PDA

View Full Version : Time Travel Campaign Advice



Talakeal
2014-10-12, 03:40 PM
In my campaign world there was a great war a thousand years before the present which ended when the BBEG was mysteriously assassinated. No one knows who killed him or how, and it is one of the big mysteries of the setting.

My epic level PCs eventually came into a situation where they discovered that they were the ones who killed him. They found a gate that could allow time travel which their enemies were using to change the past with the help of the past BBEG, and they were predestined to go back in time and put a stop to the scheme in the first place.

I intended the whole thing would have been a closed time loop with no changing of the past unless the characters failed. However, when they went back they took no actions to do it in secret, made a lot of drastic changes to the past, looted a bunch of artifacts which had a major role in history, killed some important NPCs, and told everyone who they were and why they were here. The timeline was wrecked.

So, I decided to have them return to a future dystopia very different from the one they knew. Sort of like the plot of Back to the Future 2. After some shenanigans in the nightmare present they decided to go back into the past again.

Now, I expected them to go back to put everything right. They didn't. Instead they decided that if they had the power to change time they should use it and tried to "fix" the world by turning it into a utopia in their ideal. They DRASTICALLY changed the past, to the point where their characters likely would never have been born, let alone meet, become epic level heroes, or have the motivation / means to go back in time. They have created a major time paradox.

What would you do as the DM in this situation?

Illogictree
2014-10-12, 04:04 PM
Really depends on whether your goal is to get them to restore the timeline to its previous un-borked state or not. If you do, I'd use Back to the Future rules and have them gradually fade out. Make sure they know what's causing it somehow, and indicate the way to fix it is to undo their changes. Alternately, I'm sure SOMEONE or SOMETHING will be wanting to talk to them about the pile of hash that used to be a timeline. If this is D&D as I'm assuming, that would probably include Inevitables or similar.

Then again, they went to all the trouble of building their utopian ideal through time travel shenanigans. Maybe you should consider just letting them have it. Their adventures will probably have to move on to other places like different planes or whatever since utopia doesn't exactly give them much to do.

BWR
2014-10-12, 04:24 PM
Important question: will letting the PCs win screw up your plans for the campaign? If not, let them win and end the campaign. handwave away the paradox and just let things end on a high note.

If you want the game to continue, make use of the paradox.

- bad guys (future or between the two periods you are running) realize that if the PCs succeed they will not exist and step in to stop the PCs. Or bad guys who pop up because of the PCs' actions and who are too powerful to stop without going back and doing the right thing. An old BECMI module called "Where chaos reigns" has time traveling clone cyborgs from the future try to ensure their existence by altering the past of their world. Basically, two different versions of reality are fighting it out to see which one wins. The paradox the PCs have set up could start something similar, but in reverse. In the original time line this wouldn't happen, but in the utopia the PCs set up this happens, and causes the Borg to appear, and the Borg want to secure their past by making sure the PCs succeed.

- time clones of themselves might try to stop them (this could be done quickly and painlessly - the PCs meet themselves from the future, are told they have to knock it off or Ruin Everything, and if the players take the hint

- Time Cops. Plenty of versions of these, from priomrdial manifestations of time down to people working 9 to 5 jobs at a desk. They have official or at least preferred versions of history and can try to make sure things go as they want. If hte PCs persist in monkeying about there could be an all out war between time travelling enemies.

- the ever amusing alternative of ripples in a stream. The more the PCs try to alter things, the more things change. However, they change in ways the PCs don't forsee. Things might be better right now but worse down the line. They've already started this and you'd think they would have taken a hint, but just mess things up even more. Make sure every action they take bties the world in the arse at some point

- weakening of the space-time continuum. Reality bleeds, strange monsters appearing, places and people getting unstuck in time. The PCs have to lessen paradox to fix things. The more they alter the established order of things, the worse reality gets.

If you've read enough time travel fiction you should be about as well-equipped to answer this question as us. John Crowley's "A great work of time" might be particularly relevant for compelling yet quiet and peaceful complications. In any case, the 2e supplement Chronomancer is an excellent tool for handling time travel in D&D.

GorinichSerpant
2014-10-13, 08:15 PM
If you want to end the campaign, then you can have the universe follow the rules from Time Patrol
where if you go to the past and kill your grandpa, and you decide to go back you are met with a world that I don't have a place in, do to what you've changed.

Talakeal
2014-10-15, 06:18 PM
If you want to end the campaign, then you can have the universe follow the rules from Time Patrol
where if you go to the past and kill your grandpa, and you decide to go back you are met with a world that I don't have a place in, do to what you've changed.

But they are personally unchanged? I can't imagine that would bother most PCs; especially when they are loaded down with ill gotten swag plundered from other time periods and have wiped away all enemies and obligations they might have previously had.

The Glyphstone
2014-10-15, 06:52 PM
What happened to your supposed new game group? These sort of shenanigans sounds exactly like your previous group.

Talakeal
2014-10-16, 04:59 PM
What happened to your supposed new game group? These sort of shenanigans sounds exactly like your previous group.

I am a player in several knew groups right now, I still haven't found one which I want to settle down in or DM for yet though.

This is a hanging problem left over from the last session with my old group this summer. I was a little bit too stunned to fully resolve the issue at the time, but there is a good chance I will be gaming with them again over the holidays and want to have a resolution in mind.

The Glyphstone
2014-10-19, 11:10 AM
In that case...let it resolve with a 'happy ending'. This is you cutting your last tie with these people; for your own sanity and self-esteem, if nothing else, don't worry about consequences or continuity or anything. If they want an epilogue of becoming the immortal god-dictators of a pristine utopian paradise, give it to them on a silver platter.

And if when they complain...the timelines collapse in on themselves and annihilate the multiverse, erasing everything and everyone.

Talakeal
2014-10-25, 07:20 AM
On the subject of the campaign: They haven't actually made a utopia. They killed or removed too many people and artifacts who are vital to history, and they have actually just kind of created a bland world where humanity never developed past small bronze age city states. I think what I am going to do is have them fade out back to the future style and wake up as level one civilians in the new world who decide to become adventurers. One of the previous members of the party was a chronomancer whose player moved away about 5 years ago and his character left to explore the planes. As he was in another dimension when the ret-con happened he would be unaffected, so I am going to have him return and eventually the PCs will help him restore the proper timelines (and their own power level and destiny) at the cost of his own existence, give him one last hoorah as it were.

Of course, it still creates a paradox, as how did the level 1 PCs without access to time travel change history in the first-place, but I suppose if everything works out it will be a self correcting paradox.

Any thoughts



In that case...let it resolve with a 'happy ending'. This is you cutting your last tie with these people; for your own sanity and self-esteem, if nothing else, don't worry about consequences or continuity or anything. If they want an epilogue of becoming the immortal god-dictators of a pristine utopian paradise, give it to them on a silver platter.

And if when they complain...the timelines collapse in on themselves and annihilate the multiverse, erasing everything and everyone.

I don't know Glyph, I really don't. I am just not having fun in any of my other games. True the drama and fighting was terrible in my old group, but at least when the game was actually going along fine I had FUN.

All of the new groups I have tried have been filled with (as you can probably tell from some of my other threads) control freak DMs, rampant power gamers, people who can't focus on the game, people who are just there to cause problems or crack jokes, people who can't show up and cause the game to fall apart after a few sessions, as well as people who are just plain nasty or dishonest and no fun to be around.

I really want my situation to change, but so far trying to find a new group has only made me appreciate my old group more, flaws and all, and I really can't wait to play with them again when I go home for the holidays.