I thought time travel would be a fun twist for my players, turns out it is more confusing than I thought. Does anyone have any solid advice about how to handle time travel?
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I'd start by considering what you want the time travel to achieve - is it travel into the future or the past? Is it just so the PCs can explore a historical/future setting, or so that they can alter past events? If the latter then you need to decide if/how you want these changes to effect the present and how to resolve any paradoxes that are created.
You may also wish to give some consideration to how you want timetravel to work - if they're only going forward in time then there's very little problem, all the trouble starts when they travel backwards in time. I'd strongly advocate that any travel back through time immediately and irrevocably results in the universe(multiverse) forking into two branches at the point in time they travel back to, and any changes occur in the new branch - if they then travel back to the future, even if it's just returning to their original time, then that occurs in the new branch. They've left their original branch forever, they no longer exist there (from the point in time at which they left), and whatever changes they make in the past (in the new branch) have no effect on the original branch.
I included a tiny bit of time travel in my version of Age of Worms (specifically reworking the "flashback" scene in the Library of Last Resort), and it was *very* tricky to make work. Running a whole campaign, and ensuring things stay consistent & logical, would (IMO) be a nightmare.
Dude, you gotta maintain the space-time continuum.
I thought time travel would be a fun twist for my players, turns out it is more confusing than I thought. Does anyone have any solid advice about how to handle time travel?
Tips for Time Travel in a Game:
1) Don't do time travel in a game. It is a PITA.
2) If you DO do time travel in a game, go SO FAR into the ancient past that nothing the players do will come back to bite your continuity in the ass.
3) If you DO do time travel in a game and you go to the future, make sure that your characters all die there. Going to the near future means when and if they return you can have all sorts of headaches since they WILL learn things that will give them advantages in the past. Even half way intelligent players will try to make sure to do so.
OR make sure they know that they occupy one of 'many possible futures' and then when they return to their past/present they will not know if anything the know or did will ever actually happen in their 'core' timeline.
4) NEVER allow anything they aquire in another time to come back with them. Give them some line about chrono resonance transferance conflict or other magical buzzword. Tell them their stuff came because the time effect that brought them hear moved their personal aura's and the items steeped in them but once they were 'out of the correct flow' that their aura's were 'contained' so nothing new they have comes back. It will avoid guns or lasers coming back in time or books of ancient lost lore from coming forward, etc.
5) Ideally decide if you want the players changing history or not. If not then they go to a 'parallel' timeline. If they do then be prepared to really think through the repercussions as they cascade down the time streams.
Example: It could be a real laugh if say a player 1/2 orc kills some orc in the past and the moment the orc dies the half orc ceases to exist. Give the party a chance to raise the dead orc and then the player 1/2 orc will poof back into existance. Or the same with a half elf or any race really. Get creative.
Example: It could be a real laugh if say a player 1/2 orc kills some orc in the past and the moment the orc dies the half orc ceases to exist. Give the party a chance to raise the dead orc and then the player 1/2 orc will poof back into existance. Or the same with a half elf...
Alternatively, the moment the orc dies, the half-orc character is suddenly a human or half-elf.
The only way I've run time travel successfully in a fantasy game was basically by rehashing the plot of A Sound of Thunder.
The PCs go back in time, and do what they'd intended to do, but their actions have a major effect on the timeline, which you (the GM) have already predetermined.
They return to their original time to find that the world is very different, and probably not to their liking. They then endeavor to go back in time again to prevent themselves from going back in the first place.
They succeed, and the timeline is restored, perhaps with a very minor change to underscore the disaster they averted.
The way I ran it...
The PCs accidentally went back in time 700 years, and caused a ruckus during the signing of a peace treaty. This treaty had formed the main empire of the campaign world out of seven competing petty kingdoms. The disturbance at the signing caused the dignitaries to head back home without signing the treaty, and the Great Human Empire never formed.
The PCs returned to their own timeline to find that their home town was now an orc city, and that all the humans were dead an/or enslaved. See, 400 years ago, when the Orcish Lands attempted to invade the Human Lands, the combined armies of the Great Human Empire stopped the Orcish advance and won the war. In the "new" timeline, there was no Great Human Empire, so the Orcish armies crushed each of the seven petty kingdoms individually, and now Orcs ruled all the land.
The PCs then had to go back in time again, to stop themselves from disrupting the ceremony. They succeeded, and the status quo was again restored.
Just make sure the player characters don't interact with their past or future selves. If we can learn anything from Doc Brown, bad things will ensue. Like Biff taking over Hill Valley with the 2000 Almanac.
I thought time travel would be a fun twist for my players, turns out it is more confusing than I thought. Does anyone have any solid advice about how to handle time travel?Tips for Time Travel in a Game:
1) Don't do time travel in a game. It is a PITA.
This is the best advice for adding time travel to almost anything.
Time Travel works best, in my experience, if they wind up in an Alternate 1985. Send them to the past? It's the same past they had from whence they came, but as soon as they arrive it diverges from the main timeline.
Having a single, contiguous timeline and PCs running around throughout it in a non-linear fashion can only lead to Entropy =\
Gurps might be a better system for it. I think there might be others that are good at time travel.
I guess I should have said, I haven't had my players time jump yet, I've only begun to write it down in preparation for our session, we play only when we can get everybody together. Lately it's been every couple of months. That's not the point, the point is I have plenty of time to plan ahead.
I want my players to travel a few hundred years into the future (the story revolves around dragons and their lifespan is taken into account). I've given considerable thought to the multiverse theories, and am planning on running that route.
Any other advice on the subject would be awesome. Oh, and I have yet to figure how to return to the "present". Thanks a bunch.
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Find a time travel movie you like ...
Back to the Future
Time Cop
The Time Machine
Ect
Adopt the rules of time travel there and play as you wish.
Find a time travel movie you like ...
Back to the Future
Time Cop
The Time Machine
EctAdopt the rules of time travel there and play as you wish.
+ 1
This
Star Trek TNG had a number of senarios, trapped in time loops, alternative dimensions, and so forth.
Terminator had time travel that eliminated the possibility of any gear moving through time not to mention dispite changing events in the past "fate" still fixed things to be just about the same.
Travel to the future isn't possible because the future doesn't exist. What you think is the future is merely an alternate universe, and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's future.
Travel to the past is possible, but nothing in the past can be changed because it's already all happened. That sandwich on the table? You can't eat it. You can't even move it. Its status in the past is fixed and unalterable until whatever actually happened to the sandwich happens. If you go back into the past and can interact with/change things, it's not really the past, but instead is an alternate universe and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's past.
:)
I thought time travel would be a fun twist for my players, turns out it is more confusing than I thought. Does anyone have any solid advice about how to handle time travel?
Why does time travel have to be difficult? Are you going forward, backward, or both? Are you going to time travel for a short period of time? I have done this with the group I GM. There was a dwarf (not from thier time period) that created steampunk like gadgets and gizmos. He needed to get metals that have not been discovered in the groups time period. The dwarf had a way/portal to time travel in and traveled with the group. The group traveled to the future 1920's, ran a short quest, and got back to their time period and nothing bad happened.
Time travel can be a great way to take a break from the their world. Just make sure to get pictures from the net and do some research into the new time period. I did not allow magic and they had to be creative with disguises etc. They enjoyed it and I might do something like that again, but maybe with a UFO ala Expedition to the Barrier Peaks...
If you want your PCs to time travel, run a game of C°ntinuum. You'll never want to mess with time travel again.
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Travel to the future isn't possible because the future doesn't exist. What you think is the future is merely an alternate universe, and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's future.
Travel to the past is possible, but nothing in the past can be changed because it's already all happened. That sandwich on the table? You can't eat it. You can't even move it. Its status in the past is fixed and unalterable until whatever actually happened to the sandwich happens. If you go back into the past and can interact with/change things, it's not really the past, but instead is an alternate universe and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's past.
:)
How do you know events in your present aren't predetermined based on you're previous trip to the past? The tree fell diverting the river to bring water to your village was there because you planted it while traveling in the past.
Multiverse theory.
I am not sure it's possible to play a game with almost no limits on the actions the players can take, while maintaining a timeline that hasn't been altered (the tree falling that was planted by you is an example of this). If it is, it requires a bit of metagaming on the players parts.
For tabletop stuff, I'm a fan of alternate timelines. Once they go back into the past, they have created a separate line of reality. If they go back immediately, they might come to the 2nd present that is identical to the 1st, but small changes can create huge waves, so even the tiniest interaction with the past could change the present. A Sound of Thunder is a good example of this.
In that book, they explain how killing a butterfly might kill food for a frog, that might be food for a bird, that might be food for a tiger, that might be food for a human (or some order). Next thing you know, everything is different.
You will need to consider what will happen if they meet a previous when of themselves.
You could also go the "TIME FIXES ALL" route. Regardless of what they do, time kills people, saves people, or otherwise alters events so that the present is maintained. I always found this wonky, because of continuity and the concept of time and how each "present" is a present into itself, yadda yadda yadda.
Well, Arnold managed to go back in time despite being made of equipment. Apparently synthetic flesh provides a buffer. If I was in that universe, I'd invent a duffel bag made of synthetic flesh and fill it with laser guns.Find a time travel movie you like ...
Back to the Future
Time Cop
The Time Machine
EctAdopt the rules of time travel there and play as you wish.
+ 1
This
Star Trek TNG had a number of senarios, trapped in time loops, alternative dimensions, and so forth.
Terminator had time travel that eliminated the possibility of any gear moving through time not to mention dispite changing events in the past "fate" still fixed things to be just about the same.
Exactly!
Run it like this. Go insane.
the thing with time travel is
you cant overthink itjust roll with it and see what happens
and above all try not to do anything retarded
Probably the easiest time travel adventure hook is to have your party travel back in time to become those legendary heroes they were read about as children. To basically ensure that the present is correct.
Or
Have them father or mother their own lineage to ensure they are born.
Run through the future only to comeback and be treated as insane due to their ramblings about the Drown taking over
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
Someone had to say it.
"Sound of Thunder"-esque scenarios can be awesome but have to be carefully plotted and are pretty railroady.
Time-travel is BAD, m'kay?
Time travel is fun, but you need tobe really clever, or you will ruin the suspense-of-disbelief that already exists in your campaign
Example: It could be a real laugh if say a player 1/2 orc kills some orc in the past and the moment the orc dies the half orc ceases to exist. Give the party a chance to raise the dead orc and then the player 1/2 orc will poof back into existance. Or the same with a half elf...Alternatively, the moment the orc dies, the half-orc character is suddenly a human or half-elf.
Or, better yet, when you bring the orc back to life, a human or half-elf in the party (aside from the half-orc character that changed with the sudden death), suddenly changes to a half-orc.
If you plan out the adventure before-hand and have the major details worked out it can be done. Plan on doing some major railroading though and make sure the PCs understand that, otherwise it will be a giant mess.
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Infinite universes model.
Then you can screw the past all you want, but all it does is put you on a different timeline. Your past never changed, and by traveling into the past, you are more like a dimensional traveler than a real time traveler.
The problem is... how do you get back?
Then go watch a few episodes of Sliders.
I had Time Travel in my last Scifi game, it lasted one session and everyone was confused at first but then really got into it. They found an alien artifact and were fighting their way back to their shuttle when an alternate reality version of the team popped in and helped clear the numbers with a gross display of technological power.
One of the players was a geneticist (and a little crazy to boot) his alt version made his way to himself and told him how to activate the device. Benny Hill hilarity ensues.
The first time shift, I had everyone pass their character sheets to the left and described them totally differently from how they were portrayed race, gender, robotic.....
It was good times!
Not something for a novice GM that's for sure.
I would make time travel very difficult. Something that can only be done once or twice. Maybe it needs a rare component to a spell. Maybe the planets have to be in a special alignment. Whatever.
Secondly, have a good idea of what you want the characters to change. Changing anything else is difficult due to time being "elastic". For example, you might go back in time and kill Hitler only to find Eva Braun has completely taken his place. Some events are fixed and HAVE to happen but perhaps a time traveler's action can forestall an event, like how they kept pushing the date for Judgment Day farther into the future with the Terminator series.
I would let they carry back some toys with them. For example, in my campaign it started off with no guns. The characters had an adventure where they traveled into the future where guns were common. It was also a dystopia where the bad guys won. They got the items they needed to stop the bad guys and went back to their own time--with some black powder.
How would you all handle time travel from a mechanical perspective? I suppose it would be too much to even devise a very high level spell that would allow time travel.
I have no interest in sending my PCs back in time, but I have a player who is interested in bringing a character from the past into the campaign. It is a great idea in the context of the campaign, and my idea is to send a high level NPC back in time to get her (that is, the PC).
Here's one idea I found online: "The Fulcrum of Ages"
The NPC (a virtuosic teleporter) could have a modified version of this device hidden away somewhere.
Any other thoughts?
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The irony of travelling exactly 3 years into the past in a thread about time travel.
So what I'm getting out of this and the FTL thread is that I need to run a game where I maximize travel opportunities. I've played with enough crazy settings and games I feel equipped to handle it.
*Time Travel, include as many of the theories as I can, Infinite Realities and time paradox stuff from screwing up your own timeline based on how the travel is done.
*Intersteller/Intergalactic Travel, realistic, sci-fi, warp, ftl drive, worm holes, etc
*Dimension Travel, whatever that means
*Planar Travel, because the Great Wheel is Awesome.
*Reality Travel, visit who other universes with totally different rules, etc
*Outside of Reality Travel, because why not?
*Fourth Wall travel, probably not, I saw The Gamers.
*Convert to a Different Game Travel, probably just a fun way to handle Reality travel, so not explicitly a available so much as a mechanism to handle others.
Did I miss anything?
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Here's one idea I found online: "The Fulcrum of Ages"
so it the tardis predy much so could you make a doctor who npc who is imortal and can travel exactly where he wants and his is a graden of time.
I did something completly crazy with my players. We had a book where they created a world. Each week, the book would move from one player to another. The goal was to create a world with history, event, character etc.
When we got bored, we played in this world, creating event, creating city, village, people.
I did this for one year, and finally got a good world with some crazy ignored thing. I took the book, and made a Timeline with what they wrote. EAch character (at each level) was registred in a ''book of character''.
When I had enough material, I builded my campaign. Each little event, one-shot, adventure, was integrated. They could alter history by moving from character to other character they played. Since every event was very detailled (thank to our note taker!) we knew what would happen if Y did X.
An exemple was when they came on a blocked road. They knew that their ''ancestors'' were attacked by a bunch of stone giant who create an avalanch trap (random encounter). So they got back in time, did the random encounter (now a planified encounter) to stop the giant from creating their trap.
Or when the diplomat from another one-shot got killed by an assassin, sending two country in a never ending war. They had to go back in time to stop that never ending war to save their futur country from being crush under the army of a great warlord from another one-shot. The warlord was a orc slave, one the pc bought and tortured for fun. When he got bored, he abandonned him to his death. But he survived! Yep... I was crazy.
In the Dragon lance novels, it is purported by the mages that you can't alter the timeline too much, your actions in the world are like throwing pebbles in a stream, sure ripples are created,but the river flows on.
It should also be noted that pathfinder has a time travel device, the artifact is called the scepter of ages (I think) and it allows specific or random time travel. It is also a badass weapon that causes each point of damage to age the person hit.
My advice would be to establish rules and stick with them. There has to be some level of internal consistency with the way your time travel works, or your players will lose their agency and suspension of disbelief, or just be overwhelmed by the incomprehensible level of possibilities.
Try to look at some different media with time travel of some kind for inspiration! Chrono Trigger had fixed points in spacetime you could move between, and while you could change the future from the past, you couldn't go back and undo things you already did, because the moment you enter a time period is always after you last left it. In homestuck, time players can jump forward and back in time, but have to create stable time loops to avoid creating bad alternate timelines where everything goes wrong. Find a ruleset you like, or several you like, and assemble it from there!
I would suggest if you are going to use time travel you use the "infinite multiverse theory" wherein there are an infinite number of possible multiverses and all possible things that could occur do occur.
When the players time travel they would jump to alternate realities wherein those choices exist.
Travel to the future isn't possible because the future doesn't exist. What you think is the future is merely an alternate universe, and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's future.
Travel to the past is possible, but nothing in the past can be changed because it's already all happened. That sandwich on the table? You can't eat it. You can't even move it. Its status in the past is fixed and unalterable until whatever actually happened to the sandwich happens. If you go back into the past and can interact with/change things, it's not really the past, but instead is an alternate universe and you're in that universe's present, not your universe's past.
:)
Actually time travel into the future is the only type of time travel we can actually verify. Since time naturally flows forward we are all in fact traveling in time to the future. Traveling into the past is the tricky part. There you have to deal with both the grandfather clause and the butterfly effect.
Found this thread after my players realizing they may be able to reverse Aroden’s presumed death and therefore stop Golarian’s WorldWound.
I DM sandbox style, taking player cues & PC actions to build consequences, etc. I have a very rough plan of BBEG’s goals & strategies, as well as his major villain underlings. Those continue moving forward if PCs decide not to act, but they decide the camera focus, so to speak. I also keep my baddies just above PCs’ level, so they’re always learning too.
6 months ago, PCs found secret entrance to BBEG’s lair LONG before I planned. So I wanted to reward them for creativity with good intell but also realize he was too powerful for them. BBEG had called & bound a CR 15 Glabrezu (sp?) demon (2x his own level!) to regain his true soul. PCs only knew they had this incredibly overwhelmingly powerful demon blocking their path. I had it truthfully answering their questions re BBEG’s Plan A - their reward.
They’ve now recently experienced BBEG’s Plan B succeeding - he was able to reverse time across the multiverse for 6 seconds (1 round). Problem is, they happened to be at edge of plane & locks holding Rovagug! So the guardians there AND Rovagug’s allies also now know time travel is possible. I’m still working on those complications (ie, Inevitables? Aeons?)
Thinking thru the scenarios, I just realized today that the BBEG’s desired time jump is only a couple centuries before Aroden’s failed prophecied return, and the WorldWound.
* PCs might want to allow BBEG to time travel but then stop him AND try to figure out why Aroden didn’t return (& help him).
* Good aligned orgs/demi-gods/gods might want that, too.
* Or, what if Glabrezu demon helped such a low-level (at that time) BBEG specifically to allow time travel that CREATED Aroden’s demise and WorldWound (like Hellraiser, in order to open the gates of Hell).
* Or worse, Rovagug’s allies reverse time to before his trap to stop it.
From all the prior advice in this thread, sounds like I should either play it out as alternate timeline (no going back again, but create whole new world that may be far better or far worse!), or, like Terminator ripples can’t stop the river & major events still happen but differently.
Thoughts? Suggestions?