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Gnomish Wanderer
2012-03-24, 11:14 PM
I'm working on a Traveller campaign to be a long running game. My first session is tomorrow.

Normally I'm the type of GM who is very improvisational. In my most successful campaign I didn't even give the players a plot, just made a map and a nigh-unstoppable bad guy and let the players go to town from level 1's. Most often I can improv enough to make it look like I've planned out a great deal and generally know what I'm doing.

The problem is in this game I'm running I want to introduce the concept of time-travel about half-way through. Basically I'm thinking about giving the players more tasks than they can handle in a given time which will cause them to lose to the Big Bad. But I've planned to have peppered the campaign with enough clues to make them see time-travel as teh long-shot that could help them redo what they do wrong, so to speak. But I have no idea how to plan this!

Has anyone ever done anything like this? What worked for you? I'm thinking of making a spreadsheet that lists all the events in the order they happened and then adding in what the PC's were doing the first time around so that I could accurately describe events the second time around. But in that case should I plan everything out to organize it a bit more or should I try my normal fast and loose planning? I know it's individual to everyone but I'm just looking for some opinions.

NowhereMan583
2012-03-24, 11:23 PM
I'm thinking of making a spreadsheet that lists all the events in the order they happened and then adding in what the PC's were doing the first time around so that I could accurately describe events the second time around.

This sounds solid to me. What might help is intentionally planning the "timeline" of characters/events that the PCs probably won't encounter, but whose activities are causally linked to the plot, so that you can have a set of consistent and logical "unexpected changes" when the PCs alter the course of events.

Are you planning to have them time travel just the once, or do they have to keep going through until they get it right?

Gnomish Wanderer
2012-03-24, 11:34 PM
Are you planning to have them time travel just the once, or do they have to keep going through until they get it right?

Hopefully just the once. I'm making the time travel one of those risky one-in-a-million shot of working things by having them bounce their ship around a black hole, with what they're told is a significant chance of being crushed into the singularity. So hopefully they don't have to/WON'T repeat it. Have three continuities to account for may be beyond my abilities.

I guess I'm a little worried it's going to get into the way of my ability to improv a good game. I guess I just needn't think of the timeline as something completely absolute and keep flexible it'll be able to work. Not to mention I have so little experience with actually plotting out large parts of the game.

Kyrinthic
2012-03-24, 11:41 PM
accurate record keeping would be very important.
Giving them too much to do is good, but letting them see the effects of the things they chose to not do will also help to make things interesting

Limiting their time travel in very hard ways is important. If they had to make 4 or 5 tough choices during the campaign, and can still only go back and fix 2 of them, knowing what thier choices cost, it could lead to very compelling story.

And if you really want to screw with them, just as they think they have fixed everything, let them find out the big bad was also playing with time travel and breaking the things they thought they did right the first time around.

NowhereMan583
2012-03-24, 11:53 PM
Depending on what kind of characters they're playing, it might be fun to end the campaign with an epilogue about parallel worlds.

"Sure, it feels like you saved the world. Really, though, when you went back in time and changed causality, you just caused another timeline to branch off of the original. So everything you remember happening pre-time-travel still happened -- in that universe. You didn't save the world at all; you abandoned it and moved to a better one."

NowhereMan583
2012-03-24, 11:55 PM
Edit: Sorry, double post

nedz
2012-03-25, 05:37 AM
Sequence diagrams are your friend. These are basically just timelines for each NPC with connecting lines showing interactions. Then when they go back in time and eliminate NPC X you can see which parts of your plot could never have happened. If they don't cause you to rip up your entire plot line then they didn't do it right.

Kuma Kode
2012-03-25, 05:50 AM
If you've got a computer with a microphone, every operating system has an option to record. You could have a recorded log of everything the players said and did, so you could go back over and double check exactly what happened when they did such and such, and even what they said.

You can also noticed odd things you missed and notice anything about your DMing habits that you might not have been aware of. I listened to one of my recordings and realized I was the reason we got off topic 80% of the time. As the DM. So I started to work on that, too.

You'll need to decide what interpretation of time travel you want to use. Do you want the many worlds option, where the party can do anything they want without fear of a paradox because they created a second timeline? Or should they hide from past selves to prevent accidental changes?

Prince of Persia : Warrior Within did have an interesting thing with the mask of the Wraith that I thought was neat. You encounter a monster that says nothing, and simply flees (other than throwing an axe at you through some bars once). Halfway through you realize the monster was you, under the influence of a mask that takes you back to undo your past. The monster's axe actually killed a sneaking monster, so you ended up saving your own life and many of the environmental changes were wrought by your future self pressing switches and such.

So you could have the situation replay, where the characters view their past selves from some location like a balcony. If you have verbatim notes, you could even essentially re-enact the scene, up to the point they wanted to change.

QuidEst
2012-03-25, 01:08 PM
Keep in mind, PCs will not play nicely with time travel. Why correct their mistakes when they can "correct" the existence of the BBEG?

Also, you should watch "Primer". It'll make time travel perfectly clear*!

If you're going to force your players to resort to time travel, pull out the stops and let them do what they want with it. Perhaps give them a fixed limit on how many times they can go back (player knowledge with permission to use it as character reluctance to risk more than that), but let them take back stock information they looked up, patents they've copied down, whatever their greedy PC hearts come up with. There should be some payoff for going through a campaign that's been set up for them to fail, after all. Perhaps there's only one window of opportunity to go back, but it's one that will exist each time around.

Notes will be necessary, I'd say. Keep in mind what is sensitive to little changes (exact timing of people's actions, actions altogether in the long run), what is sensitive to larger changes (stock markets, long-term weather), and what can't change (earthquakes, solar storms). You might even divide notes up into those categories. If they go back and stay in a room they rent and do almost nothing else, time will just follow the notes until they interfere. Interacting with people makes changes that pile up.


*This is a lie. It is a movie so confusing that the internet hasn't worked out what exactly happens in it. You should still watch it, though.

nedz
2012-03-25, 03:53 PM
Keep in mind, PCs will not play nicely with time travel. Why correct their mistakes when they can "correct" the existence of the BBEG?
I once had two members of a party go back 2,000 years to take out an ubermage BBEG when he was an aprentice. Well actually they tried to reason with him so as to change his beliefs. It ended up devolving into the party wizard getting into a fist fight with the apprentice, which was hilarious:smallbiggrin:. When they returned to the present I had all character roll a dice (50/50) to see if their character had ever existed. From other reports it was clear that the whole world had gone badly different.
Their next mission was to undo all of the good work which they had just accomplished.

Also, you should watch "Primer". It'll make time travel perfectly clear*!
...
*This is a lie. It is a movie so confusing that the internet hasn't worked out what exactly happens in it. You should still watch it, though.

Sounds exactly right, running a time travel game will be just like that.

jseah
2012-03-25, 06:53 PM
One way I had thought of handling consistent time travel (aka. no parallel universes) was to inform the players that they would be gaining access to time travel and telling them what the restrictions where (number of loops and maximum time to jump as well as time windows from which they could jump)

And then the players could invoke 'hypothetical' time clones of themselves arriving at certain points. Stats, Levels and Equipment for the time clones would be left deliberately vague except when used or transferred (ie. the time clones would have a grab bag from which they could conjure any piece of equipment they wanted or even allies if the time travel method can send more than just the party)
All equipment from the time clones must be so marked. (see below) The only exception is when the equipment is repaired multiple times such that every bit of the equipment has been repaired at least once ala Ship of Theseus (eg. changing the handle for a sword then reforging the blade), doing such a repair removes the Time Cloned mark.

The campaign continues except the players are playing themselves and their time clones at the same time. At any point that time travel is possible to that time the clones arrived (which can be after the whole campaign or within X days depending on how your time travel works), the players can opt to send their originals back to be the time clones.

In order to close the loops consistently, the originals' Stats, Levels and Equipment must be within the constraints used by the time clones. (ie. if they have their time clones pull a llama out of the 'vague equipment', their originals must travel back with a llama)
Such equipment used to satisfy this constraint cannot be time cloned (would generate closed loop).

At any point, if the players wish to reset or if satisfying the constraint is not possible (eg. one of the original characters suffered permadeath), then the game is restored to the point where the time clones arrived and continues from there. (without the clones arriving)
You can also create "save states" where you record the current state of affairs as well as a copy of all character details (including time clones). Restoring to such a "save state" is thus easy and can be used if the constraint cannot be satisfied.

The players can then propose another hypothetical loop in hopes of generating a consistent one this time around.


If more than one time travel event is allowed, this can scale. The players can propose more than one time clone and each time clone mark on equipment is unique to each arrival point. Various "save states" where the game can be easily rolled back to will be very convienient for the game in general.

jpreem
2012-03-27, 04:34 AM
Causality. Or do you mean to murder space-time so hard it will become casualty.