Time Travel to the not so distant future!

[Alex the Rogue]

Hello all!

I need some help with time travel. Have any of you done it as a GM? I have a group of players (10th level) that will time travel to the future, but the future will be a steampunk type of environment. I just need help on how to time travel to and from the present. Any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks!

[Magnu123]

Time Travel is, generally speaking, very dangerous territory for story-writing. There are multiple interpretations of how past and present affect each other through time travel. In any case, I'd suggest using rules similar to planar travel as far as the actual movement. Treat the future as a separate plane.

[Mirrel the Marvelous]

You could take a look at the end of all of the adventure paths see what would have happened if "the bad guys won!" as these guys weren't around to stop them!

If you're going down the steampunk route you could say that Alkenstar and Numeria have risen up to be the Inner Sea superpowers. Alkenstar with it's reliance on alchemical/technological advances and Numeria with it's scavenged half-understood super-science!

[sunbeam]

Mirrel the Marvelous wrote:

You could take a look at the end of all of the adventure paths see what would have happened if "the bad guys won!" as these guys weren't around to stop them!

If you're going down the steampunk route you could say that Alkenstar and Numeria have risen up to be the Inner Sea superpowers. Alkenstar with it's reliance on alchemical/technological advances and Numeria with it's scavenged half-understood super-science!

Does alchemy (as in extracts and potions) work in the mana wastes?

[Son of the Veterinarian]

You might want to track down a copy of Transdimentional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Palladium, as it had arguably the best time travel system in an RPG.

Essentially, time is like cement traveling through a coiled hose. Moving against the current in either direction even a few minutes takes power on a national scale. What you can do instead is break out of the "hose" and break into the next coil up or down, this makes a jump of 112(?) years.

Once in the new time you're back in the "flow". So if you spend five days in the new time, then try to jump back, you find you're five days further along in your original "loop".

[Mirrel the Marvelous]

The rules do not categorically say that extracts and potions work properly in the mana wastes however the mana wastes seem to only affect spellcasting itself which extracts and potions clearly are not.

The Inner Sea guide section on adventurers infers that there are many Alchemists in Alkenstar, which would infer that alchemy works just fine, otherwise they would have all up-sticks and left long ago.

[phantom1592]

Mirrel the Marvelous wrote:

The rules do not categorically say that extracts and potions work properly in the mana wastes however the mana wastes seem to only affect spellcasting itself which extracts and potions clearly are not.

A friend of mine is playing an alchemist and he seems to be constantly burned by the fact he does not have 'caster levels' in anything...

I'd say it's a double edged sword, if the rules won't let him be a 'caster' then I'd let him work his science in the wastes ;)

[EWHM]

Alex the Rogue wrote:

Hello all!

I need some help with time travel. Have any of you done it as a GM? I have a group of players (10th level) that will time travel to the future, but the future will be a steampunk type of environment. I just need help on how to time travel to and from the present. Any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks!

Yes, I've done time travel in D&D, specifically, in 2nd edition. I've done it into the past one a fairly extensive basis, and into the future on a couple of on-offs.

The time travel into the future was actually not intended by the players. Their characters had managed to journey outside of the multiverse to a parallel reality and had returned to their own, but the relative rates of time passage while they were away put them hundreds of years into their own reality's future. Their purpose after they realized what was going on was to gather information about how their world had gone so far downhill and return to their own time and attempt to contest that.
The time travel into that past has been accomplished by two means. One, by artifact, and generally by artifact that isn't the sort that you can hold onto very long. The second method is by 9th level wizard spell (in 3rd edition a 9th level cleric spell would also be acceptable). It is a ritual magic spell that requires that the 'stars be right' and it must be performed in one of a very short list (my setting had only 2) of places. It was also a very dangerous spell that the player character who cast it was warned, repeatedly, about how his goal was folly and would end in tears. In my games, reality is often reified as capital-R Reality, and will take active measures to preserve itself and limit paradox. In this case, the player had a pretty standard time travel goal (go back and prevent my major nemesis from being a problem in the present), but in fact eventually wound up being the author of his own woes and the architect of his nemesis' rise to power. One key element of Reality's warfare against its enemies (especially time travellers), is to do things like erase most of their memories for a good while. A time travelling PC should rarely move through time without massive disorientation.