1. This will be my 2nd time dm-ing, but my first time running a campaing all by myself. (Took over for a friend when he went to europe for 2 weeks.) So any pointers are more then welcome.
2. I plan to start this in the beginning of June. (Don't know HOW relevent, but included regardless)
3. I'm going with a sandbox style instead of pushing them toward the end.
The idea behind it involves some sort of curse (still working on a name) that manifests itself as an hourglass tatoo and causes the people afflicted to sporadically travel through time ((One party member gets a golden/silver one while the rest get black)) There will PROBABLY be 3 eras that they travel through (200 years in past, Current, 20 years in future.)
For the first bit, they won't know that they're traveling thru time, I'll just make it seem like they're constantly being teleported at bad times. (One particular time will be during a massive battle and the party is required to do something vital to turn the tide in their favor (too mean?)) Waaay down the line, they meet the creator of the curse who explains that the only way to remove the curse is to fulfill the curse-layer's last wish. He'll then take the golden/silver hour glass guy aside and tell him/her that the color of the hourglass means something as well. The people who received the black hourglass are simply meant to die. Only the person who received a golden/silver hourglass are meant to fulfill the curse-layer's last wish.
Edit: Things I forgot to mention/goals for the campaign:
A cataclysm to occur during the final weeks of the current era. I want this to happen so there's a little bit of shock factor to discovering the third era is only 20 years away.
Dungeon Dives/Crawls/Whatever you may call them will be places with ridiculous amounts of time travel but no relocation. I plan for the party to have to compete against another one in the past era, fight undead versions of them in the current and fight an abomination made from their collective bodies in the future.
I haven't thought it out completely though, I just thought it'd be a cool idea to base my summer campaign around.
Criticism is NEEDED and welcome
I'm not a fan of time travel myself, but there's no reason it shouldn't be able to work. Make sure you give your players a reason to care about the different eras they visit. A plot outline like this takes on the risk of making the players feel like their characters are being pushed around from place to place (or time to time) for no reason.
Consider giving them a way to travel through time deliberately after the campaign progresses a bit. Create rules for how they can do it though. (Only certain sites can support their time travel or other similar conditions)
I'm not seeing a good reason to mark the bulk of the party for death...even if you don't go through with it...why? Arbitrarily sorting PCs out like that is usually a bad idea.
I'm not a fan of time travel myself, but there's no reason it shouldn't be able to work. Make sure you give your players a reason to care about the different eras they visit. A plot outline like this takes on the risk of making the players feel like their characters are being pushed around from place to place (or time to time) for no reason.
Consider giving them a way to travel through time deliberately after the campaign progresses a bit. Create rules for how they can do it though. (Only certain sites can support their time travel or other similar conditions)
Well, they're all supposed to live, it's just to create a little tension for the special guy. Does he tell them? Does he keep it to himself?
The epic battle will probably take place in the past era and how well they do before they get pulled will determine how much of the continent will belong to which country.
As for the deliberate time travel, Thank you! I have no idea how to incorporate it now, but it's definitely going in there.
The question is:
Does each era have a constant flow?
IE: If they get pulled in week 2 from the current era, do they continue from week 2 when they get back? I wanna say yes but it might be a bad idea with some of the things planned.
One last thing:
What do you think of the dungeon crawl idea? too much?
I was kinda thinking it would be fun to have some areas closed in the future (due to debris or what not) but open later when they travel backwards.
About time travel, I'd say that the more rules you can implement, the better off you'll be. Give time travel a set of rules. Keeping the progression of time forward constant in all of the timelines is probably advisable. One benefit of this is that (especially after the PCs can travel through time deliberately) is that when the PCs choose to take action in one era, they may have to sacrifice their ability to take action in another era permanently. You also take out the possibility of any "redos" that might exist otherwise.
You might want to take a look at the Sextant of the Planes. It's a low-paragon magic item that can help PCs facilitate planar travel and use rituals long before they would otherwise be able to accomplish the same objective on their own. It might generate ideas for how you could implement time travel. Mixing planar travel with time travel (maybe some time junctions can only operate with specific places in the World, in the Shadowfell or in the Feywild) may or may not help you out, depending on whether you want to get involved in Shadowfell/Feywild issues.
Now in Chrono Cross in order to move the plot along you would have to solve puzzles or whatnot be switching back and forth between the two timelines. Granted the timelines where in sync but with different outcomes. For example in one timeline one guy is an actual pirate on a ship. In the other timeline he doesn't go through with pirating and his ship just sits idle as like a cruise ship. Other things like that, where you would have to do something in A to unlock something in B.
I mention this because I like the idea of things being blocked off in the present/future and your actions in the past will affect the outcomes.
As for deliberatly time travelling, you could use a sort of "waypoint" type thing. Diablo 2's were just for fast travel, but you can incorporate some kind of magical gateway, like The Dark Portal in WoW.
Back to the cause and effect thing. You could have a set of switches in each era with two outcomes. Whichever way your PC's flip the switch, you have an answer. They kill NPC 003, they dont get fat loots from NPC 003's mansion in the future. They save NPC 005's life, turns out he mass murders people in the future and an entire city never comes into fruition. Reverse era switches would be mind bottling (lol Anchorman), so I'll leave that to you.
I'm not gonna bore you with a synopsis of the game, but sufffice it to say that you could probably include one or more travel devices, with the overall plot being the PCs search for a new home timeline. Maybe their own was overrun by slaad. The next timeline was overrun earlier and worse, and the PCs have to fight or sneak their way back to the probability device. Another timeline might be completely devoid of life, with both races wiping themselves out at the cost of the world itself. The final timeline is one where the slaad invasion was delayed long enough for the PCs (now approaching their epic destinies) to be able to prevent total destruction.
Although the wyr'knkakntr were a lot nastier than the slaad or anything really in any D&D universe.
The only time I could ever see Time Travel being practical would be in a game world like Faerun, where there is literally a century worth of history to explore. There are so many places to visit, and important events that occure. Imagine educating a 4e party on the nature of Faerun and it's history, and then sending them back to before the Spell Plague? Or the glory days of 2nd Edition before Vecna's ascension to Godhood rocked Sigil and re-ordered the planes? Maybe a trip back to the Time of Troubles even?
Anyway, regardless of THAT fantasy, the point remains that Time Travel is usually too darn inflexible to work right. It curbs player attempts to develop attachment to a location or NPC's, especially if there's no greater backstory for the PC's to latch onto. Engage in this plotline with great care.