You could try the starter rules out first? Perhaps the boxed set if it is still available (try bookstores?) would let you just get some basic familiarity with the rules.
There have been rules in the past that have dealt with time travel such as the "Chronomancer" Book. The thing is this is for an earlier edition of D&D and the rules might confuse you (they still do me sometimes and I have played most editions of the game!).
Honestly best advice that I think someone could give you is as above - you have obviously got the great imagination needed to be a DM and are listeniong to what your players want. These are the parts of D&D that cannot be learned. Just give yourself a bit of a chance to learn the rules with something better defined/more straight forward first perhaps? View it as a learning exercise of a few weeks (say 6-8?) before you launch?
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
I second the starter rules. But I'll still answer your specific questions.
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
One difference exists between D&D and the Star Wars RPGs that you may not be aware of, OP.
Star Wars games are both a system and a setting in one. D&D is only a system, with an implied or default setting that is not detailed to the level of a full setting.
So when you ask what god would do that "in D&D", the question can't be answered as asked; you need a full setting to answer that question. The core D&D books assume that the DM will either use a setting, or will answer any such questions themselves as it comes up (by making things up, consistent with previous answers to questions, and in this way a setting is built through play).
The-teifling-paladin wrote:
Time Travel requires a lot of thought beforehand. One essay I read referred to it as Excedrin Headache # SQRT(-3.141592654...).
To this point, I'm not sure what you are asking, so I can't provide a helpful answer. The D&D rule questions are separate from the plot questions.
D&D has no setting tied to it; it's a bunch of ingredients to combine into whatever setting you'd like.
If the character is only going back in time once, and at the start of the adventure, run the entire game normally, except sometimes inform the player that x or y is going to happen "here" at "some time in the future". For example, the elf could meet a soldier on the road, and the DM says, "You've seen this same person before...yes, before you travelled back in time, he was the man in imperial colors who betrayed his country to defend your village (not sure why), but was overwhelmed and killed", or, upon visiting a queendom, the DM says, "the last time you saw this place, it was on-fire and the queen was betrayed by someone in her royal guard." Basically, it is a way for the DM to say, "this is important; solve the mystery of how/why it changed, so you can improve the future."
As for time travel scenarios, I've played and ran a few of them.
-Players have a vision of the future, and must try to stop it from happening.
-Players are stuck in a city that is always a few hours ahead in time, and then a few days, and then a few months.
-Players go back in time to stop an important npc from being killed by themselves.
-Player goes back in time and accidentally steals her own soul from herself.
It's always tricky. The more variables, the more you have to prepare for. If the player is simply going back in time to stop the slaughter of his own tribe, then that in itself does not require a lot of planning. But it would be a terribly missed opportunity if you didn't tie terrible future consequences to it. Sometimes terrible things happen for a reason... or at least, in fiction they do. And that's a great theme for a campaign: The butterfly effect. So here is what I'd do:
So this player wants to go back in time to stop this slaughter from happening? Maybe all the players have a similar kind of wish, and perhaps there is a place in your campaign world where wishes can come true. Maybe an ancient dead civilization found a means of getting closer to the gods. The players go on a mission to find this long lost city, hidden somewhere in a dangerous region (a volcano, the bottom of the sea, a jungle, a desert, in the arctic), so they can talk to the gods directly, and have their wishes answered. Along the way they'll encounter many friends and foes, whose destiny will be entirely changed once that particular player gets his wish. Benevolent rulers will suddenly be tyrants, noble men will be in the gutter. By changing one thing, the entire course of history could change, and everything they thought they knew could now change. So your campaign could have the following steps:
-Player makes a prayer to his deity to change history
-The player learns from his deity that there is a place to get closer to the gods, in an ancient city
-Party goes on a mission to visit an ancient library that reveals the location of this long lost city (maybe access to the library is restricted, and they have to pull some strings to gain access)
-They travel to the city, facing many perils along the way
-They find the place where they can get closer to the gods, and maybe fight a guardian
-They go back in time to stop the slaughter
-They discover that the person responsible for the slaughter, some how ties in to current events. They stop the slaughter, but the villain escapes.
-They go back to their own time, only to find out that everything has changed, and not for the better. They have made things worse, and everything they knew is now different.
-Now they must stop the evil that they've unleashed on the world themselves, to set things right.
Mystra (in Forgotten Realms) was also set up to protect the timestream and there were certain pivotal historical points or events (called a nexus) which could not be time travelled to I think. I used to use Hierophant Druids in earlier editions as guardians of the balance between the inner and outer Planes and the highest level of these (Hierophants of the Cabal) were designated to protect the timestream itself. Saying that as has already been said Labellas Enoreth (and Grumbar I think) were the only two Gods to have Time as a domain.