Chronomancy [Archive] - Wizards Community

Chronomancy [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
AgravaneThane
05-24-07, 06:28 PM I have a potential situation brewing in one of my games. A player is looking into time travelling to prevent a really nasty chain of events that culminated in Incursion in the realms and nearly caused complete devastation. I was wondering if anyone had any source material I could pull from. I have the Chronomancy D20 book and what little was published in 2nd ed. Also, how would you guys (and gals) handle chronomancy in your game? Do the gods allow it? Do they remember? Do the PC's remember? How does it affect the time stream? Thanks in advance.
UltimateReality
05-24-07, 06:47 PM Time travel does not happen in my game precisely because I don't want to deal with the headaches and paradoxes that it entails. So I guess the gods don't allow it. (Sorry I can't be of more help.)
Phrennzy
05-24-07, 07:20 PM Time Travel affects everyone unless they are protected somehow from the flow of time.

Paradoxes run rampant without protection:

1. A dragon is born.
2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant.
3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg.
4. Dragon is not born.
5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace.
6. PCs have no reason to travel back in time because populace not enslaved.
7. PCs do not travel back in time, and do not kill egg.
8. See #1. Repeat.

Now with protection, the PCs will see the changes and remember what had been their prior. This can have horrible effects - situations can be made much worse:

1. A dragon is born.
2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant.
3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg.
4. Dragon is not born.
5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace.
6. lack of the dragon's presence did not keep down local population of orcs.
7. Orcs run rampant, outbreeding the local populace and eventually enslaving the humans.
8. PCs travel back in time and kill the orc tribes.
9. The orc tribes did not exist, so the populace is free.
10. Populace grows quickly, and becomes large city.
11. Evil cult of Erythnul moves into city, begins to spread plague.
12. City overrun with plague, which spreads around the world through it's trade routes. Worldwide plague.
13. PCs travel Back in time and stop cultists.
14. PCs infected with plague.
15. Plague Delirious PCs set incorrect temporal coordinates and are spread throughout time, spreading the plague with them.
16. Plague adapts to time travel and become Chronal Epidemic, affecting alternate time lines and parallel dimensions.
17. Universe dies.

Go watch The Butterfly Effect - Ashton Kutcher. Very good movie about time travel and having the best of intentions.
kentonblack
05-24-07, 09:03 PM 17. Universe dies.

I laughed so hard that coke came out my nose.Damn you.

You truly are one of the most conniving DM's I may have ever had the pleasure of meeting. My hat is off to you.
AgravaneThane
05-24-07, 09:20 PM Actually, I was thinking that I would probably allow my player to accomplish exactly what he has in mind. I'll let him kill the baddie and alter history. Heck, I'll even let him keep his memories. However, the only "present" he can return to is the one he's from. The way I see it, he made his reality an alternate reality. Since he is, was, and always shall be a part of that reality, he's stuck there.... permanently. Life goes on, just not for him.
blade_runner
05-24-07, 09:26 PM That is a good idea, and the exact opposite of what I would have done. I would have had the timeline split, but made him unable to return to his own timeline (he fractured the space time continuum, he has to stay in the line of events he created.)

He could travel to any point he wanted in that timeline (of course, that could lead back to him going back in time to stop himself altering the timeline in the first place, but that's not my problem:P)
Eberik
05-24-07, 10:02 PM There is a chronomancer PrC in Swords and Sorcery's Advanced Players Handbook, and I also have one I have been developing for a homebrew. The S&S one is better then mine for a few good reasons, so look for that one, and if need be, I can send you mine.
Ainamacar
05-25-07, 12:51 AM In my campaigns time-travel does not change the timestream, you simply participate in it. The catastrophe you go back in time to try and change does not actually change, for instance.

This has a few effects. First, you avoid paradoxes in the story. If the players *try* to cause them, the inherently self-consistent universe prevents it from happening. This takes a light touch as DM (especially to avoid railroading), but is possible by keeping track of player knowledge. Past events about which they have specific and detailed knowledge should be avoided if possible. (This usually requires keeping a firm grip on the method the characters use to time travel.) However, there is almost always at least a bit of wiggle room since player knowledge of a character's actual situation is so abstract, and even a character's actual knowledge can come from fallible sources. And keeping that wiggle room in mind is important, so as not to reflexively squish a character (you know, with a meteor that comes out of nowhere!) if they try to change things. If the players have no prior knowledge about a specific past situation, then you can hash out the consequences later. So, basically, epistemology is your friend. :)

The specific flavor it adds to the campaign world is one I like. While changing the past is a staple of many fantasy and sci-fi settings, I feel it robs the sense of meaning and accomplishment for the characters, or the setting in general. Fixing the past isn't so great if someone can just go mess it up again. In other words, I find the lack of an identifiable "real", in any permanent sense, timeline hugely unsatisfying on nearly every metaphysical level. That's easily the main reason I treat time this way, even if it makes some things harder on me as DM. (Naturally, I have the same problem with "multiple dimensions".)

Fighting player and/or character feelings of apathy or fatalism can be a challenge. There are a couple things that can help everyone feel motivated. First, it probably isn't clear to the characters (and possibly the players as well) that time operates in this fashion. Even if they suspect it, is doing nothing worth the risk?

Second, ignorance of the full chain of events means the characters can learn hard (or rewarding) lessons about time travel, and feel more motivated if they do it again. For example, the characters could have been the unknowing lynchpins in some historical event (for good or ill) but only discover their actual role upon returning to the present. That might not make them bold, but it will demonstrate that actions in the past are not pointless, even if they can't change the actual present. If the characters are very aware of their own ignorance without a prior lesson in the consequences of time-travel, all the better. In that case, they can fight for a "present" they know is settled, but they don't know *how* it has been settled. The same holds also for events that are future from the characters' perspectives, but which their actions in the past seem likely to affect.

A third point (or perhaps a corollary to the second) is that the "present" is not the only time worth living in or fighting for. An engaging NPC in trouble is still a valid and potentially exciting situation, even if the guy is long since dead in the "present." Plus, sometimes, you can take it with you. The artifact that has been long missing? Turns out you took it. Ancient magical knowledge is always handy. And just maybe the magistrate's beautiful daughter wants to see the future. All the normal adventuring reasons can still work.

If the players come to appreciate some of these perspectives, then an adventure based around fighting the inevitable (or seemingly-inevitable) from the past can become just as compelling as any change-the-past plot. And perhaps more so, if the players come to see their choices as simply indelible, rather than fated (if the past cannot change) or mutable (if it can).

That probably doesn't help your situation directly...but at least it helped me to write it. And lest anyone misunderstand, I'm not proposing that this is the best or only sensible way to do things in a campaign.
ArcTan
05-25-07, 04:44 AM Time Travel affects everyone unless they are protected somehow from the flow of time.

Paradoxes run rampant without protection:

1. A dragon is born.
2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant.
3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg.
4. Dragon is not born.
5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace.
6. PCs have no reason to travel back in time because populace not enslaved.
7. PCs do not travel back in time, and do not kill egg.
8. See #1. Repeat.

Now with protection, the PCs will see the changes and remember what had been their prior. This can have horrible effects - situations can be made much worse:

1. A dragon is born.
2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant.
3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg.
4. Dragon is not born.
5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace.
6. lack of the dragon's presence did not keep down local population of orcs.
7. Orcs run rampant, outbreeding the local populace and eventually enslaving the humans.
8. PCs travel back in time and kill the orc tribes.
9. The orc tribes did not exist, so the populace is free.
10. Populace grows quickly, and becomes large city.
11. Evil cult of Erythnul moves into city, begins to spread plague.
12. City overrun with plague, which spreads around the world through it's trade routes. Worldwide plague.
13. PCs travel Back in time and stop cultists.
14. PCs infected with plague.
15. Plague Delirious PCs set incorrect temporal coordinates and are spread throughout time, spreading the plague with them.
16. Plague adapts to time travel and become Chronal Epidemic, affecting alternate time lines and parallel dimensions.
17. Universe dies.

Go watch The Butterfly Effect - Ashton Kutcher. Very good movie about time travel and having the best of intentions.

While this is fun if that's the theme you want the game to have, if the players *aren't* looking for creative ways to be screwed over then this doesn't make much sense. Unless you're flavoring it so that some supernatural force is causing devastation specifically to stop the players going back in time, the idea of going back in time and doing some minor innocuous thing and thereafter Destroying The Entire Universe isn't actually any more sensible than doing some minor innocuous thing *in your normal life* and having that end up Destroying The Entire Universe.

The chain of events you describe for killing the dragon as an egg somehow causing massive devastation in the future doesn't make any more sense than simply causing massive devastation as punishment for the players killing the dragon in the *present*, since "the butterfly effect" can apply to any act, and doesn't actually have anything to do with time travel per se (except that time travel is a nifty way to quickly and suddenly see the effects of your actions).
green_yawgmoth
05-25-07, 09:04 AM I think that every thread about meddling with timelines should just be locked with the message "bad things happen. Get over it. Meddling with timelines is BAD! very Bad! If you want to houserule otherwise, you're on your own."

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/yawgmoth/kittyjig.gif
Abbacabba
05-25-07, 09:15 AM I used time travel in one game. It seemed to offer a good deal of interesting situations. But you really *have* to figure out how changes to the time like will effect your PC's as they act.

If the PC's are still part of their time line then your in trouble, from paradox(es). I simply ruled that they were "immune" to time line issues.

Although one player did have an idea that he never implemented, which was to write a message on a wall, that he would see in the future warning the group not to perform the action that sent them back in the first place... Since it didn't happen I never had to worry about it, but be prepared for all sorts of odd situations when doing time line stuff.
VrecknidjX
05-25-07, 09:36 AM One option is to allow for multiple realities. If the PCs go back in time and make some big change, then the cannot return to the future they came from.

Instead, they end up in a different future, one where they don't have to travel back in time.

.........future 1
Past<
.........future 2

The PCs may go from "future 2" back into the past, and then end up in "future 1" because they changed "future 2" into "future 2a" or whatever, and so can't end up there anymore.

Another way of handling it is to have some very powerful god of time control things so that the outcome of the PCs interventions is muted. Say they go back and kill the egg described in post #3. The gods can arrange so that the Orcs/Cultists/Plague scenario never unfolds--they are gods after all.

Time travel doesn't have to end badly.

Dave
Phrennzy
05-25-07, 10:28 AM While this is fun if that's the theme you want the game to have, if the players *aren't* looking for creative ways to be screwed over then this doesn't make much sense. Unless you're flavoring it so that some supernatural force is causing devastation specifically to stop the players going back in time, the idea of going back in time and doing some minor innocuous thing and thereafter Destroying The Entire Universe isn't actually any more sensible than doing some minor innocuous thing *in your normal life* and having that end up Destroying The Entire Universe.

The chain of events you describe for killing the dragon as an egg somehow causing massive devastation in the future doesn't make any more sense than simply causing massive devastation as punishment for the players killing the dragon in the *present*, since "the butterfly effect" can apply to any act, and doesn't actually have anything to do with time travel per se (except that time travel is a nifty way to quickly and suddenly see the effects of your actions).

I personally wouldn't ever use the sort of heavy hand my earlier post described. I was just showing that by travelling back with the best of intentions, it is possible to make things infinitely worse.

And with the advent of time travel, isn't it possible, even plausible, that the events that transpire in your life - even the collossal tragedies - are the best, or at least, "the least awful" outcomes possible. Time travellers have all the time in the world to make changes and see results, assuming that they are themselves protected from the timeline changes.

There was a very good double episode of Voyager that dealt with a group of people with a time-changing ship. It would erase entire civilizations, and plot the timeline to check for the certain desired outcome. When the outcome was not realized with that change, they would make another change, which might restore the previously erased civilization.

In my game I would allow the players to travel forward in time (and then back to the 'present') much more readily than I would allow them to travel back in time. The future they visit is the one most likely to occur at the time they travel forward. The moment they return, that future is no longer certain, as they have new information on which to base choices.

Time travel very quickly becomes "Head Asplodes" territory.
Mystic Lemur
05-25-07, 09:59 PM I want to say Candlekeep has some stuff about time travel in the realms. The gist is Mystra will let you go back to any year once and only once for the whole year, but if you try to change anything major (DM discretion) you automatically get sent home. Also, you can't bring back items from the past, although I suppose you could bury something and hope it was still there...
AgravaneThane
05-26-07, 10:45 AM Mystic, that's exactly what I needed to hear. I guessI should have said that this is a FR campaign but the situation is bound to crop up in nearly any campaign.
Logistically, though, I'm not even shure my player will ever get this far. So far, he's alone in his quest to fix things. He has no real resources, no planning and worst (is that a word), no friends. He got into a real world argument with the D.M.(me) and stormed off. The game continued minus him and now, he hasn't a clue where the rest of the party went. Not only that, but several significant evil NPC's were killed off not to mention virtually every psionic using race in the game. (They used the annulus from the psionics handbook) The survivors of incursion, I believe, would be quite happy to leave things as they are.
Zephania
05-26-07, 11:03 AM I beleiev there is a thread on this buried in regar's repostiory...
SeptimusMagistos
05-26-07, 01:21 PM A party once wiped out the Yuan-Ti by going back in time to prevent the snake cult that later became them from completing its first ritual of the snake god(Which happened to also retroactively prevent the Thirteenth Ritual, which released the snake god to ravage the Material Plane).
Escef
05-26-07, 01:40 PM The 2e Chronomancer supplement is available for download on WotC's webspace.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
AgravaneThane 05-24-07, 06:28 PM	I have a potential situation brewing in one of my games. A player is looking into time travelling to prevent a really nasty chain of events that culminated in Incursion in the realms and nearly caused complete devastation. I was wondering if anyone had any source material I could pull from. I have the Chronomancy D20 book and what little was published in 2nd ed. Also, how would you guys (and gals) handle chronomancy in your game? Do the gods allow it? Do they remember? Do the PC's remember? How does it affect the time stream? Thanks in advance.
UltimateReality 05-24-07, 06:47 PM	Time travel does not happen in my game precisely because I don't want to deal with the headaches and paradoxes that it entails. So I guess the gods don't allow it. (Sorry I can't be of more help.)
Phrennzy 05-24-07, 07:20 PM	Time Travel affects everyone unless they are protected somehow from the flow of time. Paradoxes run rampant without protection: 1. A dragon is born. 2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant. 3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg. 4. Dragon is not born. 5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace. 6. PCs have no reason to travel back in time because populace not enslaved. 7. PCs do not travel back in time, and do not kill egg. 8. See #1. Repeat. Now with protection, the PCs will see the changes and remember what had been their prior. This can have horrible effects - situations can be made much worse: 1. A dragon is born. 2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant. 3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg. 4. Dragon is not born. 5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace. 6. lack of the dragon's presence did not keep down local population of orcs. 7. Orcs run rampant, outbreeding the local populace and eventually enslaving the humans. 8. PCs travel back in time and kill the orc tribes. 9. The orc tribes did not exist, so the populace is free. 10. Populace grows quickly, and becomes large city. 11. Evil cult of Erythnul moves into city, begins to spread plague. 12. City overrun with plague, which spreads around the world through it's trade routes. Worldwide plague. 13. PCs travel Back in time and stop cultists. 14. PCs infected with plague. 15. Plague Delirious PCs set incorrect temporal coordinates and are spread throughout time, spreading the plague with them. 16. Plague adapts to time travel and become Chronal Epidemic, affecting alternate time lines and parallel dimensions. 17. Universe dies. Go watch The Butterfly Effect - Ashton Kutcher. Very good movie about time travel and having the best of intentions.
kentonblack 05-24-07, 09:03 PM	17. Universe dies. I laughed so hard that coke came out my nose.Damn you. You truly are one of the most conniving DM's I may have ever had the pleasure of meeting. My hat is off to you.
AgravaneThane 05-24-07, 09:20 PM	Actually, I was thinking that I would probably allow my player to accomplish exactly what he has in mind. I'll let him kill the baddie and alter history. Heck, I'll even let him keep his memories. However, the only "present" he can return to is the one he's from. The way I see it, he made his reality an alternate reality. Since he is, was, and always shall be a part of that reality, he's stuck there.... permanently. Life goes on, just not for him.
blade_runner 05-24-07, 09:26 PM	That is a good idea, and the exact opposite of what I would have done. I would have had the timeline split, but made him unable to return to his own timeline (he fractured the space time continuum, he has to stay in the line of events he created.) He could travel to any point he wanted in that timeline (of course, that could lead back to him going back in time to stop himself altering the timeline in the first place, but that's not my problem:P)
Eberik 05-24-07, 10:02 PM	There is a chronomancer PrC in Swords and Sorcery's Advanced Players Handbook, and I also have one I have been developing for a homebrew. The S&S one is better then mine for a few good reasons, so look for that one, and if need be, I can send you mine.
Ainamacar 05-25-07, 12:51 AM	In my campaigns time-travel does not change the timestream, you simply participate in it. The catastrophe you go back in time to try and change does not actually change, for instance. This has a few effects. First, you avoid paradoxes in the story. If the players try to cause them, the inherently self-consistent universe prevents it from happening. This takes a light touch as DM (especially to avoid railroading), but is possible by keeping track of player knowledge. Past events about which they have specific and detailed knowledge should be avoided if possible. (This usually requires keeping a firm grip on the method the characters use to time travel.) However, there is almost always at least a bit of wiggle room since player knowledge of a character's actual situation is so abstract, and even a character's actual knowledge can come from fallible sources. And keeping that wiggle room in mind is important, so as not to reflexively squish a character (you know, with a meteor that comes out of nowhere!) if they try to change things. If the players have no prior knowledge about a specific past situation, then you can hash out the consequences later. So, basically, epistemology is your friend. :) The specific flavor it adds to the campaign world is one I like. While changing the past is a staple of many fantasy and sci-fi settings, I feel it robs the sense of meaning and accomplishment for the characters, or the setting in general. Fixing the past isn't so great if someone can just go mess it up again. In other words, I find the lack of an identifiable "real", in any permanent sense, timeline hugely unsatisfying on nearly every metaphysical level. That's easily the main reason I treat time this way, even if it makes some things harder on me as DM. (Naturally, I have the same problem with "multiple dimensions".) Fighting player and/or character feelings of apathy or fatalism can be a challenge. There are a couple things that can help everyone feel motivated. First, it probably isn't clear to the characters (and possibly the players as well) that time operates in this fashion. Even if they suspect it, is doing nothing worth the risk? Second, ignorance of the full chain of events means the characters can learn hard (or rewarding) lessons about time travel, and feel more motivated if they do it again. For example, the characters could have been the unknowing lynchpins in some historical event (for good or ill) but only discover their actual role upon returning to the present. That might not make them bold, but it will demonstrate that actions in the past are not pointless, even if they can't change the actual present. If the characters are very aware of their own ignorance without a prior lesson in the consequences of time-travel, all the better. In that case, they can fight for a "present" they know is settled, but they don't know how it has been settled. The same holds also for events that are future from the characters' perspectives, but which their actions in the past seem likely to affect. A third point (or perhaps a corollary to the second) is that the "present" is not the only time worth living in or fighting for. An engaging NPC in trouble is still a valid and potentially exciting situation, even if the guy is long since dead in the "present." Plus, sometimes, you can take it with you. The artifact that has been long missing? Turns out you took it. Ancient magical knowledge is always handy. And just maybe the magistrate's beautiful daughter wants to see the future. All the normal adventuring reasons can still work. If the players come to appreciate some of these perspectives, then an adventure based around fighting the inevitable (or seemingly-inevitable) from the past can become just as compelling as any change-the-past plot. And perhaps more so, if the players come to see their choices as simply indelible, rather than fated (if the past cannot change) or mutable (if it can). That probably doesn't help your situation directly...but at least it helped me to write it. And lest anyone misunderstand, I'm not proposing that this is the best or only sensible way to do things in a campaign.
ArcTan 05-25-07, 04:44 AM	Time Travel affects everyone unless they are protected somehow from the flow of time. Paradoxes run rampant without protection: 1. A dragon is born. 2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant. 3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg. 4. Dragon is not born. 5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace. 6. PCs have no reason to travel back in time because populace not enslaved. 7. PCs do not travel back in time, and do not kill egg. 8. See #1. Repeat. Now with protection, the PCs will see the changes and remember what had been their prior. This can have horrible effects - situations can be made much worse: 1. A dragon is born. 2. It grows into an adult and enslaves an area, ruling the populace as an evil tyrant. 3. PCs travel back in time and kill egg. 4. Dragon is not born. 5. Since the dragon was not born, it did not enslave the populace. 6. lack of the dragon's presence did not keep down local population of orcs. 7. Orcs run rampant, outbreeding the local populace and eventually enslaving the humans. 8. PCs travel back in time and kill the orc tribes. 9. The orc tribes did not exist, so the populace is free. 10. Populace grows quickly, and becomes large city. 11. Evil cult of Erythnul moves into city, begins to spread plague. 12. City overrun with plague, which spreads around the world through it's trade routes. Worldwide plague. 13. PCs travel Back in time and stop cultists. 14. PCs infected with plague. 15. Plague Delirious PCs set incorrect temporal coordinates and are spread throughout time, spreading the plague with them. 16. Plague adapts to time travel and become Chronal Epidemic, affecting alternate time lines and parallel dimensions. 17. Universe dies. Go watch The Butterfly Effect - Ashton Kutcher. Very good movie about time travel and having the best of intentions. While this is fun if that's the theme you want the game to have, if the players aren't looking for creative ways to be screwed over then this doesn't make much sense. Unless you're flavoring it so that some supernatural force is causing devastation specifically to stop the players going back in time, the idea of going back in time and doing some minor innocuous thing and thereafter Destroying The Entire Universe isn't actually any more sensible than doing some minor innocuous thing in your normal life and having that end up Destroying The Entire Universe. The chain of events you describe for killing the dragon as an egg somehow causing massive devastation in the future doesn't make any more sense than simply causing massive devastation as punishment for the players killing the dragon in the present, since "the butterfly effect" can apply to any act, and doesn't actually have anything to do with time travel per se (except that time travel is a nifty way to quickly and suddenly see the effects of your actions).
green_yawgmoth 05-25-07, 09:04 AM	I think that every thread about meddling with timelines should just be locked with the message "bad things happen. Get over it. Meddling with timelines is BAD! very Bad! If you want to houserule otherwise, you're on your own." http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/yawgmoth/kittyjig.gif
Abbacabba 05-25-07, 09:15 AM	I used time travel in one game. It seemed to offer a good deal of interesting situations. But you really have to figure out how changes to the time like will effect your PC's as they act. If the PC's are still part of their time line then your in trouble, from paradox(es). I simply ruled that they were "immune" to time line issues. Although one player did have an idea that he never implemented, which was to write a message on a wall, that he would see in the future warning the group not to perform the action that sent them back in the first place... Since it didn't happen I never had to worry about it, but be prepared for all sorts of odd situations when doing time line stuff.
VrecknidjX 05-25-07, 09:36 AM	One option is to allow for multiple realities. If the PCs go back in time and make some big change, then the cannot return to the future they came from. Instead, they end up in a different future, one where they don't have to travel back in time. .........future 1 Past< .........future 2 The PCs may go from "future 2" back into the past, and then end up in "future 1" because they changed "future 2" into "future 2a" or whatever, and so can't end up there anymore. Another way of handling it is to have some very powerful god of time control things so that the outcome of the PCs interventions is muted. Say they go back and kill the egg described in post #3. The gods can arrange so that the Orcs/Cultists/Plague scenario never unfolds--they are gods after all. Time travel doesn't have to end badly. Dave
Phrennzy 05-25-07, 10:28 AM	While this is fun if that's the theme you want the game to have, if the players aren't looking for creative ways to be screwed over then this doesn't make much sense. Unless you're flavoring it so that some supernatural force is causing devastation specifically to stop the players going back in time, the idea of going back in time and doing some minor innocuous thing and thereafter Destroying The Entire Universe isn't actually any more sensible than doing some minor innocuous thing in your normal life and having that end up Destroying The Entire Universe. The chain of events you describe for killing the dragon as an egg somehow causing massive devastation in the future doesn't make any more sense than simply causing massive devastation as punishment for the players killing the dragon in the present, since "the butterfly effect" can apply to any act, and doesn't actually have anything to do with time travel per se (except that time travel is a nifty way to quickly and suddenly see the effects of your actions). I personally wouldn't ever use the sort of heavy hand my earlier post described. I was just showing that by travelling back with the best of intentions, it is possible to make things infinitely worse. And with the advent of time travel, isn't it possible, even plausible, that the events that transpire in your life - even the collossal tragedies - are the best, or at least, "the least awful" outcomes possible. Time travellers have all the time in the world to make changes and see results, assuming that they are themselves protected from the timeline changes. There was a very good double episode of Voyager that dealt with a group of people with a time-changing ship. It would erase entire civilizations, and plot the timeline to check for the certain desired outcome. When the outcome was not realized with that change, they would make another change, which might restore the previously erased civilization. In my game I would allow the players to travel forward in time (and then back to the 'present') much more readily than I would allow them to travel back in time. The future they visit is the one most likely to occur at the time they travel forward. The moment they return, that future is no longer certain, as they have new information on which to base choices. Time travel very quickly becomes "Head Asplodes" territory.
Mystic Lemur 05-25-07, 09:59 PM	I want to say Candlekeep has some stuff about time travel in the realms. The gist is Mystra will let you go back to any year once and only once for the whole year, but if you try to change anything major (DM discretion) you automatically get sent home. Also, you can't bring back items from the past, although I suppose you could bury something and hope it was still there...
AgravaneThane 05-26-07, 10:45 AM	Mystic, that's exactly what I needed to hear. I guessI should have said that this is a FR campaign but the situation is bound to crop up in nearly any campaign. Logistically, though, I'm not even shure my player will ever get this far. So far, he's alone in his quest to fix things. He has no real resources, no planning and worst (is that a word), no friends. He got into a real world argument with the D.M.(me) and stormed off. The game continued minus him and now, he hasn't a clue where the rest of the party went. Not only that, but several significant evil NPC's were killed off not to mention virtually every psionic using race in the game. (They used the annulus from the psionics handbook) The survivors of incursion, I believe, would be quite happy to leave things as they are.
Zephania 05-26-07, 11:03 AM	I beleiev there is a thread on this buried in regar's repostiory...
SeptimusMagistos 05-26-07, 01:21 PM	A party once wiped out the Yuan-Ti by going back in time to prevent the snake cult that later became them from completing its first ritual of the snake god(Which happened to also retroactively prevent the Thirteenth Ritual, which released the snake god to ravage the Material Plane).
Escef 05-26-07, 01:40 PM	The 2e Chronomancer supplement is available for download on WotC's webspace.