Need miniplots for a Majora's Mask-ish time travel campaign

[Nettlekid]

I've posted about this upcoming campaign idea a few times, and it keeps evolving, so I want to try again to this time get some advice for sub-plots, puzzles, and smaller adventures that aren't just boss battle after boss battle.

The main setting of the campaign is a bubble isolated out of time, which is a city being used to power a Phane as he ascends to the realm of deities. The city has three eras, populated by Killoren, Elan, and Warforged in order. The Phane is doing this because by building up the entropy of this pocket universe and harvesting it at the end of time, it brings him great power. The PCs have what acts like a time machine, but in fact is only sort of a Quintessence-dropper. It can take them forward in time, and once they reach the end, the universe resets and they continue from the beginning. This way, small paradoxes can't happen, because the universe's reset doesn't factor in the PC's actions, unless the actions were big enough to disrupt the logical continuum, in which case the universe then reshapes to perpetuate those actions. I think it's sort of Majora's Mask-ish, in that if they complete their missions, then it stays, but if they fail then they reset it all. I plan to have sub-bosses of each of the races, a mid-boss of the Phane themed around Past, Present, and Future, and then the final end boss is the Phane and the three sub-bosses powered up. The Past, Present, and Future Phane kills the current dominant race and ends the era when it has reached its peak, but by stopping that then the PCs can break the bubble and rob the Phane of his power.

So that's the general long-term plan, but so few campaigns are actually all mission, all the time, and I'll need some side-plots. Puzzles and things that involve time travel (anything the PCs bring with them from the end to the beginning stays, so they can alter the world like that, though if it's not significant enough then it'll just reset at the next end) and maybe quests that involve bringing medicine from the future back to heal the people in the past, or lost artifacts of the past into the future, or something. I'm really running low on ideas for this, and I'd love some suggestions.

[Nettlekid]

Really? No one's ever tossed around any sort of sidequest or adventure which involves the clever use of time travel?

[Red Fel]

It just seems that, well, Majora's Mask is a good template.

That game did a lot of fun quests and sidequests with time travel. It seems silly to re-list here what was done there; review and be inspired.

Alternatively, consider some of the stuff from Chrono Trigger. Same rules apply.

You're asking, in a vacuum, "Come up with some great time travel plot ideas and adventure hooks for this idea that's in part inspired by a video game that already did this stuff." And the answer is (1) you haven't given enough information on the players and what they're doing, where should I begin, and (2) you mentioned the game as inspiration; use it as inspiration.

I just don't know enough about your plans to offer much else that's constructive.

[Nettlekid]

Alright, I've posted the plot of this a few times already on different threads so I didn't want it to be redundant and cluttered, but here it is again:
Because time is being used up (spells last only one round, poison's secondary effects act right away, etc) the PCs are collected to stop this threat. Meet the Phane, who uses time shenanigans to know all the PC's strengths and counter them. Source of Phane's power is a city locked out of time. Time moves at incomparable speed within the city to the outside, so that the whole 3,000,000 year lifespan of the pocket universes passes in the blink of an eye. The Phane lets entropy build up as this pocket universe undergoes heat death, and harvests the entropy for energy. He does this when the city's bubble universe ends. From the point of view of the city, their own universe begins at some point and carries on for millions of years, then terminates, and that's the end of it. From the point of view of the PCs, after the end of the universe it loops back to the beginning, in a time loop. This repetition is like a generator, which the Phane uses to power himself. He wants maximum efficiency from this process. Thus, he has ensured that three immortal races populate the city, perpetuating the buildup of entropy to the highest potential. At each million year mark, a pre-programmed avatar of the Phane appears to destroy the current race and instigate the beginning of the next. If the time loop were to be broken however, and prevent the city from ripening from that point on, would mean that the Phane will lose his power.

The PCs seek the monastic order of the Zerth Cenobites, psionic monks who have learned to flow with time. In their possession is a relic from the lost city, a dais whose coding key is lost, but is locked to three distinct time frames, each one million years apart (0.5 mil, 1.5 mil, 2.5 mil). The dais also has the capability to lower a Quintessence Veil to keep its occupants in stasis for a pre-programmed amount of time, but always forward, never backward. In fact, the dais is incapable of moving backward in time at all. However, it is a constant between the end of the universe and the beginning, so that if you are in stasis at the end of the universe then time will reset and you will be at the beginning of it. In this way, it appears to travel both back and forth in time, since to travel to the year 500 from 2 million you can remain in stasis for a million years, the universe resets, and you wait another 500 years to your destination time. The three eras are the Era of the Earth, the era of the wild and nature as populated by Killoren; the Era of the Mind, the era of flesh and blood as populated by Elan; and the Era of Steel, the era of machinery and urbanization as populated by Warforged.

This method significantly reduces paradoxes. Every moment in the universe's 3 million year long history is predetermined by the past cycles, so barring external interaction, each iteration is identical. Before the PCs, there was no external interaction. Now there can be. The universe begins by using the blueprints of the dead universe. If something occurred in the old universe, the newly formed universe changes to make it occur. For example, if in the year 11500 a great tyrant leader rises to power, but earlier in time the PCs kill the leader, there are two options. One is that, if the PCs kill the leader too far in the past before his rise to power (like when he's a baby), then the universe can fix the error by assigning the role of tyrant leader to another creature, rectifying the error like closing a small wound without a scar. But if the stage is set for a specific creature to become that tyrant leader, and the PCs kill that creature, then the universe can only accept that there was never meant to be a tyrant leader, and future iterations of the universe will not contain that tyrant leader in any form. The subsequent futures will be altered to reflect this. Similarly, if the PCs create an artifact that didn't exist originally, there are two options. Either they created it long enough before the end of the universe that it could be destroyed, and the universe doesn't have to deal with it, or they make it late enough/keep it safe enough that the universe has to alter itself to enable the artifact to be created in its next iterations, without the players' actions. Making small and big changes like this, the players can shape the world, and hopefully break the cycle enough that the Phane can no longer use it.

That's the big plot throughout. I plan to have mid-Era bosses in the form of a nihilistic Killoren who believes that true nature is dust and she seeks to turn the world to ash; a cultist Elan who uses the Body Leech PrC to be a cult of one person; and a violent Warforged who believes that military might is the pinnacle of being and seeks to exterminate all under a literally iron fist. And then I intend to have end-Era bosses in the form of the Phane in some kind of Past/Present/Future format, if I can think how. The very final fight might be the Phane and higher-level versions of the three mid-Era bosses taken from parallel timelines or something.

So, as far as story within the game, there will be some like nature-communing and outright adventuring stuff with the Killoren, detective work in an urban setting with the Elan, and warfare-style strategizing with the Warforged. Hopefully, if I can think of cool enough things. I also want to stock the world with ageless monsters, just because it makes sense to me, so that includes any kind of Construct, Undead, Elemental, or Outsider, some Fey, Aboleths (maybe like a Jabu-Jabu dungeon) (are there other ageless aberrations? Are Mind-Flayers ageless?), and maybe some things that could feasibly cheat death by age, like Trolls or Phoenixes. That gives me a good amount to work with.

With that as background, does anyone have good side-plot ideas, or ideas to better flesh out the story? As you can see, the time travel mechanic I'm using is a bit wonky, so it's harder both to create paradoxes and have a butterfly effect-type-deal. I want them to be clever puzzles that the PCs will have to think creatively to solve (hopefully more than one solution would work, so I can be surprised), so I don't want to outright use Majora's Mask stuff because they'd already know that.

[Red Fel]

With that as background, does anyone have good side-plot ideas, or ideas to better flesh out the story? As you can see, the time travel mechanic I'm using is a bit wonky, so it's harder both to create paradoxes and have a butterfly effect-type-deal. I want them to be clever puzzles that the PCs will have to think creatively to solve (hopefully more than one solution would work, so I can be surprised), so I don't want to outright use Majora's Mask stuff because they'd already know that.

Okay. Before I can offer any side-plot ideas - and I want to, because your campaign sounds interesting - I first have to understand the plot.

And even with your explanation, that's kind of hard.

Let me see if I grasp this correctly. The Phane - and as I understand it, a Phane is an epic-level outsider, although the source material escapes me - has created a pocket universe, and every million years (pocket-time, which comes to a few seconds/minutes real-time) he harvests it for Reasons, and then reboots it. The protagonists are born into/ enter into this pocket universe, and have to stop him. They have access to some kind of power or device that lets them timeskip, up to and through the reboots.

Am I good so far?

It makes sense that he can't intervene until the harvest; from the outside, he probably can't perceive the speedy passage of time inside. That's good, that means your PCs are protected from his attentions until the harvest.

Here's my thing. How are your PCs motivated? Before you can come up with sidequests, you have to determine what it is your PCs want. I mean, this is a million years they're talking about. They don't plan to live that long. What's to stop them from simply living out their lives in a single iteration of the pocket universe?

Also, your time machine plot device bothers me. Usually, something that powerful would require some kind of skill check or other kind of roll for accuracy. But the way your story is written, for it to function effectively, it has to basically cast Teleport Through Time With Absolute Precision whenever used. Giving that to the protagonists just screams sandbox. What's to stop them from simply using it to go back and forth, accumulating wealth and power, and then living out their days in nigh-omnipotent bliss?

In short: Before they can go off on side quests, tell me, what's their motivation to take on a character who's basically the god of their pocket universe?

Okay, now onto time-travel mechanics. The thing about the Majora's Mask-style time travel is that it's relatively short-term. You're moving back and forth over a period of several days, not years or millennia. As such, it's a poor comparison, I admit. Given that they have a device that can transport them a million years in either direction, why use it to travel a few days, or a week? Traveling through time to help the farmer grow crops for next season seems absurd.

Instead, consider the Chrono Trigger model. Example: Your protagonists come to a crypt full of undead and outsiders, permeated by an unholy aura. By researching, they learn a dark ritual befell the place six centuries prior. Now they have several options. They can travel back six centuries, stop the ritual, and discover that a beautiful church has been built on the site in the present. They can travel back seven centuries, to when the grounds were founded, and persuade them to build elsewhere; maybe the ritual happens at the new site, maybe it doesn't; maybe someone else builds something else at this new site. Maybe the reason the site was chosen was that it possessed some potent magical aura; perhaps it was a lynchpin of the pocket universe. By persuading the builders to move elsewhere, they leave it unguarded, but buried underground; if they save them from the ritual, perhaps it is exposed, but protected by holy priests instead of monsters.

That's an idea, in essence. The game becomes a game of "see bad thing, research its history, go back to a pivotal moment and change it. Return to present, profit." The thing you, as GM, should strongly consider is - for some, but not for all - having these events become in some way integral to the pocket universe. Things that destabilize it, or alter its effects, or change the rules of it somehow. Things that make the protagonists aware that there is something outside manipulating how the world works.

Don't be afraid of some paradox or conflict. Remember the ending of Final Fantasy, the original. (I'm putting in Spoiler tags, but it's so old at this point it's hardly justified.)The protagonists, early in the game, kill the wicked knight Garland in the Temple of Chaos. They then kill the four Fiends of the Elements, and discover their essences are leeching back to the Temple. Upon returning to the Temple, the protagonists are teleported centuries into the past, to the time that the Fiends were created. Garland, at the moment of his death, called out to them, and the Fiends answered, pulling him into the past and turning him into Chaos. He, in turn, created the Fiends, producing a paradox - because Garland survives, Chaos lives; because Chaos lives, the Fiends are born; because the Fiends are born, Garland survives. The protagonists kill Chaos, but - here's the final paradox - in doing so, they prevent the Fiends from surviving until the present, and prevent Garland from surviving... thus eliminating their own adventure from time. It never happened. They never happened. PARADOX!
Don't be afraid of something like that, as long as the players are okay. Maybe not something that futile, but something that communicates "not everything you do will be remembered. Despite traveling through history, you will not be heroes of legend. Just heroes."

So, the tl;dr version:

For sidequests, I'd recommend letting the PCs go exploring. They find a place that's dangerous, or mysterious, or what have you. If motivated to research (or if they have Bardic Knowledge), they learn about its past. They then travel to that past, live it, change it. Based on what they do, you decide how - and if - it changes the present. I recommend several scenarios.

1- A crypt, as mentioned above. Or a cave. Or any typical location where there are now monsters, where there may once have been something else.
2- A desert or other wasteland. They have a chance to save it, or benefit from its destruction. Don't make it cut and dry - maybe there's a good reason the land was made desolate. Think the Green Dream arc of Chrono Trigger.
3- A forgotten monument or abandoned castle. Not so much about monsters as about society. An ancient culture whose legacy lies in ruins.

Those are your major hooks - monster holes, natural disasters, and dead kingdoms. Remember, however, that everything depends on what the players do, not what you want them to do. If they don't do what you want, you have to rewrite things. It's your world, but it's their adventure.

[atomicwaffle]

I'm pretty sure the Dragonlance campaign setting has rules for time travel, too bad the campaign settings suck.

[Nettlekid]

Okay. Before I can offer any side-plot ideas - and I want to, because your campaign sounds interesting - I first have to understand the plot.

And even with your explanation, that's kind of hard.

Let me see if I grasp this correctly. The Phane - and as I understand it, a Phane is an epic-level outsider, although the source material escapes me - has created a pocket universe, and every million years (pocket-time, which comes to a few seconds/minutes real-time) he harvests it for Reasons, and then reboots it. The protagonists are born into/ enter into this pocket universe, and have to stop him. They have access to some kind of power or device that lets them timeskip, up to and through the reboots.

Am I good so far?

It makes sense that he can't intervene until the harvest; from the outside, he probably can't perceive the speedy passage of time inside. That's good, that means your PCs are protected from his attentions until the harvest.

Yeah, I think that's how I want it set up. An earlier draft of this plot had the Phane only ever harvest the universe once, but because it was like a time loop thing it had to keep existing, because of time stuff. It would just kind of be there and had to be undisturbed, like any Macguffin of Power, and so by wrecking it the PCs would not only steal the Phane's power now, but all the power he had ever had. But that might be too unnecessarily complicated, so I changed it.


Here's my thing. How are your PCs motivated? Before you can come up with sidequests, you have to determine what it is your PCs want. I mean, this is a million years they're talking about. They don't plan to live that long. What's to stop them from simply living out their lives in a single iteration of the pocket universe?

That...is a good question actually. I mean, I guess because the pocket world is limited in resources (the three dominant races don't need all that much to survive in the manner they enjoy) maybe the PCs would find it lacking, and as such use it only as a DBZ-style training tool, and stopping the Phane's plans is a good way to train? Also, it could just be that the Phane plans to use this pocket world as a test run for the Material Plane, which when harvested would give him godlike power, and so it's a classic save-the-world scenario, and that would motivate the PCs because even if they lived out their lives and died in the pocket dimension, they would be threatened on the Outer Planes when the Phane takes it to step 3 and intends to harvest the Great Wheel for who knows what.


Also, your time machine plot device bothers me. Usually, something that powerful would require some kind of skill check or other kind of roll for accuracy. But the way your story is written, for it to function effectively, it has to basically cast Teleport Through Time With Absolute Precision whenever used. Giving that to the protagonists just screams sandbox. What's to stop them from simply using it to go back and forth, accumulating wealth and power, and then living out their days in nigh-omnipotent bliss?

Hmm, well, tell me what you think between these two setups. My first idea (before the time loop plan, so it was just a hard and fast time machine, although this setup kind of works even now) was to have just three preset dates that were circumstantially synched. So like, the machine can take them to the year 0.5 million, 1.5 million, and 2.5 million. If they spend three days in 0.5 million, then the machine would take them to 1.5 million and three days. So they do things in real time, as though they were in three separate cities, with any huge changes they make in the past affecting the future but any small ones being unnoticed due to the huge passage of time. If the campaign went on for a long time, I might introduce the inventor of the device and the party could steal the key which sets the date, giving them the Precise Travel Through Time but only after they had spent enough time working around it and they earned it.

But because I thought it might be better that they have a bit more control over how plans are executed, and maybe they'll just want to skip ahead a couple of years at a time, I changed it so that they can go forward quite precisely. But then in order to go back, anything they change in the future without grave implications would get wiped because of the time reset, so they can only ever get a one- or two-step plan done if such a plan involves multiple back-and-forth trips. I had thought about letting anything they're carrying while on the machine survive the trip back, but maybe if I change it so that only either artifact level items or anything that exists by virtue of their actions lasts, and things like regular gold are examined and wiped by the universe? Or maybe I could just change the currencies of the three cultures to something that can't be duplicated/counterfeit, like spirit seeds for the Killoren, psychic imprints for the Elan, and rigidly serialized coins for the Warforged, so that no time-based money grinding can make a profit.


In short: Before they can go off on side quests, tell me, what's their motivation to take on a character who's basically the god of their pocket universe?

Probably it has to do with the whole "real world in trouble and thus things they care about need to be saved" angle. That or pride to beat the Phane that teases them at the beginning of the campaign. Or they're motivated by potential rewards or gaining power on their own.


Okay, now onto time-travel mechanics. The thing about the Majora's Mask-style time travel is that it's relatively short-term. You're moving back and forth over a period of several days, not years or millennia. As such, it's a poor comparison, I admit. Given that they have a device that can transport them a million years in either direction, why use it to travel a few days, or a week? Traveling through time to help the farmer grow crops for next season seems absurd.

Hmm, good point, I hadn't really thought of it that far. I guess I was more inspired by Skyward Sword, with those time crystal things, but those have the problem of being very short-range and so there's not a huge issue there.


Instead, consider the Chrono Trigger model. Example: Your protagonists come to a crypt full of undead and outsiders, permeated by an unholy aura. By researching, they learn a dark ritual befell the place six centuries prior. Now they have several options. They can travel back six centuries, stop the ritual, and discover that a beautiful church has been built on the site in the present. They can travel back seven centuries, to when the grounds were founded, and persuade them to build elsewhere; maybe the ritual happens at the new site, maybe it doesn't; maybe someone else builds something else at this new site. Maybe the reason the site was chosen was that it possessed some potent magical aura; perhaps it was a lynchpin of the pocket universe. By persuading the builders to move elsewhere, they leave it unguarded, but buried underground; if they save them from the ritual, perhaps it is exposed, but protected by holy priests instead of monsters.

That's an idea, in essence. The game becomes a game of "see bad thing, research its history, go back to a pivotal moment and change it. Return to present, profit." The thing you, as GM, should strongly consider is - for some, but not for all - having these events become in some way integral to the pocket universe. Things that destabilize it, or alter its effects, or change the rules of it somehow. Things that make the protagonists aware that there is something outside manipulating how the world works.

Ah, now that sounds like a perfect example of what I'd love to have happen. I've never played Chrono Trigger though. But yeah, I guess things like that could count as the side-quest/plot elements I'd like to have a few of in order to flesh out the story. I think I'd be able to think of several alternate paths for a single event to take, if I could think of the event in the first place.


Don't be afraid of some paradox or conflict. Remember the ending of Final Fantasy, the original. (I'm putting in Spoiler tags, but it's so old at this point it's hardly justified.)The protagonists, early in the game, kill the wicked knight Garland in the Temple of Chaos. They then kill the four Fiends of the Elements, and discover their essences are leeching back to the Temple. Upon returning to the Temple, the protagonists are teleported centuries into the past, to the time that the Fiends were created. Garland, at the moment of his death, called out to them, and the Fiends answered, pulling him into the past and turning him into Chaos. He, in turn, created the Fiends, producing a paradox - because Garland survives, Chaos lives; because Chaos lives, the Fiends are born; because the Fiends are born, Garland survives. The protagonists kill Chaos, but - here's the final paradox - in doing so, they prevent the Fiends from surviving until the present, and prevent Garland from surviving... thus eliminating their own adventure from time. It never happened. They never happened. PARADOX!
Don't be afraid of something like that, as long as the players are okay. Maybe not something that futile, but something that communicates "not everything you do will be remembered. Despite traveling through history, you will not be heroes of legend. Just heroes."

I get what you're saying about not worrying about paradoxes too much, but I'm not sure what to do to make that actually happen. I mean, I guess if I use my first model of "the universe was only harvested once, but that harvest happens many times," then if they stop it once they stop all of them, thus preventing the Phane from ever having power and they never had to stop him. So, similar? Maybe?


So, the tl;dr version:

For sidequests, I'd recommend letting the PCs go exploring. They find a place that's dangerous, or mysterious, or what have you. If motivated to research (or if they have Bardic Knowledge), they learn about its past. They then travel to that past, live it, change it. Based on what they do, you decide how - and if - it changes the present. I recommend several scenarios.

1- A crypt, as mentioned above. Or a cave. Or any typical location where there are now monsters, where there may once have been something else.
2- A desert or other wasteland. They have a chance to save it, or benefit from its destruction. Don't make it cut and dry - maybe there's a good reason the land was made desolate. Think the Green Dream arc of Chrono Trigger.
3- A forgotten monument or abandoned castle. Not so much about monsters as about society. An ancient culture whose legacy lies in ruins.

Those are your major hooks - monster holes, natural disasters, and dead kingdoms. Remember, however, that everything depends on what the players do, not what you want them to do. If they don't do what you want, you have to rewrite things. It's your world, but it's their adventure.

Mm, those sound like good ideas. I'm not too bad at improvising stuff, so I think I'd be able to work around that. I get the sense that you actually approve of the "give them free reign" of the time travel as opposed to the set chunks of time? What do you think about the whole "time ends and they restart leaving most things unchanged but some things changed" as opposed to just having a set start and end and letting the time machine go back in time too, if we're being more okay with paradoxes?

EDIT: Perhaps I'll scale the timespan down from 3 million year to ~30,000 years, or 15,000 years. 3,000 is too small, but 5 to 10 thousand years per ageless civilization sounds reasonable.

[Red Fel]

That...is a good question actually. I mean, I guess because the pocket world is limited in resources (the three dominant races don't need all that much to survive in the manner they enjoy) maybe the PCs would find it lacking, and as such use it only as a DBZ-style training tool, and stopping the Phane's plans is a good way to train? Also, it could just be that the Phane plans to use this pocket world as a test run for the Material Plane, which when harvested would give him godlike power, and so it's a classic save-the-world scenario, and that would motivate the PCs because even if they lived out their lives and died in the pocket dimension, they would be threatened on the Outer Planes when the Phane takes it to step 3 and intends to harvest the Great Wheel for who knows what.

Here's the thing. It may be limited in resources, but at the same time it is unlimited, because the PCs can simply reboot it and take from the same pot, ad infinitum. Further, unless they come from outside of the pocket universe (which is actually a nice plot hook, for reasons I'll get to minutely) what reason do they have to even know of its nature, unless somehow the Artifact of Timebending grants that awareness somehow?

With regard to coming from outside of the pocket universe, that might be the hook you need. Step one is to come up with a reason that a bunch of non-epic characters would come upon/confront a Phane. Step two is come up with an idiot-ball reason that the Phane would throw them into his pocket universe rather than simply kill them. Now they know they're in a pocket universe, they know who's responsible, and they hate him (if you do it right), and that's all the motivation they need.

The "save the world" thing only works if that sort of thing actually motivates your players. As other threads have mentioned, some people are less motivated by "the greater good" than they are by "that villain needs to get killed a lot" grudges. To consider.


Hmm, well, tell me what you think between these two setups. My first idea (before the time loop plan, so it was just a hard and fast time machine, although this setup kind of works even now) was to have just three preset dates that were circumstantially synched. So like, the machine can take them to the year 0.5 million, 1.5 million, and 2.5 million. If they spend three days in 0.5 million, then the machine would take them to 1.5 million and three days. So they do things in real time, as though they were in three separate cities, with any huge changes they make in the past affecting the future but any small ones being unnoticed due to the huge passage of time. If the campaign went on for a long time, I might introduce the inventor of the device and the party could steal the key which sets the date, giving them the Precise Travel Through Time but only after they had spent enough time working around it and they earned it.

But because I thought it might be better that they have a bit more control over how plans are executed, and maybe they'll just want to skip ahead a couple of years at a time, I changed it so that they can go forward quite precisely. But then in order to go back, anything they change in the future without grave implications would get wiped because of the time reset, so they can only ever get a one- or two-step plan done if such a plan involves multiple back-and-forth trips. I had thought about letting anything they're carrying while on the machine survive the trip back, but maybe if I change it so that only either artifact level items or anything that exists by virtue of their actions lasts, and things like regular gold are examined and wiped by the universe? Or maybe I could just change the currencies of the three cultures to something that can't be duplicated/counterfeit, like spirit seeds for the Killoren, psychic imprints for the Elan, and rigidly serialized coins for the Warforged, so that no time-based money grinding can make a profit.

Okay, let's see. The advantage of the first plan (time-plus-time-spent) is that it's an earned bonus. Yes, they have to plan ahead, but because they're moving in fixed eras, it requires less forethought. As a result, they don't get the Teleport Through Time With Precision bonus until they've already gotten a firm grip for the basic mechanics. Further, you give yourself a plot hook by introducing the creator of the artifact. (Side question: Is the artifact even mobile? Or is it a fixed point in the pocket universe, like a sacred monolith, circle of stones, or magical gateway? No Stargate references, thank you.) And because the improved precision is earned, it feels less like a MacGuffin and more like a legitimate bonus, because, well, they earned it. It's a quest reward rather than an upfront gimme.

The advantage of the second plan (upfront precision) is that they can immediately reap the benefits of time travel. Unfortunately, consider the following exercise: Say I told you you could teleport, right now, to any point in history and any place in the world. Where would you go?

Most people (who haven't thought about that already) would have to give it some thought. Moreso if you knew your choice might save the world. See how overwhelming it can be to give the characters all those options upfront? Furthermore, it makes your sandbox too big, too soon - if they can do everything immediately, why should they pay any attention to the metaplot? They are immune to the harvest, what do they care?

Short version: I'd go with the first plan, give them limited travel, then upgrade it later to the unlimited package.


Probably it has to do with the whole "real world in trouble and thus things they care about need to be saved" angle. That or pride to beat the Phane that teases them at the beginning of the campaign. Or they're motivated by potential rewards or gaining power on their own.

Again, the best way to motivate players to oppose your BBEG is to make it personal. Maybe they're stranded in the pocket universe until/unless they can kill him. Maybe he threatened them or their loved ones if they ever come out. Maybe one of them knows him personally somehow. Maybe they just want to punch that stupid smirk off of his stupid face. Make it personal.


Ah, now that sounds like a perfect example of what I'd love to have happen. I've never played Chrono Trigger though. But yeah, I guess things like that could count as the side-quest/plot elements I'd like to have a few of in order to flesh out the story. I think I'd be able to think of several alternate paths for a single event to take, if I could think of the event in the first place.

Play Chrono Trigger. I don't mean to shill for a video game, but this one did some fairly revolutionary stuff for SNES-era JRPGs. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll waste countless hours of your life trying to get all of the bonus endings in a game that came out before bonus endings were cool. Hipster JRPG.

But yes. It sounds like you have the perfect setup for that already with your past-present-future model. Another (slightly more linear) game to consider is the GBA game Final Fantasy Legend 3 (released in Japan as SaGa 3). Similar premise. Protagonists flee into a cave, find a time machine, travel between past, present and future eras, altering history, all to unravel the truth of a cataclysm that is slowly devouring their world in the present (and does so completely in the future); then at the end they travel via the (now-mobile) time machine into the realm of an evil deity-thing that's caused the whole mess. Games like this, while simplistic, give you an excellent map for how to coordinate past, present, and future events for your players.

Think about it this way. Assuming they're in the present, anything they do may cause changes to the future. Anything they do in the past may cause changes to the present, and may or may not impact the future, depending on what they do in the present. Changes to the present, if plot-relevant, should be visible, if not always substantial. Changes to the future, by contrast, should not change the overall aesthetic - the world is still dying of entropy, after all, and ready to be harvested - but they should change the substance. While a place may be a wasteland, perhaps there are a few survivors in a town there, where once it was completely devoid of life, for example. Making the future as bleak as possible (while little details improve is also a great way to hammer the message home.


I get what you're saying about not worrying about paradoxes too much, but I'm not sure what to do to make that actually happen. I mean, I guess if I use my first model of "the universe was only harvested once, but that harvest happens many times," then if they stop it once they stop all of them, thus preventing the Phane from ever having power and they never had to stop him. So, similar? Maybe?

I wouldn't worry about paradoxes. Remember: It's magic. This stuff is magic. You know what happens when you bring real science into a debate about this stuff.

... Those poor catgirls.

If you want an explanation, consider several options. Option 1: The Phane harvests a pocket universe, destroying it completely, then creates another one from the same template. Thus, anything from the first will be preserved and recreated in later iterations. As long as the PCs are inside the pocket universe, their association with the artifact will ensure that they spring back into the new universe at its inception (or, at least, at the artifact's creation). Or, option 2: The pocket universe is internally consistent, and follows a looping theory of time - that is, when a universe ends, a new universe begins from the remains. (Let's not debate the physics.) Thus, although the Phane only harvests it once from the outside, from the pocket universe's internal perspective, time is an infinite loop. Either of these allows you to repeat the harvest indefinitely, until your players are ready for that song by Europe the final countdown. (Side note, The Final Countdown was also a film about time travel. Funny, that!)


Mm, those sound like good ideas. I'm not too bad at improvising stuff, so I think I'd be able to work around that. I get the sense that you actually approve of the "give them free reign" of the time travel as opposed to the set chunks of time? What do you think about the whole "time ends and they restart leaving most things unchanged but some things changed" as opposed to just having a set start and end and letting the time machine go back in time too, if we're being more okay with paradoxes?

Actually, as I mentioned above, I think - at least at first - that giving them only fixed eras of time might be best. Tweaking it slightly - letting them use skill checks or somesuch to get a slightly different time, for example - will make a nice touch until they get the perfect precision upgrade.

I think that leaving some things unchanged but others changed is a bit fiat-y; what determines which events are so massive that they merit permanent alteration? On the other hand, it hammers home that this isn't perfect time travel, that the universe does end, and that they can only do so much for so many people. Having some tragic event hard-coded into history is a powerful and emotionally draining lesson that every time traveler must learn at some point.

I'm looking at you, Doctor. Fricking Waters of Mars. Ugh. What was that, anyway?

[Nettlekid]

Here's the thing. It may be limited in resources, but at the same time it is unlimited, because the PCs can simply reboot it and take from the same pot, ad infinitum. Further, unless they come from outside of the pocket universe (which is actually a nice plot hook, for reasons I'll get to minutely) what reason do they have to even know of its nature, unless somehow the Artifact of Timebending grants that awareness somehow?

Oh, sorry, they definitely do come from outside the pocket universe. They're from the normal Material Plane, after getting whomped by the Phane who doesn't care enough to kill them (their struggling makes more entropy which he plans to eventually harvest from their world), they'll go to some mountain monastery and meet the Zerth Cenobites and from there, they can enter the pocket universe. They can probably get a little exposition from the monks who studied the time thingy, and then guess-and-check stuff on their own. So long as I know how it works, I'll be able to tell them if what they're doing works.


With regard to coming from outside of the pocket universe, that might be the hook you need. Step one is to come up with a reason that a bunch of non-epic characters would come upon/confront a Phane. Step two is come up with an idiot-ball reason that the Phane would throw them into his pocket universe rather than simply kill them. Now they know they're in a pocket universe, they know who's responsible, and they hate him (if you do it right), and that's all the motivation they need.

The "save the world" thing only works if that sort of thing actually motivates your players. As other threads have mentioned, some people are less motivated by "the greater good" than they are by "that villain needs to get killed a lot" grudges. To consider.

The reason they fight him is that I guess he's messing up how time works in the Material Plane (spell durations shorted to one round and stuff, so arcanists are angry), and there were royal proclamations or something calling to adventurers to fix the mess. Using astronomy or something, the location of the flux is discovered, and there's the Phane. The PCs fight him, and he cheats by having his future self watch from the sidelines and then pass him weapons or items or other cheats to nullify the PC's powers. Because their struggles can't hurt him, and waste energy, he lets them live. Somehow (haven't figured this out yet) they seek the Zerth Cenobites who study time, as I described above. I'll try to make the Phane enough of a jerk and a threat so that Good and Evil alike will want him out of the picture for their own reasons.



Okay, let's see. The advantage of the first plan (time-plus-time-spent) is that it's an earned bonus. Yes, they have to plan ahead, but because they're moving in fixed eras, it requires less forethought. As a result, they don't get the Teleport Through Time With Precision bonus until they've already gotten a firm grip for the basic mechanics. Further, you give yourself a plot hook by introducing the creator of the artifact. (Side question: Is the artifact even mobile? Or is it a fixed point in the pocket universe, like a sacred monolith, circle of stones, or magical gateway? No Stargate references, thank you.) And because the improved precision is earned, it feels less like a MacGuffin and more like a legitimate bonus, because, well, they earned it. It's a quest reward rather than an upfront gimme.

Fixed point, I'd say. Like a pedestal in a deep underground cavern that no one in the entirety of the pocket universe's history discovers, so it's kept secret and secure, but will have to be returned to in order to travel. Perhaps the creator can be the founder of the Zerth Cenobites, who entered this world and never returned. Maybe he founded them after he returned, somehow going back further than the PCs can in their return, and wiser for his journey.


The advantage of the second plan (upfront precision) is that they can immediately reap the benefits of time travel. Unfortunately, consider the following exercise: Say I told you you could teleport, right now, to any point in history and any place in the world. Where would you go?

Most people (who haven't thought about that already) would have to give it some thought. Moreso if you knew your choice might save the world. See how overwhelming it can be to give the characters all those options upfront? Furthermore, it makes your sandbox too big, too soon - if they can do everything immediately, why should they pay any attention to the metaplot? They are immune to the harvest, what do they care?

Short version: I'd go with the first plan, give them limited travel, then upgrade it later to the unlimited package.

Okay, that works then. This way, it's sort of less like time travel and more like any RPG where you can warp between a few different cities/locations, and if you finish a quest then it changes things in the other cities. But it's still time travel so it's cool.



Again, the best way to motivate players to oppose your BBEG is to make it personal. Maybe they're stranded in the pocket universe until/unless they can kill him. Maybe he threatened them or their loved ones if they ever come out. Maybe one of them knows him personally somehow. Maybe they just want to punch that stupid smirk off of his stupid face. Make it personal.

Okay, I'll try to do that somehow. I guess the easiest way would be to strand them in the time bubble until they break it. Which will then make sense when they meet the creator of the machine, who's also stuck, and he reveals they can only get out if they can punch through the bubble, which means breaking it down.



Play Chrono Trigger. I don't mean to shill for a video game, but this one did some fairly revolutionary stuff for SNES-era JRPGs. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll waste countless hours of your life trying to get all of the bonus endings in a game that came out before bonus endings were cool. Hipster JRPG.

But yes. It sounds like you have the perfect setup for that already with your past-present-future model. Another (slightly more linear) game to consider is the GBA game Final Fantasy Legend 3 (released in Japan as SaGa 3). Similar premise. Protagonists flee into a cave, find a time machine, travel between past, present and future eras, altering history, all to unravel the truth of a cataclysm that is slowly devouring their world in the present (and does so completely in the future); then at the end they travel via the (now-mobile) time machine into the realm of an evil deity-thing that's caused the whole mess. Games like this, while simplistic, give you an excellent map for how to coordinate past, present, and future events for your players.

Think about it this way. Assuming they're in the present, anything they do may cause changes to the future. Anything they do in the past may cause changes to the present, and may or may not impact the future, depending on what they do in the present. Changes to the present, if plot-relevant, should be visible, if not always substantial. Changes to the future, by contrast, should not change the overall aesthetic - the world is still dying of entropy, after all, and ready to be harvested - but they should change the substance. While a place may be a wasteland, perhaps there are a few survivors in a town there, where once it was completely devoid of life, for example. Making the future as bleak as possible (while little details improve is also a great way to hammer the message home.

Hmm, okay. I'm not likely to get the chance to play Chrono Trigger before this starts (if it does start) but I'll skim articles and see the general style of gameplay.



I wouldn't worry about paradoxes. Remember: It's magic. This stuff is magic. You know what happens when you bring real science into a debate about this stuff.

... Those poor catgirls.

If you want an explanation, consider several options. Option 1: The Phane harvests a pocket universe, destroying it completely, then creates another one from the same template. Thus, anything from the first will be preserved and recreated in later iterations. As long as the PCs are inside the pocket universe, their association with the artifact will ensure that they spring back into the new universe at its inception (or, at least, at the artifact's creation). Or, option 2: The pocket universe is internally consistent, and follows a looping theory of time - that is, when a universe ends, a new universe begins from the remains. (Let's not debate the physics.) Thus, although the Phane only harvests it once from the outside, from the pocket universe's internal perspective, time is an infinite loop. Either of these allows you to repeat the harvest indefinitely, until your players are ready for that song by Europe the final countdown. (Side note, The Final Countdown was also a film about time travel. Funny, that!)

Both of those options are the ones I've been toying around with, more or less. I think it's option 2 that I like the most, in that the universe kind of looks over the conditions of its end, and makes the new universe so that if it's not interfered with, it will end up the same way. That way, anything that could butterfly-effect with like 10,000 years will be handwaved, while serious plot-altering stuff will be permanent.


Actually, as I mentioned above, I think - at least at first - that giving them only fixed eras of time might be best. Tweaking it slightly - letting them use skill checks or somesuch to get a slightly different time, for example - will make a nice touch until they get the perfect precision upgrade.

I think that leaving some things unchanged but others changed is a bit fiat-y; what determines which events are so massive that they merit permanent alteration? On the other hand, it hammers home that this isn't perfect time travel, that the universe does end, and that they can only do so much for so many people. Having some tragic event hard-coded into history is a powerful and emotionally draining lesson that every time traveler must learn at some point.

I'm looking at you, Doctor. Fricking Waters of Mars. Ugh. What was that, anyway?

Haha, that's true, I've never been a fan of the "fixed point in time" aspect of Doctor Who. I think what I mean is that, a change is big enough to stay if the universe can more easily alter so that the change occurs naturally rather than change it back. Like the dictator example I gave in an earlier post-If they kill the dictator as a baby, then that iteration of the universe won't have the dictator, but upon the reset the universe will look and think "Hm, for some reason that baby died. I'll just rewrite the destiny of a different baby and they'll take the dictator slot I have written here." So the next time around, the dictator will still be there, with only superficial differences. But if they kill the dictator when he's at full power, the universe will say "Hmm, okay, this being goes through all these steps, and then dies. I can't really pawn off the dictator place to anyone else, because those steps have already been taken. I guess he just dies every time, and there's no dictator."

I like the skill check thing for different precisions, but it might back it a bit difficult to do the whole tweaking thing. Like, what I'm thinking of right now is, on the ground of a Killoren massacre (which will be stopped if they beat the Killoren mid-boss), in the Elan era, a large tomb/temple is built. The default state is that cultist, the Body Leech, has become a Psionic Lich and is using the necromantic power of the dead Killoren as fuel. If the PCs go back to kill the Body Leech before he becomes a Lich, then the temple is instead a resurrection ground where Deathless Spirits of Killoren can be interacted with. If the Killoren mid-boss is killed in the distant past, then perhaps a similar temple is built elsewhere so that adventure can still happen, but at this site the Killoren mid-boss's Deathless Spirit can be summoned. However, with the skill check for tweaking, it makes it a little difficult that once they learn they need to kill the Body Leech before he's a Lich, they can go back ~100 years exactly as opposed to getting it off by ~1000 or so.

[Red Fel]

Zerth Cenobites, messing with time, etc. *snip*

Okay. First off, good call as to how they start off against the Phane. I'm amused as to why he lets them live. The whole "you're a waste of my time, go away" angle is pretty vicious, and earns him solid BBEG points. Given how elusive the ZCs are, I think they might have to make overtures towards the characters, rather than the other way around.

The way you describe him in this scenario also makes him sound fairly omnipotent. That can be a good thing! It impresses on the PCs just how superbad this guy is. I'd advise you to "force" them to leave (e.g. teleport them away), rather than let them stay and try new things over and over again. The whole "you're just an insect" card can only be played so much before you have to swat them. But here's a thing to consider - when he harvests the universe, that's when he should be more vulnerable than when they first faced him. Still epic power, but not time-shifted with himself for backup. A good explanation is that the harvest requires a great deal of focus, or that he must exist within the universe, and by its rules, in order to consume it.

As an aside, what happens to all the adorable little NPCs the players came to love and not kill, once the pocket universe is destroyed? Great shades of Link's Awakening!


Fixed point, I'd say. Like a pedestal in a deep underground cavern that no one in the entirety of the pocket universe's history discovers, so it's kept secret and secure, but will have to be returned to in order to travel. Perhaps the creator can be the founder of the Zerth Cenobites, who entered this world and never returned. Maybe he founded them after he returned, somehow going back further than the PCs can in their return, and wiser for his journey.

Another option with regard to the artifact is not merely to make it a fixed point, but make that fixed point somehow a function of the world itself. (That is, something about that point enables the artifact to exist.) A sidequest for the players could then be locating similar key points around the pocket universe, which have a unique impact on how the rules of the universe function, etc.


Okay, that works then. This way, it's sort of less like time travel and more like any RPG where you can warp between a few different cities/locations, and if you finish a quest then it changes things in the other cities. But it's still time travel so it's cool.

Well, that is where we started our analogy. And the motif seems to work, so why fix what isn't broken?


Okay, I'll try to do that somehow. I guess the easiest way would be to strand them in the time bubble until they break it. Which will then make sense when they meet the creator of the machine, who's also stuck, and he reveals they can only get out if they can punch through the bubble, which means breaking it down.

See my above suggestion about key points in the pocket universe.


Both of those options are the ones I've been toying around with, more or less. I think it's option 2 that I like the most, in that the universe kind of looks over the conditions of its end, and makes the new universe so that if it's not interfered with, it will end up the same way. That way, anything that could butterfly-effect with like 10,000 years will be handwaved, while serious plot-altering stuff will be permanent.

Precisely. Although you still have to come up with a proper metric for what stays and what goes. Admittedly, you're the GM, so it's your call; but say the players spent a great deal of time and effort on a single change, which matters to them, even if it's minor by the universal scale; it'd be a pity to wipe that way completely. Sometimes, even just a small nod to a change they made is a good thing. Think about geeks and referential humor - if they notice a detail that references something they did, expect a positive response, even if it's minor.


I like the skill check thing for different precisions, but it might back it a bit difficult to do the whole tweaking thing. Like, what I'm thinking of right now is, on the ground of a Killoren massacre (which will be stopped if they beat the Killoren mid-boss), in the Elan era, a large tomb/temple is built. The default state is that cultist, the Body Leech, has become a Psionic Lich and is using the necromantic power of the dead Killoren as fuel. If the PCs go back to kill the Body Leech before he becomes a Lich, then the temple is instead a resurrection ground where Deathless Spirits of Killoren can be interacted with. If the Killoren mid-boss is killed in the distant past, then perhaps a similar temple is built elsewhere so that adventure can still happen, but at this site the Killoren mid-boss's Deathless Spirit can be summoned. However, with the skill check for tweaking, it makes it a little difficult that once they learn they need to kill the Body Leech before he's a Lich, they can go back ~100 years exactly as opposed to getting it off by ~1000 or so.

Yeah. You have to tinker with your mechanic. If you make it too inflexible, you have to create an impression that every major historic event occurs within the entry-points to those three times (past, present, future), which may strain credulity and obviates the need for the precision time-travel. On the other hand, the skill check can't be so difficult as to be unattainable. On the other other hand, (because this hypothetical has the Multi-Limb template) it also can't be something on which they could simply take 10 or 20, because then they could simply try it over and over again until they got to the time they wanted.

Also, consider the possibility of some calamity befalling the site in some time, which would force the players to make use of a more precise time-skip to avoid/prevent it. Makes for another sidequest.

[Nettlekid]

Okay. First off, good call as to how they start off against the Phane. I'm amused as to why he lets them live. The whole "you're a waste of my time, go away" angle is pretty vicious, and earns him solid BBEG points. Given how elusive the ZCs are, I think they might have to make overtures towards the characters, rather than the other way around.

Sounds fair. The PCs run away to lick their wounds, are very annoyed, and exclaim in frustration that they need to find a way to beat him. A Zerth Cenobite appears before them.
"It's about time."
"About time for what?"
"No. Not time for anything. All is for time."
"...What do you even WANT."



The way you describe him in this scenario also makes him sound fairly omnipotent. That can be a good thing! It impresses on the PCs just how superbad this guy is. I'd advise you to "force" them to leave (e.g. teleport them away), rather than let them stay and try new things over and over again. The whole "you're just an insect" card can only be played so much before you have to swat them. But here's a thing to consider - when he harvests the universe, that's when he should be more vulnerable than when they first faced him. Still epic power, but not time-shifted with himself for backup. A good explanation is that the harvest requires a great deal of focus, or that he must exist within the universe, and by its rules, in order to consume it.

Again, that sounds like a good angle to take. At the point of the harvest, that's when he's gaining the power he used to beat the PCs in the first place, so he'll be weaker than he was while they'll be stronger than they were. Also I could say that he can't freely time travel in his pocket universe because it would counteract the propagation of entropy, which he sorely needs to reach a critical maximum. Or something. As for the first fight, maybe it'll be the Zerth Cenobite who warps them away. I'll see how it goes if that's the case.



As an aside, what happens to all the adorable little NPCs the players came to love and not kill, once the pocket universe is destroyed? Great shades of Link's Awakening!


I guess the city, or whatever is left at the very end of the pocket universe, will appear on the Material Plane (maybe in a valley below the mountain of the Zerth Cenobites) if the bubble breaks. Anyone who died in there will stay dead, and they lived their life as they should have, but anyone who's still alive now has the whole of the Material Plane to adventure around.



Another option with regard to the artifact is not merely to make it a fixed point, but make that fixed point somehow a function of the world itself. (That is, something about that point enables the artifact to exist.) A sidequest for the players could then be locating similar key points around the pocket universe, which have a unique impact on how the rules of the universe function, etc.

Hmm, maybe the artifact is actually just a fancy way of saying "hole in spacetime where there wasn't supposed to be one." The one the players initially use is the one that the first Zerth Cenobite punched when he infiltrated the pocket universe. Every time the PCs change history and break some part of the predestined universe, a new punched hole appears, but is only usable by creatures who are not recognized as part of the universe's preordained plan. And maybe the more punches that appear, the more precise you can be in travelling through them?



Well, that is where we started our analogy. And the motif seems to work, so why fix what isn't broken?

See my above suggestion about key points in the pocket universe.

Precisely. Although you still have to come up with a proper metric for what stays and what goes. Admittedly, you're the GM, so it's your call; but say the players spent a great deal of time and effort on a single change, which matters to them, even if it's minor by the universal scale; it'd be a pity to wipe that way completely. Sometimes, even just a small nod to a change they made is a good thing. Think about geeks and referential humor - if they notice a detail that references something they did, expect a positive response, even if it's minor.

Ah, now that I'm quite good at. Some of my players very happily note that I reference previous campaigns in others, such as bringing a disgruntled noble into a one-shot Bard campaign, whose name was well-known around our table for being the previous owner of the (half) table used by the Drunken Master Goliath in a Planar adventures campaign. I think I'll be able to keep continuity and little nods of the head.



Yeah. You have to tinker with your mechanic. If you make it too inflexible, you have to create an impression that every major historic event occurs within the entry-points to those three times (past, present, future), which may strain credulity and obviates the need for the precision time-travel. On the other hand, the skill check can't be so difficult as to be unattainable. On the other other hand, (because this hypothetical has the Multi-Limb template) it also can't be something on which they could simply take 10 or 20, because then they could simply try it over and over again until they got to the time they wanted.

Also, consider the possibility of some calamity befalling the site in some time, which would force the players to make use of a more precise time-skip to avoid/prevent it. Makes for another sidequest.

Hmm, I'm still not sure how to work this, then. Perhaps have like three dungeons, one in each era, with a very difficult boss (the era mid-bosses) whose defeat doesn't actually change the grand timeline of the story, but they need to hunt down and beat/at least encounter the boss in order to know what they'll have to do to beat them for good. After they do that with the three mid-bosses (and get a sense for the whole time travel aspect of it (and maybe do some sub-quests in the meantime to get to know the world)) then they'll fight the Phane's avatar echo form, and once that's done, meet the first Zerth Cenobite and learn how to control the time travel more precisely, so they can now implement the plans they made to beat the bosses.

[Nettlekid]

Okay, here's a short timeline I've drafted up. At this point, I am totally open to suggestions of "What should happen to X if PCs go to Y and do Z" and stuff like that.

-Year 0: The timeline resets, leaving only the Dais in a cave under the earth. The land is barren and rocky.
-Year 1000: Divine forces have encouraged the growth of plants on the earth, forming the Verdant Woods. There are Fey in the forests, keeping to themselves, and early Killoren tribes are fast becoming the ruling power. They trade in Spirit Seeds, and Barbarians and Druids are the most common classes among them.
-Year 2000: The Aboleth Ixilba is born.
-Year 3000: The Killoren society flourishes.
-Year 4000: Mu is born.
-Year 5000: Mu increases in power. The PCs may arrive at this time.
-Year 6000: The Blighter Mu begins her omnicidal rampage. At this point, she ranges from level 10 to level 15.
-Year 7000: Mu uses Apocalypse From The Sky, destroying all land in the pocket universe. The land becomes the Charred Earthskin, while the spot Mu stood while casting the spell becomes the Negative Zero. Mu is killed in this attack.
-Year 8000-9000: The Charred Earthskin is now the Blackskin Desert. Dustform Creatures and other constructs are predominant. The few remaining Killoren are a nomadic people struggling to stay alive.
-Year 10000: The Killoren go extinct. The first Zerth Cenobite appears in the desert sands, and is soon devoured by Ixilba.
-Year 11000: Ixilba's psionic power resonates in the sands, powered by the Negative Zero, to reanimate several Killoren corpses. These corpses transcend the bonds of their flesh, and psychically reconstruct themselves into Elan.
-Year 12000: The Elan have turned sand into sandstone, and much of the Blackskin Desert is now the Pinnacle. The Elan favor Psion, Ardent, and Divine Mind. They trade in Psychic Imprints.
-Year 13000: Nervous is born.
-Year 14000: An academy for Divine Minds and Ardents studying the Stygian Path, named Mind Splinter, is built atop Negative Zero.
-Year 15000: Nervous begins to recruit members of his cult. His Body Leech skills are now in full form. The PCs may enter at this time.
-Year 16000: Nervous uses the power of Negative Zero to raise the corpses of the Killoren and Fey as Undead. He undergoes the transformation into a Psionic Lich. Mind Splinter has been transformed into the Mausoleum of Death Denied.
-Year 17000: Nervous's network of Dominated control covers most of the formerly free-thinking world.
-Year 18000: Nervous's obsession with having fresh flesh begins to tax the population of the Elan community.
-Year 19000: The Elan population is all but destroyed, though in the underground catacombs many undead still roam. Nervous self-terminates, having lost his cult.
-Year 20000: Over ten thousand years since its creation, the overproduction of undead causes Negative Zero to expire in a supernova state. Most undead are destroyed as the Positive Energy Plane destroys non-undead.
-Year 21000: The few Elan not under Nervous's control used Nybor's Psychic Imprint and Steelsteal to protect themselves from Negative Zero's explosion. By use of Telekinesis, they begin to combine channels of metal for purposes of communication.
-Year 22000: By sacrificing their psychic ability, the Elan manage to permanently animate their metal vessels. There was an immediate schism between those who believed the loss of their psychic power was the loss of the soul, and refused to change. Those that did change forgot their psychic heritage and turned aggressively toward those who didn't, seeing their metal bodies as being forged for war.
-Year 23000: The initial conflict settled, the Warforged begin to build a metal empire, Rivet, by processing the iron in the blood and bones of the dead. Deep remanants of the Charred Earthskin have formed crude oil that the Warforged use to fuel their industry.
-Year 24000: Juggernaut is constructed. Rivet becomes increasingly urbanized, trading in specially serialized Disx as currency.
-Year 25000: With increased productivity, the Warforged begin to question what end they are working toward. Juggernaut reminds them of their name and heritage, and advocates preparation of an army for the Final War. The PCs may enter at this time.
-Year 26000: Metal supplies have run low. Juggernaut advocates the hunting of all organic creatures (like the now Colossal Ixilba) to manufacture iron from their blood, and following that the dismantling of those in the lower castes for spare parts.
-Year 27000: Most of Juggernaut's army has been dismantled, and there remain only a small squadron of perfected warriors. Juggernaut himself is the strongest.
-Year 28000: The final Warforged turn against one another. Juggernaut is the sole survivor.
-Year 29000: Juggernaut's body begins to break down, due to lack of replacement parts.
-Year 30000: The Phane returns to harvest the land. The land reaches the end of the bubble, and time resets.

So...I dunno, just suggestions and stuff.
Like, if Nervous is defeated, before he becomes a Lich, then the Mausoleum becomes a Temple of Resurrection instead. But if Mu is stopped from producing the Negative Zero, then while Mind Splinter is still build (Mu's own death will be enough to encourage its creation) then Nervous will never become a Lich at all, and instead form a cult of living Psions.
But I'm still thinking very linearly. I need more event points, and more reactions based on what is changed and when.

[Red Fel]

Okay, here's a short timeline I've drafted up. At this point, I am totally open to suggestions of "What should happen to X if PCs go to Y and do Z" and stuff like that.

*snip*

So...I dunno, just suggestions and stuff.
Like, if Nervous is defeated, before he becomes a Lich, then the Mausoleum becomes a Temple of Resurrection instead. But if Mu is stopped from producing the Negative Zero, then while Mind Splinter is still build (Mu's own death will be enough to encourage its creation) then Nervous will never become a Lich at all, and instead form a cult of living Psions.
But I'm still thinking very linearly. I need more event points, and more reactions based on what is changed and when.

It looks like you've got your primary timeline down. It's really impressive. (Some of the details are a bit tricky to follow without a glossary, but I think I get the gist of it.) Yes, basically, depending on where your players make massive changes, you'll want to ripple down the timestream.

I would suggest placing your characters in the middle, rather than at the beginning. It goes Killoren, Elan, Warforged, right? Why not drop them in the Elan period? That way, if they have any reason to become aware of history, they'll realize all that came before them (i.e. an entire Killoren society), and if they don't, upon reboot, they'll be all "Where did these Killoren come from I don't even." Give them a Present, Past, and Future, rather than a Present, Future, Distant Future. (I also like how the distant future is robots. That's amusing on a personal level.)

One question with regard to the primary timeline: Would it be possible, due to the players' actions, for all three societies - Killoren, Elan and Warforged - to survive until the harvest? To change the "rise and fall and rise" mechanic into a "rise and rise and rise" mechanic? I'm not saying mandate it, but if your players tried to accomplish this, do you think you could swing it?

Now, onto the posted purpose of this thread (took us long enough to get there, didn't it?) the sidequests. Since your main timeline is pretty solid, you need to come up with four sizes of sidequest.

Size 1: Kids' Size. These are sidequests which require no time-skipping at all. These are things like "This Elan merchant needs help delivering goods across the wasteland." These are your standard bread-and-butter tabletop quests. This is how you must start off the game, until the PCs get to the time-hopper; they will be available in each era, and are a great way to familiarize your players with each. Yoda would remind you not to be deceived by their size; sometimes these simple acts of generosity are more memorable, and have a bigger impact, than those requiring time-skips.

Size 2: Regular. These are sidequests that take place within an era. They include things like "This farmer needs help with his crops," which might require (with precise time-skip) leaping across a season or year, or "This third-generation Killoren ruler wants to know where his first-generation Killoren ancestor hid the royal seal," which would require a (precise) time-hop within the Killoren period (i.e. to the past). Amusingly, these would arrive in late-game, when precise time-skipping is available. They would be more a source of information, power, and perhaps universal key-points or major changes, due to the precision required. There should not be as many of these, due to the precision required.

Size 3: Tall. These are sidequests that span two eras. They include things like "This Warforged archaeologist is studying the Elan and wishes to find an intact Elan object," or "This Elan is convinced that this castle (built by Killoren) has a secret chamber, so the protagonists should go back in time, befriend the Killoren owner, and learn the secret so they can loot the chamber with the Elan later," and so forth. These can be done as soon as the time-skip is available, but will likely have only a minor impact on the world's progression.

Size 4: Super-Size. These are sidequests that span the entire history, but are not the primary timeline. These include things like following the history of a site of particular importance, from its creation under the Killoren to its neglect under the Elan to its rediscovery under the Warforged, or locating a hermit who has managed to survive all three eras, or something like that. They are fantastic sources of information which should have a notable aesthetic impact on the world, if not an impact on its rules or substance.

Remember: What the protagonists do in the past gives (or takes away!) their access to things in the future. This was a common theme in Chrono Trigger: for example, there were magic chests in the past which, if opened, you had the option of leaving un-looted. If you chose to do so, looting them in the future would reap greater benefits, as their contends would have improved with age. (Don't use this mechanic, it doesn't make sense, but you get the general idea.)

Also, a side note: There was a monster in Chrono Trigger called Mu. I don't know if you intended the reference or not, but be aware that a player familiar with CT, who sees your Mu, might assume the reference. (Which may have amusing outcomes.)

[Nettlekid]

It looks like you've got your primary timeline down. It's really impressive. (Some of the details are a bit tricky to follow without a glossary, but I think I get the gist of it.) Yes, basically, depending on where your players make massive changes, you'll want to ripple down the timestream.

I would suggest placing your characters in the middle, rather than at the beginning. It goes Killoren, Elan, Warforged, right? Why not drop them in the Elan period? That way, if they have any reason to become aware of history, they'll realize all that came before them (i.e. an entire Killoren society), and if they don't, upon reboot, they'll be all "Where did these Killoren come from I don't even." Give them a Present, Past, and Future, rather than a Present, Future, Distant Future. (I also like how the distant future is robots. That's amusing on a personal level.)

Ah, that does sound like a good idea, and probably makes the most sense that to punch into the bubble universe using some psionic device of the Zerth Cenobites, it homes in to the psionic timeframe. I realized as I was drafting this that the crux of the time-altering stuff happens in the Elan era. In the Killoren era there's nothing before, so there's nothing to alter until you do it within the era. And in the Warforged era there's nothing that comes after, so any alterations don't have a lasting effect. The Elan era has both.


One question with regard to the primary timeline: Would it be possible, due to the players' actions, for all three societies - Killoren, Elan and Warforged - to survive until the harvest? To change the "rise and fall and rise" mechanic into a "rise and rise and rise" mechanic? I'm not saying mandate it, but if your players tried to accomplish this, do you think you could swing it?
That was actually one of the first circumstances I thought of to be the key to breaking the pocket dimension. If the most fundamental aspect of the end of the universe is that no one survives, and then there comes a time where just this once...everybody lives, then the universe is going to have no idea what to do and break. So in that final battle with the Phane, he won't just be attacking the PCs, but probably also trying to commit mass triple-genocide to fulfill the requirements of the universe. Maybe.

If I did go that direction, I'd try to make it harder to keep them all alive. Like for example, ground zero for Apocalypse From The Sky ends up being a source of power for the undead in the Elan era. If the PCs stop the spell from destroying the land then yes, the undead will be far weaker, but perhaps the forested area there will grow dangerously poisonous plants that inhibit the growth of the Elan society at all, so the PCs will have to deal with that somehow.


Now, onto the posted purpose of this thread (took us long enough to get there, didn't it?) the sidequests. Since your main timeline is pretty solid, you need to come up with four sizes of sidequest.

Size 1: Kids' Size. These are sidequests which require no time-skipping at all. These are things like "This Elan merchant needs help delivering goods across the wasteland." These are your standard bread-and-butter tabletop quests. This is how you must start off the game, until the PCs get to the time-hopper; they will be available in each era, and are a great way to familiarize your players with each. Yoda would remind you not to be deceived by their size; sometimes these simple acts of generosity are more memorable, and have a bigger impact, than those requiring time-skips.

Seems simple enough. These are the classic quests, so I should be able to figure out what any particular Killoren, Elan, or Warforged might need adventurers for. If I can work it into the main plot (like the PCs help an Elan who knows something about the rising cult, for instance,) then all the better.


Size 2: Regular. These are sidequests that take place within an era. They include things like "This farmer needs help with his crops," which might require (with precise time-skip) leaping across a season or year, or "This third-generation Killoren ruler wants to know where his first-generation Killoren ancestor hid the royal seal," which would require a (precise) time-hop within the Killoren period (i.e. to the past). Amusingly, these would arrive in late-game, when precise time-skipping is available. They would be more a source of information, power, and perhaps universal key-points or major changes, due to the precision required. There should not be as many of these, due to the precision required.

Size 3: Tall. These are sidequests that span two eras. They include things like "This Warforged archaeologist is studying the Elan and wishes to find an intact Elan object," or "This Elan is convinced that this castle (built by Killoren) has a secret chamber, so the protagonists should go back in time, befriend the Killoren owner, and learn the secret so they can loot the chamber with the Elan later," and so forth. These can be done as soon as the time-skip is available, but will likely have only a minor impact on the world's progression.

I like these, and I think they're sort of related, since there's not a whole lot of difference if you were to go back 5000 years, even if that ends up being a different era, because it's still just a back-and-forth quest. These two, especially Size 3 but also Size 2, are the ones I want to incorporate the most of. Hopefully I can also think of a way that someone in the past would require an item from the future that they don't even know about, but the PCs might figure out.


Size 4: Super-Size. These are sidequests that span the entire history, but are not the primary timeline. These include things like following the history of a site of particular importance, from its creation under the Killoren to its neglect under the Elan to its rediscovery under the Warforged, or locating a hermit who has managed to survive all three eras, or something like that. They are fantastic sources of information which should have a notable aesthetic impact on the world, if not an impact on its rules or substance.

Mm, I like this, but the trouble is trying to think of anything that would span multiple eras. I plan to have the Aboleth Ixilba do so, and in the Warforged era it would be big enough to serve as a Jabu-Jabu Belly dungeon, so maybe there are things that the PCs could trick it into eating when it's smaller, to be useful later. The first Zerth Cenobite might be found in there. Maybe he'll be long dead of starvation, unless the PCs feed Ixilba lots of seeds when its small so plants can grow inside it. *shrug* D&D logic.


Remember: What the protagonists do in the past gives (or takes away!) their access to things in the future. This was a common theme in Chrono Trigger: for example, there were magic chests in the past which, if opened, you had the option of leaving un-looted. If you chose to do so, looting them in the future would reap greater benefits, as their contends would have improved with age. (Don't use this mechanic, it doesn't make sense, but you get the general idea.)]/QUOTE]

I should probably make small dungeons like a desert temple build by Dustform creatures that would house desert treasure, that won't exist if they stop the desert from forming. Or maybe a Killoren spirit temple in the Warforged era that only exists if they stop the undead thing from forming in the Elan era.

[QUOTE]Also, a side note: There was a monster in Chrono Trigger called Mu. I don't know if you intended the reference or not, but be aware that a player familiar with CT, who sees your Mu, might assume the reference. (Which may have amusing outcomes.)

Ah, hm, maybe I'll change it then. Mu just means like "nothing," so a lot of lamely cliche anime villains are called Mu for their destroying nature.