It seems that there are a few kinds of time travel established in games, stories, and movies:
A) The Immutable Flow - the time travelers are either mere observers, unable to change anything, or any changes they do make lead inevitably to the same outcome. Time was always laid out along a specific route, and cannot be altered meaningfully. Example: The time travelers stop Oswald from shooting JFK. A bystander in the crowd does instead.
B) Agent of Destiny - the time travelers can interact with the past, but their actions do not change the present or future, rather their actions were necessary in order for the present and future that they knew to occur at all. In essence, they had already traveled into the past and done those things, they're simply catching up with their own actions. This approach is similar to A but offers the illusion of agency. Example: A time traveler has a dalliance in baroque France and after returning to the present they learn that the offspring they fathered was the direct ancestor of Napoleon.
C)Paradox Principle - time travelers can change the past, with potentially drastic consequences for the present and future. These changes can also have drastic consequences for the travelers themselves. Any change which would prevent the traveler from existing will cause the traveler to cease to exist, either gradually or suddenly. Example: A time traveler interferes in a pitched battle in Segoku era Japan, and due to that interference, an ashigaru who happens to be their multiple great grandfather is killed. The traveler is erased from existence as a result, all memories and physical evidence likewise vanish. The undoing of their existence does not, somehow, include undoing the action that led to their removal.
D)No Rules - Time Travelers can do anything to change the past without consequence. Their actions can cause drastic change to the present and future, but the travelers themselves are insulated from such changes. Perhaps they exist outside of time, or their actions create a new timeline that they exist in from that point forward. Example: Time Travelers drive off colonists from settling along the eastern coast of the new world, and as a result the United States is never formed and their parents were never born. The travelers continue to not only exist, but have memories and artifacts of the U.S.
To those who have used time travel in their games, which style do you prefer, and why?
I have learned to not use time travel in my games. At all. Period.
Unless you're playing Dr. Who, the RPG, no system should allow time travel. It's a mess waiting to happen that will violate logic one way or another.
Love time travel. I use variant B. No possibility of messing up the past or creating a paradox, and the ability to travel in time is usually a plot device rather than something under PC control, so no worries on that score either.
I have learned to not use time travel in my games. At all. Period.
Unless you're playing Dr. Who, the RPG, no system should allow time travel. It's a mess waiting to happen that will violate logic one way or another.
I find that logic is rarely preserved in in any TTRPG for very long. I'm more concerned with fun.
I find that logic is rarely preserved in in any TTRPG for very long. I'm more concerned with fun.
If you can get it to work, all the power to you. I just find that aside from stories specifically made to involve time travel (And even then), stories of time travel (Any story, not just tabletop) add nothing but headaches and needless complexity that wrecks narrative flow and verisimillitude. It turns serious stories into comedies and satires.
We don't tend to use a lot of time travel in my games, but it did get kind of used in a WoD game that my friends were playing in that I joined after the fact (the game that my character Varian Blackthorne, who I've mentioned a few times around the boards, is from)
It wasn't so much time travel as (from my understanding of it coming in afterwards) the elder beings that control the cosmos essentially hitting the reset button but pulling the characters out of time until it hit the present day, then dropping them back in. Everything in their hometown was similar, but there were minor changes (new names for shops, stuff like that). Kind of more like shunting them into an a parallel universe... except that then they started finding some of the big changes. Like the fact that Canada was now a brutally harsh Scandinavian colony ruled with an iron fist and permanently locked in a state of unnatural winter (interestingly, what really bothered the group about this was that it meant Firefly had never been created... my character, having missed the big change, didn't understand what they were ranting about).
The big secret behind it all, and what makes it more like dimension hopping rather than time travel, was that it turned out that there were pre-existing versions of their characters in this world. Same templates, similar abilities, but it was what would have happened if they'd never met and gone through their adventures together and looked out for each other. Essentially each of them had been twisted and broken and become true monsters... the Changeling was the power behind the Canadian dictatorship and was in the process of becoming a True Fae. Unfortunately we never got to find out what happened to the others, as the game went on indefinite hiatus around the point we found out about the changeling, and hasn't restarted in the last two years.
I find that logic is rarely preserved in in any TTRPG for very long. I'm more concerned with fun.If you can get it to work, all the power to you. I just find that aside from stories specifically made to involve time travel (And even then), stories of time travel (Any story, not just tabletop) add nothing but headaches and needless complexity that wrecks narrative flow and verisimillitude. It turns serious stories into comedies and satires.
Surprisingly, I've had the opposite experience. I've used it many times, in different games and systems (each of the variants I've listed), and never had any problem with it. Indeed, it's actually created unique narrative structures and situations that most likely would have been impossible otherwise.
Then again I tend to enjoy non-linear story structure.
I had a campaign that involved time travel in its backstory. Each instance of time travel created a new world.
Timeline 1
High tech humans developed a time ship and fired it up. Their small scale tests hadn't revealed that the principle of time travel sent objects through the flesh of a Lovecraftian god. When the ship made its first time hop, everyone inside was exposed to infinite horror.
Timeline 2
The ship crashed in the distant past and leaked reality-warping madness into a primitive world. Mixed with the beliefs of both the travelers and the inhabitants, the warping effect produced a world overrun with magic and mythic beasts.
Eventually, necromancers came to power, and over thousands of years destroyed all life on the planet (except for a few small populations kept for food by vampires and such, and even those were dwindling). A bunch of powerful necromancers raised the wreck of the ancient time ship and used it to open a gate to a time when necromancy was still weak.
Timeline 3
A thriving fantasy world full of the usual fantasy tropes, and there are several portals to this strange 'Dead World' from which hordes of undead periodically invade. Yes, it's entirely possible for people in this timeline to meet undead versions of themselves from the necromancy-dominated timeline.
In this timeline, the wreck of the time ship remains undisturbed, undiscovered...
I had a campaign that involved time travel in its backstory. Each instance of time travel created a new world.
Timeline 1
High tech humans developed a time ship and fired it up. Their small scale tests hadn't revealed that the principle of time travel sent objects through the flesh of a Lovecraftian god. When the ship made its first time hop, everyone inside was exposed to infinite horror.
Timeline 2
The ship crashed in the distant past and leaked reality-warping madness into a primitive world. Mixed with the beliefs of both the travelers and the inhabitants, the warping effect produced a world overrun with magic and mythic beasts.
Eventually, necromancers came to power, and over thousands of years destroyed all life on the planet (except for a few small populations kept for food by vampires and such, and even those were dwindling). A bunch of powerful necromancers raised the wreck of the ancient time ship and used it to open a gate to a time when necromancy was still weak.
Timeline 3
A thriving fantasy world full of the usual fantasy tropes, and there are several portals to this strange 'Dead World' from which hordes of undead periodically invade. Yes, it's entirely possible for people in this timeline to meet undead versions of themselves from the necromancy-dominated timeline.
In this timeline, the wreck of the time ship remains undisturbed, undiscovered...
That sounds pretty fun. An interesting take on the consequences of unbridled experimentation.
I will say, never let players even have the tiniest chance to get time travel equipment of any sort. Players will smash any plot line to pieces by constantly jumping around in time.
I've been in a game wherein option D was in play - mostly because option C came off as the DM just messing around with players for doing it in the first place. Unless they specifically decided to pull a Grandfather Paradox, we were generally not touching the "character X has been wiped" scenario due to the mess it would make with each player's character.
The adventure did vary in that each change resulted in another alternate history/future(ala Quantum many Worlds) - not just a single history re-written. The game became as much about finding our "original" home as what we did or did not do. I would say it probably bore resemblance to the old "Sliders" TV show in that way.
In another game I ran, time travel was used to as way make the switch from 2nd edition to 3rd edition D&D. Essentially, the characters recovered a magical artifact that survived a planned destruction and when brought to the present, rewrote the rules but didn't change what has happened before. I guess that would fall closer to version B since it was planned all along.
I did option B in my Reign of Winter Campaign.
The party from the present met young Baba Yaga in the first world and an Ulfen PC who hated Irrisen and the witches got her mad at him while letting her know about a future plot against her while another PC had a fling with her. So She got tipped off about a future/present plot against her which she could then prepare for and a reason to come conquer the Linnorm Kingdoms in the Future/Past and set the other PC's daughter up as an oppresor of the Ulfen's ancestors.
I liked thinking of the Dancing Hut as a TARDIS and Baba Yaga as a timelord with many faces and personalities through time. Woman, Hag, Ogre, etc.
Option D is a great way to switch campaign settings.
Start off in Ptolus and run the Demon God's Fane module which sends you back in time 10,000 years to mess with a demon army fight, come back and now you are in Eberron but with all your old Ptolus stuff, including possibly clerics and Paladins of Lothian.
In another game I ran, time travel was used to as way make the switch from 2nd edition to 3rd edition D&D. Essentially, the characters recovered a magical artifact that survived a planned destruction and when brought to the present, rewrote the rules but didn't change what has happened before. I guess that would fall closer to version B since it was planned all along.
That's a pretty clever idea. I'm a bit envious.
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With all of the flaws it had, I really liked the 2nd edition "Chronomancer" supplement. Sadly, I never got the chance to use it...
I also liked the 2nd edition "Arcane Age" supplements for the Forgotten Realms, which mentioned the possibility of time travel (never got an opportunity to use them either).
Arcane Age was superb, both eras.
Mine only experience GMing a Time Travel was using only Alternate Future Lines:
Party crossed a portal and instead find themeself in a distant future where the echos of their "present" actions have brought to a very apocalyptic scenario. They have to figure out what happened in that timeline and find a way to go back to their own time to fix the things.
ie. the Drawrf King PC really wanted to kill the Undead Princess Kingdom Patron to which they are Vassal. He discovered that in this future he actually destroyed her, but doing so has left his own kingdom vulnerable to another bigger enemy who was only waiting for the undead princess to be removed.
With all of the flaws it had, I really liked the 2nd edition "Chronomancer" supplement. Sadly, I never got the chance to use it...
I also liked the 2nd edition "Arcane Age" supplements for the Forgotten Realms, which mentioned the possibility of time travel (never got an opportunity to use them either).
It's funny you mention those supplements, because they were the basis for setting up the change-over I mentioned above. A chronomancer character manipulated the party into traveling back to Netheril (hence we had a chance to use the settings and rules for Arcane Age). In the process one of the characters managed to snatch one of the famed Nether Scrolls, and bringing it back to the present is what set off the change. The other twist was that the chronomancer turned out to be a "future self" of one of the PCs; and they wound up fighting him as a result of his manipulations.
Also, thank you, Scythia.