Realistic Time Travel

[Oracle_Hunter]

Inspired by a misreading of another thread, I'm making one to discuss time travel in games, and which ones handle it best.

Personally, I've found Feng Shui to handle the whole thing pretty well. It uses a mixture of San Dimas Time and fixed Time Portals to keep things orderly with a healthy dose of Elastic History to prevent casual unraveling. That said, it makes specific allowances for how history can be changed and, in fact, makes that central to the structure of the world.

So, how about it? What's the most "realistic" way to have time-travel in a RPG and do you know of any interesting examples? And please, no jokes about the "one second at a time" manner of time travel

[randomhero00]

I think the most realistic form of time travel is that time is an illusion and that everything that has happened happened. We only experience time as linear because that's the only way to process it.

So if you went back in time at age 35 and killed Hitler, then that had already happened at age 6, you just haven't followed through with your stream of consciousness yet.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I think the most realistic form of time travel is that time is an illusion and that everything that has happened happened. We only experience time as linear because that's the only way to process it.

So if you went back in time at age 35 and killed Hitler, then that had already happened at age 6, you just haven't followed through with your stream of consciousness yet.

But how does that work in a game? It's all well and good to say "predestination" and wash your hands of it but it doesn't exactly encourages characters to do anything aside from smoke and drink coffee in sidewalk cafes, moaning about their enui

[TheEmerged]

So, how about it? What's the most "realistic" way to have time-travel in a RPG and do you know of any interesting examples? And please, no jokes about the "one second at a time" manner of time travel

What if I'm not joking?

Generally, I disallow this under "more trouble than it is worth" boilerplate. As a general rule (across campaign worlds) the past can only be viewed and "there is no such thing as The future" - and note the definitive article. Any attempts to see the future result in seeing what is currently the most likely future.

[Oracle_Hunter]

What if I'm not joking?

Generally, I disallow this under "more trouble than it is worth" boilerplate. As a general rule (across campaign worlds) the past can only be viewed and "there is no such thing as The future" - and note the definitive article. Any attempts to see the future result in seeing what is currently the most likely future.

Then you should definitely consider the Feng Shui approach.

There are 4 Junctures for the Players to travel to: 69 AD, 1850 AD, 1996 AD and 2056 AD. The Time Gates to each Juncture operate on San Dimas Time and history is assumed to be generally elastic: uproot Hitler's family tree and it turns out that Bitler is running Germany during WWII. However, if you (or your organization) control certain mystic sites you can affect the outcome of history. In game, the primary example is when a group known as the Ascended took over a bunch of sites in the 12th Century (due to the opening of a new Juncture) and sparked a series of events that lead to magic being less powerful in the future. This destroyed the then-world of 1988 which had been ruled by 4 sorcerer-emperors for centuries and instead presented the world of 1988 we know as "real."

[Ravens_cry]

The multiple universe time travel theory, "go back in time, kill your grandfather, no paradox because now you are travelling toward a future where you are not born" makes the most sense to me, or at least involves the fewest headaches.
It has it's downsides, you can never go home unless you can move parallel, cross to another streams as it were.
Still, an immutable past leads to headaches. It means the past is the best place to store antimatter in large quantities as it can never interact with matter or whoops, that would change something.

[Oracle_Hunter]

The multiple universe time travel theory, "go back in time, kill your grandfather, no paradox because now you are travelling toward a future where you are not born" makes the most sense to me, or at least involves the fewest headaches.
It has it's downsides, you can never go home unless you can move parallel, cross to another streams as it were.
Still, an immutable past leads to headaches. It means the past is the best place to store antimatter in large quantities as it can never interact with matter or whoops, that would change something.

In Feng Shui this problem is solved via "Lateral Reincarnation:" if you kill the ancestor of someone in the current era, then their "soul" is instead placed in a different body that comes from an unbroken family line.

So if you knew Bob in 1996 and went back to 1850 and accidentally offed his ancestors, when you got back to 1996 "Bob" might look different and have a different name but would otherwise be the guy you knew before you traveled. Really, if you didn't have Time Traveler's Immunity, you probably wouldn't even know anything had happened.

[Ravens_cry]

In Feng Shui this problem is solved via "Lateral Reincarnation:" if you kill the ancestor of someone in the current era, then their "soul" is instead placed in a different body that comes from an unbroken family line.

So if you knew Bob in 1996 and went back to 1850 and accidentally offed his ancestors, when you got back to 1996 "Bob" might look different and have a different name but would otherwise be the guy you knew before you traveled. Really, if you didn't have Time Traveler's Immunity, you probably wouldn't even know anything had happened.

Which really only works in a more spiritual setting.
Another problem with multiple universe from a gaming perspective is you need to be inhumanly good at improvisation and figuring out plausible consequences. Unlike a science fiction story, where you only need to plan as many 'branches' as appear in the story, and the actions that created them, players always do the unexpected thing.

[Yora]

I think the only realistic type of time travel in a magical wold are locations in which an after-image of a specific event is replaying itself. The location magically recreates all the conditions and everything repeats as it did before, except for the PCs interactions with the events.
However, since it's mostly a reenactment, this does not have any influence on the present. But this does allow them to experience significant events that happened in the past.

[Xefas]

I think the most "realistic" time travel in an RPG would be one where you cannot go back in time; only forward at an accelerated rate. Doing so would require orbiting a black hole, such that its mass causes you to move slower relative to the rest of the universe, or traveling so quickly that you push on the lightspeed barrier and have it push back, or something of that nature.

While it's not a central part of the game, you could certainly do something like that in Free Market. You could probably make a pretty penny selling tickets to the future. Don't want to wait until your favorite band's next album comes out in 6 months? Just buy a ticket to 6 months from now! Its exactly the sort of logic that works on the Donut.

[Elvenoutrider]

An article from cracked:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18564...-us-about.html

[Oracle_Hunter]

Which really only works in a more spiritual setting.

I suppose, although you can simply apply the "elastic history" principle and not call it "reincarnation" if that floats your boat

Another problem with multiple universe from a gaming perspective is you need to be inhumanly good at improvisation and figuring out plausible consequences. Unlike a science fiction story, where you only need to plan as many 'branches' as appear in the story, and the actions that created them, players always do the unexpected thing.

Helpfully, if the DM can't easily foresee the consequences, then neither will the Players. Who can say with authority what blowing up a cotton warehouse in 1850 will do to the 1996 we know and love? In a game setting, it is the DM - and he can pick and choose any of the various Butterfly Effect modifiers he likes to have it turn out however he prefers. Sure, the Players can do more to try and "fix" history but when you use San Dimas Time you have a limited ability to perform "do overs."

Additionally, you can make the influencing of Key Events part of the system. Perhaps only a few things actually do matter in the grand scheme of things. In Feng Shui these sites are known in-game and manipulating them is a major driver of the action. For the DM, this makes the suite of probable multiverses somewhat smaller.

[Yuki Akuma]

I think the most realistic (or at least the most awesome) time travel in an RPG I've ever encountered is in Continuum.

Because... Continuum is just awesome.

I'm bad at explaining things. >.>

[Xefas]

I think the most realistic (or at least the most awesome) time travel in an RPG I've ever encountered is in Continuum.

I agree with this part, at the very least.

[Frozen_Feet]

I think the most realistic version is where once you go back, you only get forward the ordinary way. You effectively "reset" universe to the point of past where you go to, then proceed to live as normal - if you want to "fast forward", you need to get yourself a cryogenic pod and go to circle the solar system with relativistic speeds or some such.

[Fhaolan]

An additional solution to the grandfather paradox is that it's not a paradox at all.

You go back and kill your grandfather. The universe rewrites in such a manner that it was not your grandfather, but that you had a reason to go back and kill that person. Because of the rewrite, you remember the new version of history, not the prior one.

Oh, and there's the Solipsist approach. Nothing exists except the person experiencing. Prior to that person's existance there was nothing. Outside of the person's sensory perception, there is nothing. So if you went back into history and killed your grandfather, it's irrelevant because there is no such thing as history. There is only a series of experiences for the one real person. Anything is possible to happen, simply because the only rule is that reality is defined by the perception of one real individual.

[Frozen_Feet]

I've always found the grandfather paradox a bit silly. If you've physically been transferred to the past, why should you care? All the deed does is sever its causality in regards to your original timeline, but why should it affect your body as a physical object? All your memories are nothing but fabrications now, but otherwise you should remain unharmed.

[Pie Guy]

I've always found the grandfather paradox a bit silly. If you've physically been transferred to the past, why should you care? All the deed does is sever its causality in regards to your original timeline, but why should it affect your body as a physical object? All your memories are nothing but fabrications now, but otherwise you should remain unharmed.

Because in a singular timeline, how could you exist to go back in time to kill your grandfather? You've never existed in the first place, so then your grandfather is alive, and then you're alive to go back and kill him, but then you don't exist again. It only works out in multiple reality theory.

[Frozen_Feet]

But whether or not your hypothetical self commits the same actions in the future, why would your physical presence be erased? The idea is that once you move something in the past, it exists in the past regardless of what causality sent it there. You effectively popped out from nowhere, and that remains regardless of whether you kill your grand parent.

[Ravens_cry]

But whether or not your hypothetical self commits the same actions in the future, why would your physical presence be erased? The idea is that once you move something in the past, it exists in the past regardless of what causality sent it there. You effectively popped out from nowhere, and that remains regardless of whether you kill your grand parent.

In the paradox, there is only one future, one present, one past. One time actually. A young man is dead and the person who killed him can not exist if that person is killed. Hence, the paradox.

[Fhaolan]

In the paradox, there is only one future, one present, one past. One time actually. A young man is dead and the person who killed him can not exist if that person is killed. Hence, the paradox.

The paradox assumes casualty as a hard rule. That the universe actually 'cares' that the person who killed him can not exist anymore. Unfortunately, without actual time travel there is no way to test that casualty is an actual universal constant, and that reality doesn't allow for weird stuff like this.

[Ravens_cry]

The paradox assumes casualty as a hard rule. That the universe actually 'cares' that the person who killed him can not exist anymore. Unfortunately, without actual time travel there is no way to test that casualty is an actual universal constant, and that reality doesn't allow for weird stuff like this.

It's not that killing your grandfather would make you cease to exist, it's that to kill your grandfather in the past you need to exist but you can't exist if someone killed your grandfather before your parents were conceived. That's why it's a paradox.
All this, of course, is assuming a single timeline, but only in a single timeline is this a paradox.

[Delwugor]

Runes, but the problem is no one knows what comes after "Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional".

Time travel to the future is simply explained by use of the "Ludicrous Haste" spell.

To the past requires a different much more difficult spell called "Localized Causality Disengagement". The basic premise is that there is a magical connection between cause and effect, once this connection is broken the "Ludicrous Haste" spell moves you back in time.

[Alleran]

Personally, I like the Doctor Who version of time travel. Even if it isn't all that realistic in the end.

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

[DragonOfUndeath]

I prefer the branching theory myself.
You can go back and screw up as much as you want Paradox-free and return to your own time by going back past your original point of screwing things up then go up to your original unchanged time (or one slightly different)

[Tvtyrant]

I made a pair of cities where time can fluctuate because they have no importance; you cannot leave the cities in any time but your own but you are free to travel back and forth in time within the cities bounds. Breaking through the barrier keeping you within the town in other times takes high level magic, and thus keeps things mostly in his own time.

[Welknair]

Inspired by a misreading of another thread,

Did the exact same thing.


I'm a fan of the "Multiple-Worlds" model of time travel as it avoids the problem of all those nasty paradoxes. Sadly I haven't played any games in which time travel was utilized.

[Ravens_cry]

I prefer the branching theory myself.
You can go back and screw up as much as you want Paradox-free and return to your own time by going back past your original point of screwing things up then go up to your original unchanged time (or one slightly different)

Actually, you can't return home if the branches occur on a quantum level, which is the most realistic way to look at it. Oh, you could go back to people who are exactly the same as family and friends, but you can't go back to your original timeline as there is a fundamental difference between it and the original.
You were there, and on a quantum level that makes all the difference.

[Zaydos]

Actually, you can't return home if the branches occur on a quantum level, which is the most realistic way to look at it. Oh, you could go back to people who are exactly the same as family and friends, but you can't go back to your original timeline as there is a fundamental difference between it and the original.
You were there, and on a quantum level that makes all the difference.

And this is why you need a time machine that can just travel sidewise through time, moving straight from one branch to another... although at that point it's more of a Time And Multiple Dimensions In Space machine.

[DragonOfUndeath]

Everyone is exactly the same, have the same memories and there is no difference except on a quantum level where you put the machine in that minute you were there.
Sure technically you aren't in your original configuration but who cares about the dust patterns of a desert?