Is there a game system with a "flashback" mechanic?

[Red Bear]

I don't have a specific flashback mechanic in mind and I'm not even sure it's feasible in general as a thing, so I was wondering if someone tried to make a game where you can officially do stuff in the past without in-game time travel

[The Glyphstone]

What's wrong with just saying 'okay, this scene happens X hours/days/years ago'? Unless you're doing Continuum-style hijinks where the flashback scene is specifically relevant to the 'current' events, there's nothing that mandates you play scenes in strict chronological order. In fact, I could see great narrative potential in having a big reveal then playing out the memories triggered by it.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Blades in the Dark. It's a heist style game and the mechanic in question is a solution to the Shadowrun problem where you spend more time planning a mission than executing it. It approaches that problem in a way similar to the way heist movies do things where you don't spend a lot of time on the planning stage, you just start with the action, and when you run into a problem in the mission you can spend stress points to flash back to how your competent characters have already anticipated this problem and taken steps to overcome it, with the amount of stress you spend depending on how unlikely it was for you to have foreseen this.

[Blymurkla]

The great, sweet little game The Super Crew has a mechanic where the player describes a flashback that ties into what's happening that their character is having in order to get a boost on a roll.

But I suppose you're looking more into how to play out scenes where stuff happens in the past without having said stuff ruining the continuum. Hm.

[Nifft]

I don't have a specific flashback mechanic in mind and I'm not even sure it's feasible in general as a thing, so I was wondering if someone tried to make a game where you can officially do stuff in the past without in-game time travel

3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars had an explicit flashback mechanic.

It's a good model to follow in general, for your own system. For example, each PC has a limited number of flashback slots, so you don't get one spotlight-hog using a flashback every turn of every combat.

[Friv]

Blades in the Dark has already been mentioned, but a similar mechanic is used in Leverage - you can spend a small amount of Plot Points to declare a flashback, allowing you to have prepared for an event in the past. Like Blades, the cost is based on how likely the flashback is to have been put in place - preparation for a likely scenario costs less than happening to have a plan on-hand for some ridiculous contrivance.

[Takewo]

Hack the Planet had something about that.

[Knaight]

All the examples I was going to list were already covered. In addition to these there are also games that are just heavily non-chronological to begin with, where given scenes aren't flashbacks per se mostly because the idea of a dedicated present is on shaky ground. My favorite example of this is Microscope, but there are others.

[Reversefigure4]

Pulpier versions of Fate and Savage Worlds both allow 'Dramatic Editing' in exchange for Fate Points. You put elements into the scene that weren't established before, adding in elements like "Earlier, I dug a pit trap there", "Fortunately, I bought some rope when we were last in town", "I have a friend who works as a guard down at the docks".

Fate has a stunt called "The Master Plan", which allows you to make a Command-type roll to retroactively generate Aspects in the middle of a conflict. Pinned down by gunfire in the room? You get to declare the secret door you planned for is right behind you.

[Andor13]

Not quite what you mean but the new Glorantha RPG has a combat mechanic nebulous enough that you only nail down the details of what happened after the fight is over.

TimeWatch is a Time Patrol based RPG that has a mechanic where you can spend points to pull a "Bill and Teds adventure" style flashback where you retroactively pull a rabbit (or nuke) out of your hat.

[RazorChain]

I think that Vampire the Masquerade was one of the first system I know of that hit upon flashbacks as storytelling mechanic. As Glyphstone mentioned, you don't need a specific mechanic built into the system.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Blades in the Dark has already been mentioned, but a similar mechanic is used in Leverage -

Wait is there an RPG based on the show Leverage with a flashback mechanic like Blades in Darkness?

[Nifft]

Wait is there an RPG based on the show Leverage with a flashback mechanic like Blades in Darkness?

I've played it a little, and in my limited experience it's pretty well-done.

Give it a try, if you like Cortex+ (or if you liked the show).

[Knaight]

Wait is there an RPG based on the show Leverage with a flashback mechanic like Blades in Darkness?

Absolutely - Margareit Weis Productions (the publisher for Cortex+) pretty much operates by getting access to existing IP and making Cortex+ games for them. Leverage is on that list, with the flashback mechanic added just for it, but they also made a game for Firefly (I want to say Serenity).

[Friv]

Yeah, Leverage has the advantage of being one of the Cortex Plus games that they didn't lose the license for, so you can even still buy it!

(That said, there's a new edition of Cortex coming out, and the last I checked the "Cortex Action" variant was the one that Leverage runs on, which is... not entirely what I would call it, but close enough.)

Leverage also has a Callback mechanic, in which if you haven't spent experience yet, you can use it as plot points for the session if you do a deliberate callback to the session you gained it in. This doesn't use it up. So you get to choose between having more dramatic editing ability, or having permanent stat upgrades. It's pretty elegant.

[Absol197]

It's not a unique system, just a GMing trick I came up with, but several years ago I was developing an Avatar: the Last Airbender system. In our first playtest game, I started the party off at low level. We got to mid-level through play, but I wanted to test out high-level play, so when the party was looking for some lost MacGuffin, I gave them a diary written by another adventuring party from the distant past.

When the party started reading the diary, I gave them pre-made high level characters, and they played through the adventures that were recorded in the diary. Except I didn't pre-plan what would happen, I only had some vague scenarios. So the players, using alternate, past characters, had a bunch of adventures in the past.

The narrative device of the diary was nice, because at the beginning of each session, the party could decide if their present-day characters wanted to spend the session doing actual stuff in the present, or "reading the diary" and playing with the past characters.

And then, when the past party had accidentally messed up things that wouldn't become a problem until centuries later when the present day characters were alive, I told the players that they'd read the entire diary, and now their present-day characters had to fix all the mistakes their past party had made .

[Jay R]

I would be nervous that playing a situation that the outcome, or at least parts of it, are already known, would be a special kind of railroading.

"No, you can't kill him - you've already seen him in the future."

[WindStruck]

I would be nervous that playing a situation that the outcome, or at least parts of it, are already known, would be a special kind of railroading.

"No, you can't kill him - you've already seen him in the future."

Yep. You could have a "flashback" in any system you're currently playing... Only the problem is, you would have to railroad it heavily. If something needs to happen, you have to have away to ensure it happens. The "world" can't truly be open ended. And if something isn't supposed to happen, the dice need to be fumbled.

If anything, you might just have to switch to a freeform type of game..

[Knaight]

Yep. You could have a "flashback" in any system you're currently playing... Only the problem is, you would have to railroad it heavily. If something needs to happen, you have to have away to ensure it happens. The "world" can't truly be open ended. And if something isn't supposed to happen, the dice need to be fumbled.

If anything, you might just have to switch to a freeform type of game..

Flashbacks are pretty easy to add in - you just establish what happened during blank space. Played flashbacks are a bit trickier, but they don't really require heavy railroading so much as closing a couple options.

It's flash forwards where things tend to get weird.

[Telonius]

Away from the books right now, but I believe there's one in Masks: A New Generation. (It's a Powered by the Apocalypse game, I'm reading up on it for an upcoming superhero campaign I'm putting together).

[Slipperychicken]

My GM's run games in media res, and we've played things outside of chronological order. The key is to have everyone on the same page, in terms of realizing that they're not trying to make a time paradox. Also you want to not be quite so rigid about timelines and things; be willing to have events change slightly so things remain on track.

It's also perfectly fine to have a meta-currency to represent preparation. Say, you spend one of your points and say "my character retrieved the main terminal password in advance from the technology worker we interrogated before" or "Blackleaf, in a rare moment of foresight, made sure to wear her protective gloves before touching the slimy door-handle". My group will sometimes do this with edge-points in shadowrun. There are games where you can pop one of these points to say "oh yeah, I'm friends with this NPC", but personally I think that's going a bit too far, and you need to rein in the narrative convenience a bit sometimes.

[Psikerlord]

Paizo Plot Twist cards kinda allow for flashbacks, as a way to make sense of the card you play (why does the the traitor turn on his crew - flashback!)

I am also a fan of one line character histories, and having players make up the details during play. Which involves a bunch of flashbacks. As things roll on more and more of their history becomes defined, or at least the bits that are interesting to the adventure at hand. It is all a bit handwavey and adlib however. Something more structured might be better, not sure.

[Psikerlord]

It's a heist style game and the mechanic in question is a solution to the Shadowrun problem where you spend more time planning a mission than executing it.

Planning a mission was half the fun for me.