what would happen should I feverishly decide to run such a campaign again.
I think the IDEA of time travel is really cool, and certainly an adventure in itself, but the conception is more likely to take the form of a limited scope (like planar excursions). The main problems that I see are all related to time-keeping in game situations. Does anyone even do that anymore? Most characters in 3.5 have no concept of passing time - not like in my day when a Haste spell aged you a year, or when a small jaunt to the Astral Plane could bring you out many, many years after you entered it, or heaven forbid you even SAW a ghost! No, time just seems to be on these new character's sides. Might be high time someone changed that...
I've done a time-travel adventure, but it's always something I felt you had to handle with kid gloves. The "you-can't-change-anything-because-its-already-been-done" argument has come up, as well as "if-we-do-change-anything-our-future-is-toast". The players decided amongst themselves that they wouldn't do anything outrageous. They limited their interactions with the people they met and continued their mission.
It can be done, but as a DM, I would keep a list of rules and stick to them.
There are a few races outlined in the Lords of Madness suppliment that suggest how several different kinds of aberrations did exist, are existing, and will exist on a continuum of time going both from the beginning and end of the multiverse. The material in the text can be easily adapted to your individal scinario and needs.
As ever,
ACE
I once ran a time-travel minicampaign with the Greyhawk 2000 expansion material (Dragon #277). The superb art in that issue, by Kalman Andrasofsky, and my recent reading of Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' combined to inspire me greatly.
The PCs traveled via assistance of a Chronomancer Archmage to CY 2000 from CY 584, approximately 1416 years' displacement.
They were seeking to prevent the meddling of 'alien gods' with the greatly weakened Greyhawk pantheon, a nod to the Gaiman novel's plotline.
I toughened and incorporated the Dungeon issue 83 adventures 'London Calling' and 'Alterations' to good effect, setting them in the future version of industrial Greyhawk. The Kali connection in the former adventure had rakshasas and a thuggee cult opposing the party. Eventually the group headed north into the post-nuclear wasteland that was the former Empire of Iuz for some 'Mad Max'-style action and a final confrontation with a 'uranium wyrm'.
The campaign grew on me as I wrote more, but for the players the novelty thinned-they proved pretty traditional-minded for a bunch of chaotic neutrals! In the end I foreshortened the campaign and returned them to the 'dark ages' of the Flanaess...
Since then, I've considered running adventures set in the revised 'Blackmoor' campaign, which some have called 'proto-Greyhawk', but for now the only time-travel will be via the Library of Last Resort in the Age of Worms...
I am playing in a "time-travel-setting" at the moment with my group.
There is no real problem with the characters "knowing the history that will happen" because they are a long way from anything they know exactly.
They were send back in time by a godess an the only thing they know ist that they have to find some clues regarding a situation that will occur in the near future in their "normal time".
In the past I will play:
Temple of elemental evil, Scourge of the slavelords and Queen of the spiders
After that they will come back to their normal time an I follow up with:
Istvin Campaign-arc, Slavers and Return to the Temple of elemental evil.
I hope it will not be neccessary to include Apocalypse as last part :-))
Iris
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Waaay back in 2ed there was a suppliment for a variant magic user called the chronomancer which I read cover to cover and still have on one of my D&D shelves. There was also a Boxed set about the time of Netheril (set in the FR) that you could adventure in and interact with, but not change if I remember correctly.
I still have that supplement, and it rocked. I loved the Time Elementals (although I think they were called something else). I even toyed with converting the Chronomancy rules to 3.5, though I never got around to it. I'm toying with some verison of those rules for Iron Heroes.
I think the IDEA of time travel is really cool, and certainly an adventure in itself, but the conception is more likely to take the form of a limited scope (like planar excursions).
I agree, its the kind of thing you really only want to do occasionally. A sustained time-travel campaign would probably be a big headache for DM and Players alike.
I'm currenty using a time hook in a game i'm running now. THe group has lost 5 years of there life. In truth a war has taken place on the plane of mechanus where the wheels of time are kept some timelines have been damaged which is wreaking havoc in certain regions of faerun. I'm not sre what level of time play you are thinking of so i hope this helps some..
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I'm currenty using a time hook in a game i'm running now. THe group has lost 5 years of there life. In truth a war has taken place on the plane of mechanus where the wheels of time are kept some timelines have been damaged which is wreaking havoc in certain regions of faerun. I'm not sre what level of time play you are thinking of so i hope this helps some..
Oh I don't actually need 'help' (my psychiatrist says so), this is mostly just a "what does everyone thinkg about" thread on a topic I find interesting.
Director of Narrative
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While poking around on the 'net for Greyhawk source material I came across a fansite where the guy ran an adventure for his party where they went back in time to just days before the Twin Cataclysms. The group got separated and half of them were captured by Suel and the other half went to talk to the Bakluni Mage-Priests. He went on to have the players actions raise the level of stress and paranoia each side had at this point of their long war and incidentally provoke the start of the Cataclysms.
There's other things that you could do with this idea, but I thought it was clever. Some things were just meant to happen.
DANGER WILL ROBBINSON DANGER!!!!!
In my game world the most powerful creatures (stronger than gods) come from the Time/ Space Conitnuum (Think The Q COntinuum form Startrek), and they put a serious hurt on anyone who messes with time travle. WHy? Because if traveling bact to the past is followed out to it's logical conclusion, the ripple effect of one single small encounter could completely disrupt your entire world. (THink of how many things in your life that have happened to you that if you had shown up five minutes later, of five minutes earlier, you would have missed. How would missing that event change your life from that point on?)
The other thing is: How many good movies about time travle have you seen? the answer is not many! Lost in space, The Butterfly Effect, THe two Startrek movies that did it? All of them Crap! ANd lets go way off the crap movie diving board: Timecop.
I've only seen a couple of movies that delt with time travle that were pretty good, and both of them delt with going forward in time, not back: Donne Darko, and The Jacket. (And please don't say any of the 'Back to the Future' Movies. THey were about as well thought out on the nuances of time travle as 'Teen wolf' was on lycanthropy.
so what Chronomancy and time travel related stuff is out there for 3.5?
I think that time travel could be a great way for your players to interact directly with a setting's history, rather than just reading about it from ruin walls.
This becomes really important if you run a home-brew setting like I do. Since the players can't read about my world in books or on the net, I have to find a way to present it to them in game. While the party hasn't actually gotten to that story arc, I do plan on it.
Also, I really dig the idea of a Chronomancer or a Time Domain for clerics. I think FR has the domain somewhere, but I'm not sure.
And for reference, Stargate SG-1 does time travel and such effects fairly well. It's a well-written show I think.
I had my players caught in a time loop once (actually five times). They kept repeating the same day day with little differences each time they went through it.
They would wake up in the woods, go to a nearby village, learn of a crazy wizard doing experiments in his nearby tower, get a magic wardstone from one of the villagers to enter the wizards' keep, go through a few rooms in the keep, start fighting the wizard, and end up waking up in the woods again.
They finally caught on that it was the magic wardstone that caused all the havoc.
This was about eight years ago, and it's still a running gag at my gaming table "So, you wake up in the woods..."
Ultradan
I love the concept of Time Travel as a GM but I dread it as a player. If I run the game then I have a real serious list of rules that I stick to but they are real small...1.There will NEVER be any attempts to activly seek out your progenitors (now if you meet them by my design that is something else entirely) 2. There will be no way to alter the environment under any and all circumstances; not by me or the players and 3. There is always the possibility that due to your action in the past...you may end up in an altered version of your future while your *true* future; the actual starting point for the characters moves right along as if nothing has happened.
I have done this to players on more than one occassion hehehehehehehehehe.
As a player I worry that the GM can't do it correctly; yes I know that this is fantasy and we have lots of latitude however we as players have to have some grounding and the laws of Physics are a good grounding.
I have done this to players on more than one occassion hehehehehehehehehe.
I remember that Rifts game, thankyouverymuch. I think you fried a cog in one of the other player's brain, not to mention made some of the other brain gears smoke.
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Remember the temporal wizard from Rifts? There was a spell where a temporal wizard could summon another version of himself from an alternate time line. I had that happen to a character once. It was funny, because his character started out human, and was warped into a somewhat demonic form by Coalition scientists. The human temporal wizard version who summoned him was a little freaked out at first, when this demonic version appeared, and when the character figured out what was going on, he started messin with his mind.
Good times.
DANGER WILL ROBBINSON DANGER!!!!!
In my game world the most powerful creatures (stronger than gods) come from the Time/ Space Conitnuum (Think The Q COntinuum form Startrek), and they put a serious hurt on anyone who messes with time travle
. . .
The other thing is: How many good movies about time travle have you seen?
I'd settle for using Quaruts from the Fiend Folio (revisited in the semi-recent Ecology of the Inevitable), if I wanted to discourage Time Travel. Advance them a bit if necessary and you've got a solid challenge or, at the highest of levels, one part of a solid challenge.
As for the movies aspect of your question, I'd have to answer none -- I'm not a movie person, frankly. However I have seen it handled tastefully and sensibly in other contexts. Chrono Trigger, on the Super NES, springs to mind. There's a bit of hand-waving and ignoring what might seem to be common sense, but there's nothing sensible about time travel anyway. David Drake's Lord of the Isles series includes a sorceress flung a thousand-odd years into the future, and more recently included a transdimensional time-traveling "adventure" in which the villain was an alternative future version of one of the main characters.
I've considered running a horror campaign in which the heroes are flung into the future to destroy evil despots who they later learn are themselves -- if nothing else so that I can watch the players squirm as they consider the paradox of trying to kill their past selves. One of the nastiest situations I can think of is the one where you know exactly what's going on, and thus have the power to change the outcome, but also know better than to do it. Of course, if they were smart, they could create clones of themselves and hide them where they knew they hadn't looked... but if they're smart enough to think of that solution they deserve it.
As long as you have fun, and your campaign doesn't devolve into All You Zombies, (I'm my mother and my father, and the guy who enabled me to go back in time, and...) I say you're fine.
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I never ran a time travel adventure, per se, but I have run adventures where the PCs might travel to alternate realities and within a given reality they (the PCs) seem to travel through time. E.g., The characters exit Shadowdale, Faerun v1 time 454 DR and enter Waterdeep, Faerun v97 time 979 DR ( and while attempting to return to v1 454 DR, they enter v12 121 DR)...conducting the adventure in this manner allows the perception of time travel with none of the nastiness of changing history, etc. It also allows for the interesting challenge of getting back to your original reality...
David Drake's Lord of the Isles series includes a sorceress flung a thousand-odd years into the future, and more recently included a transdimensional time-traveling "adventure" in which the villain was an alternative future version of one of the main characters.
(Thread Hijack)
How are Lord of the Isles and his other works? Have you gotten far in them? A friend gave me Lord of the Isles as a Christmas gift last year, but I haven't gotten far in it. He seems to go out of his way to use terminology that isn't strictly necessary, just to prove that he can, which really slows it down, in my opinion. But, I though David Farland was slow at first, too, and Runelords is one of my favorite series now. So, I'd just like a little insight about how the pacing goes later in the book.
(End Thread Hijack)
Ever read a short story called 'The Sound of Thunder'? It's about a trophy hunter that pays a time-travel agency to take him back to the Jurassic (or whatever) period so that he can shoot a tyrannasourus that is about to die anyway. When he sees the t-rex he becomes insanely terrified and steps off of the metal walkway (meant to protect the Jurassic environment from him) in his blind fear. Finally managing to stumble back onto the metal pathway and back into the time machine, he returns in shame to his own time to find that everything has changed. Examining the sole of his boot, he finds a single squashed butterfly from the ancient world.
A great story, but I've never considered running time travel games. Too many conundrums and potential headaches; some books and movies handle time travel very well but that's because the creator has complete control over every element of his/her story.
On a side note, I generally don't like the idea of time travel because I don't believe that it is possible. No matter how many times I hear a scientist talk about the 'time-space continium' or whatever, I just can't help but think 'but time is an abstract invention not a thing or force.' Thinking that anyone can ever travel through time is like thinking that two objects can simultaneously occupy the same space.
-TS
Ever read a short story called 'The Sound of Thunder'?
yeha I love Bradbury.
One thing people handle alot in time things is the paradox of a person touching themself. They did it that horrible Timecop movie and they did it in the recent Dr Who series. I personally believe that even if you did touch yourself in another time it wouldnt matter, for the simple reason that from second to second you are a different person. you are never the same person ever. your body is constantly changing growing and dying at the same time.just my theory anyway
I played in a game where the Forgotten Realms were being "terraformed" a few hundred square miles a day. After investigating we found out that a purple dragon, which had never existed in this reality, had been reforming Toril into a strictly lawful place. Rivers ran north/south or east/west. Trees grew 10 feet apart. Etc. An ancient red dragon, which was forbidden from time travel, flung the party back in time to a place where only the most ancient of beings existed. The rest of the party proceeded to kill the purple before it could ever exist in our time. I was a bard. I managed to seduce a couple of ladies who called themselves Sune and Lolth. Much fun was had. After the purple was slain, the red pulled us forward in time where the land was restored to normal. I worte psalms and prayers to Sune and Lolth, both of whom threatened to modify my manhood if anyone found out about what happened. I destroyed all my poetry and never told a soul. One of the best games I ever played in.
WM
On a side note, I generally don't like the idea of time travel because I don't believe that it is possible. No matter how many times I hear a scientist talk about the 'time-space continium' or whatever, I just can't help but think 'but time is an abstract invention not a thing or force.' Thinking that anyone can ever travel through time is like thinking that two objects can simultaneously occupy the same space.
-TS
Saern the Science Defender to the scene! I agree in the opinion that time travel isn't possible. At least, not like is presented in Hollywood and fiction. I'm not sure what may and may not be done, as I'm not omniscient, but the popular image of temporal backpacking seems to be wrong.
However, the Time-Space-Continuum does not, in and of its self, purport to allow time travel. There are high end researchers here and there who claim that it is possible, but their work is held in great controversy by most of the rest of the scientific body.
And your right, time is not a force, but your wrong that it doesn't exist beyond the realm of the abstract. Time is a dimension of movement, just like forward/back, left/right, up/down. The difference is that you can only go one way. And you can't stop. You always move at the same pace as everything else.
However, it does exist, as there is a present and past. The fact that you have a memory, and that this post even comes after yours, is proof that time exists. Now, the term "7:00 pm," is certainly a human abstraction.
Unlike M-theory and dark matter, this is pretty ironclad and a core scientific theory with nothing speculative about it. There may be people who attempt to work with and manipulate deeper deffinitions of "time", but at the level of deffinition presented here, it is scientific law, not theory.
The More You Know....
No, you're good Logos. A similar discussion came up on the boards about a month and a half ago, between Tequila and myself actually, and this seemed to be in the same vein. I simply was trying to shed some light on a subject when it seemed appropriate for the betterment of any reader's education.
And, you're quite possibly correct in the statement that no one really knows anything. No one reading this can prove that I, or anything else around you, truly exists. However, even if that's the case, it means nothing objectively, so while interesting, it does no one any good to ponder.
So, yes, back to D&D.
The thought mentioned on this board first really came to my head back when was still a big fan of Dragonlance, and I noticed that they wrote a lot of books set in many, many different time periods of Krynn, rather than relegating it all to dictation by naration and character. That was before I ever got interested in D&D itself, and when I did begin to play, it was only a matter of months before it popped into my head that an excellent way to reveal campaign setting history is through actually running adventures set in various time periods of the world. However, I've never really given any serious thought to developing such an adventure or campaign.
One thing that's always struck me as a point to really consider is technology level. In the aforementioned Dragonlance, it seemed that in the 10,000 or so year history of Krynn, the technology level has actually changed very little. Whereas Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms fully embrace the fact that there have been ice ages and stone ages and vast development of human (and other) cultures, much as in the real world. So, if you decided to go back and play through the Orcgate Wars, for example, you would have to decide what equipment options are available to the players. That was also before Karsus and his bid for godhood, so you might want to give some consideration to slightly different magical mechanics (they would be much more powerful). But, that last part all assumes a Forgotten Realms time-travel campaign.
How are Lord of the Isles and his other works? Have you gotten far in them? A friend gave me Lord of the Isles as a Christmas gift last year, but I haven't gotten far in it. He seems to go out of his way to use terminology that isn't strictly necessary, just to prove that he can, which really slows it down, in my opinion. But, I though David Farland was slow at first, too, and Runelords is one of my favorite series now. So, I'd just like a little insight about how the pacing goes later in the book.
(Hijack = "Resumed")
I enjoyed reading Lord of the Isle, and have read all of them that I've managed to find thus far (up throught the fifth or sixth in the series, I think). It's a bit formulaic in the structure -- everybody gets scattered in ones or twos, they go off and do interesting things, save people, and somehow all arrive at the scene of the big fight in time to kick butt and take names -- but that's ok for me because I find the characters to be likeable and fun to read, which is on top of my list of "important things" when I'm reading a book (it's why I've never gone back and reread any of David Eddings' works: I can't stand half the cast, most particularly Garion and Ce'Nedra.) The battle side of things is relatively realistic, to my perceptions, though I've never been in even a barroom brawl myself so it's more a matter of seeming plausible than anything else. I didn't find the style to be particularly ostentatious (though that probably doesn't mean much given that I preferred the term "ostentatious" over "show-off-y", sacrificing accessibility for the sake of preventing hyphenation.)
(/Hijack)
If I were going to base an adventure on going back in time, I'd probably do it in an infinite multiverse, such that their arrival in the past causes a split at their entry point, preserving the original, unadulterated timeline up to the point at which they left. That way, it doesn't matter if they render their births impossible or some other idiocy in that timeline, because they're not native to that one anyway. Otherwise, I'd just make it simple. Anyone whose existence becomes paradoxical never actually existed. Everything he "did" was still done, but only the Gods and the Quaruts know exactly how it happened.
I've wanted to run a time travel campaign on an alternate earth setting. Allowing the characters to interact with historical events seems like a cool way to learn about them.
I have this vision in my head of fantasy characters in a trench warfare scene with Fireballs and Cloudkills going off and swarms of crossbow bolts erupting from a machine gun nest.
The challenge for me seems to be finding a continuity thread to link the time frames and paring down to just a few to show to the players. My current idea is like the old TV show "Voyagers" with characters falling into a time frame to "fix" something (different mechanics than "Quantum Leap" but similar to that too). WWI at Verdun, Mecca just as Islam is starting, the voyage of Christopher Columbus, and the coronation of Charlemagne are the major scenes. I'm still debating these and looking for more dramatic choices.
Anyway thats my two cents on a time travel campaign
Stoner
There was this kid at the comic book store who said he could build anything. So my friend Eric told him "make me a flux capacitor" and the kid said "just get me the plans for it".
To which Eric responded "cool, I always wanted a Time Machine" but the kid didn't get the reference. I laughed until I stopped. Time travel is used in horrible superman sequels and crappy dragonlance novels because it's a cheap and shallow way to reverse bad decisions, etc.
My current idea is like the old TV show "Voyagers" with characters falling into a time frame to "fix" something
THANK YOU!!
I hve been trying to remember the name of that show forever. I watched it when I was a kid and could never remember what the name was.
No opinion on time travel myself but I will point out a couple published time travel adventures.
#1 was in Dungeon quite a ways back. Set in Dragonlance, I rembmer it being a cube of some type, in one of the time-travel points the players meet Huma.
#2 A module from Necromancer games (?) dealing with a tower that the PCs explore 3 different times using time travel. Seem to remember it had notes on how the PCs actions in one time would affect the module at later times.
I am totally agaisnt time travel; I hate it in most forms as it tends to be a cop out for a real storyline. To introduce my players to more or less other times; was more like a "Island that the World Forgot" or "Journey to the Center of the Earth" type thing where due to various loss of contact or geology various places or continents still have cavemen or aboringinal races or more advanced hidden races with a bit higher technology. Seems to work to fill the various times gap.
Really? I would think the opposite were true. Well in a good game I mean, doing time travel would actually require MORE of a storyline, and more prepwork.
If temporal stasis is an 8th level spell, and time stop (for a few rounds) takes a 9th level spell, certainly time travel is artifact and/or deity level magic, and rare to the point of impossibility, dangerous to the point of causing apocalyptic planar rifts.
Time travel is certainly a common device in SF literature and has old roots in medieval fantasy as well--cf. Twain's "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," Merlin aging backward in "Once and Future King," etc. As a literary device it is used to answer "what if" questions (what if someone with modern technological know-how lived in a primitive age), or to create interesting conundrums (what if I went back in time and somehow interfered with the circumstances that caused my parents to fall in love with each other), or to make a philosphical point (the causality chain that results from disruption of the past or transfer of something belonging in one time to another), or as a polemic which reveals a horrible apocalyptic future that humanity can change if it changes its ways (H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"). Use of these devices in a D&D campaign might create the same effects as you see in literature, but because of the interactive multiple agency involved in creating a D&D story, the results are not likely to be as effective. (The last of these four effects is more easily and effectively created through divinations, dreams, oracular visions, etc. anyway). At best, it comes off as mind-bending to the players, at worst, it seems like the DM is pulling the mother of all deus ex machina maneuvers. And time travel can get as stale as any other plot device. "Back to the Future" was a fun movie, but the sequels were increasingly lame.
I put time travel in the same category as the Far Realm. Hints of its existence enrich a campaign. One adventure involving it can be good if it's done well, but players tire of it fairly quickly.
Of course, different rates in the flow of time between planes create other possibilities that are more in keeping with the folkloric roots of medieval fantasy. Bran comes back to mortal lands after a stay in the Blessed Isles. When he asks after his friends, the people on the beach say they died long ago. His crewman hops out of the boat and goes ashore (despite being warned). When his foot touches the beach, he crumbles to dust, aging centuries in an instant. (Paraphrase of an old Irish legend). Celtic folklore about fairy mounds, etc. Rip van Winkle. Marion Zimmer Bradley (Mists of Avalon) does good things with this idea, Ellen Kershner (Thomas the Rhymer) also plays with it. This kind of time disjuncture is safer ground for DMs because the people involved only exist in one place at a particular time and cannot actually go backwards in time. So, you don't have to worry about someone going back in time and messing up the present by what he does in the past, and you don't have to worry about someone traveling to the future and interacting with himself there, or learning things about his future that cause him to change his fate. Linear causality is a lot less hassle to deal with, on the whole.
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Holy Crapcakes! After several months of nothing, this thread just exploded over the weekend. I had forgotten all about it. Nice to see so many opinions on the subject.
For the record, I love the idea of time travel, and have seen it done in ways I thought were very cool. The best example I can think of for that is the tv show Babylon 5 (the Babylon 4 storyline). I think that if it's done though, it has to be done with strict rules. Let your players know before hand that they either will or won't be able to change things. And do not give them unlimited access to the time travel capability. Use some NPC that can do it, but only at a high cost. And, of course, don't overdo it.
One idea I did have, was to have the PCs hired by a mysterious figure to travel through various points of a world's history (some of the key moments) and make a precise record of the things going on. They would have to sneak around in order to witness stuff, and be careful not to interact too much. After several such missions, however, they would start to realize that someone IS interfering, someone from close to their own time. They would then have to try to figure out who it is in order to try and stop them.
I agree Aberzombie; Babylon 5 did time travel well and it was all incorporated in the storyline wonderfully; the new Star Treks are a poor example.
Holy Crapcakes! After several months of nothing, this thread just exploded over the weekend. I had forgotten all about it. Nice to see so many opinions on the subject.
heh
yeah what happened I was wondering about chronomancy in 3.5 so instead of just making a post I thought I should search incase it had been asked once or a thousand times before. I found this one so just read and posted here.It drives me crazy on forums when you get the same question asked by different people in new threads like every week over and over because people are too lazy to bother checking search.
Also, as has been mentioned slightly before in this post, remember that it is completely possible to run a campaign set in a different time than the typical one for a certain world, without having to do time travel at all. Take, for example, my previous FR statement. You could run your party through the Orcgate Wars just to introduce them to the history there. Perhaps you run it as a short, even one-shot campaign, so that you can then run a longer campaign that deals with that bit of history extensively, and now the players really feel a connection to it, because "they were there", even if their characters weren't. Time travel doesn't have to come into play at all to adventure in different periods of history in one world, if that's all you want.
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yeah what happened I was wondering about chronomancy in 3.5 so instead of just making a post I thought I should search incase it had been asked once or a thousand times before. I found this one so just read and posted here.
As far as I know, there haven't been any official updates or conversions of the Chronomancer rules to 3.5E. I do recall toying around with a revision we 3E first came out, and I'm sure I have the files on that somewhere. Maybe I'll have to dig that stuff out and take another look at it.
( i seem to recall a TV show that more or less used this premise but i've been looking for it for a while and haven't even been able to find it's name, anyone help me out with that)
were you referring to that " Seven Days" show?
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I ran a campaign once that had a time based theme behind it. It was actually one of the most memorable with the old group I played with. It was a Palladium game and the group had been playing it, with the same characters somewhat regularly for just about five years at the time.
By that point I felt that I knew the players and their characters reactions to different things well enough that I could set them up a bit. During one of their travles they came across this land that was essentially desolate, had been wiped clean in this great battle nearly a century prior and was rumored to be haunted so few lived nearby. They were hired by a neighnoring kingdom to venture into the land and lay the spirits of the ruling families to rest and try and quiet the remenant anger that pervaded the land still.
Anyway, during their exploration of one of the crypts within the land they came across a mirror that showed a differing reflection on the otherside and came to the realization that it was a portal. Their thought at the time was that they were going to some sort of differing dimension where the war had not occured and they thought that perhaps they could find out how the two countries had remained allies and use that tactic to quell the spirits. Instead however they were sent back to a time just before the war.
The party was more then a little on the side of 'goody-goody' and there were a numbe of injustices that were in place in both kingdoms that I knew would be too much for the party not to try and fix. To make an already too long story a bit shorter the part didn't realize where they were until it was too late and they were able to see their actions be the cause of the war they had hoped to help the land recover from.
All in all it was a very sombering experience for the players and characters alike, but it was one of our most memorable campaigns. One of those things the players still talk about years later.
I've got an on and off again Marvel Superheroes campaign (using homebrewed system) that has just taken a turn down the time-travel path. The villain Time Master (from the comuter game Freedom Force) has sent the heroes back not only through time, but dimensions and reality.
They will come to find out that they are on Oerth, and that the largest city of note is Greyhawk. They will first meet Darl Quethos of the Library of Last Resort (who sends the heroes on a quest to claim an Ifreet), but eventually will fight numerous denizens of Dungeons and Dragons through a variety of power levels.
Eventually they will find their way home by locating the Chapel of Time (Istivin: City of Shadows 3-part campaign arc).
Nick Logan, writer of Libraryof Last Resort, made mention of the Time-Travel paradox in earlier threads. Its hard to do in D&D, but pull it off right and its very rewarding.
I am totally agaisnt time travel; I hate it in most forms as it tends to be a cop out for a real storyline. To introduce my players to more or less other times; was more like a "Island that the World Forgot" or "Journey to the Center of the Earth" type thing where due to various loss of contact or geology various places or continents still have cavemen or aboringinal races or more advanced hidden races with a bit higher technology. Seems to work to fill the various times gap.
Mostly I agree with you. I'd make the exception at specific locales where time is messed up in some manner. So different rooms of a castle can exist at different times etc. or the 'Ground Hog Day' adventure Ultradan mentions. A fixed place adventure involving time travel is not going to bring up paradoxs and it even seems more believable to me that some kind of an object in a place could be messing up time in that place compared to open ended time travel.
I like Time Travel, though more as a concept than in practice. Even fortelling the future and viewing (but not interacting with) the past can change a number of adventures. If you can view the past, mysteries tend to resolve simply, while the future allows speculation, gambling, and the like.
Still, Chrononauts (the card game), and Continuum becon-- I suspect that for me, a good time travel game needs to focus on time travel, rather than just toss it in as one element. If it is just a plot element [like the Dragon Lance Legends books], best to hand wave it and move along.
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I did a time travel one time that worked out fairly well. It was very similar to a Justice League cartoon episode in that they start off and everything is "normal" and there is an explosion of time as events re-organize themselves. The party had to make very difficult Will saves or believe that the resulting time was "normal". About half the party made the save which led to some interesting role-playing. They then had to go back in time to "fix" things and get back to the present. It was very memorable and a whole lot of fun.
Probably wouldn't want to do anything like that again for a long time though...