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SpectralDerp
2015-01-19, 03:29 AM
How could this work? The biggest problem I see is with causality. Events that happen in the past change the future. What would that mean for such an entity? How could it interact in a meaningful way? Or would it need to be able to experience time in its regular flow for a short duration? What could such a thing want? One could have it try to change our past to change its past, but I don't find that to be appealing. I'm sure there's something that can be done with this concept, I just don't know how. Any ideas?4

Zejety
2015-01-19, 04:29 AM
The X-Files had an episode about a man who experienced the week leading up to his execution backwards. But this was not a constant backwards flow.
Rather, he had no memory of the past few days but when he would go to sleep, he would awake on the preceeding day with his memory of tomorow intact. This was very frustrating experience for him seeing how nobody else could remember their "future" talks with him and he had to proof his story several times.

This seems more managable and relatable than a creature the experiences every moment backwards. Of course, if you are aiming for as alien as possible, then this becomes more difficult.

The big problem of course, is that in a roleplaying game, you can't very well write a creature that knows the future when there is no author and you don't know what the actions of the PCs will lead to...

veti
2015-01-19, 04:40 AM
Pratchett wrote his trolls like that at one point, but didn't stick to it. T H White tried to do it with Merlin, but even he never really managed to go anywhere with it. That's two fine authors who've tried the idea in novel format, and admitted defeat.

So I conclude, it's difficult to pull off. Even more so, I'd imagine, in a non linear medium like a game.

goto124
2015-01-19, 04:48 AM
The big problem of course, is that in a roleplaying game, you can't very well write a creature that knows the future when there is no author and you don't know what the actions of the PCs will lead to...

It's like prophecies or any form of future-reading. Even in storybooks, they've kept rather vague so that they don't spoil the ending too much for the readers. That's in novels, where the author has complete control over the entire setting and even the characters themselves, meaning not only can they themselves see the future, they can tweak it as they like to keep the story interesting. Not so much in a tabletop, where the players play a good part of the story.

BWR
2015-01-19, 05:32 AM
Brian Aldiss also wrote a book with a group of people who believed time actually moved backwards, they just experienced it wrong (i.e. as moving forwards). Pretty good (as usual with Aldiss) but it didn't really hold together on casual scrutiny.

More likely, it will be something like the Red Dwarf episode Backward.

Seto
2015-01-19, 08:44 AM
If it's meant as an antagonist and the PCs fight it when they meet it :
Imagine the PCs fight and kill it. In the creature's experience, it enters life through painful death and suddenly faces adventurers. The thing's just come to life, is completely disoriented and has no clue what is going on. I don't really see the point.
(I'm assuming that, unlike the X-Files example, this creature's way of experiencing time is "normal" to it and it has no clue that it's "backwards" to us, or that we even have a different perception).

If however you decide that it's eventually going to fight and kill the PCs, but not right away when they first (or last, to the creature) meet, that's more interesting. The creature has had time to process the experience of being killed and will now look for its killers. What it wants is not to kill them to prevent its death from happening, because it doesn't care, it has no meaning to it : it's already past it and won't have to go through it again. What it wants is revenge. Revenge for something that, to the PCs, hasn't happened, which can be an interesting plot line. Furthermore, by doing that, by seeking out its killers and provoking them, the creature will ensure that the future happens as planned (it'll be eventually killed by the PCs), which it doesn't care about and might even find comforting.
But be careful, time paradoxes are a total pain for the brain (I had to read my message thrice to make sure I was correct), you may screw up now and then. And be especially careful because that plan relies on the PCs not killing the creature the first time they meet, but some time later, and a lot of PCs will break your plan. Find a way for the creature to escape, and if they do kill it, oh well, they'll never know and it becomes kind of a mystery random encounter.

How does it sound ?

Edit : Oh, and the creature's revenge should not be killing the PCs, or at least not all of them, or else you've got yourself a temporal paradox if it's successful.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-19, 11:59 AM
At some level, there would have to be a compromise as to what "experiences time backwards" actually means. It's like in shows in which something causes time to slow down or stop for everyone else but certain characters. How do those character continue to breathe, since the air around them is slowed or stopped?

Taken literally, I'm not sure how anyone could interact with such a creature in a meaningful way. There could not really be any free-will involved. If someone "chooses" to attack it, even if they hit it, they're only able to strike it where it's already wounded and cause those wounds to close.

Even getting around the fact that it would speak backwards, I'm not sure how any meaningful conversation could happen with it. If someone says something to it, the response it gives is not a response to what they said, but, at best, something they're going to say.

In short, it would be a confusing interaction, with no real sense of free-will.

ComatosePhoenix
2015-01-19, 01:52 PM
Pier's Anthony managed to do this, kinda. Chronos from his "Incarnations of Immortality" setting. Each incarnation of Chronos would live time backwards to the moment of their birth. after which they would pass the mantle on to the next Chronos who would likewise live backwards. Chronos essentially being the god of time would have some useful tricks, like stopping time or reversing the flow of time allowing him to appear to interact with the world sensibly. Furthermore since his past was the future whenever something bad was going to happen and he averted it his memory would change.

The other aspect was that whenever he interacted with mortals, time got screwy kinda foreword kinda back. I think this would be a more sane way to try and play with a "Backwards" creature. Half of the parties attacks would be reversed, the wizard would constantly have his spells refreshed, and after the encounter ended twenty years had past, any coal in their possession would turn into diamonds, and the fighter had grown a tail.

Amaril
2015-01-19, 03:09 PM
Now I actually really want to try and run a campaign with a creature like this--probably some kind of stupidly-powerful eldritch horror--as the main antagonist. I'll add this to the same list as that other idea I saw on here a while back for a villain who comes back from the dead every time he's killed with new powers and immunities based on what killed him (at the end of the story, you have to make a last, dangerous choice: you can throw him into a sphere of annihilation and he'll probably stay dead...but what if he doesn't?).

DrDeth
2015-01-19, 04:29 PM
yrros. ouy pleh t'nac.

Pex
2015-01-19, 06:11 PM
River Song

jaydubs
2015-01-19, 06:44 PM
The big problem of course, is that in a roleplaying game, you can't very well write a creature that knows the future when there is no author and you don't know what the actions of the PCs will lead to...

But we can write an explanation that gets around that issue. For instance, say that the PCs are special individuals, who can alone defy fate (a pretty common fantasy theme). They always meet the NPC who would exist if the PCs didn't change destiny (with destiny being the default rails if the DM guesses correctly what the PCs will do).

For instance, the NPC might be friendly and helpful the first time they meet, because the DM expects them to be allies. He's respectful and holds them in high regard, since the DM expects the PCs to be heroic. But as time goes on, the PCs start to turn evil. And so the NPC changes to reflect that. If their relationship remains solid, the NPC becomes an evil-doer himself, though he is still on friendly terms with the PCs. If their relationship sours, perhaps the NPC is portrayed as a future enemy, with wounds that the PCs have inflicted on him during one of the possible futures.

So the backwards traveling NPC isn't so much a predictor of a future, as a weather vane for how the DM expects the world to change if the PCs continue on their current path. The NPC could also be used to drop certain plot hooks or add some drama. Such as, no longer recognizing one of the PCs, and implying that they died in the very near future before they met. Or talking about their children with X or Y person.

The PCs are then free to embrace that likely future, by continuing on their path. Actively trying to change the future. Or trying to defy the entire notion of fate, and continuing as if the NPC wasn't there at all.

I... kind of want to run such an NPC now...

Envyus
2015-01-19, 07:07 PM
Ygorl the Slaad Lord of Entropy apparently does experience time backwards.


The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos suggests that Ygorl actually sprang into being the moment the multiverse finally died and has been perceiving time backwards ever since, so that the past is the future to him, and his "death" will be some time in the distant past. He is thus patient in his attempts to spread entropy, because he remembers the time when entropy claims everything, and regards it as inevitable.

nedz
2015-01-19, 08:20 PM
The Heirophants in The Book of the New Sun work like this. This is probably the best attempt I've come across. They appear fleetingly in cryptic scenes and it takes a while for Severin to work it out.

Riversong in Dr Who was much more upfront, but then it's a requirement of that medium perhaps ?

GoblinGilmartin
2015-01-19, 11:26 PM
If you want a good (yet very balls to the wall) example of a character who lives backwards, check out Piers Anthony's Bearing an Hourglass. It's about the incarnation of time, a guy who, upon assuming the office, lives his life backwards. He can phase in with regular time whenever he wants, but he has to concentrate.

At one point, while time travelling, he meets a woman who helps him with a mission. He goes and sends her a letter, and soon, he "can't believe he forgot about Helga, and the wonderful time they spent together all those years ago.

I suppose the way that such an encounter would work in D&D, is that they meet a creature moving in reverse, and if they succeed, time is altered so they never actually fought him, and yet they pass by it's dead body, not remembering the fight. that's just me though. Time travel is a great way to bend all semblance of sense over a table and have your way with it.

edit:sorry, i didn't notice comatose's post. I'll still leave my two cents here.

UristMcRandom
2015-01-20, 01:37 AM
River Song

I was going to rebuff, but this is actually an interesting concept. A creature who, rather than experiencing time backwards, is merely traveling through time and encounters the party in the opposite order the party encounters it. Still hard to play without rails though, River had the benefit of TV writers to avoid snags when she predicted the future.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-20, 02:54 AM
If this creature is just a dumb animal, from the PCs perspectives, the first time they fight it, the creature will be very tough and should nearly defeat them. But the second time they fight it, the creature seems to be a less competent combatant, and with each proceeding encounter it becomes less of a threat.

In reality, from its perspective, it has been learning with each encounter. The last time the PCs fight it will be the first time it fights them, and with each earlier conflict it is becoming cannier and more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the PCs.

GoblinGilmartin
2015-01-20, 03:02 AM
If this creature is just a dumb animal, from the PCs perspectives, the first time they fight it, the creature will be very tough and should nearly defeat them. But the second time they fight it, the creature seems to be a less competent combatant, and with each proceeding encounter it becomes less of a threat.

In reality, from its perspective, it has been learning with each encounter. The last time the PCs fight it will be the first time it fights them, and with each earlier conflict it is becoming cannier and more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the PCs.

there are a few things wrong with this, narratively. frankly, a dumb animal that gets progressively weaker? boring, nothing more than a mild curiousity. secondly, that means it survives each encounter, when logically, it's getting less experienced with each one, meaning it should have died during the "last" encounter, meaning none of the previous ones would have happened.

time travel is weird.

Shadowsend
2015-01-20, 03:14 AM
I think it would be more headache than it's worth. There are already plenty of interesting and crazy things in RPGs...And the closest I would get to this idea is probably from Groundhog Day...Even so, it may not be fun for the PCs unless *they* are the ones experiencing it.

GoblinGilmartin
2015-01-20, 03:22 AM
I'm just saying, it COULD be done, but it would require a little handwaving here and there, which is much harder when not in book form.

OldTrees1
2015-01-20, 04:52 AM
Well, you could cheat.
Have the creature move through time backwards but try to interact with the world forwards. Then have paradoxes snap reality back into a stable stream.

PC encounter the creature. The creature survives since it was around at the beginning of the first round. If the PCs slay it by the end of the encounter, then retcon the encounter out of existence but keep the PC's memories from both timelines. More likely the PCs do not slay the creature. The creature is now earlier than the PCs and will try to cause events that will travel forward through time to stop the PCs from interfering in the future. Meanwhile the PCs move forward in time trying to slay the creature. Eventually they slay the creature while having to dodge the threats the creature is sending from the past. At that point do a paradox snap(see earlier). This allows you to handle the creature using only a forward in time perspective.

Jay R
2015-01-22, 03:22 PM
I don't think such a creature is possible.

If you do, write a ten line dialog that makes sense. Not a trick set of lines that mean the same backwards and forwards, but an actual dialog you could have with someone who remembers what will be said in the future while you remember what was said in the past.

After that, run the creature, since you know how he works. But first, write that dialog.

Segev
2015-01-22, 03:31 PM
I was going to rebuff, but this is actually an interesting concept. A creature who, rather than experiencing time backwards, is merely traveling through time and encounters the party in the opposite order the party encounters it. Still hard to play without rails though, River had the benefit of TV writers to avoid snags when she predicted the future.

And Moffet's inability to write story arcs well STILL bit her "big plot reveal" in the backside. >_<

Moffet does a great job with single episodes. Blink, for instance, is spectacular. But he tries to immitate Davies's arc-writing style...and it comes off ham-fisted at BEST.

Which goes to show that this kind of time-travel-based-future-knowledge is still very hard to write. Let alone handle when other free-willed beings enter the mix.

Segev
2015-01-22, 03:41 PM
I don't think such a creature is possible.

If you do, write a ten line dialog that makes sense. Not a trick set of lines that mean the same backwards and forwards, but an actual dialog you could have with someone who remembers what will be said in the future while you remember what was said in the past.

After that, run the creature, since you know how he works. But first, write that dialog.

One thing I think people who want to write this kind of creature forget is that everything in its experience will be exceedingly alien to our perceptions and expectations.

Entropy literally runs backwards. Things move from chaos to order.

That fight it's having with the PCs? They won't encounter it earlier in their timeline and later in its and see wounds from that fight. The wounds they're going - from their perspective - to inflict on it haven't been inflicted yet.

It, meanwhile, coming from the "future" and moving towards the "past," will have wounds on its body that started opening up some time ago (from the perspective of those moving forward in time, they slowly healed), which these adventurers it comes across are violently removing from its body with the blows of their weapons.

To it, they've HEALED it of harm that started appearing a while back.

Similarly, it comes across them with wounds on their bodies. Let's firm up the hypothetical a bit, and say that the PCs ran from the creature (from their perspective) after a nasty battle. It sees them coming TOWARDS it (from its perspective) in great haste, horrid wounds shaped just like its claws on their bodies. Obviously, they're coming to it for aid! It rushes forwards, happily helping them recover from those horrific gashes by raking its claws backwards along them!

From the PCs' perspective, this creature ended the fight by inflicting the last of the wounds on them, then retreating swiftly with an eager expression on its face.

To the creature, that fight, as it unfolds, is not a fight, but a dance where it helpfully removes all of their wounds, and in return, they do much the same to it. In fact, when that one member of their team uses that strange magic on them, it sees him HURTING these people he's trying to help (so of course, he has to slash at that wound to heal it for them).

TeChameleon
2015-01-22, 06:19 PM
A slightly simpler, but still rather interesting, way to do it would be to have somebody who reincarnates, but experiences their lives in reverse order (something like Agrajag, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), courtesy of some kind of glitch on the celestial end of things.

I can easily see such a being ending up somewhat bad-tempered, since, from its point of view, it would be moving steadily away from Nirvana or whatever final-reward-type-thing you have going on for reincarnators in your cosmology, no matter what it lived like, and yet everything it could see and everything it would be taught during its lives would say that the opposite should be happening.

Also, the world would be degenerating into barbarism (since progress would be happening backwards), with short blips forwards that never lasted (which it would watch while it was alive).

You might need to introduce some time travel in order for your players to interact with this being meaningfully, but it could be rather interesting- in linear time, they'd be getting steadily more milder-mannered and, well, zen about things, since from their perspective, early on in the cycle, they'd still be trying to rack up good karma before they realized that it was utterly pointless, since they were progressing away from their end goal no matter what they did.

And, of course, you could always introduce them with the classic time-travel apparent-non-sequitir scream of "You promised you'd help me! YOU PROMISED!" :smalltongue:

GoblinGilmartin
2015-01-22, 08:15 PM
One thing I think people who want to write this kind of creature forget is that everything in its experience will be exceedingly alien to our perceptions and expectations.

Entropy literally runs backwards. Things move from chaos to order.

That fight it's having with the PCs? They won't encounter it earlier in their timeline and later in its and see wounds from that fight. The wounds they're going - from their perspective - to inflict on it haven't been inflicted yet.

It, meanwhile, coming from the "future" and moving towards the "past," will have wounds on its body that started opening up some time ago (from the perspective of those moving forward in time, they slowly healed), which these adventurers it comes across are violently removing from its body with the blows of their weapons.

To it, they've HEALED it of harm that started appearing a while back.

Similarly, it comes across them with wounds on their bodies. Let's firm up the hypothetical a bit, and say that the PCs ran from the creature (from their perspective) after a nasty battle. It sees them coming TOWARDS it (from its perspective) in great haste, horrid wounds shaped just like its claws on their bodies. Obviously, they're coming to it for aid! It rushes forwards, happily helping them recover from those horrific gashes by raking its claws backwards along them!

From the PCs' perspective, this creature ended the fight by inflicting the last of the wounds on them, then retreating swiftly with an eager expression on its face.

To the creature, that fight, as it unfolds, is not a fight, but a dance where it helpfully removes all of their wounds, and in return, they do much the same to it. In fact, when that one member of their team uses that strange magic on them, it sees him HURTING these people he's trying to help (so of course, he has to slash at that wound to heal it for them).

You know what? Forget what I said. I'm putting my eggs in this basket.

JeenLeen
2015-01-23, 10:47 AM
You know what? Forget what I said. I'm putting my eggs in this basket.

I shared this idea with a friend of mine, and he had this feedback which I found funny:



It is interesting trying to think of how it would actually see things though. And since it would only be able to communicate with others of its kind who experience life similarly, there is no reason it would EVER really be able to understand that its attacks are harming others who experience life backwards. Backhand claw slashes are just how you heal people. Its those horrible 'clerics' that are the only ones who actually know how to hurt people, with their horrible black magic 'cure wounds' and 'heal' spells...

What would be really interesting is if the first time you run into one of these right after another battle you had, the thing starts healing you with a really angry expression. Then in a latter time you run into it again, it being wounded that time, and heal it, trying to make things right after it helped you before. It immediately attacks you, to your great confusion.

Of course to its perspective, it met some wounded people, helpfully 'healed' them with some nice claw backhands, then those monsters returned the favor by attacking it, opening horrendous wounds with the PCs evil 'cleric' magic. So of course they are going to return the favor the next time they run into those evil PC's and show them the pain of the horrible heal spell.


Edit-Add: on the subject of such creatures, though, I recall reading about some otherworldly beings in Mage: The Ascension that experience time just differently. They attacked a major chantry the first time, with detailed knowledge of its defenses and the powers of its mages. They attacked it later on and were soundly defeated, being less coordinated and seemingly ignorant of almost everything about the chantry. Mages deduced that the 'second' attack was actually the first one, and the enemy used the knowledge gained then to make the 'first' attack more successful.
They still seem to experience time in the same order as we do when in our timeline/universe, though, so it doesn't quite fit.

And, in general, it looks too hard to pull this off in a game with player agency.

Segev
2015-01-23, 11:21 AM
Thinking about it a bit further, it occurs to me that the easiest way to run a simple encounter with such a creature would be to run it normally, with one exception: the emotional reaction of the monster.

It should start out eager and friendly, and look like it's pleased with itself just before it starts to beat up party members. The only character it should be mad at at the start is the cleric, but it definitely doesn't attack him. Its tactics, from the forward-running party's perspective, should be "normal" enough, as well. It's mad at the cleric, until the cleric heals somebody. Then it seems less upset (try to gauge this by whether you think the cleric will heal anybody else other than himself). Perhaps it only focuses on the cleric after that, looking confused for a while until the cleric's last "healing" of the encounter.

Since the cleric will likely be self-healing if the beast is concentrating on it, the beast's confusion is due to wondering why, after it JUST healed all those wounds (remember, attacking is un-damaging in its temporal perspective, and the healing just opened more), the cleric is hurting himself. It gets mad when the cleric heals OTHERS, making it have to heal them, too (hence why it starts the fight attacking people other than the cleric).

Try to end the fight by having the creature land a few random blows after the cleric has mostly healed himself, then savagely maul the cleric. The creature should be confused before what you expect to be the cleric's last heal on himself, and then look pleased with itself just AFTER said healing (it thinks it's helped). Have it attack a couple PCs lightly, then savagely maul the cleric, looking very pleased with itself, then bound away backwards.

What it sees is itself approaching, in pain from wounds that have been opening, and seeing a severly wounded cleric and his lightly wounded buddies. Going for the most wounded of them, first, it slashes up the cleric to repair those terrible injuries (hence why the party sees the fight END with this mauling of the cleric). Then it takes care of the more minor wounds on a couple others (the seemingly-random attacks on a couple other PCs after the cleric's last self-healing).

It sees the cleric re-open the wounds on himself after it finishes healing him, so is...confused. And tries harder to heal the cleric, getting more and more frustrated. It returns a few favors of healing from the cleric's friends by healing them between attacks on the cleric to try to keep the cleric from killing himself.

Finally, it gives up and LETS the cleric keep its wounds (the ones the cleric entered the fight with) and goes to finish (happily) healing the other PCs, before leaving because that mean old cleric is just making it so mad.


So again, the party sees it looking angry at the cleric, at first, but happy and pleased with itself just before it attacks them. After the cleric heals somebody, it gets less mad at him and more confused, and starts concentrating on the cleric, only returning a few blows to others. When the cleric manages to self-heal significantly, the creature goes from confused to eager and happy, attacks a few other PCs, then mauls the cleric and bounds away.

Hazrond
2015-01-23, 01:28 PM
On the topic of River Song, I wonder how well that could actually work in a game? If you keep the NPC's "slips" ("remember the time we visited the ruins of agrabah? Oh wait, that hasn't happened yet") to the plot-centric places the PCs are bound to visit it could work, either way this sounds cool, but very hit or miss, it could work beautifully or fall on its face, neat idea though

GoblinGilmartin
2015-01-23, 07:37 PM
I just thought of an interesting way to bring something like this into a game. Say you have a group that lives backwards, and they hate the party. one day, the party is traveling along and they all start to feel really good... Healthy even. Then one of the backwards people shows up and start using healing spells on them, opening a ton of wounds and then leaving. Then the party will be left wondering what the source of the wounds actually was.
Good way to build up tension for an upcoming fight? My figuring of this is incomplete, I feel...