Advice for handling an entire campaign based on time travel?

[MonkeySage]

So I'm planning a 3.5 campaign soon which will involve, as part of the BBEG's story, a Bootstrap Paradox. All I have yet is thoughts- nothing written down just yet.

I know this much:
The BBEG is a fallen paladin, though the players will meet her before her fall- she'll be a quest giver at first.
This is deity-facilitated time travel, specifically the Titan of Time.
The BBEG, due to the circumstances of her fall, has involved the Titan in a revenge plot. For his part, the Titan is reluctant, but believes direct intervention would do more harm than good. He's playing both sides, helping the BBEG and the players.
I do not want to shy away from Paradoxes- in fact, the BBEG's fall was caused in part by a Bootstrap Paradox. The BBEG kind of caused her own fall in her attempt to prevent it.

I want the BBEG to be sympathetic- someone the players may want to try and save.

I want to subtly hint at time travel from day one, but I don't want to make it too easy for my players to figure it out. I also don't want to do it in a way that will take away player agency.

NOTE: This is, incidentally, a Titan in the mythological sense- not the giant found in the monster manual, but an actual deity.

Are there existing adventures I can draw inspiration from?

[haplot]

Off the top of my head, I believe the dragonlance setting handled time travel stuff.

I haven't got the books to hand to give you more info, but I'd personally start there, or read the books tied to the setting.

Sorry I couldn't be more help

[Calthropstu]

Off the top of my head, I believe the dragonlance setting handled time travel stuff.

I haven't got the books to hand to give you more info, but I'd personally start there, or read the books tied to the setting.

Sorry I couldn't be more help

Ah, war of the twins. They didn't handle it well, and dealt very little with paradox.

Time travel gets messy fast. If you don't handwave certain things the way dragonball z did, you have to come up with some sort of mechanism to handle all the problems. Also, I'd strongly recommend restricting time travel as much as possible. If the players get a hold of it at will, expect things to degenerate real fast, and you will need to do a lot of world building you wouldn't expect.

[liquidformat]

What level of time travel are you looking at? Are you looking at time travel over the span of the BBEG's, the span of time itself, a couple hundred years, are you looking at both going to the future and the past?

Also for a Fallen Paladin look at Dirty Fighter 1/Paladin 4/Shadowbane Inquisitor 7, trading handle animal and ride for gather information and tumble. There are a couple cool things about going Shadowbane Inquisitor for starters it gives you Improved Sunder as a bonus feat, its level count as paladin levels for determining your Blackguard bonuses, and you get to keep all your class features of Shadowbane Inquisitor once you fall. I like level 7 as the 'fall' point myself since that gets you more smite and sneak attack but anything level 5 or further allows you to trade all your paladin levels for blackguard and get all the level 1-9 bonuses!

[Remuko]

Ah, war of the twins. They didn't handle it well, and dealt very little with paradox.

Time travel gets messy fast. If you don't handwave certain things the way dragonball z did, you have to come up with some sort of mechanism to handle all the problems. Also, I'd strongly recommend restricting time travel as much as possible. If the players get a hold of it at will, expect things to degenerate real fast, and you will need to do a lot of world building you wouldn't expect.

DBZ didnt handwave things. It just used multiverse theory time travel, as it avoids paradoxes, since changes to one timeline never effect any others (directly).

[MonkeySage]

For restricting, I was thinking of using time travel based dungeons and such, and it'd be entirely out of the players' hands to what time they're going. The Fallen Paladin herself will have only limited control over it- attempting to travel back in time to right some wrongs. Trouble for her is that she ends up not only causing the events that led to her past self falling, but also the selfsame events that made her want to go back in time in the first place. Mostly, it'll be limited to the BBEG's lifetime.

The actual power over time travel is held by this Titan of Time- one of the first deities. He's now a pawn in a mortal's plans, and doesn't intervene because he's afraid he'd do more harm than good. The Titan has, up to this point, been locked away by the gods. The Keys to his prison have, for thousands of years, served as crown jewels to half a dozen mortal kingdoms. The Titan actually asked the gods to do this, he wanted to be left alone, where he couldn't cause any damage.

Since I'm still in the planning phase, i've still to figure out:

What event not only caused this paladin to fall, but was so traumatic that she felt that only time travel could fix it?

What kind of leverage might this fallen paladin have over a primordial being, that she'd be able to make use of his power for time travel? How is she doing this?

Why would the Titan try to play both sides- helping the fallen paladin with her plans, while also helping the players to thwart them?

[liquidformat]

For restricting, I was thinking of using time travel based dungeons and such, and it'd be entirely out of the players' hands to what time they're going. The Fallen Paladin herself will have only limited control over it- attempting to travel back in time to right some wrongs. Trouble for her is that she ends up not only causing the events that led to her past self falling, but also the selfsame events that made her want to go back in time in the first place. Mostly, it'll be limited to the BBEG's lifetime.

The actual power over time travel is held by this Titan of Time- one of the first deities. He's now a pawn in a mortal's plans, and doesn't intervene because he's afraid he'd do more harm than good. The Titan has, up to this point, been locked away by the gods. The Keys to his prison have, for thousands of years, served as crown jewels to half a dozen mortal kingdoms. The Titan actually asked the gods to do this, he wanted to be left alone, where he couldn't cause any damage.

Since I'm still in the planning phase, i've still to figure out:

What event not only caused this paladin to fall, but was so traumatic that she felt that only time travel could fix it?

What kind of leverage might this fallen paladin have over a primordial being, that she'd be able to make use of his power for time travel? How is she doing this?

Why would the Titan try to play both sides- helping the fallen paladin with her plans, while also helping the players to thwart them?

Ahh, so Butterfly Effect style time travel. Well if you want an easy way to explain the leverage/ reason the titan would help the fallen paladin perhaps she found an item that gives her some limited control over the power of time travel. Something like a spark of the Titan's divinity or something that forces the titan to help her since it is caged....

[FauxKnee]

I don't really have any creative ideas on orchestrating this kind of campaign, but I have a few remarks on the mechanics of time travel. If you're specifically trying to allow for time paradoxes, you have a lot of thinking to do.

Are there universal consequences of paradoxes? (hp damage, will save or go insane, slowly become disconnected from reality, etc.)
Are paradox consequences situational? (do you try to figure out "what this will cause" and dictate those actions through dm fiat?)
Does the timeline "defend itself"? (do small changes tend to vanish over time, is it difficult to change important historical events, etc.)
Are there global-scale restrictions on time travel? (can you only travel back to the moment time travel was invented, is it pointless to travel to the future because the future is unfixed, can you only send your mind back into your own younger body, etc)


Personally I think it's a lot more elegant to embrace the Novikov principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle). This dodges all of the mind-twisty paradox stuff in favor of requiring the DM and the players to come up with solutions to their problems that don't interfere with knowledge they already have. For example, they can't go back in time and stop the baddie from detonating his world-devastator bomb, because they already know it detonates. They can go back in time and evacuate the planet before the bomb goes off (as long as you haven't already dictated the casualties of the event.) Narratively, this has an interesting effect where it's often better not to get additional information, because the more events you know about, the more constraints your solutions have to meet.

[MR_Anderson]

So I'm planning a 3.5 campaign soon which will involve, as part of the BBEG's story, a Bootstrap Paradox. All I have yet is thoughts- nothing written down just yet.

I know this much:
The BBEG is a fallen paladin, though the players will meet her before her fall- she'll be a quest giver at first.
This is deity-facilitated time travel, specifically the Titan of Time.
The BBEG, due to the circumstances of her fall, has involved the Titan in a revenge plot. For his part, the Titan is reluctant, but believes direct intervention would do more harm than good. He's playing both sides, helping the BBEG and the players.
I do not want to shy away from Paradoxes- in fact, the BBEG's fall was caused in part by a Bootstrap Paradox. The BBEG kind of caused her own fall in her attempt to prevent it.

I want the BBEG to be sympathetic- someone the players may want to try and save.

I want to subtly hint at time travel from day one, but I don't want to make it too easy for my players to figure it out. I also don't want to do it in a way that will take away player agency.

NOTE: This is, incidentally, a Titan in the mythological sense- not the giant found in the monster manual, but an actual deity.

Are there existing adventures I can draw inspiration from?
First and foremost Time Travel is at the core of DnD, Mindflayers/Illithid are a time traveling race from the future, if you haven’t looked into Spelljammer I recommend having and understanding of it as you cause ripples in time.

Edit: removed the unwanted info.

[Zombimode]

First and foremost Time Travel is at the core of DnD, Mindflayers/Illithid are a time traveling race from the future, if you haven’t looked into Spelljammer I recommend having and understanding of it as you cause ripples in time.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't call some rather inconsequential fluff* and a setting that was discontinued 20+ years ago to be "at the core" of D&D. Dragons are at the core of D&D. Timetravel? Besides some very specific spells and psionic powers not so much.

*that Illithids are "from the future" does not do anything. You can ignore that line of text and nothing will change. Also, it's not true for all settings anyway.

[liquidformat]

Yeah, well, I wouldn't call some rather inconsequential fluff* and a setting that was discontinued 20+ years ago to be "at the core" of D&D. Dragons are at the core of D&D. Timetravel? Besides some very specific spells and psionic powers not so much.

*that Illithids are "from the future" does not do anything. You can ignore that line of text and nothing will change. Also, it's not true for all settings anyway.

That is a very time'ist response you have there...

Anyways, it's going to be important to setup some basics of time travel and how it functions inside the campaign world.

What happens if your past self sees your future self? do you die, do you go insane...
How does time travel work? do you transport back inside your own body to be at the age you were and where you were but with your current memories and what not, are you limited to your own time line, and so forth
How 'stable' is time travel? How accurately can you travel back, and do you end up in the same exact spot in space
How much understanding of time travel will you allow your players to have IC? are you going to make a skill that is needed for the players to use or are they simply go through established space/time portal, do they have any control what so ever over the time travel


Here is one way to approach the fall of your BBEG:
Fallen paladin BBEG's original mission was to stop DBBEG (Different Big Bad Evil Guy) who wished to control the world through controlling time and time travel. The BBEG acquired her understanding of time travel and cooperation of the Titan of Time while trying to stop the DBBEG from taking over the world. before the final battle the DBBEG had gone back in time and killed off the whole line of ancestors of BBEG's lover, so that said lover would no longer exist. It was an attempt to stop BBEG from ever becoming his enemy because it was due to said lover that BBEG became enemies with DBBEG. DBBEG couldn't do the same to BBEG because their fates were to tightly bound at this point making it impossible for him to erase her. However, since she had already been using time travel so much she had already loosened her ties with the timeline enough that this act by DBBEG made no difference. BBEG killed DBBEG and right after fell because she made the decision to stop DBBEG from ever existing because he was so evil and did so much evil the world would be better without him.

[MR_Anderson]

Yeah, well, I wouldn't call some rather inconsequential fluff* and a setting that was discontinued 20+ years ago to be "at the core" of D&D. Dragons are at the core of D&D. Timetravel? Besides some very specific spells and psionic powers not so much.

*that Illithids are "from the future" does not do anything. You can ignore that line of text and nothing will change. Also, it's not true for all settings anyway.

Well, if that is all that you got from my post, I guess you didn’t really need the other information or ideas.

[Brunks]

There's some cool potential in timetravel campaigns, especially if you sprinkle in some "random" events that are easy to recreate at a later time, like a loud sound at mightnight or a sudden missing precious item.

You gotta be careful with direct interaction with different timelines though.

I played in a d&d 7th edition campaign that did that a few years back. My character wound up killing his past self and my character sheet imploded into a vortex of wailing causality. I still get nosebleeds from time to time to time.

[MonkeySage]

I played in a d&d 7th edition campaign that did that a few years back.
Brunks, are you from the future? :smallbiggrin:

[Quertus]

Sounds like the first thing you need to do is figure out how Time Travel works in this setting. IMO, about the only time travel mechanic that actually works - that can't be gamed, doesn't get complicated or stupid or make for an unfun game - is "multiple realities", where traveling backwards in time takes you to / creates a different reality.

But first, you need to look at your plot, and decide whether your players will enjoy such strict rails as you seem to have planned.

So, first, you should ask yourself whether your idea is better suited to a group game, or to single author fiction. Because doing something like this in a group can be *hard* to get right (not that it's necessary trivial in saf, depending on your choice of mechanics).

Thus, let me first tell you how I might go about it: introduce a completely different quest-giver or two. Introduce a completely different Paladin or two. Introduce a completely different strong female character or two. Observe how the party interacts with each of these elements; use this knowledge to predict how they might interact with your rails, what setup and contingency plans you'll need in place in order for your intended storyline to make sense.

Of course, to do that, first you'll need to map out the rails, the specific abilities and decision points¹ that are required for the story to happen.

¹ actually, since these are points where it's important that the party / NPCs decide a particular way, perhaps they should be called "indecision points", for clarity.

[aglondier]

Plot out your primary timeline. Take a leaf out of the Doctor's playbook and establish certain events that are fixed points in time. Those events will happen unless rediculous amounts of effort and power are brought to bear. Be flexible on everything else.

Fun tricks to pull: let the players save their younger selves a few times, but keep a note of when it happens from both ends, because if they forget to have their level 17 party go back and save their 2nd level selves...boom...or at least a crippling time out when the Inevitables of time come after them for not maintaining the threads of history...

Borrowing stuff from each other at different points in the timeline...also allows you to yoink key items from them from time to time.

Grandfather paradox...do the Marty McFly thing and have them interfere in their own parents meeting...or have them discover that they are actually the long-missing biological parent of another party member...

[Malphegor]

first off I strongly recommend you have inconsistent time travel mechanics via different methods.

An inverted Forced Dream power that takes you to your past might work differently with paradoxes than a Portal Through Time item than a Chronowyrm would cause you to experience upon eating your history.

The more methods of time travel there are the more confusing it gets about how the ‘current’ method works. And in the incertainty you can handwave away a lot of fiddly details like ‘wait if the Duke died the kingdom would never be and our homelands never existed so uh wait do we still exist in the regular timeline or are we castoffs from a discarded timeline’ to instead go ‘eh it probably works out’

[Batcathat]

first off I strongly recommend you have inconsistent time travel mechanics via different methods.

An inverted Forced Dream power that takes you to your past might work differently with paradoxes than a Portal Through Time item than a Chronowyrm would cause you to experience upon eating your history.

The more methods of time travel there are the more confusing it gets about how the ‘current’ method works. And in the incertainty you can handwave away a lot of fiddly details like ‘wait if the Duke died the kingdom would never be and our homelands never existed so uh wait do we still exist in the regular timeline or are we castoffs from a discarded timeline’ to instead go ‘eh it probably works out’

This method might work well with some type of players, but I suspect it would work very poorly with some types. Personally, I think a GM doing this would drive me up the wall.

[Fitz10019]

Some suggestions

==.....==

Time-travel Mechanism

There's a movie, Somewhere in Time, where a guy travels back in time via hypnosis.

I suggest that the time travel only go backwards from the present via magic dreaming. Then the PCs will need to secure a safe place for the present-bodies they leave behind. Also, you can interrupt their time travel by waking the PCs in the present. Just like the wizard not sleeping a second time in a day to regain spells, the PCs can't just dive back into the past after the interruption.

Some opposing force should be able to sense the... DreamStone?... when it is in use, so there's always a threat of being woken, and always a need to move on to a new location before dreamstoning again. Because they must find a new location each time, they always go out in the world and are likely to see the impact of their last time-tinkering.

The Dreamstone itself is the Titan's prison, and he doesn't want it to be found/destroyed. The Titan himself might eject the party when opposing force gets too close. He also might nudge their dreamstoning destination for his own purposes.

===
Plot: fall of a Paladin

The glorious high-level paladin travels back in time for some noble reason. She accidently encounters her younger self, and that meeting sows the younger paladin with a dangerous seed, Pride. After returning to the present, she can feel her own corruption and that is why she recruits the PC party for further dreamstoning.

===
Plot: the Titans plays both sides

The Titan needs worshippers, but the leadership's preaching to those worshippers can taint the energy he gets from the worship. He needs the cult to be righted, but not wiped out or disillusioned.