I've always wanted to try and run a game that features time travel or alternate timelines. I eat that shit up in books, movies and tv. The only problem is that I can never seem to figure out a way to get it right. It always feels way too obvious and unoriginal.
Time travel doesn't work to well in RPGs.
If you're actually going into your past, players are going to change the past. This leads into paradoxes, otherwise known as plot holes, when the past isn't consistent with the future the PCs came from.
I've had a GM who avoided that by having us jump into alternative timelines. But we were left feeling that it didn't matter what did, because we kept leaving one timeline to jump into one where we hadn't done anything.
>>48282437
Make time travel required by the threat. The timeline keeps that best of everthing, but people can remember the other stuff, too. Some people don't have good memories, or think about it or connect the weirdness. Like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; that's how they new you were the hero of time. Time travel in play is a boring overly long skit. Give them something else to focus on and make them glad they can time travel because of the overwhelming nature of the threat, like Link vs. the falling moon in Majora's Mask; or a time traveling villain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKiREZnU0dI
The non-time travel/alt-timeline stuff needs to stand on its own AND compensate for the time travel/alt timeline drag. The obvious way is to make the problem unsolvable without it.
I've been playing in a game going on 80 sessions [each session 6ish hours online] based entirely on time travel. AMA.
>>48282808
I'm interested in hearing how the time travel is integrated into the game. also, how do you handle paradoxes in your game?
>>48282976
The characters have a time machine.
The villains also have time machines.
There is a single timeline, that alters in real time whenever things are changed.
The butterfly effect is not true [time is generally stable, only big changes like killing an important person changes history by a large margin].
Anyone who has time traveled at least once is immune to changes in the timeline.
The time machines only have a preset list of destinations they can go to, each of which move into the future in real time. For example if you go back to February 13th 1261, that date is one of only say, six that the machine can reach. And if you spend a week in 2205 AD, it'll be February 20th 1261 that the machine brings you to when you try and go back.
The PCs are of course fabulously wealthy, but given most of the PCs are famous historical persons in a fantasy universe whose history loosely follows our worlds [a la Chrono Trigger] thats not really a big deal.
>>48282437
I did a skip forward with minor quests playing out huge over the years and almost screwing the world up. The PCs really had there hands full.
>>48282437
I just delved back into the Destiny Grimoires.
There's many a campaign seed and quest hook and bizarre concept just floating around in the logs and stories. As much hate as the game inspires, the Grimoire is a goldmine where science, magic, philosophy, faith, and a bunch of other shit merge into some weird amalgamation that's far more satisfying than anything the game has delivered.
Post-rapture setting.
>>48282437
Have you tried looking at the GURPS Time Travel sourcebooks?
>>48283563
I haven't. But I'm sure I can find it.
>>48282437
Pic related
>>48282437
I feel like it'd be fun to do something silly like this. No idea how I'd make it work though
I love unreliable narrator media (which sucks because you can't really look up unreliable narrator media without spoiling it)
but I can't think of a way to do a campaign like that without the party feeling like everything they did didn't matter, or just pulling a "the BBEG was the good guy all along!"
>>48284395
Just don't tell the party shit. New setting etc. And everything they learn about it comes from its inhabitants.
So like, yeah, the country turnip farmer is going to be magic-racist against Elves so yeah you're gonna hear stories of them stealing babies and ensaring women instead of the work they've done to improve quality of life
>>48284307
How silly does it need to be? Haunted mansion or even a ghost town, helping spirits find their rest, areas magically sealed until you find their key, it could all be pretty fun.
Hell, I'm pretty sure i've seen a ghostbusters rpg around here somewhere.
>>48282437
Death games. I want to play death games.
>>48284689
I meant silly as something fun and laid back, not childish or lolrandumb. Do you have a link to the ghostbusters rpg by chance?
>>48285002
Google it. From the wikipedia page
>Editor Scott Haring noted that Ghostbusters was "the first-ever RPG to use the dice pool mechanic" and "the game did a great job of catching the zany feel of the movies."
sounds like it might be what you're looking for
Improbability device.
>>48284028
I have made and run two one-shots of a (hell of a lot more simulationist than the Apocalypse World hack at least) Attack on Titan RPG. AMA.
>>48285098
Thanks pal
>>48285227
Not that anon but do you have a pdf I can read?
something i'd like to try but idk how to do it without it being cringey
an order of doctors who's founder made a deal with death that let them save people from otherwise untreatable disease/injury/etc, the price being that saving people from such fates drives them a little bit mad every time, the only way to mitigate this being by balancing death's books
for this particular character, the insanity would manifest as a separate personality, think harley quinn/jolly tira
>>48285275
Yes, but be warned it is MASSIVELY incoherent and poorly formatted since I haven't done literally anything to it to make it readable by another human being. It's an absolute mess.
Like, for very good reason, I literally wrote the system on one hand on my smartphone while practicing for a half-marathon.
>>48284764
Oh man, yeah. I have no idea how you would do something like that in an RPG. But I would love a campaign focused around death games.
>>48282437
> a campaign set inside a train/zeppelin. As non-dieselpunk as possible
> A campaign taking place in a "realistic" version of Earth Orbit, satellites and space vehicles would be the focus
> A REALLY small scale campaign (taking place in a lighthouse or train station or some such)
But mostly
> Slightly magic/sci-fi 1812 campaign where you defend The Dominion of Canada from American expansion
I have an idea for a setting where all humans use magic to some extent.
>Most of existence is an incoherent jumble of magical energies
>hunter-gatherer humans wander through the shifting plains using magic to defend themselves
>eventually a bunch of humans decide that life sucks
>they magic a secluded world into existance
>it's removed from the magic realm, so while on it their magic skills are dampened somewhat
>but they aren't getting harassed by demons and fay all the time so that's nice
>they magic themselves all kinds of other stuff too
Within a single generation humans went from nomadic tribes with oral traditions to agriculture and cities.
Within another generation that tribe has a written language.
And finally the generation after that, who has never truly known the magic realm, are sent to seek out the other human tribes and lead them to safety. Adventure happens along the way.
>>48282437
I've always liked the idea of PCs being a vehicle crew or something. Which is easy enough to do poorly, but do it WELL. Very difficult to communicate the idea of being simultaneously stuck in one closed space with their allies, but also on the move at the same time.
Likewise, the sense of violation that would come from say, a breach in the hull/chassis and suddenly this enclosed space has a window to the outside.
>>48282437
Alright, I had this idea of a campaign for a while, but I never tried it out because I have no idea how to GM in any rpg system.
>Groundhog day
Players wake up together in their apartment/house. Upon waking up give them a well detailed description of surroundigs, something so specific it gets stuck in their head, like music playing or NPC talking nearby and waking them up. Every time you TPK you restart campaign right at that starting scene, giving players same cursed description. Characters keep their memories but NPCs forget everything that happened. Campaign is uberbrutal and your player party WILL die because of it's unfair nature (for example as a greeting thing have a mob of gangsters with tommies right outside ready to shred them because of a debt). Make it so to gain some valuable information, players HAVE to die. Base the game around Metaknowledge.
Player goal is to break the loop by surviving it to the end of the day somehow (and to do this they need to prevent some massive disaster that is going to wipe out the city they are in). Setting could be anything from sci-fi to fantasy, reason for groundhog is some alien/ancient/cursed artifact players found the day before groundhog day.
>>48282437
>>48282474
I was told once that Fey tend to like stories. Like, a lot. So much so that they cause a lot of time-travel style paradoxes without rewriting reality itself by inserting themselves into other people's stories/lives.
If the story has a plothole that a PC or Player can notice, there's a Fey somewhere around here.
>>48287308
...
I know how to do my Hotline Miami game now.
>>48287308
Brilliant!
This might be more simple than what has been posted before, but i would really /love/ to run a Stargate game.
I even have a base premise figured out:
A cluster of Stars that is under the effect of a time-dilation device, which cut it off from the rest of the galaxy. It's only a very slight dilation, like 1:2 or so: Enough for this are to be different, but not so different as to be unrecognisable.
The two problems i have are: The Group is very entrenched in High-Fantasy, so it's hard to sell them on this, and i don't know which System to use.
>>48282437
>The only problem is that I can never seem to figure out a way to get it right.
What is Achron? What is faster-than-time propagating event timewaves?
>>48282437
Something similar to what metroid prime 3 did with the peds
>>48288851
Trying to figure this out now. Maybe an action that lasts a few rounds giving you a big stat boost but if you dont take nany actions for more than maybe 1 in a row you die?
>>48289544
That's where I'm stuck too. I was thinking that it'd give you a decent boost to any damage you do but I can't decide how to handle going into "corrupted hypermode" and becoming fully corrupted
>>48289544
Maybe what can be done is a PC has to take the "vent" action where they vent off all of their excess phazon (or whatever you call it) but have it tied to a some kind of ability check and if they fail then they are still in their powered up state. Then after a predetermined amount of turns if they haven't vented then they go into a corrupted state
>>48282437
I think the best way to do it would be like Radiant Historia where you have different time lines that are broken up by "nodes" which are just parts in that time line where you have a critical decision.
You can only jump to nodes and influence things around that time.
Have them go to different timelines / make different timelines to get something to influence those critical discussions and change the timeline.
An example would be like in your campaign your group is a few mercs who are forced to enlist in an army for an nation at war. Make when they join that empire a node. Have it so later in that timeline their squad falls into an enemy trap; Have them go back to that first node and flee that nation and join the rival army. Let them steal the military plans on that attack. Go back to the first timeline and use that document as proof for a counter attack.
It'd be best if instead of focusing on one side, you try to write around a greater solution so they can play both sides.
Also make it so they can't just say "I'M A TIME TRAVELER YOU GOTTA TRUST ME" because they'd loose the power or something to just keep that kind of shit to a minimum.
>>48282437
COMPLEX MOTIVES
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>>48285489
pretty easy, but also pretty hard to not make it feel like a ripoff.
Make a dungeon, insert players, insert other characters, have PCs connect into a party(either by making all of them into 'good guys who don't kill', or because rules of the death game favor them joining up), then have them start exploring and killing. At the end, force them to kill each other or hint at "secrets" that can make them free.
also, read Killer Queen - this vn could be most easily adapted to a short campaign.
Ouendan + japanese high school gang fight.
You can be a fierce combatant, a sneaky specialist or a powerful bard that inspires and burns that yamato damashi.
>>48282474
I did something similar to that in a game I ran, but the villain hopped bodies while the player characters had to physically travel between timelines. Focus was less on fixing timelines, which they did try to do a few times, and more and keeping the villain from completing his plans using the knowledge he got from previous timelines without drawing attention to the fact that the player characters came off as crazed, wrong-aged copies of already existing people.
I always wanted to run a fantasy heist campaign. Like have the first session be scouting out all of the different magical and mundane defenses of the High Lord's guild vault for dangerous and unnecessary artifacts of immense value, then allow them to come up with what kind of ways to negate, circumvent, avoid, distract, or bypass each layer of security over a month of laying the ground work and recruiting the necessary talent without tipping off the authorities.
And then of course if everything goes smoothly add in the complications when an unforeseen security measure pops up or a sudden time limit is imposed and force them to improvise upon all their planning.
Steal the greatest haul even known and live like kings or die trying.
>>48282437
time travel dont work
good luck trying to come with some time travel rule/variant that fix time travel problems
>>48293045
>good luck trying to come with some time travel rule/variant that fix time travel problems
time travel create a new universe instead of being time travel
>>48282474
>This leads into paradoxes, otherwise known as plot holes,
Nope it doenst.
You can even go to the past and kill your dad.
>"but them you wont be born at the future, making you unable to be a person from the future"
You are using the definition of future wrong
>>48293066
>time travel create a new universe instead of being time travel
Still have some problems:
1-You cant travel with friends unless you travel at the exact same time as them (this can be done by time travelling a item and being inside this item, like an car or a telephone booth). If you dont travel at the exact same time as them, you will travel to an different universe as they did.
2-Some guy at 12:00 city A, time travel to 12:09 at a distance place.
He will arrive there and not change the world enought to make guy time travel again at 12:00 to the exact same place and date he did before.
That will lead to this new time traveller not changing the world enought and making the guy time travel back again and so on, you will lead to infinite new universes.
3-If you allow multiverse travel this lead to even more problems, you would need to create an alternate version of the entire current multiverse everytime you go back in time.
A setting where everyone has their own familiar, and their familiars have their own consciousness and personality while still embodying certain core aspects of their owners.
The more I try to plot it out though the more it strikes me as one of those things that works better in a book than a game.
>>48294023
Could you not have each person play their PC and familiar? Or have a PC play also play someone else's familiar
>>48294151
*or have a PC play someone else's familiar
I can't type on my phone
>>48294151
Yes, that's not the problem.
The problem is giving everyone - and I mean everyone - two characters they can effectively control and coordinate as they wish makes a mess of the action economy whenever anything goes down.
Watching CCS the other day made me want to run a game revolving around a magical deck artifact with battles utilizing the various cards and the player's own wit.
>>48294023
I had similar idea when I considered running a Persona Style game with players summoning demons to battle while they are just average joes. I had the same issues as you though so I just scrapped the idea.
Dastardly Whiplash-like reoccurring villain, not a BBEG, who is pretty weak and has no allies but still manages to make the situation worse for the heroes every time he comes in without turning the whole village against them.
>>48297771
>magical deck artifact
I've thought about doing the same thing but more along the lines of the Lost Kingdoms games
>>48282437
I actually just started the Zero Escape series. Plowed through 999 in a couple of days and am now working through VLR. It's kind of made me want to incorporate escape rooms in to a game at some point.
I think it would be interesting to do it like's it done in VLR. They have to get to a goal, or escape a dungeon r whatever. A long the way they have to make key decisions, depending on their decisions, they'll probably hit a dead end, dawn breaks, and they find themselves back where they were before hand. But they retain the knowledge they gained that will help them finally make it to the 'true end'
>>48282437
Similar, but the idea I had was more fantasy. Every legend from our world is true and exists but in different realities that are connected to one another. So one land is Greek with all the Minotaurs, Olympus and Gods, another is Egypt with all of its Gods, another is Aztec, Hindu and so on. With all of their mythical creatures.
The only problem is I don't know of anyone that might be interested and what the plot hook might be that would actually let players travel all over the realms. Perhaps something along the lines of figuring out why the Gods' magic is fading as if something was leeching off of it. Then soon discovering that nearly every realm is saying the same thing is happening to them.
>>48282437
Just remembered a campaign my friend ran a while back. It was ripped straight out of Ass Creed, but I really enjoyed it. It was in Mutants & Masterminds, a superhero tabletop. We started as regular dudes, and we were recruited by this secret organization to help stop this other secret organization. We get strapped in to these machines that let as see through the eyes of three of our ancestors. And the ends of each's ancestor's arc, we recovered an artifact that let us gain some portion of that ancestor's powerset, slowly building our modern days dudes in to full-fledged heroes. One of my all time favorite campaigns, and led to the best arguement of all time, who got to be the next Pope. One person had basically Kirby powers, and he finished the Pope off by eating him. The other guy was wearing his hat. They both had strong claims to the throne.
Glampunk. But unfortunately all my friends are dweebs who'd rather make references to animu, overwatch and dota than to David Bowie and Sparks
It's not a normal RPG, but Microscope could work for this. If you want time travelers to appear in a scene, they can, and you don't have to worry about preventing paradoxes from happening in gameplay because, unless you've already agreed paradoxes are part of the setting, anything paradoxical would be against established canon.
And it's not in the rules, but I can see branching timelines being possible, though you might annoy people if you retroactively make some stuff they thought was really cool part of a "false" timeline, Hussie.
Maybe you can have multiple interacting universes and timeline retcons, but that might be a bit convoluted.
>>48288851
I'm doing a campaign soon based off of Soma and a few other things, I didn't even think about doing something like that... Well, NOW I am
>>48282437
>>48290088
Making a game even in the same ballpark of mindfuck as ZE series would be a dream. But incorporating different timelines would be pretty confusing, because if the players can SHIFT, then what stops them from going to a past point where they simply succeed in a roll that they previously rolled.
Or maybe that's the whole idea. Use failed / critted rolls as divergence points, where the characters can return later. It could get confusing, unless they are mapped like ZTD and VLR. But it would be COOL AS SHIT.
