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Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 02:56 AM
I have a rather odd campaign world that I am remaking due to the old campaign falling apart (they got caught in a krakens nest, and there wasn't really an interest in rolling new characters and recrossing the giant ocean of doom). The old campaign was built on the premise of paleontological megadynastys, such as the dinosaurs or the proto-mammals before them. I really, really hate playing games that don't make ecological sense, so each era is broadly similar in that there are only a few sentient creatures in a world filled with animals and magical beasts, with the types of each based on the era.

In the last campaign the world was made of 9 continents that each were from a different time period and had been slammed together into a new planet by a wizard's attempt to create a portal to the beginning of time (it caused the time explosion because the gods put up buffers to prevent cross time travel, due to the fact that all divine beings exist simultaneously throughout the time line, so killing one now has no effect on them. So the primordial gods they defeated at the end of the first epoch and the evil gods they defeated at the end of the second are effectively locked in the past)

People can then go by boat from continent to continent and explore/loot/conquer different time periods. The problem was that the party sailed to a part way over their heads and they died (the time periods roughly go up in difficulty with each passing epoch. Epoch two is more difficult then epoch 1, but its the exception).

So what I want is suggestions on how to implement controlled time travel in a way that isn't readily available but still possible.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 03:29 AM
constantly breaking time machine. or maybe an artifact that gets stolen by a boss when they teleport in and they have to level up to become tough enough to defeat said boss and move onto the next time period, this prevents the characters from skipping ahead until they are the right level and provides a meta-game reason to do the quests in the period. what is the overall goal of the party anyway? repair timeline? change outcome of certain events? etc.?

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 03:38 AM
In the old one is was to "fix" the world, because in a world with dragons and Ithiliads humans aren't going to last long as a species. In a more personal and more epic one I would kind of like it to be based around getting themselves back to their own time. However while I could get away with time-bombing them back to age immediately before humanoids, it would be a stretch for me to constantly be blasting them further and further back.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 03:42 AM
maybe its a one-way limited jumping artifact (i.e only backwards and only 5 million years) recharge is 5 minutes (so you can jump numerous times without consequence yet still have random encounters and losing the thing) and it goes forward when you get too the beginning of time (mess with newborn Gods/become a God/kill all Gods for the hell of it :smallbiggrin:)

FelixG
2010-10-18, 04:38 AM
In the old one is was to "fix" the world, because in a world with dragons and Ithiliads humans aren't going to last long as a species. In a more personal and more epic one I would kind of like it to be based around getting themselves back to their own time. However while I could get away with time-bombing them back to age immediately before humanoids, it would be a stretch for me to constantly be blasting them further and further back.

Not nesicarily, depending on how many "epocs" get jammed together technology could level the playing field. Ithiliads and dragons wont last long against nuclear bombardment for example

Or even scarier things in future timelines.

Magic is indistinguishable from advanced technology, the converse is also true :P

Also if the argument that with these creatures around humans wouldnt last long then by that logic the other epocs that get slammed together in this new world would be dominated by those factors.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 04:45 AM
Also if the argument that with these creatures around humans wouldnt last long then by that logic the other epocs that get slammed together in this new world would be dominated by those factors.

they weren't jammed together, they were connected by 'the ocean of giant ocean of doom' so unless they had invented WWII aircraft there is no chance they would interact regularly (except adventurers of course)

FelixG
2010-10-18, 04:48 AM
they weren't jammed together, they were connected by 'the ocean of giant ocean of doom' so unless they had invented WWII aircraft there is no chance they would interact regularly (except adventurers of course)



In the last campaign the world was made of 9 continents that each were from a different time period and had been slammed together into a new planet


They are from different times of (presumably) the same world.

Thus my saying that if these creatures were such a danger to the human race they would be the ones in charge in the future versions of the world

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 04:53 AM
Thus my saying that if these creatures were such a danger to the human race they would be the ones in charge in the future versions of the world

i think that is one of the arguments by *insert religion here* (i dont think we can mention specific religions {can we?}) as to why dinosaurs didnt exist. also the DM can just say "Meteors fall everyone dies"

FelixG
2010-10-18, 04:56 AM
i think that is one of the arguments by *insert religion here* (i dont think we can mention specific religions {can we?}) as to why dinosaurs didnt exist. also the DM can just say "Meteors fall everyone dies"

No we cant mention specific religions, thats a no-no to Mr Mods :P

Players: "Huh, why are there no monsters and other things here in this time"
NPC scientist: "Oh Metiors fell a few thousand years ago and whiped them out...hey where are you guys going?!"
Players: "Back to our time continent, gona start on those anti-rock shelters and sell them, we will make millions of gold!"

Theres another issue, how will currency be handled between times?

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 05:00 AM
im assuming that they were the same UNTIL the whole time explosion thing. so the Meteor that would have hit tomorrow now never comes. oops it seems those anti-rock shelters are worthless, oh look a horde of angry cavemen who want their currency back!

ffone
2010-10-18, 05:04 AM
You don't need time travel, just have diff continents have diff feels. In Faerun, 'Chult' has dinosaurs and primitive elves, for example, and 'Mulhorand' is blatantly Ancient Egypt.

I think Ravenloft even had a 'progress rating' for each region to distinguish it.

So unless the PCs have teleport magics that you're trying to prevent use of for EZ-go-home...

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 05:07 AM
i think this is a bit off-topic. the OP asked how to get a time-machine to go backwards in time and stop them just zapping home. maybe mystical stone rings? sending you backwards and when you reach the end you gain a magic item that allows you to go to any ring from any other ring (rather than moving in a chain)

ffone
2010-10-18, 05:14 AM
i think this is a bit off-topic. the OP asked how to get a time-machine to go backwards in time and stop them just zapping home. maybe mystical stone rings? sending you backwards and when you reach the end you gain a magic item that allows you to go to any ring from any other ring (rather than moving in a chain)

It wasn't clear to me to what the degree the OP necessarily wanted a literal time-travel plot, vs the look and feel of different 'era' continents. Plus, if the continents coexist on the same planet at the same time...is it really time travel? It almost sounds more like the continents have already 'time traveled' together and now the PCs are just space-traveling.

My suggestion on actual time travel is something involving an Artifact and fuzzy rules, or Portals in certain places that link predetermined time-space points. If you try to actually stat time travel, time paradoxes will probably come up, and the PCs will use time travel to create infinite wealth loops.

Also consider doing something like in Michael Chrichton's 'Timeline', where the time you spend in one era 'advances' the 'clock' when you return to a previously visited era. That way you can't create a time loop in one era, and there's little functional difference between the time travel and simply traveling between planes.

Amiel
2010-10-18, 05:16 AM
Perhaps have the world decay each time someone enters the past?
Or have time travel cause imperfections within the temporal stream, necessitating regular time travel to fix these anomalies.

Psyx
2010-10-18, 05:21 AM
So what I want is suggestions on how to implement controlled time travel in a way that isn't readily available but still possible.

You want it under YOUR control, not the player's. Otherwise mayhem will ensure.
The old-style TARDIS was great for this, because it dispatched protagonists where the plot wanted them, rather than where they want to go.

Use something similar, and completely uncontrolled by the players.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-18, 05:27 AM
It wasn't clear to me to what the degree the OP necessarily wanted a literal time-travel plot, vs the look and feel of different 'era' continents. Plus, if the continents coexist on the same planet at the same time...is it really time travel? It almost sounds more like the continents have already 'time traveled' together and now the PCs are just space-traveling.

most of the OP was explaining the last campaign that gave him an idea for this new campaign and the last line was asking how to implement a 'keep going back in time and you'll get back to the present' effect

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 12:37 PM
Okay, to explain why its important that they remain separate:

Epoch 1: Cambrian type world of acid rain and frequent storms, ruled by Aberrations, especially Aboleths and Beholders. Ends with the invasion of a gigantic number of fiends. Epoch lasts around 100 million years.

Epoch 2: Silurian type world, hyper oxygenated jungles with 400 foot trees and gargantuan vermin. Ruled over by fiends (slaad, demons, daemons). However the fiends are cut off from their plane when they move to the material plane, so they are slowly leeched of their powers. This epoch lasts about fifty million years, and ends with start of the dinosaur/dragon age.

Epoch 3: Jurassic type world, still jungle but the vermin are rarely bigger the large. Instead the dominant animals are dinosaurs, and the world is divided into a series of draconic territories, each with a dragon, its mate and their kobolds. Dragon population is relatively low, with only about ten thousand world wide (compared to millions of fiends or aberrations in the last two epochs). The dragons mostly don't do much but hunt and laze around. Epoch ends with a giant war amongst the dragons, which tears up a lot of territory and leads to the creation of dozens of types of monstrous humanoids that the dragons use to fill their armys.

Epoch 4: desert world, with the inland areas being essentially a bunch of deserts of varying dryness dotted with oasis. Inland is dominated by the Yuan-ti Empire, which is patterned off the Aztecs, while the coast is dominated by the Sahaugin. The other monstrous humanoids (kua-toa, lizardfolk, etc) are mostly slaves to one group or the other. The two are constantly at war with each other, but neither has the biological capability of surviving in the others area.

Will post the rest when I get back from class :P

Randel
2010-10-18, 02:20 PM
Idea 1: The Time Stone

The Time Stone is an indestructible meteor that landed on the planet before life began and has existed for all history and will only leave when the sun goes nova, at which point the Time Stone will be flung into the past where it will land on the prehistoric surface once more.

The Time Stone is eternal, it has always existed, it always exists, and it shall always exist as long as the planet does.

It is possible to travel through time with it due to its artifact nature. At certain times, people can touch it to enter a slow-time demiplane that is linked to it. They enter and from their vantage point can see history fly past them at incredible speeds. Then, the demiplane collapses and spits them out in the next Epoch until it charges up enough energy to do it again (whever the DM decides that its time to go).

However, the Time Stone itself is a physical thing and can be moved around. In the first Epoch it might be in the bottom of a crater, in the next it might be in the center of a place of worship, in a modrn Epoch it might have been moved into a museum or other highly secure place, and wherever the Time Stone goes the people riding in it will apear when they exit it.

There is no way to control exactly what time you can enter or exit or where the Time Stone will be once you step out (due to the circular nature of time, the stone will always have been moved to those points... you could try to change it but inevitably history will correct itself or you'll end up ripping a hole in space time. Puting it in a piece of extradimensional space is a really really bad idea).

At the end of the world when the Sun explodes and destroys the planet then the people inside will get to watch the stone itself get blasted back in time to the beginning of the world. They can thus more or less keep traveling throuugh history as long as they don't mind having to keep waiting for the stone to recharge. The stone only goes back in time at the end of the world so its a pretty long wait if you want to go back in time.

2). Going the long way.

Maybe the PCs find a secure place somewhere and cast Flesh to Stone on themselves... then they just wait for someone to come by and revive them with a Stone to Flesh spell.

Doing this is extremely risky and at the very least could result in your outer layer of skin eroding away after millenia and requiring some healing afterwards.

3). The God of Time offers you a job
Exactly what it says on the tin, have an actual divine being show up and handle the actual transport between eras. Maybe they tell the PCs what is going on, maybe they take the form of a cloaked figure or Father Time to convince the Players to go along with it (or maybe a crazy man with a blue box) or maybe the God of Time just puts portals conveniently in the way of the heroes and watches them jump through the hoops.

Point is, the God of Time knows what the rules are and they are in total control of whats going on. They could be doing this to prevent some other time travelers from messing up history or they could be doing it to let some stable time loops sort themselves out (Hey, it turns out that life began on this planet because I sat some sunflower seed on the ground in prehistoric Earth... damm that's both amasing and depressing).

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 02:35 PM
Idea 1: The Time Stone

2). Going the long way.


3). The God of Time offers you a job
.

I really like the idea of the Time Stone, with its invincible nature. I think if I'm going to use that I would make it so that the stone is a balance to fluxes in magic; essentially when there is a snag or buildup of energy in the weave the time stone flares and spreads the energy evenly throughout time to prevent catastrophic failure. However the flares are related to the fall of each epoch, and standing near one when it goes off sends the party back to a while before the fall of the previous epoch (a week to a year before). Then the party has to find the stone in that era and go stand next to it to leave that time period. When they finally get to the fall of the aberrations the Time Stone sends them back to their own time; however the flare that sent them to the past in the first place was the mark of the cycle resetting by allowing an elder brain and its Ithiliad community to go into the modern time. So when the party gets sent back one week before the next flare they have to kill the elder brain as the final enemy, thus saving their own time from the Ithiliads.

I like it! What do you all think?

Tyndmyr
2010-10-18, 02:39 PM
It's a time machine. They find it perfectly functional, with voice-only recordings from the previous crews. In gleaning the instructions on how to operate it, they learn that all the previous crews have died horribly.

Oh, also, it functions randomly. Forward or backward is selectable, but where exactly you end up is unknown.

Prime32
2010-10-18, 03:37 PM
2). Going the long way.

Maybe the PCs find a secure place somewhere and cast Flesh to Stone on themselves... then they just wait for someone to come by and revive them with a Stone to Flesh spell.

Doing this is extremely risky and at the very least could result in your outer layer of skin eroding away after millenia and requiring some healing afterwards.There's a safer way. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/quintessence.htm)

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 06:12 PM
Crystals that serve as hibernation chambers.

It's a stock idea.