Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Tordek 03-11-06, 03:49 PM	I've been a DM for a long time, and I've got alot of books. I'm bringing together 2nd Edition Chronomancer with Steampunk, classic D&D, and Dragonstar to make a campaign across 10,000 years of history and 5 planes of existence. Has anyone here done similar time travel adventures, and would they have any advice on things to do or avoid?
LCD2YOU 03-11-06, 03:57 PM	It's hard to do. First you must decide if your timelines are fluid or are rigid. I am a believer that what ever happens happens and you can't go back. If you are going with that things are rigid, make several "odd occurances" that the players are aware of but don't know about directly. That should let the players know that they can't change history and to do so invites disaster. Have them know that if they are going to try and go back to change things, they could meet with total disaster. (Roll secretly. If they start taking precautions to not have it blow up, have other things that they can't control start happen to preserve it. Hey father time doesn't play fair an as the DM, you are father time.)
nyysjan 03-11-06, 04:17 PM	i agree with LCD2YOU, atleast in most issues ecie the rules of causality beforehand, try to avoid cliches, will killing your granfather estroy you, does future affect the present (beyond the fact that time traveller came from it), can you travel both wais or only one (being able to only travel into the future or only into the past might be interesting), will the timeline bounce back or will stay changed. personally i'd make it so that causality is one way and what you do does affect the future but that there is no way to actually wipe ourself away by killing your grandfather, and that you can only travel into the past (you will get to the future the usual way, by waiting for it to happen) i'd also recommen reading Schlock Mercenary (the best web comic ever) because there is a good storyine involving time travel that avois most horrible cliches go also to it's forum an ask for their help with time travel, and remember, that while time travel is difficult, the present understaning of physics oes not make it impossible (just very very difficult, and practically impossible with current technology)
Tordek 03-11-06, 04:53 PM	Have them know that if they are going to try and go back to change things, they could meet with total disaster. (Roll secretly. If they start taking precautions to not have it blow up, have other things that they can't control start happen to preserve it. Hey father time doesn't play fair an as the DM, you are father time.) I do a mixed bag. One time they changed history and lost some magic items, one time they turned their world from high magic to steampunk. I like to do the whole "time does what I say it does" thing.
LCD2YOU 03-11-06, 05:00 PM	Then your idea of time travel is fluid, or shall we sayopen ended. If that is the case, then treat time travel as just another point on the map, a 4-D map that is.
Bryarr 03-12-06, 02:13 AM	i agree with LCD2YOU, atleast in most issues ecie the rules of causality beforehand, try to avoid cliches, will killing your granfather estroy you, does future affect the present Emphasis mine. Either you need a new keyboard, or you need to push harder on your current keyboard's "D" key. :P Bry
nyysjan 03-12-06, 04:18 AM	Emphasis mine. Either you need a new keyboard, or you need to push harder on your current keyboard's "D" key. :P Bry i was able to get a new keyboard or an internet connection i give you one gues on which i got even without D's i'm more legible than many other net users :P
zlatko 03-12-06, 07:24 AM	I got a suggestion. Don't use it. :) If you do then jump to the future. If you go to the past, do it in a way (a long rime ago) in which your PC could not interract with their former selves. This would invoke A LOT of paradox issues. Something in the line of "I'll jus give my former self my new necklace of circle of death. That should help us clearing that goblin hive back then."
revnk 03-12-06, 10:24 AM	I would advise not sleeping with your own grandmother, unless you want to have a brain where the delta waves are replaced by something cobbled together from several other brainwaves. Stepping on a butterfly while hunting tyrannosaurs is also very bad. :D (Good luck in your campaign!)
Omega the Powerfull 03-12-06, 10:28 AM	I think you've been playing enough Crono Cross. I've tried once - the bbest thing to do is - DON'T DO IT!!!!
nyysjan 03-12-06, 10:41 AM	"I'll jus give my former self my new necklace of circle of death. That should help us clearing that goblin hive back then." would not work because by doing this you would create a new timeline completly destroyng the time you came from (but not yourself, you're now part of this new timeline) and basicly you would just have given your circle of death to an NPC that has a canny resemblance to you. because in the event of timetravel your past self becomes an NPC because after meeting you, he never grows to be you. as said read Schlock Mercenary and learn
Cantankerous 03-12-06, 10:48 AM	Presently I have it happening in my game. The PCs are in the past...on another Crystal Sphere than their native one, but definately in the past, seven years in their own past. There are a few ways around the problems inherent. The biggie is that they were not on the Crystal Sphere (Oerth) in question during the time period that they could conceivably get into now, and secondarily, if even one of them leaves it, they find themselves as a group directly back in their own timeline. What they are doing there could tangentily effect their own timelines afterwards, but not directly. Isshia
revnk 03-12-06, 11:03 AM	would not work because by doing this you would create a new timeline completly destroyng the time you came from (but not yourself, you're now part of this new timeline) and basicly you would just have given your circle of death to an NPC that has a canny resemblance to you. because in the event of timetravel your past self becomes an NPC because after meeting you, he never grows to be you. as said read Schlock Mercenary and learn You apparently haven't seen Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, the single greatest time-travel story ever told by anyone in the entire universe, ever. All you have to do is remind yourself to do it later, and it will have already happened. "Okay, dude, we need to remember later to come back and leave a circle of death thing under that rock that says 'Wyld Stalyonz Rulz!!!!!!!'" ;)
nyysjan 03-12-06, 11:17 AM	You apparently haven't seen Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, the single greatest time-travel story ever told by anyone in the entire universe, ever. All you have to do is remind yourself to do it later, and it will have already happened. "Okay, dude, we need to remember later to come back and leave a circle of death thing under that rock that says 'Wyld Stalyonz Rulz!!!!!!!'" ;) i've seen the movie, it wasn't that great.
ShadowDragon8685 03-12-06, 01:59 PM	There are two ways I've come up with deal with time travel. 1: Time travel at will, but only on a plane or planes that has no intereaction with the PC's planes excepting that the PCs got there. That way they can't @*%)-up their own causality. 2: Decision-branches. This is exactly like that one where it says that for every choice made, any given outcome will be played out in an alternate universe. The hitch is that the PCs are on a single track, and they themselves become isolated from causality when they first start time-traveling. This means that if they go back and kill their grandfather, when they come back to the present, they don't exist. Except he's still there, it's just that his family is gone, or radically different from what he knew of it as. They can go back and stop themselves from killing their grandfather and put things right, of course. What they're really doing is making a complete mockery of the laws of cause and effect, spawning off countless decision-tree universes. But the only one that matters for the game is the one they see.
wrecan 03-12-06, 05:04 PM	i've seen the movie, it wasn't that great. Blasphemer!
Tordek 03-12-06, 05:12 PM	I don't let them meet their past selves. In the 2nd edition Chronomancer it is impossible to exist in two places at once without making time elementals and vortexes show up and attack you. Thanks for all the tips.
revnk 03-13-06, 07:06 PM	i've seen the movie, it wasn't that great. :OMG! OH! OH! OH! NO, YOU DIDN'T! OH! IT'S ON NOW! IT'S ON! C'MON, YOU AND ME! RIGHT NOW! :fight!: ( ;) )
AMac 03-13-06, 07:26 PM	There are two ways I've come up with deal with time travel. 1: Time travel at will, but only on a plane or planes that has no intereaction with the PC's planes excepting that the PCs got there. That way they can't @*%)-up their own causality. 2: Decision-branches. This is exactly like that one where it says that for every choice made, any given outcome will be played out in an alternate universe. The hitch is that the PCs are on a single track, and they themselves become isolated from causality when they first start time-traveling. This means that if they go back and kill their grandfather, when they come back to the present, they don't exist. Except he's still there, it's just that his family is gone, or radically different from what he knew of it as. They can go back and stop themselves from killing their grandfather and put things right, of course. What they're really doing is making a complete mockery of the laws of cause and effect, spawning off countless decision-tree universes. But the only one that matters for the game is the one they see. That sounds pretty good. I'd lean towards number 1, and just make it essentially a new world. Kind of like Chrono Trigger (if that helps anyone... :P ), so you can't affect the future/past.
Baptor 03-14-06, 11:09 AM	Ive done Time Travel only once in my campaigns. I based my senario on one of my favorite movies, the movie is in fact, a sort of "thinking" movie that has alot of suprises and such, so I won't reveal its name as not to spoil it for the poor folks that have not seen it yet. In this movie, time itself sort of breaks down, and a tangent universe, with an alternate time, is spawned. The hero of the story has no idea this has happened, nor really does anyone else. But the tangent universe is an unstable construct, and it will soon collapse. The hero must repair the time frame by sending an artifact from the original universe back to where its supposed to be, thus severing the tanget universe from the real one before it collapses the original universe with it. When he does, time snaps back to its original workings, and no one really knows what happend, although it seems the hero remembers. This is debatable, but for my game, the hero (in this case, the adventuring party) remembers the tangent universe. It was pretty cool, since they were all fans of the movie yet for many many sessions had no clue what was going on. Near the end they did figure it out and sent the artifact back, restoring time. Lots of fun.
oxybe 03-14-06, 11:37 AM	actually, in chrono trigger the characters had to go back in time to stop some paradoxes from happening. the fact that they went into the past (from the present) actually caused the present timeline. this means that they in the future, they had to go into the past to make it so the present is as it should be... so they could in the future, go in the past and correct the present so they could... ect... think about this for a minute: -you meet up with marle (the princess) at a fair -you find a time portal and jump in it to save marle (who was accidentally sucked in) -it brings you to the past -marle blinks out of existance, why? read further -in the past, marle's ancestor was kindnapped then rescued by some heroes -if you were to wait around, she would never come back because... -you happen to be that hero that is going to save the ancestor -you save marle's ancestor -marle blinks back into existance because her lineage was preserved think about that for a second. because of events that happened in the present, you were able to go to the past and make it so the present happends like it's supposed to. otherwise you would most likely never have existed to cause the present to happen.... ow... my brain just broke :eek: :twitch: :headexplo :ghosted: EDIT: just wanted to add that chrono trigger was not a "new world" when you went into the past, what you did in the past affected the future. treasure chests taken in the past were opened in the future, people saved in the past were alive in the future (in one part of the game you had to teach a poor family to be nice & helpful in the past so their rich decendants would be generous in the future. in another part you get the chance to give someone the ability to walk again, by saving her from getting her legs smushed into paste). you even get to populate a desert with trees (making it one of the biggest forests in the game)