Worst time travel game I played in was a 3.5e homebrew. We ended up being sent back a whole 50 years. We succeeded at the mission to get the McGuffin, an evil crown from a princess who was being influenced to become her future evil self by her future evil self. Upon returning to the present, things had changed... not just in the world, but butterflied out to our characters, like different coloured eyes or being taller. This was all well and good for the humans who had not yet been born at the time of the story... but my dwarf was 12! Be sure to take into account the lifespans of your longer lived lineages when planning your adventures.
What I would love to see is a "Steins;Gate" style "history dungeon" scenario. Branching paths that lead to specific scenarios, and one can choose which particular example of "worldline convergence" to settle on, but that's the limit: you can't just do anything with history any more than you can just crash through dungeon walls. At a table with multiple competent GMs, you could pass the GMs chair around. The first GM could present the players with two bad options, and after the players decide they're done trying to find a third option, put the game away until one of the players comes up with a way out that works within the narrative and then takes over the game, running the players through the discovery of that third option.
I've seen two solid actual play uses of time loops on UA-cam. One was in High Rollers Aerois, wherein the players had to enter temporal pocket dimensions of the past and future to "destroy" the phylactery of a lich by learning from the future version how to dissuade the younger version from embracing lichdom before their transition (the character was also trans which have the scene a swelling of nuance). The other was Deadlands and the players had one minute to interior a wedding in a specific way to prevent the loop from recurring.
The best way to run an established fixed point for Time Travel, KILL CHARACTERS. Oh you went back in time, well that girl you loved is now married to the evil Tyrant and is obviously also evil, that child your character was trying to save, they've been sacrificed for something stupid. Make them regret trying to change a point, and when they try to go back, they have to fight themselves to (sort of) reset the timeline, but of course things are different now, and they aren't all roses and sunshine, things have still shifted.
Personally I say your being a poor GM/ST if you don't tell players things their character should know, that isn't really a way time travel stories are better in a medium, that is more just being a lazy GM/ST to avoid problems, which just makes the whole narrative worse, since its built on a plot hole. I also disagree with forcing in an "oh no" narratives work best with actions and reasonable consequences.
If you want a really good time loop story in a TTRPG i recommend The Adventure Zone, there is a quest line called "The Eleventh Hour" which features the players constantky going through this one hour over and over and over as they learn more about the area they're in, the events that take place and the problem they have to resolve. It is one of their best arcs, check it out.
In your video on the sending spell at about 16:40, you mention that your world has an organization of spellcaster that set fixed prices for magical services, with sending being a “loss leader”. With the price of sending being lower that it takes to cover the training of a wizard. I love your videos on spell worldbuilding and I think it’d be very useful to the community for you to have a video covering your process for setting prices for magics services and the cost of training a spellcaster.
Ooh interesting.. I can certainly try and put something together like that. It's on the ideas board! I'm no economist, that's for sure, but that's an awesome video idea, thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying the videos, it's fun to think through these implications - and I hope you keep getting value out of them!
when you talked about time loops i was reminded of The legend of Zelda: Majoras mask the story of the game is this, the villain will cause the end of the world in 3 days by crashing the moon into the earth, our hero link creates a time loop, anytime he dies, time gets reset to 3 days before that apocalypse he gets to keep all of his acquired levels, and a few but not all items in his inventory, between loops, but nothing else
I dislike self intersecting timelines that are not closed (i.e. changing the present by interacting witb the past). It isnt imposible to have a closed timelike path in the cobtext of a game, though. While on the surface it would seem that it restricts player agency, by keeping things vague, or shadowed in the mists of history and legend, and keeping the scope within predetermined bounds, discrepancies can be explained away as documentarion errors. In this way, ttrpgs have an advantage over video games, as with all elements of storytelling, in that the story is more melleable. The lore that gets added can be influenced by choices the player has made. Though this doesnt work if the players are able to interact with themselves. That requires either a reduction in player agency, or an open self intersecting timeline.
I’ve found the explanations a little too broad and lacking examples to really get your lessons on how to run time travel in RPG. But food for thought it is.. ;)
GURPS generally has amazing worldbooks that are useful regardless of system. I would probably spend a lot of money on them if they would just up their paperless game. Even PDFs are inconvenient. They seriously need to release e-reader editions.
I allow time travel and have even turned the Time Dragon's Time Gate into a spell players could learn and are free to use. However, my rule for time travel and manipulation is that the universe simply will not allow a paradox. In essence, this simply means that in my game: *You cannot change events in the past in a way that negates the reason for the time traveling.* If you go back in time to save your parents, they will still die. If you go back in time to kill your grandfather, he was not your grandfather. You need to actually put a bit of thought in before you can start to change things, and you can't cause major changes that would reshape your life before traveling back in time. The timeline is maleable, but it only bends so far before snapping back into shape. 🤓 Edit: As an example, you cannot prevent the apparent death of your parents. But you may be able to bring them to the future, keeping the past intact, so long as they still appeared to die in the past and were not present from then to the time after you traveled to the past.
Adding to what you said about the advantages of TTRPGs for telling time travel stories, players will assume your mistakes are intentional. I'm reminded of the DM who described a city with a mountain that wasn't there in the future. The players were like "I wonder what's gonna happen to that mountain", not "OMG I can't believe he forgot there's not a mountain there".
I haven’t done this … yet, but I would end the session when the timetraveling PC are back in the present. Then I would give the players a homework: „every one of you gives me three things your actions might have changed. When we meet again, we will discuss it, I have the last call, but consider that I will allow anything within reason.“ and than I would wait for magic to happen 😁my players never let me down.
I invented a ruleset for time travel the current world I run in, with plans to create more for other worlds in the future. The idea is that time travel doesn't naturally exist at all, but magic can make it happen so someone invents time travel and forces the universe to deal with it. Some kind of magical paradox counteraction, or dumping of energies into a trash plane or something, to account for the cosmic friction it creates with natural law. I like it because it makes the idea of who invented time travel a good question, and how this particular time travel deals with its paradoxes, or prevents them somehow.
Worst time travel game I played in was a 3.5e homebrew. We ended up being sent back a whole 50 years. We succeeded at the mission to get the McGuffin, an evil crown from a princess who was being influenced to become her future evil self by her future evil self. Upon returning to the present, things had changed... not just in the world, but butterflied out to our characters, like different coloured eyes or being taller. This was all well and good for the humans who had not yet been born at the time of the story... but my dwarf was 12! Be sure to take into account the lifespans of your longer lived lineages when planning your adventures.
Wdym he was 12
I have run a time loop of memories, players where in a time loop until they save a spirit from others in the peregrinage
What I would love to see is a "Steins;Gate" style "history dungeon" scenario. Branching paths that lead to specific scenarios, and one can choose which particular example of "worldline convergence" to settle on, but that's the limit: you can't just do anything with history any more than you can just crash through dungeon walls.
At a table with multiple competent GMs, you could pass the GMs chair around. The first GM could present the players with two bad options, and after the players decide they're done trying to find a third option, put the game away until one of the players comes up with a way out that works within the narrative and then takes over the game, running the players through the discovery of that third option.
If I recall right pathfinder 2e actually covers time loops in the dark archive book
As a wise old Turtle once said, One often meets their fate on the path they take to Avoid it.
Mother of Learning is a great example of possibility and loops
I've seen two solid actual play uses of time loops on UA-cam.
One was in High Rollers Aerois, wherein the players had to enter temporal pocket dimensions of the past and future to "destroy" the phylactery of a lich by learning from the future version how to dissuade the younger version from embracing lichdom before their transition (the character was also trans which have the scene a swelling of nuance).
The other was Deadlands and the players had one minute to interior a wedding in a specific way to prevent the loop from recurring.
That video was amazing, I've used time travel in my campaign and it workd so well, my players really enjoyed the experience!
An obsession with psionics is never wrong.
This was fun. Like your ideas. Will steal them. Thanks and huzzah for day drinking🎉
Only sometimes world breaking is a win in my book
The best way to run an established fixed point for Time Travel, KILL CHARACTERS. Oh you went back in time, well that girl you loved is now married to the evil Tyrant and is obviously also evil, that child your character was trying to save, they've been sacrificed for something stupid. Make them regret trying to change a point, and when they try to go back, they have to fight themselves to (sort of) reset the timeline, but of course things are different now, and they aren't all roses and sunshine, things have still shifted.
Love the fez.
Good.
Personally I say your being a poor GM/ST if you don't tell players things their character should know, that isn't really a way time travel stories are better in a medium, that is more just being a lazy GM/ST to avoid problems, which just makes the whole narrative worse, since its built on a plot hole. I also disagree with forcing in an "oh no" narratives work best with actions and reasonable consequences.
Ww
If you want a really good time loop story in a TTRPG i recommend The Adventure Zone, there is a quest line called "The Eleventh Hour" which features the players constantky going through this one hour over and over and over as they learn more about the area they're in, the events that take place and the problem they have to resolve.
It is one of their best arcs, check it out.
In your video on the sending spell at about 16:40, you mention that your world has an organization of spellcaster that set fixed prices for magical services, with sending being a “loss leader”. With the price of sending being lower that it takes to cover the training of a wizard. I love your videos on spell worldbuilding and I think it’d be very useful to the community for you to have a video covering your process for setting prices for magics services and the cost of training a spellcaster.
Ooh interesting.. I can certainly try and put something together like that. It's on the ideas board!
I'm no economist, that's for sure, but that's an awesome video idea, thank you.
I'm glad you're enjoying the videos, it's fun to think through these implications - and I hope you keep getting value out of them!
Magic services: get the cost of a scroll for that spell, including material components required, and halve it. There's a good start. :P
when you talked about time loops i was reminded of The legend of Zelda: Majoras mask
the story of the game is this,
the villain will cause the end of the world in 3 days by crashing the moon into the earth,
our hero link creates a time loop, anytime he dies, time gets reset to 3 days before that apocalypse
he gets to keep all of his acquired levels, and a few but not all items in his inventory, between loops, but nothing else
I dislike self intersecting timelines that are not closed (i.e. changing the present by interacting witb the past).
It isnt imposible to have a closed timelike path in the cobtext of a game, though. While on the surface it would seem that it restricts player agency, by keeping things vague, or shadowed in the mists of history and legend, and keeping the scope within predetermined bounds, discrepancies can be explained away as documentarion errors. In this way, ttrpgs have an advantage over video games, as with all elements of storytelling, in that the story is more melleable. The lore that gets added can be influenced by choices the player has made.
Though this doesnt work if the players are able to interact with themselves. That requires either a reduction in player agency, or an open self intersecting timeline.
Can confirm having played in it, the Grungeon Master’s time loop one shot is fantastic
the storytelling and structure of this video is really well executed. great stuff
I’ve found the explanations a little too broad and lacking examples to really get your lessons on how to run time travel in RPG. But food for thought it is..
;)
watch again and take account of background details
GURPS TIme Travel has a great set of methods and ideas, most of them are not system-specific.
GURPS generally has amazing worldbooks that are useful regardless of system. I would probably spend a lot of money on them if they would just up their paperless game. Even PDFs are inconvenient. They seriously need to release e-reader editions.
@@Tarvokwhat game publisher does that? Searchable PDFs are basically ebooks as it is.
I allow time travel and have even turned the Time Dragon's Time Gate into a spell players could learn and are free to use.
However, my rule for time travel and manipulation is that the universe simply will not allow a paradox.
In essence, this simply means that in my game: *You cannot change events in the past in a way that negates the reason for the time traveling.*
If you go back in time to save your parents, they will still die. If you go back in time to kill your grandfather, he was not your grandfather. You need to actually put a bit of thought in before you can start to change things, and you can't cause major changes that would reshape your life before traveling back in time.
The timeline is maleable, but it only bends so far before snapping back into shape. 🤓
Edit: As an example, you cannot prevent the apparent death of your parents. But you may be able to bring them to the future, keeping the past intact, so long as they still appeared to die in the past and were not present from then to the time after you traveled to the past.
Adding to what you said about the advantages of TTRPGs for telling time travel stories, players will assume your mistakes are intentional. I'm reminded of the DM who described a city with a mountain that wasn't there in the future. The players were like "I wonder what's gonna happen to that mountain", not "OMG I can't believe he forgot there's not a mountain there".
I haven’t done this … yet, but I would end the session when the timetraveling PC are back in the present. Then I would give the players a homework: „every one of you gives me three things your actions might have changed. When we meet again, we will discuss it, I have the last call, but consider that I will allow anything within reason.“ and than I would wait for magic to happen 😁my players never let me down.
I invented a ruleset for time travel the current world I run in, with plans to create more for other worlds in the future. The idea is that time travel doesn't naturally exist at all, but magic can make it happen so someone invents time travel and forces the universe to deal with it. Some kind of magical paradox counteraction, or dumping of energies into a trash plane or something, to account for the cosmic friction it creates with natural law. I like it because it makes the idea of who invented time travel a good question, and how this particular time travel deals with its paradoxes, or prevents them somehow.